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      Criss-Crossing the ’24 Campaign Trail, Before the Campaign Is Official

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      A handful of prominent Republicans, including Tim Scott and Ron DeSantis, have been testing the waters for months, mindful of the biggest fish out there: Donald Trump.Two months ago, Senator Tim Scott stood before cameras and reporters in South Carolina, leaning heavily on his biography and the Civil War history of his native Charleston for a soft launch of a presidential campaign.Fast-forward to Wednesday in Iowa, where Mr. Scott announced a presidential exploratory committee, and the soft launch remained just as soft.If his video announcement sounded familiar — with a remembrance of the battle of Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War, recollections from his rise from poverty and a denunciation of the politics of racial division — it should have. After two months, his campaign argument had not changed, nor had an actual campaign — he still is not a candidate.Mr. Scott’s reluctance to officially join the 2024 Republican field is shared by others who are wary of the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump. While Mr. Scott explores, Ron DeSantis delays, Mike Pence procrastinates and Mike Pompeo ponders, all hoping that forces beyond the voters will derail Mr. Trump’s third run for the White House without their having to engage in combat with the pugnacious ex-president.“They see the writing’s on the wall — Trump is going to win the primary,” said Al Baldasaro, a Republican former state lawmaker in New Hampshire and an outspoken Trump fan. “Maybe they’re hoping he’ll go to jail or get fined or something, but it’s not going to stop him.”The situation for Republicans has helped give rise to several unofficial White House runs that increasingly look and sound like official White House runs.Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump’s biggest rival, will be in New Hampshire on Thursday to meet the voters who will cast the first ballots in the Republican primaries next year — although still technically as governor of Florida, and not as a declared candidate for president.Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president, will swing by the National Rifle Association’s annual conference in Indianapolis at the end of the week before visiting a Republican National Committee donor conference in Nashville — still not as a candidate.Mr. Pompeo, the former secretary of state, has been making the rounds in early-voting states — just not as a candidate. And former Representative Mike Rogers was a long way from his native Michigan when he found himself chatting about current events last week in New Hampshire — as a very concerned citizen.Former Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to appear at a National Rifle Association event in Indianapolis.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe so-called shadow campaign ahead of the Republican primary contest is not all that unusual, but the odd minuet of 2023 has one unique characteristic — the noncandidates are not shadowboxing one another, but the first declared candidate, Mr. Trump..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“The new dynamic now compared to ’11 or even ’07 is that everyone recognizes that when you enter the ring you’re in the cross hairs of Donald Trump,” said Alice Stewart, an aide to Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign in 2012, who counseled potential candidates to line up their money, infrastructure and message before declaring their candidacies. “The safe space is to be in the early states but not necessarily in the race until you’re ready.”Mr. Trump’s decision to make his candidacy official and early — in November, just after the midterm elections — did not clear the field, as he might have hoped. His ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, formally announced her entry into the Republican race in February. Vivek Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and author, jumped in a week later. Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas and a Trump critic, entered the fray this month.“I said all along it’s important for the Republican Party to have an alternative to Donald Trump,” Mr. Hutchinson said on Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s a time to hunker down for our party or our country. It’s a time to engage.”But Mr. Trump’s hold on the core Republican voter base and the Republican National Committee’s new winner-take-all primary rules have kept his most formidable rivals circling the runway, awaiting signals that the turbulence has cleared, said Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore’s presidential campaign manager in 2000.It was evident on Wednesday in Mr. Scott’s appearance on the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends,” when Mr. Scott, the only Black Republican senator, was pressed to explain how he would beat Mr. Trump to the nomination.“If we focus on our uniqueness, we focus on our path to where we are, I believe we give the voters a choice so that they can decide how we move forward,” he answered. “As opposed to trying to have a conversation about how to beat a Republican, I think we’re better off having a conversation about beating Joe Biden.”In the shadow campaign, meanwhile, the maneuvering goes on. Mr. DeSantis has one clear advantage: a national infrastructure, said Ron Kaufman, a longtime Republican presidential strategist and a confidant of Mitt Romney’s in 2012. Jeff Roe, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has signed on with Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down PAC, where he can bring to bear the infrastructure of his multistate firm Axiom Strategies.But he still needs to declare.By historical standards, it is still early. The last competitive Republican presidential race came in 2016, and by this time there were two major candidates, Mr. Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, and Mr. Trump, the eventual nominee, did not declare until June 2015.The wide-open primary of 2012 included May 2011 announcements by former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Herman Cain, a former pizza executive. But the eventual nominee, Mr. Romney, did not join the pack until June, and Rick Perry, who at the time was the governor of Texas, waited until that August.The difference this year is that the front-runner is setting the pace. More

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      Tim Scott Set to Announce Presidential Exploratory Committee for 2024

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      Mr. Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, will appear on Fox News on Wednesday morning.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the most prominent Black leader in the Republican Party, will start an exploratory committee for a 2024 presidential run on Wednesday, according to three people with knowledge of his plans.The announcement, which was first reported by The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., opens an all-but-declared presidential campaign for Mr. Scott, who will test his message this week in the early primary voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, his home state.An exploratory committee will allow Mr. Scott, who would enter the Republican primary with nearly $21.8 million on hand in his Senate account, to raise money directly for a 2024 campaign and garner more national attention before a formal presidential announcement. He will host a donor retreat in Charleston this weekend, where he is expected to update his top donors on his plans.Allies have already established a super PAC that is expected to be supportive of Mr. Scott, should he make his run official. Last week, the PAC announced that it was expanding through the hiring of two veteran South Carolina political operatives, Matt Moore and Mark Knoop.Mr. Scott also teased his plans to run in a fund-raising email to supporters on Tuesday evening, saying he would make “a major announcement” on Wednesday. He will announce his plans on “Fox and Friends” on Fox News that morning, according to the email.Mr. Scott, who will campaign in Iowa on Wednesday, in New Hampshire on Thursday and in South Carolina on Friday, is expected to heavily emphasize his only-in-America rise, a story he first told on the national stage at the 2020 Republican National Convention.“Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime,” Mr. Scott said. “And that’s why I believe the next American century can be better than the last.” In 2021, he was tapped to deliver the Republican response to President Biden’s first joint address before Congress, a speech that turbocharged Mr. Scott’s online fund-raising.Mr. Scott’s biography, his oratorical skills and his prominence as the top-ranking Black Republican in Congress have him on many Republican short lists to serve as a potential vice president, though advisers to Mr. Scott have rebuffed that as the goal.If and when Mr. Scott officially enters the race, he will be the second South Carolina Republican in the 2024 sweepstakes, following the entry of Nikki Haley, the former governor and former United Nations ambassador. He also joins an increasingly crowded primary field for president: Former President Donald J. Trump, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and the tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have all begun campaigns. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to join the field in the coming months. More

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      In South Carolina, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott Appeal to the Same Donors, and the Same Voters

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      Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, vying for Republican support for 2024 in their home state, attended a South Carolina conservative forum on Saturday.NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — At a conservative forum on Saturday, South Carolina Republicans had a common refrain about two home-state political figures who are eyeing the White House in 2024, former Gov. Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott.“I like them both.”It was the first time Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott had attended the same event during the 2024 campaign, in a key battleground state that fueled their political rise and that will play a critical role as they prepare to square off for the Republican nomination for president, one officially and the other unofficially so far.The two allies have largely steered clear of each other as they have staked out their respective lanes early in a presidential primary in which the specter of former President Donald J. Trump looms large. And while Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott might not be fighting each other, they will almost certainly be fighting for the same voters.At the forum on Saturday in North Charleston, both Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott received standing ovations as they entered and left the stage. Each one drew whoops and claps in response to points they made about the teaching of race in schools and problems with the Biden administration. And each one drew a small crowd on the side of the room to jostle for a closer photo, hug or handshake.“It’s going to be virtually impossible to take two from the same state, but that we know,” said Elizabeth Lyons, who moved to Charleston from Connecticut in 2021. Her husband, Michael, chimed in: “I’ll bet you either one or the other of them is going to be the vice-presidential candidate in 2024.”It remains unclear if either Ms. Haley or Mr. Scott — or both — will generate momentum beyond their in-state stardom. Their toughest task will be winning over Republicans eager for a Trump alternative, as well as a portion of the former president’s hyper-conservative base. The dynamic, some say, has the air of the 2016 G.O.P. primary, in which a crowded field cleared a path for Mr. Trump to win.“They’re both very popular with Republicans in South Carolina,” said Chip Felkel, a veteran South Carolina political consultant who said he is remaining neutral in the primary. “The question is, does their popularity exceed that of the former president?”Many of those at the forum said they were still undecided as to whom they would nominate for president in 2024. Mary Catherine Landers, 63, was among them. A lifelong Republican voter who moved to Charleston from Indiana in 2018, Ms. Landers supported Mr. Trump in 2020. But she said she feared some conservatives would stay home if he were nominated again, and that Ms. Haley was the draw for her on Saturday.“I’m excited about both,” Ms. Landers said, though she added, “I think personally the one who would have the better chance at this point in time is going to be Nikki.”Nikki Haley spoke on Saturday at the same conservative forum in South Carolina that Mr. Scott also attended. Logan Cyrus/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMs. Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, launched her campaign for president in February. Mr. Scott, the junior senator from South Carolina, has yet to formally declare his candidacy, but he is widely expected to make a decision in the next few weeks.South Carolina is home to a varied conservative electorate — Libertarian-leaning Lowcountry voters, establishment insiders around Columbia’s State Capitol, staunch conservatives along its eastern coast upstate to the North Carolina border. How Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott ultimately fare in South Carolina will be decided at county party picnics, on the debate stage and, perhaps most importantly, at smaller platforms like the Saturday forum.The event drew a couple hundred of the party’s most faithful Christian conservative voters and activists to a convention center in North Charleston. Speakers stoked anxieties about social issues like abortion and transgender students, railing against what they saw as existential dangers that the next party nominee will be tasked with righting: China’s ascendance on the world stage, the war in Ukraine and ongoing economic uncertainty.An open question is whether the governor of a state to the south, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, will draw a large network of support. The governor has closely trailed Mr. Trump in polling and has amassed a fund-raising haul of more than $100 million.Jerry Dorchuck, a Florida-based pollster who has conducted polling for candidates in South Carolina, said the results of his polls in the state have followed a national trend: Mr. Trump still commands nearly half the Republican vote, followed closely by Mr. DeSantis. In South Carolina, both Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott have roughly equal support, floating at or below 10 percent.Right now, Mr. Dorchuck said, “It’s Trump’s race to lose, DeSantis’s race to win.”Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott benefit from household-name status in the state. Mr. Scott got his political start on Charleston’s City Council and is the only Black lawmaker to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Ms. Haley served for six years as a state representative in a district just outside Columbia before winning the governorship after a tough campaign in 2011. In fact, it was Ms. Haley who appointed Mr. Scott to his current Senate seat in 2012.Their campaigns — one established and one still under construction — have split some allegiances among the Palmetto State’s political class, albeit amicably. A handful of donors have given to both operations. A few, though, are waiting for their candidates of choice to enter the race.Chad Walldorf, a Charleston-area business owner and G.O.P. donor who has been a close ally of both Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott, said he would ultimately support Mr. Scott in a potential presidential bid.“It’s a difficult choice that I think many South Carolina Republicans are going to have to figure out in the coming months ahead, assuming that Tim does enter the race,” he said.Support for Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump has been mixed among South Carolina elected officials, with several waiting to take sides. Representatives Russell Fry, Will Timmons and Joe Wilson are on the former president’s leadership team in the state, as is Senator Lindsey Graham. Representative Ralph Norman has thrown his support behind Ms. Haley.Ms. Haley’s allies said that because she served in Mr. Trump’s administration, she could bring the knowledge of the former president’s policy goals without the bombast that turned off moderate conservatives. She has also won a handful of tough races, namely her run for governor.Mr. Scott, on the other hand, has not run in tough statewide races. His proponents have praised his conservative messaging that has often been overwhelmingly positive and peppered with Bible verses. And, if he does run, he will enter the race with more than $20 million already in the bank.Attendees at the conservative forum cheered as Mr. Scott spoke.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesBut with Mr. Scott not yet a declared candidate and Ms. Haley still building national momentum, some Republican leaders and strategists warn that both of them could crowd the field and clear a path for Mr. Trump to win the state.“Are they splitting the vote? Yeah, they certainly are,” said Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who is supporting Ms. Haley. “Are they going to take any from Donald Trump? I don’t know yet.”Mr. Trump still commands a majority share of support among Republican voters in South Carolina. He did not attend Saturday’s event, though he was invited. Neither did Mr. DeSantis, who was also invited. Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who is still mulling a possible presidential bid and who attended the forum, told reporters on Saturday that the presence of Mr. Scott and Ms. Haley created “a little bit of a complicated arena.”Mr. Scott has been on a weekslong listening tour through early primary states, namely Iowa and South Carolina. Outside of the requisite engagements with voters and donors, Mr. Scott has paid particular attention to faith leaders and has held a handful of listening sessions with pastors. Ms. Haley, whose campaign has boasted that she has made nearly 20 campaign stops in the month she has been a candidate, plans to visit New Hampshire later in March.Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott are two Republicans of color in an overwhelmingly white party. Each one has used that distinction to flatten Democratic criticisms of systemic racism in America and to argue that the country remains a beacon of progress and opportunity.“America’s not racist, we’re blessed,” Ms. Haley said, a message she has emphasized repeatedly.Mr. Dawson, the former chairman of the state  Republican Party who is supporting Ms. Haley, offered another scenario. Instead of cannibalizing each other’s voters, Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott, he said, could consolidate their resources if one of them were to suspend their presidential bid to support the other. Such a move could strengthen one contender’s odds against a higher-polling candidate, such as Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis.“You team those two up on something, you got a problem,” Mr. Dawson said. “Because they like each other.” More

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      Tim Scott Weighs 2024 Run, Selling Unity to a Party Eager for a Fight

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      Mr. Scott, the only Black Republican senator, has many political assets. What he lacks is an obvious ability to win over voters who have embraced a Trumpian brand of us-versus-them divisiveness.CHARLESTON, S.C. — Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, openly eyeing a pathbreaking run for the Republican presidential nomination, came home Thursday night to the city that started the Civil War to test out themes of unity and forgiveness aimed at the current war in his party — and the divisions roiling the nation at large.The ultimate question is whether Republican voters who embraced Donald J. Trump’s brand of us-versus-them divisiveness are ready for the themes that Mr. Scott is selling.His speech Thursday to the Charleston County Republican Party could have been the kind of routine dinner address that all elected officials give, this one honoring Black History Month at a local college. But the television crews and reporters piled on to the risers at The Citadel military college’s alumni center were there to watch what amounted to a soft opening for a White House run by Mr. Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate. And it came only a day after a festive kickoff event for the presidential campaign of Mr. Scott’s friend, political benefactor and fellow South Carolinian, Nikki Haley.“If you want to understand America, you need to start in Charleston; you need to understand and appreciate the devastation brought upon African Americans,” Mr. Scott counseled. “But if you stop at our original sin, you have not started the story of America, because the story of America is not defined by our original sin. The story of America is defined by our redemption.”Mr. Scott has obvious political assets to bring to a potentially crowded field: a message of optimism, a disposition that has made him personally popular even with his political opponents, and the historic nature of his potential nomination.But those assets could prove to be a liability in today’s Republican primary environment, where voters rail against what they see as unfair favoritism toward people of color and where activists may be more interested in anger than optimism. Even in his home state, the third in the Republican nomination process, it is not clear that his political approach is preferable to those of the two pugnacious Floridians expected to compete for the party’s standard, Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.“I don’t see a path for Tim,” said Chip Felkel, a longtime Republican consultant in South Carolina and a critic of Mr. Trump. He said of the mood in the party, “We don’t have a lot of Republicans ready to sing ‘Kumbaya.’”Mr. Scott appears to understand that race is a major political issue at this fraught moment when the loudest voices in his party are disputing how Black history is taught, race consciousness and the once widely accepted notion that diversity should be a goal, not just happenstance. His own Senate record includes legislation to make lynching a federal hate crime and a major push for police reforms in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.Mr. Scott with a young attendee after she gave him an introduction at the dinner. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesSo Mr. Scott has been approaching the issue from both sides, acknowledging the racism that confined his grandparents to the impoverished corners of the Jim Crow South and that still sends him routinely to the shoulders of the road for traffic stops. But he also says, invariably with a smile, that the nation is not racist. “There is a way for us to unify this country around basic principles that lead us forward and not backward, but we have to quit buying the lie that this is the worst time in American history,” he said on Thursday. “Only if American history started today can that be true.”Which Republicans Are Eyeing the 2024 Presidential Election?Card 1 of 6The G.O.P. primary begins. More

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      Republicans Try to Challenge Trump in 2024, but Barely Say His Name

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      The former president’s Republican rivals appear highly reluctant to criticize him, and Nikki Haley didn’t even mention him as she jumped into the race this week.Nikki Haley’s leap into the 2024 presidential campaign this week included a nod to the historic nature of her candidacy, as a woman of color and the child of immigrants making a White House run as a Republican.But beyond biography, the former South Carolina governor’s entry to the race on Tuesday underscored how difficult it will be for many Republican candidates to persuade the party’s base that they should bear the standard for the G.O.P., not former President Donald J. Trump, who maintains the loyalties of so many voters.Ms. Haley’s announcement, which she will repeat on Wednesday at an event in Charleston, S.C., seemed like a calculated appeal to Republican voters who are ready to turn the page from the Trump era without burning the book of Mr. Trump’s presidency. She reminded voters that the Republican Party had lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections and said it was “time for a new generation of leadership,” both signs that she will call for a fresh start in the 2024 Republican primaries.But she never mentioned Mr. Trump by name, much less leveled any direct criticism at the only other major candidate in the presidential race.Ms. Haley’s conundrum about how to approach Mr. Trump will surely apply to other potential competitors. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who shares Mr. Trump’s pugnacious instincts and is the only Republican within striking distance in early polls of the field, has nevertheless been reluctant to trade insult for insult with the former president. Like Ms. Haley, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence served in the Trump administration. Overt critics of Mr. Trump, like Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Larry Hogan of Maryland, both former governors, risk not being taken seriously by Republican voters.Ms. Haley has “a pretty bad tightrope to walk,” said Chip Felkel, a longtime Republican consultant in South Carolina and a critic of Donald J. Trump.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressMs. Haley has time to devise a strategy for challenging Mr. Trump, but moving on from the last Republican presidency will be tricky, said Chip Felkel, a longtime Republican consultant in South Carolina and a critic of Mr. Trump. Since leaving his administration in 2018 and making halting efforts to criticize him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Ms. Haley has tacked back into his orbit.The Run-Up to the 2024 ElectionThe jockeying for the next presidential race is already underway.G.O.P. Field: Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, has officially entered the 2024 race. It’s the first major Republican challenge to Donald J. Trump, but unlikely to be the last.DeSantis’s Challenge: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has pursued a strategy of conflict avoidance with Mr. Trump in the shadow G.O.P. primary. But if he runs for president as expected, a clash is inevitable.What the Polling Says: Mr. DeSantis is no Scott Walker, writes Nate Cohn. The Florida governor’s support among Republicans at this early stage of the primary cycle puts him in rare company.Harris’s Struggles: With President Biden appearing all but certain to run again, concerns are growing over whether Kamala Harris, who is trying to define her vice presidency, will be a liability for the ticket.“She’s got a pretty bad tightrope to walk,” Mr. Felkel said.In fact, her arrival in the Republican primary — and the expected entry of another South Carolinian, Senator Tim Scott, as well as of Mr. Hutchinson, who is leaning hard on his degree from the state’s evangelical conservative Bob Jones University — could make it easier for Mr. Trump to win the state, by dividing Republican voters who want to move past him.“They are fighting over non-Trump conservatives who’d like to see the party win elections and who are tired of the chaos,” Mr. Felkel said. “I’m not sure in South Carolina that’s a majority.”Difficulties lie ahead for candidates who choose not to take on Mr. Trump directly — particularly those, like Ms. Haley, who appear inclined to avoid saying his name — in hopes that they can create distance from him without going too far in the eyes of Republican voters. And if Mr. DeSantis can consolidate a bloc of voters, it remains to be seen whether the other rivals can make an affirmative case for their own candidacies beyond hoping Mr. DeSantis struggles.Even Ms. Haley’s résumé seemed like a credential to tread on lightly. In her announcement on Tuesday, she pointed to her experiences in the governor’s mansion in Columbia, S.C., and to her time as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. But she was light on listing accomplishments to burnish a claim to the highest elective office in the land.Her most notable achievement as governor, the delicate compromise that removed the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina State House, went unmentioned altogether, though the tragedy that instigated it — a massacre of Black parishioners at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a white supremacist — was invoked as a call to return the nation to religion.“We turned away from fear toward God and the values that still make our country the freest and greatest in the world,” she said. “We must turn in that direction again.”Still, Ms. Haley’s biggest advantage will be her deep connections in the state, the third to vote in the primary season next year. Retail politics and local organization matter in South Carolina, and regardless of the results in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, its results have a track record. Victory in the state propelled Joseph R. Biden Jr. to the Democratic nomination in 2020 and vaulted George W. Bush ahead of John McCain in the 2000 election.Chad Connelly, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, said that Ms. Haley remained “wildly popular” in the state, but that so did Mr. Trump, Mr. Scott and Mr. DeSantis — an unpredictable situation that he said he had not seen in his 25 years in South Carolina Republican politics. But Mr. Trump has never paid attention to organization, and Mr. DeSantis has little connection to the state.“People expect retail politics here,” Mr. Connelly said. “People expect you to meet them at Bill and Fran’s in Newberry for waffles.”Ms. Haley campaigning for Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina last year. Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesFor now, Mr. Trump has refrained from taunting, mocking or attacking Ms. Haley. Republican officials in South Carolina said that could be a sign that he is listening to consultants who are pleading with him not to assail a Republican woman of color, or that he is simply not viewing her as a serious threat.It could also mean that both candidates are sizing each other up as running mates, Mr. Felkel said. In 2016, Mr. Pence, then Indiana’s governor, helped shore up Mr. Trump’s appeal with conservative evangelical Christians, who had been leery of him. In 2024, with many of those voters still loyal to Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley might help Mr. Trump with perhaps his biggest weakness, suburban Republican women.Ms. Haley’s announcement video leaned heavily into her roots as the child of Indian immigrants, “not Black, not white, but different.” But she also emphasized that she had been taught to accentuate what Americans have in common, not what separates them, a reassuring message for the white voters who dominate the Republican Party.And she took pointed swipes at movements that emphasize the country’s racist past, including The New York Times’s 1619 Project, which traced Black American history to the first year enslaved Africans reached North American shores.In doing so, she signaled that her family’s immigrant roots would not impede her entry to the social policy and culture wars that have been central to the appeal of Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis.But vying for vice president would be difficult for Ms. Haley, South Carolina Republicans said, because the state’s primary comes so early. She will have to signal that she is in it to win it, Mr. Felkel said, and that might mean she will eventually have to go on the attack against her former boss.An adviser to Mr. Scott, who insisted on anonymity to discuss preliminary campaign preparations, said that because Ms. Haley worked for Mr. Trump, she would have a harder time separating herself from him. While Mr. Scott can fly above the fray, the adviser said, Ms. Haley will be under more pressure to confront the former president head-on.“It’s going to be one of the most fascinating things to watch that I’ve ever seen in politics,” Mr. Connelly said.Like Mr. Scott, Ms. Haley is projecting a more optimistic message than Mr. Trump’s often apocalyptic description of the United States. But whether that will be enough remains to be seen.“The challenge for this field is to tell the truth,” said Chris Christie, a Republican former governor of New Jersey and a potential candidate for president who has been vocally critical of Mr. Trump since breaking with him at the end of his presidency. “And it’s to tell the truth about everything — to tell the truth about your plans for the country, and to tell the truth about what has happened over the last number of years with Donald Trump and Joe Biden.”If people are “unwilling to tell all of it,” he said, “it’s unlikely you’ll have credibility on any of it.” More

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      Nikki Haley Might Challenge Trump in 2024. Other Republicans Aren’t So Eager.

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      Nikki Haley is expected to join the 2024 race this month, but other G.O.P. contenders are taking a wait-and-see approach. Some anti-Trump Republicans worry that too much dithering could be costly.Increased uncertainty is rippling through the Republican Party over how to beat Donald J. Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination, as an array of the party’s top figures move slowly toward challenging the politically wounded yet resilient former president.Contenders have so far been unwilling to officially jump into the race, wary of becoming a sacrificial lamb on Mr. Trump’s altar of devastating nicknames and eternal fury. Some are waiting to see if prosecutors in Georgia or New York will do the heavy lifting for them and charge Mr. Trump with crimes related to his election meddling after the 2020 contest or hush-money payments to a porn star during the 2016 campaign. And the sitting governors weighing a 2024 campaign, including Ron DeSantis of Florida, are vying to score legislative victories they can use to introduce themselves to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.The first entrant against Mr. Trump might be former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who served as United Nations ambassador under the former president and is set to announce her candidacy on Feb. 15, according to a person familiar with the plans. And this week, former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said for the first time that he was “actively and seriously considering” running.But other potential challengers have more quietly wavered over when, where and how to unleash attacks on Mr. Trump’s candidacy, and to begin their own, after a midterm election in which his endorsements failed to usher in the red wave Republicans had expected. Republicans who hope to stop him worry that dithering by possible candidates could only strengthen Mr. Trump’s position — and could even lead to a field that is far smaller and weaker than many in the political world have anticipated.“There’s a non-Trump lane right now that’s as wide as the Trump lane, and there’s no one in that lane,” Mr. Hogan said in an interview.The lack of activity has included major Republican donors, a number of whom have moved away from Mr. Trump but, with few exceptions, are keeping their options open.But a flood of candidates into the race could also help Mr. Trump. Some Republicans fear a repeat of the primary campaign in 2016, when a cluttered field allowed Mr. Trump to win with roughly 25 percent of support in several contests, a possibility that his advisers are hoping for if he faces a particularly strong challenge from any one person.The case would-be challengers and their aides make behind the scenes is not that Mr. Trump’s policies were wrong, but that he would lose a rematch with President Biden, who won in 2020 in large part by presenting himself as an antidote to Mr. Trump.Republicans last week re-elected Ronna McDaniel, left, as the chair of the Republican National Committee. Many rank-and-file members do not support a third Trump campaign.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesAmong those who have expressed concern is Paul D. Ryan, the former Republican House speaker, who has called Mr. Trump a “proven loser.” In private conversations, Mr. Ryan has told people that donors and other Republicans need to find ways to ensure that there are not too many candidates splitting the vote against Mr. Trump. But what exact approach they might take is unclear, as is which would-be challengers would be receptive to it.Mr. Trump has shown signs of both weakness and durability. His fund-raising haul in the first weeks of his campaign was comparatively thin, and members of the Republican National Committee, long a bastion of pro-Trump sentiment, are not eager to back a third Trump campaign. A survey this week by The Bulwark, a conservative anti-Trump website, and the Republican pollster Whit Ayres found that most likely G.O.P. voters wanted someone other than Mr. Trump to be the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.Gov. Ron DeSantis and His AdministrationReshaping Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has turned the swing state into a right-wing laboratory by leaning into cultural battles.Education: Mr. DeSantis, an increasingly vocal culture warrior, is taking an aggressive swing at the education establishment, announcing a proposed overhaul of the state’s higher education system.2024 Speculation: Mr. DeSantis opened his second term as Florida’s governor with a speech that subtly signaled his long-rumored ambitions for the White House.Prosecutor Ousting: A federal judge ruled that the governor violated state law when he removed Tampa’s top prosecutor, but that the court lacked the authority to reinstate him.Yet other recent polls suggest that he remains the Republican front-runner. And the Bulwark survey also found that a staggering 28 percent of G.O.P. voters would be willing to back Mr. Trump in an independent bid, a figure that would all but ensure another four years for Democrats in the White House.“I think there are a lot of things that are still uncertain” about the 2024 primary race, said former Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.The clearest example of the mixed Republican situation is Ms. Haley, who has long been seen as a potential presidential candidate. She had made contradictory statements about whether she would challenge Mr. Trump, saying in 2021 that she would not do so. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump posted on his social media site a video of Ms. Haley making that remark, with the taunt that she had to “follow her heart, not her honor.”Ms. Haley’s expected entrance to the race this month would give Mr. Trump a challenger in the form of a popular former governor from what has historically been the first Southern state to vote in the primary cycle — and a state Mr. Trump won decisively in the 2016 primary.“I think she could be generational change, and I see that’s the lane Nikki’s got a shot at,” said Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who is supporting Ms. Haley.So far, Ms. Haley appears to be treading gingerly around Mr. Trump. He revealed to reporters over the weekend that she had reached out to him to let him know that she might run — and instead of sounding angry, he sounded almost delighted at the prospect of having a direct target, and a more crowded field.Former Vice President Mike Pence is not expected to announce a campaign decision until later in the year.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesOthers considering a campaign include former Vice President Mike Pence, who has expressed disapproval of Mr. Trump’s efforts to use him to overturn the 2020 election while avoiding most criticism of his onetime ally. Mr. Pence has been building a campaign apparatus, including poaching a staff member from Ms. Haley, but he is not expected to make a final decision on running until later this year.Another potential Trump rival, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has avoided going directly after his former boss. He has set his sights lower, using his recent book to attack Ms. Haley and John R. Bolton, a former national security adviser under Mr. Trump who is also considering a candidacy.The person Mr. Trump is most acutely concerned about is Mr. DeSantis, whose advisers in Tallahassee are planning for the state’s coming legislative session with an eye on a potential presidential bid.The Florida governor, who has a book set to be published this month, has been promoting policies that could translate into applause lines for the Republican primary base, including a proposed “anti-woke” overhaul of the state’s education system and a potential new law letting residents carry firearms without a permit. One change that Mr. DeSantis would almost certainly need from a friendly Republican supermajority in the Legislature: loosening a state law that requires state elected officials in Florida to resign before running for federal office.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to challenge Mr. Trump, and he is said to be the candidate who most concerns the former president.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesYet while Mr. DeSantis has attracted interest in early primary states, he has a small, insular team, which has concerned some donors and activists. And his lack of a presence in those states has led to questions among activists in places like Iowa and South Carolina about whether he risks squandering a chance to consolidate support if he waits past spring.Mr. Ayres, the Republican pollster, said that “there’s no question there’s an opening” to run against Mr. Trump.“In a multicandidate field, he has a lock somewhere around 28 to 30 percent, and that is a very significant portion of the party,” Mr. Ayres said. “And they are very, very committed to him. But if he doesn’t get more than that, in a narrowing field or a small field, he’s going to have a hard time winning the nomination.”Senator Tim Scott, one of the party’s most prominent Black politicians, is another South Carolinian considering a campaign. He has proved to be one of the most prodigious Republican fund-raisers, collecting $51 million for his re-election campaign last year.Mr. Scott also laid the groundwork for a national campaign by spending $21 million helping elect Republicans in the 2022 midterms. He endorsed 77 candidates last year and participated in 67 campaign events in 21 states, an adviser said.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina will give speeches soon in Iowa, a traditional early-contest state.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThis month, Mr. Scott will travel to Iowa, where he will speak at a fund-raiser for the Republican Party of Polk County, and he is beginning a “Faith in America” listening tour, including speeches in his home state and Iowa.Some prospective candidates have taken on Mr. Trump more directly. Former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who lost her primary for re-election after helping lead the House committee investigating the former president’s role in the Capitol riot, is said to be considering a campaign, as well as possibly writing a book. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has been one of the most vocal Republicans in calling for the party to find a new leader.And Mr. Hogan has spent the two weeks since he left office speaking with political advisers and donors about running for president. In an interview on Wednesday, he cast the field as one Trump-aligned figure after another aiming to lead a party he said must move beyond the former president in order to win the general election.“Maybe a crowded field is good, with Trump and DeSantis fighting with each other and with six or eight other Trump people,” Mr. Hogan said. “It might create more of an opportunity for somebody like me.”Mr. Hogan is not the only Republican without clear Trump ties, however.Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has done little to burnish his national profile or prepare for a presidential bid since the midterm elections, when he was a rare Republican welcomed as a surrogate by both moderates and the party’s far right. Back then, he told some Republican allies that he saw an opening if the presidential field was not especially crowded.Virginia’s legislative session, which runs through the end of February, gives Mr. Youngkin — as it does Mr. DeSantis and Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire — a reason to put off moving forward with presidential planning. More

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      Trump’s Primary Losses Puncture His Invincibility

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      With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates falling to defeat in recent primaries, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.Donald J. Trump had cast this year’s primaries as a moment to measure his power, endorsing candidates by the dozen as he sought to maintain an imprint on his party unlike any other past president.But after the first phase of the primary season concluded on Tuesday, a month in which a quarter of America’s states cast their ballots, the verdict has been clear: Mr. Trump’s aura of untouchability in Republican politics has been punctured.In more than five years — from when he became president in January 2017 until May 2022 — Mr. Trump had only ever seen voters reject a half-dozen of his choices in Republican primaries. But by the end of this month, that figure had more than doubled, with his biggest defeat coming on Tuesday when Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia thrashed a Trump-backed challenger by more than 50 percentage points. Three other Trump recruits challenging Kemp allies also went down to defeat.The mounting losses have emboldened Mr. Trump’s rivals inside the party to an extent not seen since early 2016 and increased the chances that, should he run again in 2024, he would face serious competition.“I think a non-Trump with an organized campaign would have a chance,” said Jack Kingston, a former Georgia congressman who advised the first Trump presidential campaign.Mr. Trump remains broadly popular among Republicans and has a political war chest well north of $100 million. But there has been a less visible sign of slippage: Mr. Trump’s vaunted digital fund-raising machine has begun to slow. An analysis by The New York Times shows that his average daily online contributions have declined every month for the last seven months that federal data is available.Mr. Trump has gone from raising an average of $324,633 per day in September 2021 on WinRed, the Republican donation-processing portal, to $202,185 in March 2022 — even as he has ramped up his political activities and profile.Those close to Mr. Trump — and even Republicans who aren’t — caution against misreading the significance of primary losses in which he himself was not on the ballot. Mr. Kemp, for instance, took pains ​​not to say a cross word about the former president to avoid alienating his loyal base.“To be the man, you have to beat the man,” said Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster with Public Opinion Strategies. “And until Trump either bows out of electoral politics, or is beaten by a Republican at the ballot box, his strength remains.”Rivals, including his own former vice president, Mike Pence, are gearing up for potential presidential runs, as he and others visit key early states like Iowa and ramp up their own fund-raising operations. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has amassed a $100 million re-election war chest and is the talk of many donors, activists and voters interested in the future of Trumpism without Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida speaking to the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., in February.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“Donald Trump had four good years,” said Cole Muzio, president of the Frontline Policy Council, a conservative Christian group based in Georgia, who voted twice for Mr. Trump but is now looking for someone more “forward-looking.”“DeSantis is great about seeing where the left is going and playing on the field that they’re going to be on, rather than reacting to what happened a couple of years ago,” Mr. Muzio said, echoing the frustration that Mr. Trump continues to obsess about denying his 2020 election loss.After the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 races were among the most consequential so far of the 2022 midterm cycle.Takeaways: G.O.P. voters rejected Donald Trump’s 2020 fixation, and Democrats backed a gun-control champion. Here’s what else we learned.Rebuking Trump: The ex-president picked losers up and down the ballot in Georgia, raising questions about the firmness of his grip on the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: Brian Kemp scored a landslide victory over David Perdue, delivering Mr. Trump his biggest setback of the 2022 primaries.2018 Rematch: Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, will again face Mr. Kemp — but in a vastly different political climate.Mr. Muzio, whose organization is hosting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as its fall gala headliner, spoke as he waited to hear Mr. Pence this week in Kennesaw, Ga., at a rally for Mr. Kemp — all names he included in the party’s “deep bench” of 2024 alternatives.Mr. Trump still remains the most coveted endorsement in his party, and he has boosted some big winners. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas virtually cleared the field for governor with his support, and Representative Ted Budd in North Carolina defeated a past governor to win his party’s Senate nomination.Yet the difficult primary season has added to Mr. Trump’s personal anxieties about his standing, after he has sought to fashion himself as something of an old-school party boss in his post-presidency. He has told advisers he wants to declare his candidacy or possibly launch an exploratory committee this summer.Most of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he should wait until after the midterm elections to announce a candidacy. Yet the sense among Republicans that Mr. Trump has lost political altitude is taking hold, including among some of those close to him.Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesman, said the “undeniable reality” is that Republicans rely on Mr. Trump to “fuel Republican victories in 2022 and beyond.”“President Trump’s political operation continues to dominate American politics, raising more money and driving more victories than any other political organization — bar none,” Mr. Budowich said.Some Republican strategists have fixated on the fact that so many of Mr. Trump’s endorsees have landed about one-third of the vote — big winners (J.D. Vance in Ohio), losers (Jody Hice in Georgia, Janice McGeachin in Idaho and Charles Herbster in Nebraska) and those headed for a recount (Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania).One-third of the party is at once an unmatched base of unbending loyalists — and yet a cohort far from a majority.Notably, Mr. Trump’s share of what is raised overall among all Republicans online has also declined. Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising committee accounted for 19.7 percent of what was raised by Republican campaigns and committees on WinRed in the last four months of 2021, but just 14.1 percent of what was raised during the first three months of 2022. Some of that decrease is the result of other candidates on the ballot raising more this year.Still, only 10 times since July 2021 has Mr. Trump’s committee accounted for less than 10 percent of the money raised on WinRed during a single day — and nine of those instances came in March 2022, the last month data was available.The vocal opposition is no longer just confined to anti-Trump forces inside the party but is also evident in the pro-Trump mainstream. When a triumphant Mr. Kemp, whom Mr. Trump had targeted because he refused to go along with his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, arrived in Nashville on Thursday to speak before a gathering of the Republican Governors Association, he received a standing ovation.Former Vice President Mike Pence, left, joined Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia during a Kemp campaign stop in Kennesaw, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“There is this temptation to engage in wish-casting in which, ‘This is the moment in which Trump is slipping!’” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative anti-Trump commentator. “On the other hand, what happened in Georgia was significant. He drew a bright red line — and voters just stampeded across it.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      ‘I Will Not Sit Quietly’: 3 Black Senators in Spotlight on Voting Rights

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      Senators Cory Booker, Tim Scott and Raphael Warnock brought vastly different perspectives to proceedings that highlighted the Senate’s striking lack of diversity.Senators Tim Scott and Cory Booker clashed over calling Republican-backed voting legislation “Jim Crow 2.0.”Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesWASHINGTON — The Senate has only three Black members, a paltry number that is unrepresentative of the country, so when the chamber took up a voting rights bill this week aimed at preventing the disenfranchisement of voters of color, Senators Cory Booker, Tim Scott and Raphael Warnock played an outsized role in the debate.During a more than 10-hour discourse on Wednesday that highlighted the Senate’s lack of diversity, the three men brought vastly different perspectives to an issue that each said had affected them in deeply personal ways, with the two Democrats — Mr. Warnock of Georgia and Mr. Booker of New Jersey — serving as self-described witnesses to Republican-engineered voter suppression, and Mr. Scott, Republican of South Carolina, countering that the real threat to democracy was coming from the left.The protracted proceedings underscored how heavily the white leaders of both parties lean on the few Black members of their rank-and-file when issues of race arise. When Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator from California who was the first Black woman to serve in that post, briefly presided over the debate on Wednesday night, nearly half of the 11 African Americans who have ever served in the Senate were present at once.But it also showed the power of representation and biography in a debate over policy.The moral force that the three senators could marshal to their causes was clear. The back-and-forth between Mr. Scott, the son of a struggling single mother in working-class North Charleston, S.C., and Mr. Booker, a former Rhodes Scholar and big-city mayor, provided a striking moment, as they fought over the meaning of Jim Crow in the present day.Mr. Scott used the elections of all three Black men — but especially himself and Mr. Warnock — to back up his case that America is a nation of expanding democratic opportunity, not voter suppression and inequity.“It’s hard to deny progress when two of the three come from the Southern states which people say are the places where African American votes are being suppressed,” he said.Mr. Warnock, who ministers from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the pulpit from which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, closed the debate with an appeal to every senator.“Let the message go out: You cannot honor Martin Luther King and work to dismantle his legacy at the same time,” Mr. Warnock said Wednesday night, two days after King’s holiday, when virtually every senator of every political stripe produced an obligatory tribute to the slain civil rights leader.“I will not sit quietly while some make Dr. King the victim of identity theft.”The groundbreaking positions of the men, no doubt, are at least part of the reason they were thrust onto center stage. Mr. Scott was the first Black senator from the South since Reconstruction. Mr. Warnock is the first African American to represent Georgia in the Senate and the first Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate by a former state of the Confederacy. Mr. Booker is his state’s first Black senator.Donna Brazile, a Black Democratic strategist who headed Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, recalled watching Wednesday’s debate and “thinking, ‘I thank God we have in 2022 three Black members of the United States Senate, regardless of party affiliation,’ because they all spoke uniquely from their own experiences of the journey of Black Americans.”But it can be a bit overwhelming, said Carol Moseley Braun, who was the first Black woman to serve in the Senate and the only Black person in the entire chamber when she served.“If it had to do with women, I got trotted out. If it had to do with Black people, I got trotted out,” she recalled in an interview on Thursday. “I couldn’t win.”In the end, no amount of pressure from Mr. Warnock could sway a single Republican to back the voting rights and election protection bill, or persuade the two balking Democrats, Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, to support weakening the filibuster to advance it over G.O.P. opposition.Nor could Mr. Scott save his party from the fallout of defending voting restrictions passed by Republican legislatures that Democrats say are intended to disenfranchise minority voters. The South Carolina senator’s ardent defense of Georgia’s new voting law may have been lost amid the repercussions from a faux pas uttered on Wednesday by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.Asked about protests from voters of color over new restrictions, Mr. McConnell said, “The concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.” Critics interpreted the comment as implying that either Black voters are not wholly American, or that the top Senate Republican considered “American” synonymous with white.Mr. Warnock is the obvious face of the Democratic cause, not because of his skin color but because his tight election victory in 2020 — along with an even tighter win by his colleague, Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia — gave the party its Senate majority, and because Mr. Warnock must face Georgia voters again this November, now under new election rules signed into law by the state’s Republican governor.Indeed, in an evenly divided Senate where the net loss of a single seat would cost Democrats control, Mr. Warnock is perhaps the most endangered Democrat, and the party’s cause célèbre.“Reverend Warnock is the moral authority and conscience on this issue by virtue of his background, his election and his extraordinary rhetorical capabilities,” said Marc Elias, the party’s top election lawyer. “He speaks for so many people, and articulates what so many people feel in their hearts about the importance of voting rights.”Last year, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, but in the Senate on Wednesday, Georgia’s law was front and center.Mr. Scott fiercely defended the law — “supposedly the poster child of voter suppression” — as actually expanding access to the ballot, saying Democrats were distorting its effects to inject race into the voting rights fight when their real aim was political power.Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia is perhaps the chamber’s most endangered Democrat.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesHe leaned in hard to his biography, which included a grandfather he escorted to the polls because he could not read, to burnish his credentials as he laid into the Democrats’ case for a far-reaching rewrite of election laws that have traditionally been the purview of state and local governments.Speaking for “Americans from the Deep South who happen to look like me,” the conservative Republican recounted the Jim Crow era that his grandfather had lived through, when literacy tests, job losses, beatings and lynchings kept Black Southerners from the polls. The Georgia law is nothing like the “Jim Crow 2.0” that President Biden and other Democrats have called it, he said.“To have a conversation and a narrative that is blatantly false is offensive, not just to me or Southern Americans but offensive to millions of Americans who fought, bled and died for the right to vote,” Mr. Scott said.That brought a sharp response from Mr. Booker. “Don’t lecture me about Jim Crow,” he said, adding: “It is 2022 and they are blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented. I’m not making that up. That is a fact.”But it was Mr. Warnock who brought to the debate the names of his own constituents: a woman who has not been able to vote for a decade because of long lines and constantly moving polling places; a student who could not vote for him in 2020 because the epic waits near her college would have made her miss class; another who waited eight hours in the rain to cast her ballot.“One part of being a first of any kind is thinking, ‘How do I educate people?’” said Minyon Moore, who was a political director in the Clinton White House and a senior aide to Hillary Clinton. “I see that as a badge of honor, not a burden, and I know that Senators Warnock and Booker do, too. They have a responsibility to educate and explain. If they don’t do it, who will?”Mr. Warnock, too, brandished his biography, which included growing up in the Kayton Homes housing project in Savannah, Ga., the youngest of 12 children. His mother picked cotton in Waycross, Ga., as a child, he said, and “the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton helped pick her youngest son as a United States senator” in 2021.It was difficult enough when he beat the incumbent Republican, Kelly Loeffler, by about 93,000 votes with a huge minority turnout; this November will be worse with the state’s new law, he said.Georgia’s legislators “have decided to punish their own citizens for having the audacity to show up,” Mr. Warnock said, adding, “Those are the fact of the laws that are being passed in Georgia and across the nation.”Democrats have been wowed by such rhetorical performances, but the senator’s first year in electoral politics has yielded little in the way of victories. The voting rights push that he has framed as a moral imperative has been blocked. Another effort, to secure health care for the working poor in states like Georgia that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, got a boost when it was included in the Build Back Better Act that passed the House. But that, too, has been stymied in the Senate.He was blunt on Wednesday, when he said during the voting rights debate that he believed in bipartisanship, but then asked, “Bipartisanship at what cost?”“Raphael Warnock feels that he went up there with this idea he can work with anyone,” said Jason Carter, a grandson of former President Jimmy Carter who was the Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia in 2014 and speaks regularly to Mr. Warnock. “There may come a time where he throws up his hands and says we can’t get anything done. I haven’t heard the frustration boiling over yet.” More