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      Bob Dole, Old Soldier and Stalwart of the Senate, Dies at 98

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      Mr. Dole, a son of the Kansas prairie who was left for dead on a World War II battlefield, became one of the longest-serving Republican leaders.Bob Dole, the plain-spoken son of the prairie who overcame Dust Bowl deprivation in Kansas and grievous battle wounds in Italy to become the Senate majority leader and the last of the World War II generation to win his party’s nomination for president, died on Sunday. He was 98. His death was announced by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation.It did not say where he died. He had announced in February that he had Stage IV lung cancer and that he was beginning treatment.A Republican, Mr. Dole was one of the most durable political figures in the last decades of the last century. He was nominated for vice president in 1976 and then for president a full 20 years later. He spent a quarter-century in the Senate, where he was his party’s longest-serving leader until Mitch McConnell of Kentucky surpassed that record in June 2018.President Biden called Mr. Dole “an American statesman like few in our history. A war hero and among the greatest of the Greatest Generation.” He added, “To me, he was also a friend whom I could look to for trusted guidance, or a humorous line at just the right moment to settle frayed nerves.”As the old soldiers of World War II faded away, Mr. Dole, who had been a lieutenant in the Army’s storied 10th Mountain Division and was wounded so severely on a battlefield that he was left for dead, came to personify the resilience of his generation. In his post-political career, he devoted himself to raising money for the World War II Memorial in Washington and spent weekends there welcoming visiting veterans.In one of his last public appearances, in December 2018, he joined the line at the Capitol Rotunda where the body of former President George H.W. Bush, an erstwhile political rival and fellow veteran, lay in state. As an aide helped him up from his wheelchair, Mr. Dole, using his left hand because his right had been rendered useless by the war, saluted the flag-draped coffin of the last president to have served in World War II.Mr. Dole with President Richard M. Nixon in 1971. He was national Republican chairman at the time. Associated PressPolitically, Mr. Dole was a man for all seasons, surviving for more than three decades in his party’s upper echelons, even though he was sometimes at odds ideologically with other Republican leaders.He was national Republican chairman under President Richard M. Nixon in the early 1970s; the running mate to President Gerald R. Ford in 1976; chairman of the Senate Finance Committee during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s; and presidential standard-bearer during Newt Gingrich’s “revolution” of the mid-1990s, when the Republicans captured the House for the first time in 40 years and upended the power dynamic on Capitol Hill.More recently, Mr. Dole, almost alone among his party’s old guard, endorsed Donald J. Trump for president in 2016, after his preferred candidates had fallen by the wayside. On the eve of his 93rd birthday, he was the only previous Republican presidential nominee to appear at the party’s convention in Cleveland, where Mr. Trump was nominated.Mr. Dole himself ran three times for the White House and finally won the nomination in 1996, only to lose to President Bill Clinton after a historically disastrous campaign. He had given up his secure post in the Senate to pursue the presidency, although, as he acknowledged, he was more suited to the Senate.As the Republican leader, he helped broker compromises that shaped much of the nation’s domestic and foreign policies.He was most proud of helping to rescue Social Security in 1983, of pushing the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 and of mustering a majority of reluctant Republicans to support Mr. Clinton’s unpopular plan to send American troops to Bosnia in 1995. (Mr. Dole was not wild about the deployment either, but he long believed that a president, of either party, should be supported once he decided something as important as committing troops abroad.)A skilled legislative mechanic, Mr. Dole understood what every senator wanted and what each could live with, and he enjoyed the art of political bartering.He was so at home in the Senate’s marble corridors that during his last campaign, in 1996, he constantly had to remind voters that he was “not born in a blue suit” — Dole shorthand for saying that he had a life before arriving in Washington in 1961. In fact, he had been shaped profoundly by the twin experiences of growing up poor in Depression-era Kansas and enduring the shattering wounds of war.Young Bob, left, with his siblings in the backyard of their home in Russell, Kan.Dole family photo, via Associated PressWith dust storms blackening the skies of his tiny hometown, Russell, in north-central Kansas, and destroying the wheat economy, the Doles moved into the cramped basement of their home and rented out the upstairs to make ends meet.As for the war, it changed the course of Mr. Dole’s life. A star athlete who lettered in football, basketball and track and who was voted best looking in his class at Russell High School, he had planned to become a surgeon. Instead, he came home from the war in Europe in a body cast, mostly paralyzed.He spent 39 months convalescing, much of it in surgery — as a patient, not as the surgeon he had hoped to become. Instead, he became a lawyer and a politician, though his injuries kept him from many of the fundamental rituals of politics. His right hand was so damaged that he couldn’t shake hands, and he would clutch a pen in his fist to discourage people from trying. Unable to cut his meat with a knife, he tended to avoid political dinners and ate at home.Mr. Dole began his political career as a conservative and evolved into a pragmatist, even forging relationships with prominent liberals. With George S. McGovern of South Dakota, he expanded the food stamp program, and with Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, he made school lunches a federal entitlement. Kansas farmers applauded both efforts.He was such a good deal-maker that his own convictions were not always apparent. By the end of his long career, Mr. Dole had cast more than 12,000 votes, having stood on both sides of many issues.He opposed many of the Great Society programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson, but he supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.Avoiding budget deficits had been his North Star, given his hardscrabble youth. Sometimes he supported tax increases, which led Mr. Gingrich to brand him “the tax collector for the welfare state.” But in 1995, he tried to recast himself as a tax-cutter, memorably telling party leaders, “I’m willing to be another Ronald Reagan, if that’s what you want.” He then signed a pledge not to raise taxes as president, a pledge he had previously rejected.“It adds a certain poignancy,” Richard Norton Smith, the former director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, said in an interview for this obituary in 2009, “that he found himself chasing the caboose of movement conservatism at the height of his career.”Mr. Dole thrived as chairman of the Finance Committee, a powerful position that attracted big corporate donors often seeking favors. At one point he raised more money from special interests than any other senator. A particularly generous donor was Dwayne Andreas, chairman of Archer Daniels Midland, the giant agribusiness; over two decades, the company received millions of dollars in tax breaks and federal subsidies.“When these political action committees give money, they expect something in return other than good government,” Mr. Dole bluntly told The Wall Street Journal, pinpointing why the system benefited wealthy interests over poor ones.His fellow Republican senators elected him their leader in both the majority and the minority for a combined 11 years, from 1985 to 1996.Mr. Dole in 1990 on the balcony adjacent to the Republican leader’s office at the Capitol. The balcony was later named for him.Michael Geissinger/Library of CongressHe conducted much of his bargaining with other senators on the balcony off the Republican leader’s office. When he left the Senate in 1996, his colleagues unanimously passed a resolution naming it the Robert J. Dole balcony. It overlooked the National Mall and the Washington Monument, affording him what he wistfully called “the second-best view in Washington.” Unofficially, the balcony was called “Dole Beach,” because he often escaped there to soak up the sun and refresh his perpetual tan.But away from Capitol Hill, Mr. Dole was a fish out of water. His insider skills as a tactician and deal closer did not translate to the presidential campaign trail.During the 1996 race, he was faulted as having no overarching vision — for his campaign or for the country. He chafed at handlers who tried to package him, and he never adapted to the scripted politics of the television age. During speeches, he often lapsed into legislative lingo and referred to himself in the third person. He was detached as a candidate, more wry commentator than engaged participant.“Stayed on message,” Mr. Dole congratulated himself in front of reporters after one campaign event, then went on to mock the process in which he was involved: “Every time I do that ‘reconnect the government to values’ stuff, I feel like a plumber.”After that final quest for the presidency, Mr. Dole became a lobbyist for the powerhouse international law firm Alston & Bird. Despite his standing as a well-connected Washington insider, he cultivated a new persona, one unexpected for a man of Mr. Dole’s dark visage and mordant wit: that of self-deprecating loser.“Playing up the image of the downtrodden also-ran was great fun,” he wrote in his 2005 book, “One Soldier’s Story: A Memoir.” He starred in Super Bowl commercials for Visa (“I just can’t win”) in 1997 and for Pepsi in 2001 and later made a cameo in a Pepsi ad featuring Britney Spears. He spoofed previous ads he had made for the male potency drug Viagra, for which he had become a spokesman after undergoing surgery for prostate cancer.“Once you lose,” he told The New York Times, “people like you.”It was a surprising turn for Mr. Dole, who was long linked in the public mind with the glowering Nixon. He had defended that beleaguered president so fiercely that one critic branded him Nixon’s “hatchet man,” a label that stuck.Mr. Dole, then Senate majority leader, at a news conference with House Speaker Newt Gingrich during budget negotiations in 1996.David Scull/The New York TimesLike Nixon, Mr. Dole had overcome struggles early in life. And like Nixon, he felt embittered toward people for whom he thought things came easy.“I trust in the hard way, for little has come to me except in the hard way,” he said when he announced he was leaving the Senate in 1996.His bitterness found an outlet in partisanship, which he often expressed in acerbic asides. It flared in public during a vice-presidential debate in 1976, when he blamed Democrats for all the wars of the 20th century, and again in 2004, when some fellow Vietnam veterans challenged the military record of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee. Mr. Dole, who had received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with an oak leaf cluster, joined in, questioning whether Mr. Kerry had deserved his Purple Hearts.“Three Purple Hearts,” Mr. Dole said of Mr. Kerry, “and never bled that I know of.”Wounds and RecoveryRobert Joseph Dole was born in his parents’ house in Russell on July 22, 1923, the second of four children of Doran and Bina (Talbott) Dole. His mother was an expert seamstress and sold sewing machines; his father worked in a creamery and later ran a grain elevator.Mr. Dole enlisted in the Army Reserve during college and was called to active duty in 1943. On April 14, 1945, in the mountains of Italy outside the small town of Castel D’Aiano, about 65 miles north of Florence, the Germans began firing on his platoon. When he saw a fellow soldier fall, Mr. Dole went to pull him to safety. But as he scrambled away he was struck by flying metal. It blew apart his right shoulder and arm and broke several vertebrae in his neck and spine.His men dragged him back to a foxhole, where he lay crumpled in his blood-soaked uniform for nine hours before he was evacuated. He was just 21.It was a horrifying turn of events for one of Russell’s most promising young men. Unable to feed or care for himself, he feared he was doomed to a life of selling pencils on the street.Mr. Dole recovering from his war injuries in 1945. Flying metal had blown apart his right shoulder and arm and broke vertebrae in his neck and spine. Dole family photo, via Associated PressHe spent more than three years recovering and underwent at least seven operations. Back in Russell, he devised a homemade weight-and-pulley system to rebuild his strength. The townspeople rallied around him, pooling their nickels and dimes for his treatment.Russell was a speck on the flat Kansas prairie, but in the Dole biography it took on mythic significance. In his political campaigns, Russell was cast as the shaper of noble, small-town virtues and Mr. Dole as their personification.Remembering that period, and the generosity of his neighbors, often brought him to tears. In his first appearance with President Ford in Russell in 1976, with 10,000 well-wishers crammed into the downtown business district, he thanked the townspeople for their support after the war. Then he started to cry and couldn’t go on. The audience fell silent. Finally, Mr. Ford stood and began clapping, and the audience joined in.Regaining his composure, Mr. Dole said: “That was a long time ago.”And yet even in 1996, long after Russell and his recovery had become a staple of his origin story, he could hardly mention that period without choking up. When his image-makers wrote references to it in his prepared remarks, he would often skip over those passages or truncate them to avoid the inevitable tears.He could not avoid them on the final leg of his presidential campaign, however, by which time it was clear that he was going to lose. At a bowling alley in Des Moines, his friend Senator John McCain, a former naval aviator and Mr. Dole’s wingman in those last days on the road, delivered a spontaneous tribute to him.“This is the last crusade of a great warrior,” Mr. McCain told a small crowd over the clatter of falling bowling pins, “a member of a generation of Americans who went out and made the world safe for democracy so that we could have lives that were far better for ourselves and for our children.”Mr. Dole, standing nearby, wept.After the war, during his recuperation, he met Phyllis Holden, an occupational therapist, and married her three months later, in 1948. He returned to college on the G.I. Bill. He already had credits from the University of Kansas, where he had studied pre-med. With Ms. Holden’s help, he earned a dual bachelor’s and law degree in 1952 at Washburn Municipal University (now Washburn University) in Topeka, Kan. They had a daughter, Robin, in 1954.Readjusting his aspirations from medicine to the law, Mr. Dole had to develop his mind, he said, because he could not use his hands. His life, he said, would be “an exercise in compensations.”Bob and Elizabeth Dole following their wedding  at the Washington National Cathedral in 1975.Dole family photo, via Associated PressRussell Republicans approached Mr. Dole in 1950 to run for the Kansas State Legislature — they saw the hometown war hero as an easy sell. But he had not yet picked a party, though his parents were New Deal Democrats. He said later that he had signed on with the Republicans after he was told that that’s what most Kansas voters were.After a stint in the Legislature and as Russell County attorney, he won a House seat in Congress in 1960 and ascended to the Senate in 1968.The Nixon InfluenceNixon won the presidency that same year and became the driving political influence in Mr. Dole’s life. Mr. Dole saw them as soul mates. Both were self-made men, politically ambitious loners disaffected from their party’s elite Eastern establishment, Nixon hailing from California.Mr. Dole made a name for himself by zealously defending Nixon, particularly in the president’s continued prosecution of the Vietnam War and his controversial Supreme Court nominees. He could be so snarly, though, that Senator William B. Saxbe, Republican of Ohio, memorably derided him as Nixon’s “hatchet man” and said he was so disagreeable, “he couldn’t sell beer on a troop ship.”Even Nixon worried that Mr. Dole’s lust for the fight would undermine his effectiveness. In a memorandum made public years later, Nixon wrote that it was “important that we not let Dole destroy his usefulness by having him step up to every hard, fast one.”Mr. Dole had flown to Washington from Chicago aboard Air Force One in 1971 accompanying President Nixon and the first lady, Pat Nixon, along with members of Congress from Illinois: from left, Senator Charles H. Percy, Mr. Dole and Representatives Leslie C. Arends and John B. Anderson.Bob Daugherty/Associated PressNixon named him chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1971. It was a role Mr. Dole relished as he raked in political chits. The travel kept him far from home, and he and Phyllis divorced in 1972.Three years later he married Elizabeth Hanford, then a federal trade commissioner; she later became a cabinet secretary, president of the American Red Cross and a senator from North Carolina. They became one of Washington’s original power couples.Elizabeth Dole as well as Mr. Dole’s daughter, Robin Dole, survive him. His first wife, Phyllis Holden Macey, died in 2008. After Nixon won re-election in 1972 and the Watergate scandal was closing in, he dumped Mr. Dole as party chairman, saying the senator was too independent. But Mr. Dole remained loyal, so much so that he tried to shut down the live television coverage of the Watergate hearings.When Nixon died in 1994, Mr. Dole delivered a sentimental eulogy, sobbing as he described the disgraced former president as a “boy who heard train whistles in the night and dreamed of all the distant places that lay at the end of the track.”He also recalled Nixon’s advice that while failure was sad, “the greatest sadness is not to try and fail, but to fail to try.”Mr. Smith, the historian, said he believed that Nixon, in his preparations for his own funeral, had a political motive in asking Mr. Dole to deliver the eulogy. Nixon, Mr. Smith said, expected that Mr. Dole would become emotional, and that his “authentic display of grief” would reveal Mr. Dole’s human side and perhaps help his presidential bid.‘Democrat Wars’Ford, who was Nixon’s vice president and successor as president, gave Mr. Dole his first shot at national office, choosing him as his running mate in 1976. Ford needed to shore up strength with conservatives and also hoped that the selection would appeal to voters in farm states. But Mr. Dole’s performance during the vice-presidential debate on Oct. 15, 1976, against Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic nominee, was so harsh that some analysts say it contributed to Ford’s loss to Jimmy Carter.Mr. Dole, the vice presidential nominee, with President Gerald R. Ford at the close of the 1976 Republican convention in Kansas City.United Press InternationalIn response to a question about Ford’s 1974 pardon of Nixon, Mr. Dole veered off topic and in an inexplicable tangent said: “I figured up the other day, if we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans, enough to fill the city of Detroit.”A stunned Mr. Mondale said he could not believe that Mr. Dole would cast the war against Germany and Japan in partisan terms. Mr. Dole, he said, “has richly earned his reputation as hatchet man.” Even Republicans joined in the post-debate criticism, as did Mr. Dole himself.“I went for the jugular,” he said later. “My own.”The reaction was so negative that he sought out an image consultant and paid her to help him appear more likable.Still, he ran for president in 1980, a misbegotten venture that ended almost as soon as it began. He tried again in 1988 and won his party’s Iowa caucus, but couldn’t overcome Vice President Bush’s forces in New Hampshire, where Bush had the invaluable support of the governor, John Sununu, and ran a TV spot suggesting that Mr. Dole would raise taxes.The ad infuriated Mr. Dole, who snapped that Bush should “stop lying about my record.” The comment only reinforced the impression that Mr. Dole was too mean to be president.But by 1996 his party seemed incapable of denying him the nomination. At that point, President Clinton was popular, the nation was enjoying a period of peace and prosperity, and the strongest potential Republican contenders — Gen. Colin L. Powell among them — declined to run.Mr. Dole prevailed over a weak primary field that included Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patrick Buchanan, a conservative broadcast journalist. But then Mr. Dole ran a terrible general election campaign, offering voters little rationale for denying Mr. Clinton a second term. At times, he made no pretense that he was even taking his task seriously.Bob and Elizabeth Dole after he won  the presidential nomination at the 1996 Republican convention in San Diego.Stephen Crowley/The New York Times“We’re trying to get good pictures,” he told reporters on his campaign plane the day after he quit the Senate to devote himself full time to running for president. “Don’t worry very much about what I say.”In 1995, Richard Ben Cramer, one of Mr. Dole’s biographers, asked him to name the first thing he might do in the White House.“Haven’t thought,” he replied in clipped Dole-speak, as quoted by Mr. Cramer.“If I get elected, at my age, you know,” he trailed off, revealing a paucity of plans for the presidency. “I’m not goin’ anywhere. It’s not an agenda. I’m just gonna serve my country.”His lack of preparation stood in stark contrast to his wife’s tendency to over prepare. Mrs. Dole delivered a polished star turn for her husband at the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996. But her choreographed precision only highlighted how much her husband was winging it.“Watching Bob Dole campaign for the presidency,” the journalist Michael Kelly wrote in The New Yorker, “is a curious and dislocating experience, like showering clothed or eating naked.”Mr. Smith, the historian, said he was always puzzled about why Mr. Dole, who had sought the nomination for so long, seemed to take it so casually and “wasn’t willing to adapt himself to the changing media climate.” Mr. Smith concluded that this was a mark of Mr. Dole’s integrity. “He couldn’t jackknife himself into a persona that was fundamentally at odds with the real thing,” he said.In one of his last public appearances, in 2018, Mr. Dole saluted the coffin of George H.W. Bush, the last president to have served in World War II.Erin Schaff for The New York TimesOthers said his goal was not the presidency but winning the nomination — and proving he could rehabilitate himself politically just as he had physically.Mr. Dole won 41 percent of the popular vote, with Mr. Clinton taking 49 percent and Ross Perot, a Reform Party candidate, winning 8 percent. The magnitude of Mr. Dole’s loss was more evident in the electoral votes; he won just 159 to Mr. Clinton’s 379.In his memoir almost a decade later, Mr. Dole framed his crushing defeat in a way that would have made Nixon proud.“Losing means that at least you were in the race,” he wrote. “It means that when the whistle sounded, life did not find you watching from the sidelines.” More

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      SALT Deduction That Benefits the Rich Divides Democrats

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      House Democrats are poised to lift a cap on the state and local tax deduction, a gift to wealthy homeowners in some blue states.WASHINGTON — A plan by House Democrats to reduce taxes for high earners in states like New Jersey, New York and California in their $1.85 trillion social policy spending package is becoming an early political albatross for the party, with Republicans already mobilizing to accuse Democrats of defying their populist principles in favor of cutting taxes for the rich.The criticism offers a preview of the emerging battle lines ahead of next year’s midterm elections and underscores the challenge that Democrats face when local politics collide with the party’s national ambitions to promote economic equity. For Republicans who have defended their 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, the proposal by Democrats to raise the limit on the state and local tax deduction is an opportunity to flip the script and cast Democrats as the party of plutocrats.“I think they’re struggling to maintain their professed support for taxing the wealthy, yet they are providing a huge tax windfall under the SALT cap,” said Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, referring to the acronym for state and local taxes. “If your priorities are working families, make that the priority, not the wealthy.”Republicans, looking for ways to finance their own tax cuts in 2017, capped the amount of state and local taxes that households could deduct from their federal tax bills at $10,000. Democrats from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California have spent years promising to repeal the cap and are poised to lift it to $80,000 through 2030, before reducing it back to $10,000 in 2031. The cap, which is currently set to disappear in 2025, would then expire permanently in 2032.The bill would cut taxes sharply for the next five years by increasing the value of the deduction, but it would mean higher taxes in the following five years than if the cap were allowed to expire. The Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday that over the course of a decade, the changes to the deduction would amount to a tax increase that would raise about $14.8 billion in revenue.The House proposal is likely to change in the Senate, where it has its own champions and detractors. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has embraced a more generous deduction while Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has sharply criticized the House proposal. He joined Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, in negotiating an income cap — as high as $550,000, though that number is in flux — on who can receive the deduction.This week, the National Republican Congressional Committee released survey data that it said suggested most voters in battleground states would be less likely to vote for Democrats who supported a policy that gave tax cuts to rich homeowners in New Jersey, New York and California. It said that the Democratic Party would have “to defend its politically toxic policies which penalize hard working families to reward liberal elites.”Prominent tax and budget analysts have argued that expanding the deduction amounted to an unnecessary giveaway to the rich.According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a family of four in Washington making $1 million per year would receive 10 times as much tax relief next year from expanding the state and local tax deduction as a middle-class family would receive from another provision in the social policy package, an expansion of the child tax credit. Citing calculations from the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the group said that two thirds of households making more than $1 million a year would get a tax cut under the legislation because of the increase to the state and local property tax deduction.The proposal has put some Democrats on the defensive.Rep. Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said this week that tax giveaways to millionaires sounded like something that Republicans would have come up with.“Proponents have been saying that the BBB taxes the rich,” Mr. Golden said on Twitter, referring to the bill known as the Build Back Better Act. “But the more we learn about the SALT provisions, the more it looks like another giant tax break for millionaires.”The issue is further complicating passage of the bill, which Democrats are trying to get through both the House and Senate without Republican support. Given their thin majorities in both chambers, Democrats can afford to lose no more than three votes in the House and none in the Senate.Some Democrats in Congress from states with high taxes have made the inclusion of the more generous deduction as a prerequisite for their backing the bill.“There’s a series of competing views on SALT, but I mean, it’s pretty obvious something has to be in there, that’s for sure,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.The unexpectedly tight race for governor of New Jersey was a clear reminder that the state’s high property taxes — and the limit on their deductibility — are high on voters’ lists of worries, strategists and other political observers said.“As Covid kind of recedes, taxes are taking its place as the top issue in New Jersey,” said Michael DuHaime, a Republican political strategist with Mercury Public Affairs.The SALT cap “essentially resulted in a pretty large tax increase for a lot of families” in the suburbs of New York City, Mr. DuHaime said. With Democrats in power, those homeowners are counting on some relief, he said.Now that former President Donald J. Trump is out of office, New Jersey has “reverted to its mean” of being deeply concerned about the state’s affordability, said Julie Roginsky, a strategist who advised Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, during his first campaign in 2017. The average homeowner in the state pays about $10,000 in property taxes, she said, with the cap hitting about one-third of New Jersey residents.“I think it’s absolutely a line in the sand that some of these vulnerable members of Congress need to draw,” Ms. Roginsky said.Several Democrats who represent affluent suburban areas where most homeowners pay much more than $10,000 a year in property taxes will face stiff challenges in the midterm election next year, strategists said. Their short list of vulnerable House members include Josh Gottheimer, Mikie Sherrill and Tom Malinowski from North Jersey, and Andy Kim, who represents part of the Jersey Shore, all of whom support raising the SALT cap.If the Democrats can engineer a change to the SALT deduction that is retroactive to cover 2021 taxes, those incumbents can campaign on having provided a tax cut, Ms. Roginsky said. But if they fail, their Republican opponents — like Thomas Kean Jr., a state senator who is challenging Mr. Malinowksi — will be able to use that against them, she said.Several House Democrats who represent affluent suburbs, including Mikie Sherrill, whose district includes part of Montclair, N.J., are expected to face stiff challenges in next year’s elections.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“It may not play well in Vermont or in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district, but if you’re Nancy Pelosi, you understand that the road to your majority runs through places like suburban New Jersey and suburban California and suburban New York,” Ms. Roginsky said.Ben Dworkin, the director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., cited the unexpectedly close race for New Jersey governor this year. He noted how effective Mr. Murphy’s challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, was in playing to voters’ feelings about the state’s high taxes.“He hammered home that issue,” Mr. Dworkin said.Public polling leading up to that election showed that affordability in general was the “top issue” in the state, he said.Biden’s ​​Social Policy Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 6A proposal in flux. More

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      Patrick Leahy Announces He Will Retire From the U.S. Senate

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      At age 81, the Vermont Democrat has served in the chamber for nearly half a century.WASHINGTON — Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chamber’s longest-serving member, announced on Monday that he would retire at the end of his term rather than seek re-election in 2022, closing out nearly half a century of service in Congress.Mr. Leahy, 81, who was elected in 1974 at age 34 after working as a prosecutor, announced his decision at a news conference at the Vermont State House in Montpelier.“It is time to put down the gavel — it is time to pass the torch to the next Vermonter,” Mr. Leahy said, speaking in the same room where he announced his first campaign for the Senate. “It is time to come home.”Mr. Leahy’s departure is unlikely to alter the partisan makeup of the Senate given that Vermont is a solidly Democratic state; President Biden won with 65 percent of the vote there last year. But it will rob the chamber of an institutional figure who has come to embody its traditions and the comity that defined it in a bygone era.“It is hard to imagine the United States Senate without Patrick Leahy,” said Representative Peter Welch, the lone Vermont Democrat in the House, who is widely seen as a possible successor to the senator. “No one has served Vermont so faithfully, so constantly, so honestly and so fiercely as Patrick.”The only sitting senator who served during President Gerald R. Ford’s term, Mr. Leahy is the first and only registered Democrat to be elected to represent Vermont in the Senate. He recently became the fourth longest-serving senator in American history, and finishing his term at the beginning of 2023 will make him the third longest-serving.Mr. Leahy serves as president pro tempore of the Senate, a role reserved for the majority party’s most senior member that puts him third in line to the presidency. He is also the chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees government funding.That seniority meant that Mr. Leahy played a unique role in the second impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. After fleeing the Senate chamber as rioters stormed the building during the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory, Mr. Leahy both presided over the trial and served as a juror, ultimately voting to convict Mr. Trump.In his news conference, Mr. Leahy reflected on the granular legislative work of more than four decades in the Senate. He spoke about the bills he shepherded through to support forestland and farmland in Vermont, increase nutrition assistance across the country and help the victims of the Vietnam War.And he spoke about the legislation and the judicial appointments — including every sitting member of the Supreme Court — that he oversaw as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and as the panel’s chairman. Mr. Leahy also gained prominence for his push to curtail domestic surveillance after the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes — work that led to him being targeted in the anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill.“Representing you in Washington is the greatest honor,” he said on Monday. “I’m humbled, and always will be, by your support. I’m confident in what the future holds.”“It has been such a great part of our lives,” he concluded, standing beside his wife, Marcelle, who could be seen dabbing her eyes as supporters applauded. His office circulated his remarks announcing the “decision he and Marcelle have made about 2022.”In a later interview, he described the walks through the fields and woods near their home that helped lead the pair to conclude “this was the right time.”“We want more time to be in Vermont, want more time with family,” Mr. Leahy said. His long-lasting tenure, he added, “was not my idea when I first ran,” but ultimately “was a pretty good arc.”Mr. Leahy has expressed mounting frustration in recent years with the gridlock that has stymied most legislation in Congress, often complaining to reporters during the tensest moments in negotiations that bills should just be put on the floor for an up-or-down vote. He is a lead sponsor of legislation to expand voting rights protections, which Republicans have blocked repeatedly this year through filibusters.While he has kept up a steady stream of work in the Senate, where the average age is about 64, Mr. Leahy’s health has faltered at times recently. In January, shortly after opening the impeachment proceedings, he was briefly taken to the hospital for observation after he reported not feeling well.“Very few in the history of the United States Senate can match the record of Patrick Leahy,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader. “He has been a guardian of Vermont and more rural states in the Senate, and has an unmatched fidelity to the Constitution and rule of law.”Mr. Schumer expressed confidence that the seat would remain in Democratic hands, though in an interview, he declined to single out any candidate and said he would wait for the voters to decide. Senator Bernie Sanders, 80, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, will become Vermont’s senior senator upon Mr. Leahy’s retirement.“He leaves a unique legacy that will be impossible to match,” Mr. Sanders said.Mr. Leahy’s announcement means that the top two positions on the Appropriations Committee will be vacated at the end of 2022. Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the panel’s top Republican and a close friend of Mr. Leahy’s, is also retiring.But Mr. Leahy vowed that he would oversee the completion of the dozen annual spending bills to keep the government funded. He joked on Monday that his approach at the helm of the Appropriations Committee “was simple: help all states in alphabetical order, starting with the letter V — Vermont.”“I’m sure he would agree one great way to honor him would be to make sure this year’s appropriations bills are signed into law as soon as possible,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, another senior Democrat on the Appropriations panel, said on Twitter.Born almost blind in one eye, Mr. Leahy found photography to be an outlet and is known to carry a camera on Capitol Hill, snapping photos of both his colleagues and the journalists who roam the hallways. (He is also working on a memoir that will reflect his bipartisan work and his photography.)Outside the Capitol, Mr. Leahy is known as a fan of Batman, and he has made appearances in the franchise’s films, including confronting Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight.”He also takes great pride in the prized real estate that comes with being the most senior senator, often taking visitors, reporters and colleagues to his private hideaway office in the Capitol to marvel at the breathtaking views of the Washington Monument and the National Mall. More

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      Ruth Ann Minner, Down-to-Earth Governor of Delaware, Dies at 86

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      The first woman in that position, she rose from being a receptionist in the governor’s office to claiming the top job herself.Ruth Ann Minner, who was raised by a sharecropper and dropped out of high school but went on to become the first and only woman to serve as governor of Delaware, died on Thursday at the Delaware Hospice Center in Milford. She was 86. The cause was complications of a fall, said Lisa Peel, one of her granddaughters.One of the last public events she attended was President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory celebration in Wilmington in November 2020. He called out her name from the stage before he began his speech, and he had been in touch with the family in recent days.Ms. Minner, a middle-of-the-road Democrat who was conservative on fiscal matters and progressive on social issues, served as governor from 2001 to 2009. A strong promoter of health care and a clean environment, she made headlines in 2002 for successfully pushing through one of the nation’s first smoking bans in public places, despite fierce opposition from many in Delaware’s powerful business community.She also successfully pushed for several education initiatives, including the first scholarship program in the nation to offer free college access to students who kept up their grades and stayed out of trouble. She implemented full-day kindergarten as well.Her other signal achievement was preserving and protecting the state’s open spaces, particularly its farmland and forests.Known for her no-nonsense approach and lack of pretense, Ms. Minner, who grew up during the Depression in a rural coastal area on the Delaware Bay, brought a down-to-earth style to the state capitol in Dover, where a political columnist called her the “Aunt Bee” of state government, a reference to the family matriarch on “The Andy Griffith Show.”“She was a leader who had a real common touch,” Gov. John Carney, who served as her lieutenant governor, said in a statement. Having grown up poor, he added, “she brought that perspective to her job every day, and she never lost her attachment to those roots.”Breaking the gender barrier when she was elected governor was not important to her, Ms. Minner told The Associated Press in 2000.“I’ve found out since the election, though, that it does matter to a lot of women,” she added. “It matters to a lot of young girls.”Ms. Minner in 2004 with John Carney, her lieutenant governor, after narrowly winning a second term.Pat Crowe II/Associated PressRuth Ann Coverdale was born on Jan. 17, 1935, in Milford, Del., the youngest of five children, and was raised in nearby Slaughter Neck. Her father, Samuel Coverdale, was a sharecropper, and her mother, Mary Ann (Lewis) Coverdale, was a homemaker.She left high school at 16 to work on the family farm. At 17 she married Frank R. Ingram, her junior high school sweetheart. The couple had three sons.Mr. Ingram died of a heart attack at 34 in 1967. In 1969 she married Roger Minner, with whom she operated a car-towing business. He died of cancer in 1991.She is survived by two sons, Frank Ingram Jr. and Wayne Ingram; seven grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren. Her son Gary L. Ingram died in 2016.Having dropped out of high school, Ms. Minner was determined to make something of herself — and to show her sons that dropping out was not OK.She started by earning her high school equivalency diploma while working as a statistician with the Maryland Crop Reporting Service. She briefly attended Delaware Technical and Community College before landing a job as a clerk in the Delaware House of Representatives, where, she told The New York Times in 2001, she was able to study the ins and outs of statehouse politicking.She transferred to an office job with Sherman W. Tribbitt, a state representative. When he was elected governor in 1972, he brought her along as his receptionist. And then she ran for office herself.“I never had any intention of getting deeply involved in politics,” Ms. Minner told The Times. “But it finally got down to proving some things to myself.”She was elected to the State House in 1974. After eight years there and nearly a decade in the State Senate, she ran for lieutenant governor in 1992, with Thomas R. Carper at the top of the ticket. They won. In 2000, after two terms as governor, Mr. Carper was elected to the U.S. Senate and Ms. Minner was elected governor, winning 60 percent of the vote.By then, “she had become comfortable with being the only woman in the room,” Dr. Peel, her granddaughter, said in an interview. And Ms. Minner was one to stick to her guns, she said, to the point of being stubborn. When she made up her mind, there was no arguing with her.She faced a tough re-election fight four years later; after difficult battles with the legislature and scandals involving the state police and prison system, she squeaked into her second term with 51 percent of the vote.As Ms. Minner prepared to leave the governor’s office in 2009, Mr. Biden, who had just been elected vice president, participated in a tribute to her, at which he recalled her bruising fight to enact the ban on smoking in public places.“When we were watching your poll numbers falling precipitously, you did not budge,” he told her. “You were willing to risk your political life to get it done.”He added: “In this business of politics, the most important question is, what are you willing to lose over? If you can’t answer that question, then it’s all about ego and power and not about principle.” More

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      Sununu to Seek Re-election as New Hampshire Governor, Rejecting Senate Bid

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      National Republicans had been trying to recruit Gov. Chris Sununu to compete for a Democratic-held seat that the G.O.P. believed could determine control of the Senate.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican, surprised his party on Tuesday by announcing he would not run for U.S. Senate next year, rejecting a full-court press from national Republicans who tried to recruit him to compete for a Democratic-held seat that the G.O.P. believed could determine control of the Senate.Instead, Mr. Sununu announced at a press conference, he would seek a fourth two-year term as governor, a job that he said he could make more of a difference in than in Congress, where “too often doing nothing is considered a win.”“My responsibility is not to the gridlock and politics of Washington, it is to the citizens of New Hampshire,’’ he said. National Republicans had seen a Sununu challenge to Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, as one of their best shots to upend the Senate’s 50-50 partisan split, which gives Democrats control with the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.At a Republican gathering in Las Vegas over the weekend, where Mr. Sununu spoke, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas urged attendees to lean on Mr. Sununu, who was also mulling whether to seek re-election as governor. “Every person here needs to come up to Chris and say, ‘Governor is great but you need to run for Senate,’” Mr. Cruz said. “Because this man could single-handedly retire Chuck Schumer as majority leader of the Senate.” Mr. Sununu, 47, was re-elected to a third two-year term in 2020 with 65 percent of the statewide vote. That was 20 percentage points better than what former President Donald J. Trump received in losing New Hampshire to President Biden. Unlike other Republican governors of blue states, such as Maryland or Massachusetts, Mr. Sununu supported Mr. Trump’s re-election, declaring at one point, “I’m a Trump guy through and through.” A University of New Hampshire poll in September found that support for Mr. Sununu was eroding, but still high. Fifty-seven percent of New Hampshire adults approved of the job the governor was doing, including his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the share of independents who approved of his performance as governor fell for the third consecutive month. This is a developing story. More

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      Decoding Kyrsten Sinema’s Style

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      Sometimes a dress is just a dress. Sometimes it’s a strategy.Senator Kyrsten Sinema may have been in Europe recently on a fund-raising trip and out of reach of the activists who have dogged her footsteps, frustrated with her obstruction of President Biden’s social spending bill. But despite the fact her office has been keeping her itinerary under wraps, were those protesters able to follow her overseas, there’s a good chance they would be able to find her.Not just because of her political theater. Ever since she was first elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2005, Ms. Sinema has always stood out in a crowd. And as Ms. Sinema’s legislative demands take center stage (along with those of Senator Joe Manchin, the other Biden Bill holdout) her history of idiosyncratic outfits has taken on a new cast.As Tammy Haddad, former MSNBC political director and co-founder of the White House Correspondents Weekend Insider, said of the senator, “If the other members of Congress had paid any attention to her clothing at all they would have known she wasn’t going to just follow the party line.”The senior senator from Arizona — the first woman to represent Arizona in the Senate, the first Democrat elected to that body from that state since 1995, and the first openly bisexual senator — has never hidden her identity as a maverick. In fact, she’s advertised it. Pretty much every day.Indeed, it was back in 2013, when she was first elected to the House of Representatives, that Elle crowned Ms. Sinema “America’s Most Colorful Congresswoman.” Since she joined the Senate, she has merely been further embracing that term. Often literally.Notice was served at her swearing-in on Jan. 3, 2019, when Ms. Sinema seemed to be channeling Marilyn Monroe in platinum blond curls, a white sleeveless pearl-trimmed top, rose-print pencil skirt and stiletto heels: She was never going to revert to pantsuit-wearing banality.Senator Sinema leaves the Senate reception room at the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump in 2020, her cape sweeping behind.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesInstead, she swept in as a white-cape-dressed crusader for Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, in January 2020. Modeled a variety of Easter-egg colored wigs — lavender, pink, green — to demonstrate, her spokeswoman Hannah Hurley told The Arizona Republic in May of last year, a commitment to “social distancing in accordance with best practices, including from salons.” (Ms. Hurley specified the wig cost $12.99.) Sported pompom earrings, a variety of animal prints, neoprene, and assorted thigh-high boots. And presided over the Senate on Feb. 23 of this year while wearing a hot pink sweater with the words “Dangerous Creature” on the front, prompting Mitt Romney to tell her she was “breaking the internet.”Her reply: “Good.”To dismiss that as a stunt rather than a foreshadowing is to give Ms. Sinema less credit than she is due. “She’s saying, ‘I can wear what I want and say what I think is important and I’m going to have a lot of impact doing it,’” Ms. Haddad said. “She is unencumbered by the norms of the institution.”Lauren A. Rothman, an image and style accountability coach in Washington who has been working with members of Congress for 20 years, said it’s part of a growing realization among politicians that “you are communicating at all times, because a clip on social media can be even more meaningful than something on national TV.” And that means “thinking at all times about what story you are telling with your nonverbal tools, which means your style.”As Washington has begun to realize. Conversation with various insiders and Congressologists offered theories on the wardrobe that suggested it was either: a sleight-of-hand, meant to distract from Ms. Sinema’s journey from progressive to moderate to possibly Republican-leaning; or meant to offer reassurance to her former progressive supporters that she wasn’t actually part of the conservative establishment.Richard Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Changed History,” said he thought her image was designed to telegraph: “I’m a freethinker, my own person, not going along with convention, so even though I’m a part of the Democratic Party I am representing your interests, not theirs.” (As it happens Ms. Sinema is featured in the book as an example of a woman “unapologetically” bringing a more feminine approach to dress to “the halls of power.”)Whatever the interpretation, however, no one expressed any doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing. To pay attention is simply to acknowledge what Ms. Haddad called “a branding exercise” being done “at the highest level.” Either way, the senator’s office did not respond to emails on the subject.Senator Sinema in non-traditional silver talking with Senator Thom Tillis in traditional dark suit in 2020.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressSenator Sinema in the U.S. Capitol Building in 2020.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesAnother of Senator Sinema’s wigs, which came in a variety of Easter egg shades. This one matches the large flower on her dress.Pool photo by Tom WilliamsSenator Sinema stood out like a beacon in a bright red halter dress, blue beads, and an apple watch during a news conference in July.Alex Wong/Getty ImagesAfter all, said Hilary Rosen, the vice chair of the political consultancy SKDKickerbocker, who has known Ms. Sinema since 2011, the senator “used to dress more like the rest of us, in simple dresses” and the occasional suit jacket. But, Ms. Rosen said, “I’ve seen a real shift in the last few years, and I think they way she dresses now is a sign of her increasing confidence as a legislator. She’s not afraid to wear her personality on her sleeve, and that’s rare in a politician. They usually dress for ambiguity.”There are few places, after all, more hidebound when it comes to personal style than Congress, which long had a dress code that included the caveat that congresswomen were not supposed to show their shoulders or arms in the building. The House changed its rules in 2017, but the Senate hewed to tradition until Ms. Sinema’s election; the rules were actually changed for her.According to Jennifer Steinhauer’s book “The Firsts: the Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, the senior member on the Senate Rules Committee, went to leadership before the last swearing-in to request the rules be reconsidered to reflect the modern world. She knew Ms. Sinema, a triathlete, had a penchant for showing her arms, and believed the new senator “needed to be allowed to wear what she wanted” in her new workplace. Some male senators grumbled, but acceded. (In the end, Ms. Sinema compromised by carrying a silver faux-fur stole to cover her shoulders.)But for women, Capitol Hill is traditionally a land of Talbots and St. John’s; of dressing to camouflage yourself in the group so it is your words that stand out, not your clothes. As Mr. Ford said, “Women are always subject to heightened scrutiny and criticism,” and in Washington this is even more true.There’s a reason Kamala Harris, the first female vice president, seems to wear only dark pantsuits. A reason the Women’s Campaign School at Yale Law, an annual five-day intensive training course for female elected officials hosted by the school (though not administered by it), includes a seminar entitled “Dress to Win.” Any woman in the political public eye has to make a decision about her clothes, whether she likes it or not, and resorting to the most nondescript common denominator is the norm.Senator Sinema, on the second day of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial at the U.S. Capitol in February, modeling message dressing.Pool photo by Joshua RobertsSenator Sinema on Capitol Hill in September in tiger stripes, though not the kind normally seen in nature.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesSenator Sinema in September, this time in a sort of cow print.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesYet more wild animal imagery, courtesy of the sweater Senator Sinema wore for a vote in the Capitol in March.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWhen statements have been made with dress, they have been made with clear intent, both individually — the flamethrower coat Nancy Pelosi wore when she faced down President Donald J. Trump over his border wall; her many face masks; her mace pin — and with critical mass, as when the women of the House wore white to Mr. Trump’s State of the Union in 2019 and 2020. However, such visual messaging remains the exception to the general rule (that’s part of what makes these moments stand out, and gives them their power).When fashion comes into play, it is more generally as a gesture of international diplomacy (where it is often left to the first lady to get fancy in the name of playing nice on a state visit) or national boosterism, using the political spotlight to promote local business and thus justify the choice of a designer name as a move to help the economy (see President Biden’s decision to wear Ralph Lauren to his swearing-in).Senator Sinema began her Washington career by breaking that tradition, clearly reveling in a seemingly endless wardrobe of eye-catching, idiosyncratic and colorful clothes speckled with flowers and zebra stripes: the kind more often labeled “fun” rather than, say, “sober” or “serious”; the kind that were unidentifiable in terms of provenance (where did she get them? where were they made? who knew?); the kind that are not unusual in civilian life, but stand out like neon lights under the rotunda of the Capitol; the kind that maybe call to mind an uninhibited co-worker with a zest for retail therapy at the mall. But that the senator continued to do so as she ascended the political ranks served two purposes.Everything’s coming up floral, as Senator Sinema leaves a closed-door bipartisan infrastructure meeting on Capitol Hill in June.Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressMore blooms on Senator Sinema in September.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesPuffed sleeves and poesies on Senator Sinema in September.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesIt made her nationally recognizable in a way very few new members of Congress are, and it placed her at the forefront of a social trend at a time when dress codes of all kinds are being reconsidered — and often left behind. (It’s no accident that the other congresswoman sworn in at the same time who has become a household name, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is equally good at using the tools of image making to craft her political message.)And, it made it clear she just wasn’t going to apologize for enjoying shopping. She clearly does a lot of it. So what? As far as she is concerned, she can have her stuff and substance too.In other words, all those seemingly kooky clothes that Ms. Sinema is wearing aren’t kooky at all. They’re signposts. And the direction they are pointing is entirely her way. More

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      Democrats Work to Sell an Unfinished Bill

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      As President Biden and his allies in Congress work to whittle down the size of their ambitious domestic plans, Democrats must sell a bill without knowing precisely what will be in it.ALLENTOWN, Pa. — When Representative Susan Wild, Democrat of Pennsylvania, accompanied Jill Biden, the first lady, to the Learning Hub, a newly established early education center whose walls were covered with vocabulary words in English and Spanish, on a recent Wednesday morning, Ms. Wild’s constituents were frank about the many unmet needs in their community.Jessica Rodriguez-Colon, a case manager with a local youth house, described the struggles of helping families find affordable housing with rent skyrocketing. Brenda Fernandez, the founder of a nonprofit focused on supporting formerly incarcerated women and survivors of domestic violence, explained the challenges of ensuring homes were available for those who needed them.Dr. Biden had a ready answer: “It’s a big part of the bill,” she said, turning in her seat to Ms. Wild. “Right, Susan?”Ms. Wild quickly agreed. The sprawling $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate package that the House compiled last month would address everything raised during the discussion. It would devote more than $300 billion to low-income and affordable housing, provide two free years of community college and help set up a universal prekindergarten program that could help places like the Learning Hub, which serves about 150 children and families through Head Start, the federal program for preschoolers.But left unmentioned was the uncertainty about whether any of that would survive and become law. A month after the House put together its bill, President Biden and Democrats in Congress have trimmed their ambitions. Facing unified Republican opposition and resistance to the cost of the measure by a handful of centrists in their party, led by Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Democrats are now working to scale back the package to around $2 trillion to ensure its passage through a Congress where they hold the thinnest of majorities.For Ms. Wild and other Democrats facing the toughest re-elections in politically competitive districts around the country, the ambiguity surrounding their marquee legislation makes for an unusual challenge outside of Washington: how to go about selling an agenda without knowing which components of it will survive the grueling legislative path to the president’s desk.Polls show that individual components of the legislation — including increasing federal support of paid leave, elder care and child care to expanding public education — are popular among voters. But beyond being aware of a price tag that is already shrinking, few voters can track what is still in contention to be part of the final package, as the process is shrouded in private negotiations.Representative Susan Wild, Democrat of Pennsylvania, during an interview in Allentown on Wednesday.Mark Makela for The New York Times“We don’t want to be having to come back to people later and say, ‘Well, we really liked that idea, but it didn’t make it into the final bill,’ — so it’s a challenge,” Ms. Wild said. “As the bill’s size continues to come down, you may be talking about something at any given time that’s not going to make it into the final product.”To get around Republican obstruction, Democrats are using a fast-track process known as reconciliation that shields legislation from a filibuster. That would allow it to pass the 50-50 Senate on a simple majority vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a tiebreaking vote.But it would still require the support of every Democratic senator — and nearly every one of their members in the House. Democratic leaders and White House officials have been haggling behind the scenes to nail down an agreement that could satisfy both Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema, who have been reluctant to publicly detail which proposals they want to see scaled back or jettisoned.Congressional leaders aim to finish their negotiations in time to act on the reconciliation bill by the end of October, when they also hope to move forward on another of Mr. Biden’s top priorities, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that would be the largest investment in roads, bridges, broadband and other physical public works in more than a decade.“As with any bill of such historic proportions, not every member will get everything he or she wants,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, wrote to Democrats in a letter ahead of the chamber’s return on Monday. “I deeply appreciate the sacrifices made by each and every one of you.”It remains unclear which sacrifices will have to be made, with lawmakers still at odds over the best strategy for paring down the plan, let alone how to structure specific programs. The most potent plan to replace coal and gas-fired plants with wind, nuclear and solar energy, for example, is likely to be dropped because of Mr. Manchin’s opposition, but White House and congressional staff are cobbling together alternatives to cut emissions that could be added to the plan.Liberals remain insistent that the bill — initially conceived as a cradle-to-grave social safety net overhaul on par with the Great Society of the 1960s — include as many programs as possible, while more moderate lawmakers have called for large investments in just a few key initiatives.In the midst of the impasse, rank-and-file lawmakers have been left to return home to their constituents to try to promote a still-unfinished product that is shrouded in the mystery of private negotiations, all while explaining why a Democratic-controlled government has yet to deliver on promises they campaigned on.“I try to make sure that people know what I stand for, what my positions are, what I want for our community,” Ms. Wild said in an interview, ticking off provisions in the bill that would lower prescription drug costs, provide child care and expand public education. “But if it’s not guaranteed, I also try to make sure people understand that, so they don’t feel like I’ve promised something that’s not going to happen.”“That doesn’t always work,” she added. “Because you might think that something something’s in the bag, so to speak, and then all of a sudden, the rug gets pulled out from under you.”Karen Schlegel, who is retired, waited outside, hoping to see Dr. Biden in Allentown on Wednesday.Mark Makela for The New York TimesKaren Schlegel, 71, who waited outside the center with a mix of protesters shouting obscenities and eager onlookers waiting for a glimpse of Dr. Biden, said she remained in full support of Mr. Biden’s agenda. She blamed congressional Democrats for delaying the president’s plan.“He would be doing better if he had some support from Congress,” she said, carrying a hot pink sign professing love for both Bidens. “They better get a hustle on.”Even Dr. Biden, as she trailed from classroom to classroom to watch the students engage in interactive color and shape lessons — and perform an enthusiastic penguin-inspired dance — avoided weighing in on the specifics of the bill.“We already started when Joe got into office, and that’s what we’re fighting for,” Dr. Biden told the group, pointing to the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill that Democrats muscled through in March as evidence of the success of their agenda. “I’m not going to stop, nor is Joe, so I want you to have faith.”For lawmakers like Ms. Wild, time is of the essence. Many Democrats are already growing wary of the prospects of beginning their re-election campaigns, before voters have felt the tangible impacts of either the infrastructure bill or the reconciliation package.They will have to win over voters like Eric Paez, a 41-year-old events planner, who wants Democrats to deliver and has little patience for keeping track of the machinations on Capitol Hill standing in their way.“I need to come home and not think about politicians,” Mr. Paez, said, smoking a cigarette and waving to neighbors walking their dogs in the early evening as he headed home from work near the child care center. “They should be doing what we voted them in to do.” More

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      Money Floods the Race for Control of Congress, More Than a Year Early

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      The main House war chests for both Democrats and Republicans have a combined $128 million in the bank — more than double the sum at this point in 2020.A dizzying amount of money is already pouring into the battles for the House and the Senate more than a year before the 2022 elections, as Republicans are bullish on their chances to take over both chambers in the first midterm election under President Biden, given the narrow margins keeping Democrats in power.The two parties’ main war chests for the House total a combined $128 million — more than double the sum at this point in the 2020 cycle and far surpassing every other previous one. Top House members are now raising $1 million or more per quarter. And more than two dozen senators and Senate candidates topped that threshold.Candidate after candidate, and the parties themselves, are posting record-breaking sums, even as the shapes of most House districts nationwide remain in flux because of delays in the once-a-decade redrawing of boundaries.In Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, raised more than $100,000 per day in the last three months for a $9.5 million haul. But his leading Republican rival, Herschel Walker, the former football player who was urged to run by former President Donald J. Trump, raised $3.7 million in a little more than a month, setting up a potentially bruising and expensive contest in that key state.Politicians in both parties are furiously racing to expand their online donor bases while simultaneously courting big checks from wealthy benefactors. At a Senate Republican retreat for big donors in Palm Beach, Fla., this week, Mr. Trump’s presence was a reminder of his continued perch at the center of the Republican Party — both in helping lure donations and in derailing whatever messaging party operatives have designed.“The donor community is waking up to the fact that the Republican Party has a historic opportunity in 2022, in spite of Trump continuing to talk about 2020,” said Scott Reed, a longtime Republican strategist.Money alone is rarely decisive in political races, especially when both parties are flush with cash. But the glut of political funding, detailed in Federal Election Commission reports filed on Friday by House and Senate candidates and announced by the parties, shows the growing stakes of American elections, where a single flipped Senate seat can shift trillions of dollars in federal spending.The country’s increasingly polarized electorate has been hyper-engaged in politics since the Trump era began, and the ease of channeling that energy into donations online is remaking how campaigns are funded. The online donation clearinghouses for the two parties, ActBlue and WinRed, processed a combined total of more than $450 million in the third quarter.The avalanche of cash could expand the 2022 political battlefield and result in an unrelenting wave of advertising aimed at Americans who live in swing districts and states.The ad wars have, in fact, already begun. Democratic- and Republican-linked groups are spending millions of dollars to shape public opinion on the spending package currently being debated in Congress.Among them is one Biden-aligned nonprofit group, Building Back Together, which said it had spent nearly $15 million on television ads in more than two dozen House districts and key states since July. This week, a Republican-aligned nonprofit group, One Nation, announced that it was beginning a $10 million ad campaign, urging three Democratic senators up for re-election in 2022 — in Nevada, Arizona and New Hampshire — to oppose the spending package.Senator Raphael Warnock raised more than $100,000 per day in the last three months, making him the top Democratic fund-raiser outside of congressional leaders.Damon Winter/The New York TimesAll told, more than $70 million has been spent since Sept. 1 on television ads related to the Biden legislative agenda, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Historically, the party out of power has done well in a new president’s first midterm election, and Republicans see rising inflation, missteps in Afghanistan and a softening in Mr. Biden’s approval rating as reasons for a sunny 2022 outlook.“We’ll have to really screw up to lose the House,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, referring to the Democrats’ narrow majority in that chamber. He said that recapturing the Senate, which is split evenly between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, would depend on recruiting more top-tier Republicans, such as Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.At the donor retreat in Florida, Mr. Graham said, “there was a sense of optimism that was as high as I’ve seen it.”In the House, the path to the majority is widely expected to be determined by suburban voters, who swung sharply toward the Democratic Party during the Trump administration.Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who has worked on House campaigns, noted that the central role of suburban terrain — the battlegrounds were more rural 15 years ago — had driven up the cost of campaigning. Buying ads to reach suburban voters requires advertising in pricier urban television markets.“The upside is the Democratic coalition is built around suburbs,” Mr. Ferguson said. “The downside is the resources to run in Philadelphia and Chicago and L.A. and Miami.”The National Republican Congressional Committee began this year with roughly $8 million less on hand than its Democratic counterpart but entered October with roughly $2 million more, as small digital contributions have accelerated for Republicans. Each group has raised well over $100 million this year.Representative Tom Emmer, the chairman of the Republican congressional committee, noted in a call with reporters that in the 2020 cycle, his party committee had not reached the $100 million threshold until February — five months later.Both the Senate and the House Republican campaign committees have leaned on hardball and sometimes deceptive tactics to boost their bottom lines, such as pre-checking boxes that automatically enroll donors in recurring monthly contributions and aggressively fostering guilt trips in supporters and questioning their allegiances.“You’re a traitor …” began one such House G.O.P. text earlier this week. “You abandoned Trump.”The text gave a false deadline of 17 minutes to donate. “This is your final chance to prove your loyalty or be branded a deserter,” it read.A fund-raising text message this week from the National Republican Congressional Committee.The House G.O.P. committee, which declined to comment on its tactics, said it had raised nearly 44 percent of its funds last quarter online.“Democrats have owned online fund-raising, and that is no longer true,” said former Representative Tom Davis, who previously led the House Republican campaign arm. “Republicans now are the ones who are obsessed and aroused. People voted for Biden to get Trump out of their living rooms. But they didn’t vote for all his policies.”Most Republican strategists hope to keep the focus on Democrats, knowing voters typically want to put a check on those in power. But Mr. Trump’s continued insistence on making his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen a central rallying cry for the G.O.P. — “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Mr. Trump warned in a statement this week, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24” — is a complicating factor.“If it’s a referendum on Biden’s policies, we will do very well,” Mr. Graham said of the 2022 midterms. “If it’s looking back, if it’s a grievance campaign, then we could be in trouble.”Mr. Emmer tried to distance himself from Mr. Trump’s remarks, saying, “He’s a private citizen, and he, of course, is entitled to his own opinion.” Still, Mr. Emmer added that he was “honored” that the former president would headline the committee’s fall fund-raising dinner. “He remains the biggest draw in our party,” he said.Congressional leaders are the other leading party fund-raisers. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican minority leader, and his top deputy, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, have transferred a combined total of nearly $30 million to their party committees this year, party officials said.Mr. Scalise’s top donations since July included $105,000 from the PAC of Koch Industries; $125,000 from H. Fisk Johnson, the chief executive of S.C. Johnson & Son; and $66,300 from John W. Childs, the private equity magnate.Whether this is the final term of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is 81, is widely discussed in Washington. But the San Francisco Democrat remains a prolific fund-raiser.Donors to her political accounts in recent months include Haim Saban, the media investor ($263,400); Hamilton James, a top Blackstone executive ($263,000); Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer, the Cargill heiress ($263,400); and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood producer ($163,400).Senator Chuck Schumer has aggressively pressed top party fund-raisers in recent months.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesSenator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, raised heavily both for his own 2022 re-election bid in New York and to maintain the Democratic majority. Mr. Schumer has aggressively pressed top party fund-raisers in recent months, telling one that he wanted to fill his war chest (now at $31.9 million) as a deterrent to any primary challenge from the left. He specifically named Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York as the kind of candidate he would like to keep from running, mostly to avoid weakening his hand while navigating the evenly divided Senate. Mr. Schumer’s office declined to comment.Notably, some of the top fund-raisers in both parties are Black.They include Mr. Warnock, the top Democratic fund-raiser, and Mr. Walker, a leading Republican in the Georgia Senate race. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone Black Republican in the Senate, was the top fund-raiser in his party. Mr. Scott raised $8.3 million in the third quarter. He now has $18.8 million in the bank, funds that can be used for his 2022 re-election or to seed a potential 2024 presidential run.Representative Val Demings, a Black Democrat in Florida and a former Orlando police chief, is challenging Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican incumbent, and was another top fund-raiser, pulling in $8.4 million. But she spent heavily to do so: $5.6 million.Florida has proved elusive for Democratic candidates, especially in recent years, and some party strategists are already quietly grumbling about the tens of millions — if not more — that is likely to be poured in to a tough race, especially after hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on losing 2020 efforts to topple Republican incumbents in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina and South Carolina.Rachel Shorey contributed reporting. More