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      When It Comes to Disdain for Democracy, Trump Has Company

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      It makes perfect sense to treat Donald Trump as the most immediate threat to the future of American democracy. He has an ambitious plan to turn the office of the presidency into an instrument of “revenge” against his political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups.But while we keep our eyes on Trump and his allies and enablers, it is also important not to lose sight of the fact that anti-democratic attitudes run deep within the Republican Party. In particular, there appears to be a view among many Republicans that the only vote worth respecting is a vote for the party and its interests. A vote against them is a vote that doesn’t count.This is not a new phenomenon. We saw a version of it on at least two occasions in 2018. In Florida, a nearly two-thirds majority of voters backed a state constitutional amendment to effectively end felon disenfranchisement. The voters of Florida were as clear as voters could possibly be: If you’ve served your time, you deserve your ballot.Rather than heed the voice of the people, Florida Republicans immediately set out to render it moot. They passed, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed, a bill that more or less nullified the amendment by imposing an almost impossible set of requirements for former felons to meet. Specifically, eligible voters had to pay any outstanding fees or fines that were on the books before their rights could be restored. Except there was no central record of those fees or fines, and the state did not have to tell former felons what they owed, if anything. You could try to vote, but you risked arrest, conviction and even jail time.In Wisconsin, that same year, voters put Tony Evers, a Democrat, into the governor’s mansion, breaking eight years of Republican control. The Republican-led Legislature did not have the power to overturn the election results, but the impenetrable, ultra-gerrymandered majority could use its authority to strip as much power from the governor as possible, blocking, among other things, his ability to withdraw from a state lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act — one of the things he campaigned on. Wisconsin voters would have their new governor, but he’d be as weak as Republicans could possibly make him.It almost goes without saying that we should include the former president’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election as another example of the willingness of the Republican Party to reject any electoral outcome that doesn’t fall in its favor. And although we’ve only had a few elections this year, it doesn’t take much effort to find more of the same.I’ve already written about the attempt among Wisconsin Republicans to nullify the results of a heated race for a seat on the state Supreme Court. Voters overwhelmingly backed the more liberal candidate for the seat, Janet Protasiewicz, giving the court the votes needed to overturn the gerrymander that keeps Wisconsin Republicans in power in the Legislature even after they lose a majority of votes statewide.In response, Wisconsin Republicans floated an effort to impeach the new justice on a trumped-up charge of bias. The party eventually backed down in the face of national outrage — and the danger that any attempt to remove Protasiewicz might backfire electorally in the future. But the party’s reflexive move to attempt to cancel the will of the electorate says everything you need to know about the relationship of the Wisconsin Republican Party to democracy.Ohio Republicans seem to share the same attitude toward voters who choose not to back Republican priorities. As in Wisconsin, the Ohio Legislature is so gerrymandered in favor of the Republican Party that it would take a once-in-a-century supermajority of Democratic votes to dislodge it from power. Most lawmakers in the state have nothing to fear from voters who might disagree with their actions.It was in part because of this gerrymander that abortion rights proponents in the state focused their efforts on a ballot initiative. The Ohio Legislature may have been dead set on ending abortion access in the state — in 2019, the Republican majority passed a so-called heartbeat bill banning abortion after six weeks — but Ohio voters were not.Aware that most of the voters in their state supported abortion rights, and unwilling to try to persuade them that an abortion ban was the best policy for the state, Ohio Republicans first tried to rig the game. In August, the Legislature asked voters to weigh in on a new supermajority requirement for ballot initiatives to amend the State Constitution. If approved, this requirement would have stopped the abortion rights amendment in its tracks.It failed. And last week, Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to write reproductive rights into their State Constitution, repudiating their gerrymandered, anti-choice Legislature. Or so they thought.Not one full day after the vote, four Republican state representatives announced that they intended to do everything in their power to nullify the amendment and give lawmakers total discretion to ban abortion as they see fit. “This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law,” their statement reads. “We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.”Notice the language: “our power” and “our laws.” There is no awareness here that the people of Ohio are sovereign and that their vote to amend the State Constitution holds greater authority than the judgment of a small group of legislators. This group may not like the fact that Ohioans have declared the Republican abortion ban null and void, but that is democracy. If these lawmakers want to advance their efforts to restrict abortion, they first need to persuade the people.To many Republicans, unfortunately, persuasion is anathema. There is no use making an argument since you might lose. Instead, the game is to create a system in which, heads or tails, you always win.That’s why Republican legislatures across the country have embraced partisan gerrymanders so powerful that they undermine the claim to democratic government in the states in question. That’s why Republicans in places like North Carolina have adopted novel and dubious legal arguments about state power, the upshot of which is that they concentrate power in the hands of these gerrymandered state legislatures, giving them total authority over elections and electoral outcomes. And that’s why, months before voting begins in the Republican presidential contest, much of the party has already embraced a presidential candidate who promises to prosecute and persecute his political opponents.One of the basic ideas of democracy is that nothing is final. Defeats can become victories and victories can become defeats. Governments change, laws change, and, most important, the people change. No majority is the majority, and there’s always the chance that new configurations of groups and interests will produce new outcomes.For this to work, however, we — as citizens — have to believe it can work. Cultivating this faith is no easy task. We have to have confidence in our ability to talk to one another, to work with one another, to persuade one another. We have to see one another, in some sense, as equals, each of us entitled to our place in this society.It seems to me that too many Republicans have lost that faith.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Democrats Plan to Spend Millions to Weaken Republican Supermajorities

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      The party is targeting states with Democratic governors but overwhelming Republican legislative control, effectively battling to win back veto power.Democrats are planning to spend millions of dollars next year on just a few state legislative elections in Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky and Wisconsin — states where they have little to no chance of winning control of a chamber.Yet what might appear to be an aimless move is decidedly strategic: Democrats are pushing to break up Republican supermajorities in states with Democratic governors, effectively battling to win back the veto pen district by district. Such supermajorities result when a single political party has enough votes in both chambers of a legislature to override a governor’s veto, often, though not always, by controlling two-thirds of the chamber.The extraordinary political dissonance of having a governor of one party and a supermajority of an opposing party in the legislature is one of the starkest effects of gerrymandering, revealing how parties cling to evaporating power.As gerrymanders built by both parties for decades have tipped the scales to favor the party of the map-drawers, legislative chambers have proved resistant to shifting political winds at the state level. At times, those gerrymanders have locked in minority rule in legislatures while statewide offices, like the governor’s, adhere to the desires of a simple majority of voters.Though both parties employed aggressive gerrymanders during the last round of redistricting in 2021, Republicans entered the cycle with a distinct advantage: In 2010, G.O.P.-controlled state legislatures across the country drew aggressive gerrymanders in state governments. Democrats were caught off guard.“The bottom fell out,” said Heather Williams, the interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “And we’ve been building back since then.”As a result, Republicans now control resilient supermajorities in Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky, even as Democrats hold the executive branch. And in Wisconsin, Republicans control a supermajority of the State Senate, which can act unilaterally on issues like impeachment, and are just two seats shy of a supermajority in the State Assembly, though last year Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, won re-election.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has committed “more than seven figures” of its initial $60 million budget for 2024 to breaking up these four supermajorities, with the caveat that redistricting efforts in North Carolina and Wisconsin could shift resources. “Republicans in these legislatures are not moderate,” Ms. Williams said. “They are governing very extremely, and we need a stopgap, and it is critical that governors have veto power where their legislature and their legislative maps are so gerrymandered.”The only example where the parties are flipped is in Vermont, where a Democratic supermajority in the legislature overrode multiple vetoes by Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, this year. And in Nevada, Democrats control a supermajority of the State Assembly and are just one vote shy of a supermajority in the State Senate, while Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, was elected in 2022.A spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee did not respond to questions about similar strategies for Republicans.Though Democrats have occasionally ventured into conservative-leaning legislative districts, such an extensive foray into fairly hostile territory will be a new challenge, particularly in deeply red states like Kansas where Democratic voters are often ignored during better-funded national campaigns for president. Recruiting candidates to serve in the minority, rather than to play a role in flipping a chamber — a more energizing prospect — can also pose a challenge.But while state legislative elections are often defined by issues as hyperlocal as a traffic intersection or funding for an after-school program, Democrats are also hoping that one critical national issue will help them: abortion.Despite President Biden’s persistent unpopularity, Democrats last week took back the Virginia General Assembly and won the governor’s race in deep-red Kentucky, as well as a majority of this year’s special elections, largely because abortion access was a motivating issue.On the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year, Kansas voters rejected an amendment that would have effectively eliminated abortion in the state. But in the Legislature, dominated by Republicans, “we had 21 different bills come up in committee trying to restrict abortion access,” said Jeanna Repass, the chair of the Kansas Democratic Party. “So what that has taught us is that if we can get the messaging out to people, we can get them interested in the fact that they’re not being represented by their legislators.”“When I’m out, I hit them hard with abortion, our public schools and Medicaid, and in that order,” Ms. Repass added.As Democrats invest in trying to climb out of superminority positions, they will face some deep-pocketed state Republicans. Robert Reives, the Democratic minority leader in the North Carolina General Assembly, pointed to two races in 2022 that featured Republican candidates spending roughly $800,000 each to defeat Democratic incumbents.“They had the benefit of having two billionaires that kind of financed a lot of the top line of the campaign and then just kind of went from there,” Mr. Reives said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have billionaires on our side to do that.”Mr. Reives was confident that even with newly drawn maps favoring Republicans, the Democrats would have a chance of breaking the supermajority in the state in 2024, focusing on urban areas like Wake County, home to Raleigh. And he said that while abortion would inevitably be a factor in coming elections, the hyperlocal issue of authorizing casinos in the state is likely to help Democrats claw back a few seats.“They were literally going against every constituency,” Mr. Reives said, referring to broad opposition to casino expansion. Even some Republicans objected to it.One path for Democrats to win back their veto pens can be found in eastern Wisconsin.In 2022, Democrats stared down gerrymandered maps that raised the possibility of a Republican supermajority even as Mr. Evers, the Democratic governor, cruised to a re-election victory.As returns trickled into the party headquarters in Madison, party officials breathed a sigh of relief when Steve Doyle, a 10-year incumbent from La Crosse, defeated his Republican challenger by 756 votes. His race was won not on the airwaves or even necessarily just on the issues, but on the pavement, as Mr. Doyle undertook an extensive door-knocking campaign to meet all of his voters, according to Greta Neubauer, the Democratic minority leader in the Wisconsin Assembly.“This is a Trump-won district that Democrats at the top of the ticket struggle to win,” Ms. Neubauer said. “But he spends a lot of time on his acquisition of voters, and constantly fending off attempts to take him out.” More

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      Democrats Dominated Suburbs on Election Night, a Potential Preview of 2024

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      Republicans had hope after 2022 that the nation’s residential redoubts were coming back to the G.O.P. But aside from New York, the suburbs on Tuesday swung back to the Democrats.From Northern Virginia to Northern Kentucky, the American suburbs rejected Republican candidates on Tuesday, sending a message that leafy residential communities where elections were once won and lost increasingly side with the Democratic Party — especially on abortion rights.Only in the New York suburbs of eastern Long Island did the Republican message on crime and “open borders” seem to resonate. Democrats took a drubbing in Suffolk County, where suburbanites may be recoiling at the migrant crisis plaguing the metropolis to the west.Elsewhere, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Louisville, Ky., and Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio, voters rejected Republican messages on abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. issues and crime, sending a signal that while they may fret over President Biden’s age and capabilities, they may worry more about Republican positions in the era of Donald J. Trump.“Suburban America left the G.O.P. in 2016 when they didn’t like Trump’s behavior,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and message adviser. “They began to come back in 2022 when they rejected Joe Biden’s economic policies, but they will leave again if the conversation is about abortion and social policy.”Abortion was dominant; suburban voters outside Ohio’s biggest cities voted overwhelmingly to establish the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. Kentucky’s incumbent Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, who ran hard on abortion rights and kitchen-table issues like infrastructure spending, won not only Jefferson County, home to Louisville, and Fayette County, home to Lexington. He also beat his Republican challenger, Daniel Cameron, in Kenton and Campbell Counties, once reliably Republican redoubts across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.Two years ago, Glenn Youngkin’s victorious Republican campaign for governor in Virginia had some Democrats worried that their lock on the suburban sprawl outside the nation’s capital wasn’t as tight as they had thought. Those same suburbs on Tuesday made Danica Roem, a Democrat, the first transgender state senator in the South, while helping Democrats seize a majority in the Virginia General Assembly and hold control of the State Senate.“We let the Democrats drive the message and make it all about abortion,” said John Whitbeck, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia who lives in Loudoun County, a Washington exurb. “The Republican Party has to modernize its message on this issue if we’re going to convince Democrats and independents to cross over and vote Republican. The reality is Virginia has some districts that vote blue. In a year where Roe v. Wade is driving intensity, there’s no way for us to win those districts.”In retrospect, Mr. Youngkin’s victory may have been a hangover from the coronavirus pandemic, when suburban parents worried about school closures and responded to his singular focus on education, said Heather Williams, interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to state legislatures.This time, she said, some of the same parents recoiled from Republican efforts to ban books with L.G.B.T.Q. themes from libraries and more generally inject socially conservative views into the school system.“The issue of fundamental freedoms still really resonates,” she said.In the highly contested school board races around Cedar Rapids, Iowa, voters soundly rejected every candidate endorsed by the right-wing group Moms for Liberty, which had been leading efforts to excise L.G.B.T.Q. books from libraries and exert more conservative control over curriculums.In 2021, with the pandemic still hanging over the schools, the group claimed victory in 33 school board seats in the swing Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks County, Pa. On Tuesday, Moms for Liberty candidates lost five school board races in central Bucks County.“They just got crushed,” said Jefrey Pollock, a Democratic pollster who worked with candidates in Pennsylvania. “Voters are looking for common-sense middle-of-the-road candidates, and that includes how they’ll view Donald Trump a year from now.”Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty and former school board member from Indian River County, Fla., expressed no regret, saying that across the country, about 90 school board candidates endorsed by her group did win, out of 202 total that it backed. The “win rate” of Moms for Liberty did slip, from better than 50 percent in 2022 to 43 percent on Tuesday, she said. But, she said, the group will be back in 2024 with 139 candidates, better training for candidates, more money and more professional political partnerships.“We’re just getting started,” she said.The one Republican bright spot was significant: New York. In an otherwise disappointing midterm election in 2022, Republican victories in the suburbs of the nation’s largest city secured the party its narrow control of the House. Democrats are banking on a comeback to help retake the House.But the signal sent on Tuesday was that where voters are seeing the huge upswell of migrants from the southern border, the Republican message on crime and border security is working. In these areas, voters were not asked to litigate the abortion issue.Ed Romaine easily flipped the Suffolk County executive’s office from Democrat to Republican. A Republican, Kristy Marmorato, won a City Council seat in the Bronx for the first time in more than 50 years.Of course, the threat of an abortion ban did not hang over those races — because reproductive rights are already secure in New York.Reid J. Epstein More

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      Election 2023: How Abortion Lifted Democrats, and More Key Takeaways

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      The political potency of abortion rights proved more powerful than the drag of President Biden’s approval ratings in Tuesday’s off-year elections, as Ohioans enshrined a right to abortion in their state’s constitution, and Democrats took control of both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly while holding on to Kentucky’s governorship.The night’s results showed the durability of Democrats’ political momentum since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022. It may also, at least temporarily, stem the latest round of Democratic fretting from a series of polls demonstrating Mr. Biden’s political weakness.After a strong midterm showing last year, a blowout victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April and a series of special election wins, Democrats head into Mr. Biden’s re-election contest with the wind at their backs. The question for the party is how they can translate that momentum to Mr. Biden, who remains unpopular while others running on his agenda have prevailed.Here are key takeaways from Tuesday:There’s nothing like abortion to aid Democrats.Democratic officials have been saying for months that the fight for abortion rights has become the issue that best motivates Democrats to vote, and is also the issue that persuades the most Republicans to vote for Democrats.On Tuesday, they found new evidence to bolster their case in victories by Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who criticized his opponent’s defense of the state’s near-total ban; legislative candidates in Virginia who opposed the 15-week abortion ban proposed by the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin; and, above all, the Ohio referendum establishing a right to abortion access. A Pennsylvania Supreme Court candidate who ran on abortion rights, Daniel McCaffery, also won, giving Democrats a 5-2 majority.Where Trump Counties in Ohio Voted to Support Abortion RightsOhio’s referendum drew support from both liberal and conservative areas of the state, and polled well ahead of President Biden’s results three years ago.Abortion is now so powerful as a Democratic issue that Everytown, the gun control organization founded and funded by Michael Bloomberg, used its TV ads in Virginia to promote abortion rights before it discussed gun violence.The anti-abortion Democrat who ran for governor of Mississippi, Brandon Presley, underperformed expectations.It’s a sign that no matter how weak Mr. Biden’s standing is, the political environment and the issues terrain are still strong for Democrats running on abortion access and against Republicans who defend bans.The last six Kentucky governor’s elections have been won by the same party that won the presidential election the following year. The president may not be able to do what Mr. Beshear managed — talking up Biden policies without ever mentioning the president’s name — but he now has examples of what a winning road map could look like for 2024.In Virginia, a Republican rising star faces an eclipse.Governor Youngkin had hoped a strong night for his party would greatly raise his stature as the Republican who turned an increasingly blue state back to red. That would at the very least include him in the conversation for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, if not 2024.Democratic victories in the Virginia legislature undercut Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s agenda, which was focused on abortion.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesBut Mr. Youngkin’s pledge to enact what he called a moderate abortion law — a ban on abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of an endangered mother — gave Democrats an effective counter as he sought full control of state government.The Democratic argument won the day, at least in part. The party seized the majority in the House of Delegates, kept control of the State Senate and definitely spoiled Mr. Youngkin’s night. The results offered nervous national Democrats still more evidence of abortion’s power as a motivator for their voters while upending the term-limited Mr. Youngkin’s plans for his final two years in office, and possibly beyond.A Democrat can win in deep-red Kentucky, if his name is Andy Beshear.Being the most popular governor in the country turns out to be a good thing if you want to get re-elected.Mr. Beshear spent his first term and his re-election campaign hyperfocused on local issues like teacher salaries, new road projects, guiding the state through the pandemic and natural disasters and, since last summer’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, opposing his state’s total ban on abortion.Gov. Andy Beshear focused on local issues in Kentucky, and avoided mentioning President Biden by name.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesThat made him politically bulletproof when his Republican challenger, Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, sought to nationalize the campaign and juice G.O.P. turnout by tying Mr. Beshear to Mr. Biden and attacking him on crime and L.G.B.T.Q. issues. (Mr. Beshear vetoed new restrictions aimed at transgender young people, though G.O.P. lawmakers voted to override him.)It’s not as if Republican voters stayed home; all the other Republicans running for statewide office won with at least 57 percent of the vote. Mr. Beshear just got enough of them to back him for governor. A Democrat who can win Republican voters without making compromises on issues important to liberal voters is someone the rest of the party will want to emulate in red states and districts across the country.Attacks on transgender rights didn’t work.As abortion access has become the top issue motivating Democrats, and with same-sex marriage broadly accepted in America, Republicans casting about for an issue to motivate social conservatives landed on restricting rights for transgender people. On Tuesday, that didn’t work.In Kentucky, Mr. Cameron and his Republican allies spent more than $5 million on television ads attacking L.G.B.T.Q. rights and Mr. Beshear for his defense of them, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks political advertising. Gov. Tate Reeves in Mississippi spent $1.2 million on anti-L.G.B.T.Q. ads, while Republicans running for legislative seats in Virginia spent $527,000 worth of TV time on the issue.Daniel Cameron and his Republican allies spent more than $5 million on television ads attacking L.G.B.T.Q. rights — a strategy that did not pay off in Tuesday’s election.Michael Swensen/Getty ImagesIndeed, in Virginia, Danica Roem, a member of the House of Delegates, will become the South’s first transgender state senator after defeating a former Fairfax County police detective who supported barring transgender athletes from competing in high school sports.In Ohio, voters back both abortion and weed.Ohioans once again showed the popularity of abortion rights, even in reliably Republican states, when they easily approved a constitutional amendment establishing the right to an abortion.The vote in Ohio could be a harbinger for the coming presidential election season, when proponents and opponents of abortion rights are trying to put the issue before voters in the critical battleground states of Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania.Abortion rights groups entered Tuesday on a winning streak with such ballot measures since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. And ultimately, Ohio voters did as voters before them had done — electing to preserve the right to an abortion in their state.Voters at a high school in Columbus, Ohio. Ohioans legalized recreational marijuana.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesAnd with a margin that was almost identical to the abortion vote, Ohioans also legalized recreational marijuana use. That will make Ohio the 24th state to do so.Where abortion wasn’t an issue, a Republican won easily.Mississippi’s governor’s race was the exception to this off-year election’s rule on abortion: The incumbent governor, Mr. Reeves, and his Democratic challenger, Mr. Presley, ran as staunch opponents of abortion rights.And in that race, the Democrat lost.Mr. Presley hoped to make the Mississippi race close by tying the incumbent to a public corruption scandal that saw the misspending of $94 million in federal funds intended for Mississippi’s poor on projects like a college volleyball facility pushed by the retired superstar quarterback Brett Favre. He also pressed for the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to save Mississippi’s collapsing rural hospitals.Gov. Tate Reeves won his re-election campaign easily Tuesday night in Mississippi.Emily Kask for The New York TimesBut in Mississippi, Mr. Reeves had three advantages that proved impenetrable: incumbency, the “R” next to his name on the ballot, and the endorsement of Mr. Trump, who won the state in 2020 by nearly 17 percentage points.In Kentucky races beneath the marquee governor’s contest, Democrats also did not run on abortion, and they, like Mr. Presley, lost.Rhode Island sends a Biden aide to the House.Rhode Island is hardly a swing state, but still, the heavily Democratic enclave’s election of Gabe Amo to one of its two House seats most likely brought a smile to Mr. Biden’s face. Mr. Amo was a deputy director of the White House office of intergovernmental affairs and as such, becomes the first Biden White House aide to rise to Congress.The son of African immigrants, Mr. Amo will also be the first Black representative from the Ocean State.Gabe Amo became the first Black person to represent Rhode Island in the U.S. Congress, according to The Associated Press.Kris Craig/Providence Journal, via Associated PressWhite House officials said the president congratulated his former aide on his victory. The special election fills the seat vacated by David Cicilline, a Democrat who left the seat to run a nonprofit. More

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      Can Glenn Youngkin Save the G.O.P. from Trumpism?

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      It’s a perfect fall weekend in Virginia horse country, about two weeks before Election Day, and the American Legion hall in Middleburg is decked out for a rally featuring Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is not on the ballot but is stumping hard for his fellow Republicans. His name is everywhere: on a bright blue backdrop behind the stage, on the swag in the front room, on the side of a bus out front with the slogan “Strengthening the Spirit of Virginia Together.” The bus is a high-end prop for Mr. Youngkin’s “Secure Your Vote” tour, which has him crisscrossing the state to promote early voting. His attempt to reverse Republican mistrust of early and absentee voting is one way the governor stands apart from the leader of his party, Donald Trump. But it is not the only way.Looking over the crowd, you can’t help but notice a dearth of Trump paraphernalia. One woman has on a blue “Nikki Haley for president” vest, and another one is rocking a “Moms for Liberty” T-shirt. Virginia’s Republican base has plenty of Trump love, yet it’s not a visibly MAGA-rific gathering. This makes a certain political sense: Joe Biden won this county in 2020, as did Mr. Youngkin’s Democratic rival in 2021. But the fact that Mr. Youngkin is aggressively campaigning in blue areas is not only a sign of his popularity, it differentiates him from Mr. Trump, who largely sticks to safe conservative spaces.As Mr. Youngkin bounds into the hall in his signature red vest — smile beaming, cheeks ruddy from the wind — he radiates the upbeat, hunky-P.T.A.-dad vibe that helped carry him to victory in 2021. His voice ranges from an urgent whisper to a gargly rasp as he raves not about his personal grievances or some vision of American carnage, but about the “common sense” plans he and his party have for Virginia. He spotlights a handful of policy areas — jobs, tax relief, crime, mental health care, education — and contends that Republicans, and Virginians, “win” when sensible people come together. Mr. Youngkin’s sales pitch casts the G.O.P. as a party filled with practical folks who want to get stuff done — as opposed to the Democrats, he charges, who “just want to sell fear.”Remember that “fear” line. It’s revealing about Mr. Youngkin’s brand of politics, but it’s also about as edgy as the guy gets. His performance is a far cry from MAGA.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      How the Louisiana Democrats Lost the House Legislature

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      Even before the Nov. 18 election, some liberals are pushing the state party to confront its internal divisions and paltry fund-raising.Before a single ballot was cast, Louisiana Democrats knew they couldn’t win control of the State Legislature this year. It was mathematically impossible, because a lack of candidates meant they were not even contesting the majority of districts.Their best hope for political success rested with Shawn Wilson, a former state transportation secretary, and the expectation he would force a runoff against Jeff Landry, the state’s hard-line Republican attorney general, in an open primary for governor.At least, Democrats reasoned, Mr. Wilson would make it a little harder for the overwhelmingly favored Republican to flip control of the governor’s mansion in a region increasingly dominated by conservatives.But when Mr. Landry won a majority of the primary vote in October, eliminating the need for a runoff, the results instead laid bare the bleak conditions of a state Democratic Party decimated by internal divisions, paltry fund-raising totals and a disenchanted voter base.“If my defeat brings about change and organization, so be it because it’s worthy of that — it deserves that kind of change,” Mr. Wilson said in an interview. “Our citizens deserve better than what we’re getting.”Now just a handful of political offices and legislative seats are undecided as early voting for runoff elections begins Friday. Republicans are barreling toward uniting a conservative government for the first time in eight years, led by Mr. Landry, who has defended the state’s strict abortion ban, questioned the results of the 2020 election and battled environmental regulation.Shawn Wilson, the Democratic candidate for governor, was critical of the support he received from the state party. “Our citizens deserve better than what we’re getting,” he said.Emily Kask for The New York TimesIt is not the first time in recent years that Democrats have confronted the party’s dwindling influence in the South: Senator Mary L. Landrieu’s defeat in 2014 marked the end of a 138-year streak of at least one Democrat representing the state in the U.S. Senate. But even before the Nov. 18 election, some liberals are pushing the state party to consider deeper systemic changes ahead of high-stakes presidential and congressional elections.Just over 36 percent of the electorate voted, and one analysis estimated that 17 percent of Black voters chose a Republican candidate in the governor primary, underscoring the extent of apathy and discontent among the voters who had rallied twice behind Gov. John Bel Edwards, a conservative Democrat limited to two terms.John Couvillon, a longtime Republican pollster who analyzed precincts with at least 70 percent of registered Black voters, said the combination of some Black voters turning away from the Democratic candidate, the low turnout and a decline in registered Democrats made for “a whole new ballgame.”Many Democrats acknowledged they had faced long odds in the governor’s race, given that Louisiana has become increasingly conservative and is historically prone to flip-flopping control of its highest post between parties. A combination of gerrymandering and increased polarization has also led to several centrists to either lose their political posts or leave the Democratic Party altogether.Mr. Wilson, who scrambled to introduce himself to voters, also faced different challenges than Mr. Edwards: He would have been the first Black candidate elected statewide in 150 years, in a state that nearly elected a former Ku Klux Klan leader as governor in the 1990s.Mr. Edwards, who opposes allowing access to abortion, also ran long before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and abortion rights became an issue that galvanized the Democratic base.But some also wondered if the air of inevitability surrounding Mr. Landry’s campaign led some Democratic allies to preemptively move to make inroads with the next governor. Others questioned why top Democrats had not done more to shore up support for obvious successors to Mr. Edwards, knowing that he was unable to seek a third term.“Democrats just really aren’t competing,” said Trey Mustian, who works with the Jefferson Parish Democratic Executive Committee. “The state party has a great responsibility going out and recruiting candidates, and they just don’t do a good job of that.”He added, “We’ve just got to really rehabilitate and rebuild.”Several Democrats have focused much of their ire on the state party chair, Katie Bernhardt, calling on her to resign.As attorney general, Mr. Landry defended the state’s harsh abortion ban, questioned the results of the 2020 election and battled environmental regulation.Emily Kask for The New York TimesMs. Bernhardt inherited an already downtrodden party, taking over after Governor Edwards initially endorsed another candidate and replacing a previous chair who pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud after siphoning funds away from the party.But anger began to fester after she released an ad that appeared to tease a run for governor, a move that some Democrats felt stymied Mr. Wilson’s introduction to the race and prioritized her personal political brand over that of the party.“It’s pretty daunting for us, and it’s already hard enough,” said Dustin Granger, a candidate for state treasurer who had the best Democratic performance by garnering just a third of the vote. He called on Ms. Bernhardt to resign in a statement, saying the party could not “let self interests at the top continue to drag us down.”The internal drama, some said, further spooked donors from committing to the party.Mr. Wilson described his interactions with the state party as “We need you to raise money, Shawn.” His campaign raised “right at $300,000,” he said.“And,” he added, “to this day, I’m still waiting on a mailer — a ballot from the state Democratic Party — in spite of the fact that we played by the rules, we followed the law, we made investments.”Mr. Wilson’s defeat has led several Democrats to call for the state party chair, Katie Bernhardt, to resign or for an overhaul of the party infrastructure and approach.Emily Kask for The New York TimesAnother division emerged when Mr. Edwards and other top Democrats backed a challenger to Mandie Landry, a liberal state representative who had tussled with party leaders, in a safe New Orleans seat. (Ms. Landry has taken great pains to emphasize that she and the governor-elect are not related.)“There’s a big battle still — do they go more moderate to get more rural white moderates back, or do they go full city progressive to energize people?” said Ms. Landry, who won her race. “And it seems like what they’ve been doing for a while is trying to get the white moderates or white conservatives back, and I think that’s stupid.”Ms. Bernhardt and her allies have largely avoided directly responding to the calls for her resignation, choosing to focus on the remaining races. Those include Mr. Granger’s bid for treasurer and two Democratic women running for attorney general and secretary of state.“Division leads to defeat,” Ms. Bernhardt, who did not respond to requests for an interview, wrote in an opinion piece published after the primaries. “Unfortunately, some are looking to stoke divisions to advance their political agenda. This divisive rhetoric is untimely and counterproductive.”But without Mr. Edwards in place to wield his veto pen, there appears little Democrats can do to advance their own agenda in the Legislature or push back against Republican policies.“When resources are not garnered, are not gathered and invested, you cannot be surprised if you don’t have that sort of backbone to be able to lean on,” said Stephen Handwerk, a former executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party.And in recent days, as most Americans learned about Representative Mike Johnson, the hard-line Louisiana Republican newly elected as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, several local Democrats grimly noted one biographical detail: Mr. Johnson ran unopposed in 2022. More

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      Election Day Guide: Governor Races, Abortion Access and More

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      Two governorships are at stake in the South, while Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution.Election Day is nearly here, and while off-year political races receive a fraction of the attention compared with presidential elections, some of Tuesday’s contests will be intensely watched.At stake are two southern governorships, control of the Virginia General Assembly and abortion access in Ohio. National Democrats and Republicans, seeking to build momentum moving toward next November, will be eyeing those results for signals about 2024.Here are the major contests voters will decide on Tuesday and a key ballot question:Governor of KentuckyGov. Andy Beshear, left, a Democrat, is facing Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s Republican attorney general, in his campaign for re-election as governor.Pool photo by Kentucky Educational TelevisionGov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, is seeking to again defy convention in deep-red Kentucky, a state carried handily by Donald J. Trump in 2020.He is facing Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general, who was propelled to victory by an early endorsement from Mr. Trump in a competitive Republican primary in May.In 2019, Mr. Cameron became the first Black person to be elected as Kentucky’s attorney general, an office previously held by Mr. Beshear. He drew attention in 2020 when he announced that a grand jury did not indict two Louisville officers who shot Breonna Taylor.In the 2019 governor’s race, Mr. Beshear ousted Matt Bevin, a Trump-backed Republican, by fewer than 6,000 votes. This year, he enters the race with a strong job approval rating. He is seeking to replicate a political feat of his father, Steve Beshear, who was also Kentucky governor and was elected to two terms.Governor of Mississippi Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner who is related to Elvis Presley, wants to be the state’s first Democratic governor in two decades.Emily Kask for The New York TimesGov. Tate Reeves, a Republican in his first term, has some of the lowest job approval numbers of the nation’s governors.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressIt has been two decades since Mississippi had a Democrat as governor. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican in his first term, is seeking to avoid becoming the one who ends that streak.But his job approval numbers are among the lowest of the nation’s governors, which has emboldened his Democratic challenger, Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner with a famous last name: His second cousin, once removed, was Elvis Presley.Mr. Presley has attacked Mr. Reeves over a welfare scandal exposed last year by Mississippi Today, which found that millions in federal funds were misspent. Mr. Reeves, who was the lieutenant governor during the years the scandal unfolded, has denied any wrongdoing, but the issue has been a focal point of the contest.Abortion access in OhioAs states continue to reckon with the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court last year, Ohio has become the latest front in the fight over access to abortion.Reproductive rights advocates succeeded in placing a proposed amendment on the November ballot that would enshrine the right to abortion access into the state constitution. Its supporters have sought to fill the void that was created by the Roe decision.Anti-abortion groups have mounted a sweeping campaign to stop the measure. One effort, a proposal to raise the threshold required for passing a constitutional amendment, was rejected by voters this summer.Virginia legislatureIn just two states won by President Biden in 2020, Republicans have a power monopoly — and in Virginia, they are aiming to secure a third. The others are Georgia and New Hampshire.Democrats narrowly control the Virginia Senate, where all 40 seats are up for grabs in the election. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House of Delegates, which is also being contested.The outcome of the election is being viewed as a potential reflection of the clout of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican with national ambitions.Philadelphia mayorAn open-seat race for mayor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s foremost Democratic bastion, is down to two former City Council members: Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, and David Oh, a Republican.The advantage for Ms. Parker appears to be an overwhelming one in the city, which has not elected a Republican as mayor since 1947.It has also been two decades since Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth most populous city, had a somewhat competitive mayoral race. More

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      Supreme Court Delays Efforts to Redraw Louisiana Voting Map

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      The Louisiana dispute is one of several voting rights cases churning through the courts that challenge a state’s congressional map.The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower-court ruling that delays an effort to redraw Louisiana’s congressional map, prolonging a bitter clash over the representation of Black voters in the state.The order temporarily leaves in place a Republican-drawn map that a federal judge had said diluted the power of Black voters while an appeal moves through the lower courts.Civil rights groups had sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court abruptly canceled a scheduled hearing aimed at drafting a new map for Louisiana. That map was to include two districts in which Black voters represent a large enough share of the population to have the opportunity to select a candidate. The appeals court said that the state legislature should have more time to redraw its own map before a lower court stepped in.The Supreme Court’s order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications, and there were no public dissents.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a brief concurring opinion, emphasized that Louisiana should resolve the dispute in time for the 2024 election.In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, the plaintiffs had argued that delays in the case could complicate efforts to instate a new map by the next election, leaving the state with a version that lumps Black voters from different parts of the state into one voting district, diluting their power.By the time the Supreme Court issued its order on Thursday, a hearing date had passed. Another has been set for February.The consolidated cases, Galmon v. Ardoin and Robinson v. Ardoin, are part of a larger fight over redistricting. State lawmakers in the South have contested orders to refashion congressional maps and establish additional districts to bolster Black representation. The outcomes could help tilt control of the House, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.Weeks earlier, the court refused a similar request by Alabama, which had asked the justices to reinstate a map with only one majority-Black district. A lower court had found that Republican lawmakers blatantly disregarded its order to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”At issue in Louisiana is a voting map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in the winter of 2022. The map carved the state into six districts, with only one majority-Black district, which joined Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the state’s two largest cities. About a third of the population in the state is Black.The case has reached the Supreme Court before.A coalition that included the N.A.A.C.P. Louisiana State Conference, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice and Louisiana voters sued state officials and said the map unfairly weakened the power of Black voters.A district court, siding with the plaintiffs, temporarily blocked Louisiana from using its map in any upcoming elections. A new map, it said, should include an additional district where Black voters could choose a representative. The court gave the Legislature until June 20, 2022, to sign off on a redrawn map.Louisiana immediately appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, and a three-judge panel unanimously denied the request. The state then asked the Supreme Court to intervene.The Supreme Court paused the case until it ruled in the Alabama case, Allen v. Milligan, which concerned similar questions. That essentially allowed the Republican-drawn map in Louisiana to go into effect during the 2022 election.The court lifted the pause in June after a majority of the justices, in a surprise decision, found Alabama’s map had unfairly undercut the power of Black voters. The justices said the appeals court should review the case before the 2024 elections. More