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      Elise Stefanik Files Ethics Complaint Against Trump Fraud Trial Judge

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      Justice Arthur Engoron imposed a narrow gag order on Donald Trump. Right-wing allies are going after the judge on his behalf, through official channels and online.Representative Elise Stefanik, a member of the House Republican leadership and an ally of former President Donald J. Trump, filed an ethics complaint Friday attacking the judge presiding over Mr. Trump’s civil fraud trial, the latest salvo in a right-wing war against the case.Echoing the courtroom rhetoric of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the letter complains that the Democratic judge, Arthur F. Engoron, has been biased against the former president, who testified this week in New York State Supreme Court. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, has accused Mr. Trump of fraudulent business practices, and in a pretrial ruling Justice Engoron agreed, validating the heart of her case.The letter, to a judicial conduct commission, is unlikely to have any immediate repercussions in the trial, which will determine the consequences Mr. Trump and his company will face as a result of the fraud. But it represents the latest Republican attempt to tar Justice Engoron, and to meddle with Ms. James’s case. The judge has placed narrow gag orders on both the former president and his lawyers, but nothing bars Mr. Trump’s allies from their criticism.They have taken up the effort with gusto.“I filed an official judicial complaint against Judge Arthur Engoron for his inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance in New York’s disgraceful lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization,” Ms. Stefanik said in a statement Friday.“Judge Engoron’s actions and rulings in this matter are all part of the public record and speak for themselves,” Al Baker, a spokesman for the New York court system, said in an email. “It is inappropriate to comment further.”Robert H. Tembeckjian, the administrator of the state commission on judicial misconduct, noted in a statement that all matters before the body are confidential unless a judge is found to have committed misconduct and a decision is issued.Mr. Trump, 77, has repeatedly implored his allies to fight on his behalf. And Ms. Stefanik, who has close ties to Mr. Trump’s team, has portrayed herself as one of his chief defenders, thrusting herself into the former president’s controversies dating back to the first impeachment he faced while president.The civil fraud trial, which is separate from the four criminal cases against Mr. Trump, began early last month and is at its halfway point. After the former president and his daughter, Ivanka, testified this week, the attorney general’s office rested its case, which accuses Mr. Trump and his company of filling annual financial statements with fraudulent asset values in order to receive favorable treatment from banks and insurers. The defense case will start on Monday, with Donald Trump Jr. scheduled to return to the stand, and is expected to last into December.Justice Engoron, 74, has not responded to the attacks outside the courtroom, though at one point this week he lost his temper when a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Christopher M. Kise, suggested, as he has throughout the trial, that the judge had been biased.“I object now, and I continue to object, to your constant insinuations that I have some sort of double standard here. That is just not true,” the judge said, adding, “I just make the rulings as I see them. You know, like the umpire says, call them as I see them.”Representative Elise Stefanik of New York has become one of the former president’s paladins, vociferously attacking those he sees as enemies. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesStatements like those are unlikely to satisfy Mr. Trump’s allies, and Ms. Stefanik’s attack is just one of many hurled at the judge this week. Laura Loomer, a far-right activist whom Mr. Trump considered hiring to work on his third presidential campaign and has since praised, has targeted the judge and his family in numerous social media posts. Commentators on Fox News and elsewhere in right-wing media have attacked him for shirtless photos that appeared in an alumni newsletter.Ms. Stefanik and others have also attacked the judge’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, who has experience as a trial attorney and whom the judge consults during proceedings when considering rules of evidence and other trial matters.Mr. Trump attacked Ms. Greenfield on the second day of the trial, saying that she was a partisan and was running the case against him. Justice Engoron placed a gag order on the former president barring him from discussing the court staff; Mr. Trump has twice violated that order, incurring $15,000 in fines.After the former president was barred from speaking about Ms. Greenfield, his lawyers took up the cause, continuing to complain about the judge’s practice of consulting her during the trial. Justice Engoron barred the lawyers from commenting on his private communications with Ms. Greenfield. He expressed concern about the safety of his staff and noted that his office had received “hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters and packages.”Republican critics have taken particular issue with donations that Ms. Greenfield, who is also a Democrat, has made over the past several years, accusing her of violating rules governing the conduct of judicial staff members. But Ms. Greenfield has been campaigning for a judgeship and New York’s judicial ethics rules allow candidates to make certain donations, such as purchasing tickets to political functions.Mr. Trump’s congressional allies have taken on a number of the law enforcement officials who have brought cases against the former president. After the former president was criminally indicted in Manhattan in March, Representative Jim Jordan, who has worked closely with Mr. Trump, demanded information about the case from the prosecutor, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Mr. Jordan also subpoenaed Mark F. Pomerantz, a prosecutor who had worked on the criminal case, compelling Mr. Pomerantz to testify in a closed-door congressional session.Mr. Jordan has also said he would investigate a Georgia prosecutor who also indicted Mr. Trump, accusing him of interfering with the 2020 election results in the state. The prosecutor, Fani Willis, fired back, writing in a letter that Mr. Jordan’s “attempt to invoke congressional authority to intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case in Georgia is flagrantly at odds with the Constitution.” More

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      Trump Privately Encouraged Republican Lawmakers to Impeach Biden

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      The former president has talked regularly with members of the House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment.On a sweeping patio overlooking the golf course at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., former President Donald J. Trump dined Sunday night with a close political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene.It was a chance for the former president to catch up with the hard-right Georgia congresswoman. But over halibut and Diet Cokes, Ms. Greene brought up an issue of considerable interest to Mr. Trump — the push by House Republicans to impeach his likely opponent in next year’s election.“I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Ms. Greene said in a brief phone interview.Mr. Trump’s dinner with Ms. Greene came just two nights before Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced his decision on Tuesday to order the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, under intense pressure from his right flank.Over the past several months, Mr. Trump has kept a close watch on House Republicans’ momentum toward impeaching Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has talked regularly by phone with members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment, according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to publicly discuss the conversations. Mr. Trump has encouraged the effort both privately and publicly.Ms. Greene, who has introduced articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden, said she told Mr. Trump that she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”She would not say what Mr. Trump said in response, but she said her ultimate goal was to have a “long list of names” — people whom she claimed were co-conspirators involved in Biden family crimes. She said she was confident Mr. Trump would win back the White House in 2024 and that she wanted “to go after every single one of them and use the Department of Justice to prosecute them.”While Mr. Biden’s son Hunter was charged in June with two misdemeanor tax offenses and a felony firearm offense, Republicans have not shown that Mr. Biden committed any crimes. House Republicans are proceeding with the impeachment inquiry without proof that Mr. Biden took official actions as vice president to benefit his son’s financial interests or that he directly profited from his son’s foreign deals.Mr. Trump has also spoken weekly over the past month to Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the third-ranking House Republican, according to a person familiar with the conversations who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. During those conversations, Ms. Stefanik also briefed Mr. Trump on the impeachment inquiry strategy, this person said.The former president thanked Ms. Stefanik for publicly backing the impeachment inquiry in July, the person added. Ms. Stefanik, who talked to Mr. Trump again on Tuesday after Mr. McCarthy ordered the impeachment inquiry, had been the first member of House Republican leadership to publicly call for taking the first step in the process of impeaching Mr. Biden.A person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said that despite his eagerness to see an inquiry move forward, the former president has not been twisting Mr. McCarthy’s arm. Mr. Trump has been far more aggressive in pushing several members to wipe his own impeachment record clean, the person said, potentially by getting Congress to take the unprecedented step of expunging his two impeachments from the House record.Under intense pressure from his right flank, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden on Tuesday.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMr. Trump has not been expressing concern about the possibility that the McCarthy impeachment effort might backfire and benefit Mr. Biden, according to two people with direct knowledge of his private statements over several months. Instead, he wondered to an ally why there had been no movement on impeaching Mr. Biden once he learned that the House was back in session.A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy did not respond to a question about his interactions with the former president regarding impeachment.When asked for comment, Mr. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, pointed to Mr. Trump’s public statements about impeaching Mr. Biden.The former president’s public commentary on the possibility of a Biden impeachment has escalated from wistful musings about the Justice Department’s supposed inaction to explicit demands.“They persecuted us and yet Joe Biden is a stone-cold criminal, caught dead to right, and nothing happens to him. Forget the family. Nothing happens to him,” the former president said at a rally in March.In a June town hall with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, Mr. Trump lamented what happened after authorities found boxes of classified documents in both Mar-a-Lago and the Bidens’ Delaware residence.“It is a dual system of government,” Mr. Trump said. “You talk about law and order. You can’t have law and order in a country where you have such corruption.”That same month, after Mr. Trump was arraigned on charges that he had improperly retained sensitive national security documents and obstructed investigators, he declared that if re-elected he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Mr. Biden and his family.By July, Mr. Trump had begun suggesting that Republicans should impeach the president, and as the summer wore on, he conveyed his desire with greater urgency.“So, they impeach me over a ‘perfect’ phone call, and they don’t impeach Biden for being the most corrupt president in the history of the United States???” Mr. Trump wrote in all caps on his website, Truth Social.In yet another nearly all-cap Truth Social post in late August, the former president wrote, referring to congressional Republicans: “Either impeach the bum, or fade into oblivion. They did it to us!” More

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      G.O.P. Leaders Stand by Santos as New York Republicans Call on Him to Resign

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      Republican congressional leaders badly need the newly elected representative’s vote, but local officials and lawmakers are eager to distance themselves from his scandal.WASHINGTON — New York Republicans are ready to rid themselves of Representative George Santos, the newly elected congressman from Long Island who has admitted to fabricating parts of his résumé and is under multiple local and federal investigations into his yearslong pattern of political deception.House Republican leaders, not so much.Amid mounting calls for his resignation from Republican members of Congress from New York and state party officials, Mr. Santos still has the backing of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other House Republican leaders.In a news conference at the Capitol on Thursday, Mr. McCarthy made it clear that he had no intention of barring Mr. Santos from congressional committees or otherwise penalizing him for winning election under false pretenses.“The voters of his district have elected him,” Mr. McCarthy said. “He is seated. He is part of the Republican conference.”Mr. McCarthy downplayed the likelihood that allowing Mr. Santos to serve might put national security at risk, even though members of Congress routinely receive classified briefings from top military and other government officials.“I don’t see any way that he’s going to have top secret” information, Mr. McCarthy said Thursday at his first news conference since winning the speaker’s gavel, adding, “He’s got a long way to go to earn trust.”He added that Mr. Santos would face the House Ethics Committee, which considers allegations of misconduct by members.“If anything is found to be wrong, he will be held accountable exactly as anybody else in this body would be,” Mr. McCarthy said.The disconnect between the reaction from Nassau County Republicans and those in Washington reflects the differing political realities for both groups. In Congress, Republicans, who hold a paper-thin majority in the House, do not feel directly culpable for Mr. Santos’s misdeeds and have much more on the line if they lose his seat. Mr. McCarthy can’t spare a single vote in the House — least of all one who was a reliable supporter during the 15 rounds it took for him to secure the speakership.In the 2020 presidential election, President Biden won Mr. Santos’s district by 8.2 points. If he were to resign from Congress, prompting a special election for the seat, there is no guarantee that Republicans would be able to win it again.More on the George Santos ControversyBehind the Investigation: The Times journalists Michael Gold and Grace Ashford discuss how he was elected to Congress and how they discovered that he was a fraud.Going to Washington: Despite being under scrutiny for lies about his background, George Santos brings his saga to Capitol Hill, where he will face significant pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.Facing Inquiries: Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Mr. Santos committed crimes involving his finances or made misleading statements, while authorities in Brazil said they would revive a 2008 fraud case against him.Embellished Résumés: While other politicians have also misled the public about their past, few have done so in as wide-ranging a manner as Mr. Santos.The New York Republicans who have repudiated Mr. Santos, by contrast, fear suffering by association with a man whose scandals threaten to tarnish what was a resurgent year for the party throughout the state. Five of the six representatives who have called on Mr. Santos to step down won seats in competitive districts where they are expected to face fierce challenges from Democrats in 2024.Other local Republicans have suggested that newly installed leaders in Washington are more concerned with their own short-term survival than the potential long-term consequences of backing Mr. Santos.“We have to think about our brand as a party,” said Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive. “Are we a party that’s behind people of good character and integrity who are transparent? Or are we a party that, for cynical reasons, we are going to allow this to continue?”With Mr. McCarthy consumed by his own political future last week as he struggled for five days to secure the votes he needed to become speaker, the confounding issue of what was to be done with Mr. Santos was left up in the air.Speaker Kevin McCarthy can’t afford to lose a seat in the House, where his party holds a sliver of a majority.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesBut now that the speakership has been settled, Republicans are split on how to punish a member who is under active investigation by federal and local prosecutors into potential criminal activity during his two congressional campaigns, as well as fraud charges from Brazilian law enforcement officials.Representatives Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy and Brandon Williams, all newly elected from New York, have called for Mr. Santos’s resignation on Wednesday. Of those, only Mr. Langworthy, who serves as the state party chair, is in a safely Republican district. The Nassau County G.O.P. chairman, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., has also called for Mr. Santos to step down.On Thursday, two more Republican freshmen from New York, Representatives Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro, said that they, too, believed Mr. Santos should resign.Mr. Lawler said in a statement that his fellow newcomer had “lost the confidence and support of his party, his constituents and his colleagues,” adding that Mr. Santos could not fulfill his duties as a member of Congress.At the news conference on Wednesday where a host of local Republican elected officials demanded Mr. Santos’s resignation, Mr. Cairo said he had not spoken with Mr. McCarthy.But, he added, he hoped that House Republican leaders “would support us.”Instead, they have taken a hands-off stance. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 4 Republican who endorsed Mr. Santos during his campaign, notably sided with her fellow party leaders rather than her state’s congressional delegation, defending her new colleague.“It will play itself out,” Ms. Stefanik told CNN. “He’s a duly elected member of Congress. There have been members of Congress on the Democrat side who have faced investigations before.”Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and majority leader, brushed off questions about Mr. Santos, declaring it a matter that would be settled “internally.”Mr. Santos may be benefiting from the fact that his district is not further to the right. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill speculated privately that leaders might have made a different political calculation if Mr. Santos represented a district that former President Donald J. Trump had won by double digits in the presidential race.Mr. D’Esposito on Thursday tried to play down any tension within the fractured conference.“We are unified,” Mr. D’Esposito said. He and other local officials, he said, had felt that “we need to make our position known based on the fact that we have constituents that we represent there who are personally offended by the lies that George Santos has told or made.” But he said he had faith that Mr. McCarthy would make sure Mr. Santos was properly held “accountable.”Joseph G. Cairo Jr., the Nassau County G.O.P. chair, called for Mr. Santos’s resignation. The New York Republicans who have repudiated Mr. Santos fear being tarnished by his scandal.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesWhat may unify them is a political gene for self-protection.“They may be bailing on Santos faster because it’s a better topic for them than why the vetters didn’t vet him,” said Stu Loeser, a former press secretary to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, referring to party operatives’ failure to dig into any of Mr. Santos’s claims that turned out to be brazenly fabricated, choosing instead to blindly back his candidacy.At the news conference in New York, Mr. Cairo was quick to dub Mr. Santos an outsider, saying he was not representative of Long Island Republicans because he initially came from neighboring Queens. (His district does encompass part of Queens.)“I think George Santos is an exception to the rule,” Mr. Cairo said, adding that he hoped Nassau County voters would make judgments in future elections based on the issues and not “one individual who, unfortunately, was not truthful and ran on Long Island.”Mr. Santos, for now, is defying calls to resign and portraying himself as a partisan warrior. In an interview on the podcast “Bannon’s War Room” with Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida on Thursday, Mr. Santos said he was in Washington to “serve the people” and that he planned to continue doing so.“I was elected by 142,000 people,” Mr. Santos said. He said we would “find out in two years” if those voters didn’t want him.Mr. Santos also said confidently that he had outperformed the politicians calling for his resignation, saying “I beat them by double their margins in the victory.”Though he did outperform Mr. Lawler significantly, he fell far short of Mr. Langworthy’s 30-point win. Mr. LaLota won his race with a double-digit margin. Mr. Santos won his race by 7.6 points.Mr. Santos, who initially appeared out of his depth when he arrived in Washington last week, sitting alone in the House chamber and dodging the media as he got lost in the basement corridors of the Capitol complex, has quickly learned his way around Congress.By the end of the week, he was sitting on the House floor next to the center of the action, alongside Mr. Gaetz and at another point laughing with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia.On Thursday, he portrayed himself as a fighter.“I just pray for all of you,” he said, “when they come for you, that you have the strength I have.”Michael Gold More

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      Here Are the House Republicans to Watch if McCarthy’s Bid for Speaker Falters

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      Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far faced no viable challenger for the speakership. But if he is unable to secure the votes, an alternative could quickly emerge.WASHINGTON — A big factor in Representative Kevin McCarthy’s favor as he labors to become speaker of the House is that no viable candidate has emerged to challenge him.A group of hard-right lawmakers has pledged to block Mr. McCarthy, Republican of California, in his ascent to the speakership, imperiling his path to the top job. But he was nominated by a lopsided majority of his conference and has remained the only broadly supported candidate for the post.The threat that some of Mr. McCarthy’s allies have dangled — that moderate Republicans could band together with Democrats to elect a Democratic speaker should he fail — is highly improbable.But the landscape could quickly change should Mr. McCarthy falter on Tuesday, when the new Congress convenes and lawmakers vote to elect a new speaker. House precedent requires that lawmakers continue voting on ballot after ballot if no one is able to win the gavel. If Mr. McCarthy is unable to quickly win election, Republicans would be under immense pressure to coalesce around an alternative, ending a potentially chaotic and divisive fight on the floor that could taint the start of their majority in the House.Here are the Republicans to watch:Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesThe Deputy: Representative Steve Scalise of LouisianaMr. Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, is in some ways Mr. McCarthy’s obvious successor.Deeply conservative and always on message, Mr. Scalise began his ascent up the leadership ranks in Congress when he became the chairman of the influential right-wing Republican Study Committee and beat out a candidate who endorsed a more combative approach to dealing with party leadership. Speculation about his ambition to one day become speaker has followed him ever since.The party’s hard-right flank is not altogether trusting of Mr. Scalise, in part because the whip has sometimes quietly staked out neutral or mainstream positions when his colleagues have gone the other way. He broke with most other top House leaders in declining to endorse the primary challenger to Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was exiled by Republicans for repudiating former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies.A New Congress Takes ShapeAfter the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.George Santos: The Republican congressman-elect from New York, who is under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn in even as records, colleagues and friends divulge more about his past.Elise Stefanik: The New York congresswoman’s climb to MAGA stardom is a case study in the collapse of the old Republican establishment, but her rise may also be a cautionary tale.Retirements: While each legislative session always brings a round of retirements, the departure of experienced politicians this year is set to reverberate even more starkly in a divided Congress.At the internal conference election to choose party leaders in November, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida pressed Mr. Scalise about comments he made on a private conference call days after the Jan. 6 riot. During that call, Mr. Scalise agreed with Mr. McCarthy that Mr. Gaetz’s comments about conservatives he deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump had been dangerous and “potentially illegal.”Still, many rank-and-file lawmakers regard Mr. Scalise as a solid alternative and one seen by some conservative lawmakers as a more palatable option than Mr. McCarthy.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesThe Firebrand: Representative Jim Jordan of OhioMr. Jordan, a founder of the Freedom Caucus, helped upend Mr. McCarthy’s last bid to become speaker in 2015. He continued to be an irritant to the California Republican when he challenged Mr. McCarthy, unsuccessfully, for the top leadership position in 2018.But Mr. McCarthy worked to mend fences with Mr. Jordan when he paved the way for him to take the top seat on the Judiciary Committee and dispatched him as a pugilistic defender of Mr. Trump during two impeachments.It is unclear whether the more moderate lawmakers in the party would back a bid by Mr. Jordan for speaker. But he has a number of disciples among the far-right group of lawmakers who have vowed to oppose Mr. McCarthy.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe Dark Horse: Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North CarolinaMr. McHenry came to Congress in 2005 at the age of 29 as a conservative rabble-rouser, and was frequently seen yelling on the House floor or on cable news shows.But in the years that followed, the silver-haired, bow-tie-wearing Mr. McHenry underwent a metamorphosis. He became chief deputy whip to Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who later predicted that Mr. McHenry would become speaker himself one day. He pointedly took a lower-profile, behind-the-scenes approach to the job. And he developed a reputation among other lawmakers for his braininess and interest in tax and financial policy.“What changed for me was once I slowed down enough to respect the process and to respect the people that I served with in the institution,” Mr. McHenry once told a local newspaper. “I was able to get more done when I slowed down and had respect for others.”Mr. McHenry, who has for years been an informal adviser to Mr. McCarthy, has previously tried to scuttle the notion that he was interested in any top leadership post, saying he would rather lead the Financial Services Committee. He once gave the Republican leader a silver bowl in a joking reference to a famous scene from the crime drama series “The Wire,” in which a former mayor tells an incoming one that the vaunted top job is akin to eating silver bowls of feces all day.He is the only Republican lawmaker whose name has been floated as a possible candidate for speaker who voted to certify the 2020 presidential election.Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesThe MAGA Warrior: Representative Elise Stefanik of New YorkWhen Ms. Stefanik first came to the House in 2014 as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, she was viewed as a rising star in the mold of Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who had hired her to work on his 2012 campaign for vice president.She presented herself as a moderate pragmatist willing to work with Democrats and hoping to expand the party’s appeal. When Mr. Trump’s star began to rise in the Republican Party, she remained so skeptical of his inflammatory style that she refused to say his name in 2016 when she rolled out a tepid endorsement of her party’s presidential nominee.But she has undergone a profound political metamorphosis. Ms. Stefanik is now one of the former president’s most vociferous and aggressive defenders in Congress. She became the No. 3 House Republican in May 2021 after the party ousted Ms. Cheney from the post for her vocal criticism of Mr. Trump. More

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      Elise Stefanik Believes She Can Turn New York Into a Republican State

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      AMSTERDAM, N.Y. — The event, hard by the Mohawk River, was a meet-and-greet opportunity for some of the Republican Party’s most notable candidates in New York. But Representative Elise Stefanik’s focus clearly extended far beyond her re-election bid.“We are seeing the results of one-party Democrat rule both in Albany and in Washington, and it has created crisis, after crisis, after crisis,” Ms. Stefanik said, with her attacks on the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats drawing the biggest applause lines.“The bad ideas that start in Albany, often times they percolate to Washington,” she added.Ms. Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference, is at the forefront of a push for her party to regain control of Congress, and she believes that New York — perennially a Democratic state — can lead the way. She predicts that Republicans will win 15 of the state’s 26 House seats.And her efforts in New York — appearing at fund-raisers and news conferences across the state — are predicated on a message that New York’s Rockefeller-era Republicanism, with moderate positions on social issues girded by fiscal and budgetary austerity, is over.“America First is here to stay,” said Ms. Stefanik, 38, adding, “and parties are determined not by the political leaders, they’re determined by the people.”Indeed, of the eight Republican members of the state’s current congressional delegation, only one, Representative John Katko of central New York, is generally considered a consistent moderate, and he is retiring, a decision that the former president greeted with joy.“Great news,” former President Donald J. Trump said after Mr. Katko announced he would not run in 2022. “Another one bites the dust.”Veterans of the party — which hasn’t won a statewide race in two decades — say the move away from Rockefeller Republicanism is a part of larger shift, as moderate Republicans from urban areas moved away and the party’s faithful increasingly began to be found in more conservative, rural areas.Ms. Stefanik drew applause as she criticized Nancy Pelosi at a recent political event in Amsterdam, N.Y.Cindy Schultz for The New York Times“A lot of the Republican base, what was part of that movement, has left the state,” said the former congressman Tom Reed, a Republican who served as chairman of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and who resigned last spring from a district encompassing the state’s Southern Tier. “They are just not there anymore.”Others were even more blunt about the status of the Rockefeller model.“That’s over,” said Al D’Amato, the former Republican senator from New York. “That’s over.”The shift in the Republican Party echoes the arc of Ms. Stefanik’s political career.A Harvard-educated striver from upstate New York, Ms. Stefanik was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 2014, running as a moderate in a district that had previously been represented by Representative Bill Owens, a centrist Democrat.She rose fast in the ranks, banking right with the election of Mr. Trump as president in 2016 and quickly earning his approbation after she staunchly defended him during his first impeachment hearing.By May 2021, she had effectively deposed Representative Liz Cheney to become chair of the House Republican Conference, making her the third-highest ranking Republican in that chamber. She voted against certifying the vote confirming President Biden’s victory and now describes herself as “Ultra MAGA” and “proud of it.”If, as is expected, Ms. Stefanik wins a fifth term next month, she will be the most senior member of the state’s Republican delegation. She is also the first New Yorker to hold a position of leadership in the Republican Party since Representative Tom Reynolds, from western New York, served as chair of National Republican Congressional Committee from 2003 to 2006. And she’s proven a potent draw for donors, raising more than $10 million, often in small dollars, for congressional races and party committees nationwide, according to her campaign, while giving money to conservative candidates from Rhode Island to California.Her influence on candidates has already been seen across the state, with candidates in races in Long Island trumpeting and raising funds off Ms. Stefanik’s endorsement, including Nicholas J. LaLota, a former Navy lieutenant who is running to fill Mr. Zeldin’s seat, and George Santos, a financier who attended the Jan. 6 rally and is running in the Third Congressional District.With New York potentially being a battleground for control of the House, Ms. Stefanik’s efforts have also been backed by national party leaders: At a September fund-raiser in Washington, D.C., for Mike Lawler, who is trying to knock off Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, she appeared alongside Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.In early October, Ms. Stefanik also co-hosted a $1,000-a-ticket reception at the Women’s National Republican Club in Manhattan, alongside Representative Tom Emmer, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, raising more than $120,000 for seven of the state’s Republican congressional candidates.Her principal campaign committee — Elise for Congress, currently home to a $3 million bankroll — has also given steadily to other congressional candidates across New York, as well as to county committees and small-bore races like county judgeships. She also leads the Elise Victory Fund (a joint fund-raising committee), and E-Pac, which works to elect female Republicans.That sort of beneficence, as well as her outspoken appearances on conservative cable news shows and constant critiques of President Biden and Democratic policies, have positioned Ms. Stefanik to become one of New York’s few Republican kingmakers, on par with Mr. Trump and, previously, Mr. D’Amato.“She’s one of the coolest rock stars we have,” said Sally Hogan, who leads a Republican women’s organization in the Capital region which expresses “100 percent support” for Mr. Trump. “She stands up for women and for Republican values.”Ms. Stefanik, addressing farmers at a recent event in Fultonville, N.Y., has also traveled across the state to bolster the chances of her Republican colleagues.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThe embrace of Trumpism is not complete among Republicans in New York. Representative Andrew Garbarino of Long Island, and a pair of competitive candidates in the Hudson Valley, Mr. Lawler and Marc Molinaro, have taken some centrist positions, while Representative Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island — who is in a rematch against Max Rose, the former Democratic congressman — has expressed measured support for new gun laws and abortion rights, while remaining a staunch Trump backer.And there are Republicans who still identify with the Rockefeller era, including Mr. Katko, the soon-to-be congressional retiree who espouses a bipartisan philosophy, and was one of just 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump in 2021.“My bread and butter is always that the other side is not the enemy,” he said in an interview earlier this fall. “The Democrats love the country just as much as we do. They just have a different approach.”Another New York Republican who strayed from the party’s orthodoxy — Representative Chris Jacobs — is also retiring, after embracing gun control policies in the wake of a racist massacre in Buffalo, adjacent to his district in western New York.Mr. Jacobs’s decision led Ms. Stefanik to a somewhat surprising endorsement of Carl Paladino, a Buffalo-area developer and former candidate for governor with a long history of racist and sexist slurs, in a June primary to fill that seat. (Among other remarks, Mr. Paladino, who lost to Andrew Cuomo in the race for governor in 2010, commented that Hitler is “the kind of leader we need today.”)The endorsement of Mr. Paladino signaled Ms. Stefanik’s willingness to take on the status quo in the state party: Mr. Paladino’s opponent was Nick Langworthy, the party’s chairman, who was assailed by one of Ms. Stefanik’s top aides who called on him to resign. Mr. Langworthy fired back, accusing Ms. Stefanik of a “vendetta.” she did not back down, lending staff to Mr. Paladino during his primary campaign.He did not win, though he has continued to criticize Mr. Langworthy, calling him a “nightmare” for the state party in a recent interview, while lavishing praise on Ms. Stefanik.“She’s very bright. She’s got that North Country thing going for her: She’s so practical and down to earth,” Mr. Paladino said. “And yeah, she helped me and I’m very thankful for that and all the help that she sent me. I can’t say enough good things about her.”Mr. Langworthy, who is expected to be elected to Congress next month, declined to comment on Mr. Paladino or Ms. Stefanik, who, for her part, says the feud is settled. “We haven’t spoken,” she said, of Mr. Langworthy, “but we’re working great with the New York G.O.P.”Jay Jacobs, the Democratic state party chair, said that Ms. Stefanik’s predictions of a “red tsunami” were overblown. “My advice to the congresswoman is, ‘Don’t count your chickens till they hatch,’” Mr. Jacobs said. “A lot can happen in the last 10 days of any campaign, particularly because that is when most voters really begin to pay attention.”In her own race, Ms. Stefanik, who lives in Schuylerville, in Saratoga County, N.Y., is expected to prevail in the 21st Congressional District, an enormous, solidly Republican district that encompasses all or part of 15 counties in northern New York. Her opponent is Matt Castelli, a former C.I.A. officer specializing in counterterrorism, who has attacked Ms. Stefanik for the very ambition that has made her famous, claiming it has come at a cost to her constituents.“She sold out her district in order to advance her career, and that is readily transparent to voters across the political spectrum,” Mr. Castelli, 41, said. “And people are really turned off by it.”Matt Castelli, a former C.I.A. officer making his first run for office, has raised more than $1 million in the last quarter in his run against Ms. Stefanik.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesMr. Castelli, a first-time candidate and a Democrat, established a third-party line — the Moderate Party — to appeal to voters that might be put off by Ms. Stefanik’s complete embrace of Trumpism, and he has brought in more than $1 million in donations between July and September, a haul he says been helped by donors nationwide who understand “the stakes of this particular race.”“I’ve made the argument that this is the frontline in the battle for the soul of America, because there is no person on the ballot this November that probably represents this ongoing threat to our democracy, more so, than Elise Stefanik,” he said.Ms. Stefanik insists she is not a pure partisan, noting her work on northern border issues as well as on veterans affairs, as part of her role on the House Armed Services Committee. “It’s to the media’s detriment that they don’t want to focus on that,” she said.By the same token, she also reminded voters at the recent meet-and-greet in Amsterdam of her prominence in Republican circles, something she said “gives this district a seat at the highest levels.”“And I’m never going to apologize for that,” she said. “You deserve more than a backbencher.”Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting. 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      Elise Stefanik Says She’s Confident a Republican Wave Is Coming to the House

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      Representative Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican, also spoke about her PAC’s success in backing female candidates, 23 of whom are running in the fall.Today’s newsletter is a guest dispatch from Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent in Washington.Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican, predicted on Wednesday that her party would pick up as many as three dozen House seats in November, despite signs that the red wave many predicted months ago might not form after all.And, brushing aside concerns from many Republicans that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has saddled them with an unpopular position that is energizing Democrats all over the country, Stefanik told reporters defiantly at a news conference that “we will have a pro-life Republican majority in the next Congress.”Stefanik, who was first elected in 2014 to her upstate New York seat as a relative moderate, became a star of the MAGA universe thanks to her role as President Donald J. Trump’s chief defender on the House Intelligence Committee during his first impeachment trial.She has translated her Trump-refracted fame into a fund-raising boon for female Republican candidates she is boosting in critical House races — a move that is also helping build a base in the G.O.P. House conference for a politician with big ambitions.“My own experience going through impeachment No. 1, where I played an outsized role on the House Intelligence Committee — we built up a national donor list,” Stefanik said Wednesday at a briefing at the Republican National Committee about the midterm elections. “We’ve been able to have that donor list support other women candidates across the country.”Stefanik, 38, founded her political action committee, Elevate PAC, or E-PAC, in 2018, when only 13 Republican women served in the House of Representatives. At the time, her goal was to elect more conservative women to Congress.In 2020, 11 of the 15 House seats that Republicans flipped were won by women that E-PAC had endorsed. Today, there are 34 Republican women in the House.During this campaign cycle, Stefanik’s organization has raised and donated more than $1 million directly to female Republican candidates, and 23 women endorsed by E-PAC are running in the general election. Since its creation, E-PAC has raised $4 million to date.Another part of Stefanik’s aim is to help with news coverage. “One thing that is very clear to me is Democrat women get outsized coverage in the media,” Stefanik said. “They get magazine covers.” Those she helps, she said, “deserve glossy magazines as well.”The outcome of those races will help determine Stefanik’s clout as a queenmaker in the current, Trump-controlled version of the Republican Party. Her activities are also a key part of the G.O.P.’s overall midterm strategy to expand beyond the core political base of right-wing and conservative voters with a more diverse slate.The push to elevate female candidates comes as the Republican Party struggles to overcome political gains Democrats have made on the issue of abortion since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.In an election year when political tensions are running high over gender and social issues, liberal groups are willing to give Stefanik only so much credit for helping to elect women.“There are challenges that all women face in running for office,” said Christina Reynolds, a spokeswoman for Emily’s List, a group that backs Democratic female candidates who support abortion rights. “I understand why there’s a need for this on both sides of the aisle.”But she added, “To support women’s rights, to support our freedoms, we think it’s critical that we elect Democratic, pro-choice women.”Stefanik shrugged off questions about how the issue of abortion will affect the midterms. Her party has struggled to unite behind a strategy on a fraught social issue that is reshaping campaigns across the country and, in some cases, forcing Republicans to backpedal on hard-line positions they took to win their primaries.“On the issue of abortion, Democrats are working overtime to force the American people to rethink what their top priorities are,” Stefanik said. “In every poll, inflation is the No. 1 issue. In my district, Second Amendment issues are second. Our candidates know how to communicate on this issue.”Stefanik also emphasized that many of the candidates she is backing are mothers. “I think that’s a very compelling message to voters,” she said, noting that one congressional candidate in Ohio, Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, gave birth just days ago.E-PAC’s slate of candidates includes seven who are Hispanic, four who are veterans and one who is Black. Stefanik said it was the most diverse group of candidates her PAC had supported to date.Stefanik said she had no ideological litmus test for candidates to gain her organization’s financial backing and endorsement.This cycle, she has backed candidates who falsely claim that Trump won the 2020 election, like Karoline Leavitt in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District and Yesli Vega in Virginia’s Seventh District.Vega has come under attack for questioning on tape whether a woman was less likely to become pregnant after a rape.Stefanik also supported Representative Mayra Flores, who won a special election in Texas’s 34th District after saying, falsely, that the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was stoked by members of Antifa and used a hashtag associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory in tweets that were later deleted.At the same time, Stefanik is backing Barbara Kirkmeyer, a state senator running in Colorado’s competitive Eighth District, who said President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.Stefanik simply interviews candidates who are able to raise $250,000 in their first quarter, she said, and decides which of them have what it takes, based on her gut feeling and experience.“I interview and talk with everyone,” she said. “I put candidates through their paces. I ask how they would answer certain questions from the media.”After meeting hundreds of candidates across the country over the years, she said, “I’m able to tell pretty quickly, No. 1, if they have the fire in the belly, and also if they’re speaking from the heart on behalf of their district. I don’t do any ideological litmus test. These are all strong, conservative Republicans.”Karoline Leavitt with Senator Ted Cruz before her primary. “When you start your campaign as an outsider, you’re looking for that early support and help,” Leavitt said of Stefanik’s political action committee.Brian Snyder/ReutersIn some cases, Stefanik’s endorsements have put her at odds with leadership. She endorsed Leavitt, a 25-year-old hard-right Republican who served as an assistant in Trump’s White House press office before winning the G.O.P. nomination for a House seat in New Hampshire. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, was backing Leavitt’s rival, Matt Mowers, in the primary.“When you start your campaign as an outsider, you’re looking for that early support and help,” Leavitt said on Wednesday, joining Stefanik briefly as an example of an E-PAC success story. She said that Stefanik, whom she once worked for, was “someone that I leaned on, not only for financial support through E-PAC but also for advice and support.”Republicans are expected to win back control of the House next year, although in recent weeks, the political winds that once favored them have shifted toward Democrats.Still, for Democrats to retain a majority, they will have to hold virtually all their tossup districts in addition to flipping some tossup seats Republicans currently hold.Stefanik said she remains bullish about a red wave.“I remember on election night in 2020 when people said Nancy Pelosi would pick up 15 seats,” she said, referring to the House speaker. “Well, Republicans picked up 15 seats.”She added: “Eighty percent of their dollars are on defense. Do I think we have the opportunity to earn that historic majority of 35 seats? I do. I’ve always thought that this cycle.”What to readToday’s big story: Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump Organization, former President Trump and three of his children of what she called “staggering fraud.” Jonah E. Bromwich, William K. Rashbaum and Ben Protess wrote the main article examining the 220-page claim, and I have a short piece on the politics at play.The House voted mostly along party lines to overhaul the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that Trump tried to exploit to overturn his defeat, Carl Hulse reports.At the United Nations, President Biden called on countries to unify in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine. Moscow’s goal, he said, is “extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state.” Follow our live coverage of the U.N. General Assembly here.The Federal Reserve tightened interest rates by a further three-quarters of a percentage point fewer than seven weeks before the November elections, an effort to stem inflation that remains stubbornly high. Chairman Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy was fundamentally healthy, however. The Times’s economic team covered all the angles here.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      In New Hampshire, a MAGA Rivalry Is Splitting House Republicans

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      WASHINGTON — He calls her “fake MAGA Karoline” from “the swamp.” She calls him a “Fauci foot soldier” and a “pharma bro.”A congressional primary in New Hampshire between two young, conservative former Trump staff members has divided MAGA Republicans and the party’s leaders in the House, devolving into a bitter, expensive battle over who carries the mantle of Trumpism.The race, in a highly competitive district currently held by a Democrat, will be decided on Tuesday. Its outcome could determine whether Republicans have a chance at flipping the seat in the midterm elections in November as part of their drive to reclaim the House majority. The contest has also highlighted a power struggle in the party ranks that will shape what that majority might look like if Republicans take control.Matt Mowers, 33, who worked on Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign, served him at the State Department and was endorsed by the former president in an unsuccessful bid for the same congressional seat in 2020. Mr. Mowers entered the race last year as the presumed front-runner against Representative Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, who is one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country in this election cycle.Mr. Mowers is viewed as a strong candidate with high name recognition in the state’s First Congressional District; he drew favorable coverage from right-wing news outlets like Breitbart and a well of endorsements from powerful conservative figures. They include Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader; Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican; Representative Jim Banks of Indiana; as well as Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, the former Trump campaign managers.But despite all that, Mr. Mowers is facing a strident and surprisingly fierce challenge on his right from Karoline Leavitt, 25, a former assistant in Mr. Trump’s White House press office. She is backed by a host of hard-right Republicans in Congress, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican.The race has turned less on any ideological divide between the candidates, who have few discernible differences on policy, than on style and tone. Where Mr. Mowers opts for nuanced, carefully worded statements, Ms. Leavitt almost always reaches for the most extreme and provocative ones.Her success at turning the primary into a neck-and-neck competition has underscored how in the current Republican Party, fealty to Mr. Trump is not always enough on its own to sway voters. What increasingly matters is a willingness to mimic his tactics, by adopting inflammatory language and making the most incendiary statements possible.“Maybe in part because Leavitt came out of the White House press operation, it’s like a second language to her,” Dante J. Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said of her ability to channel the style and rhetoric of the MAGA movement. “Her campaign has been the whole package, and that’s put Mowers to the wall.”Gail Huff Brown and Matt Mowers during a debate in Henniker, N.H., on Thursday. They are among the candidates running against Ms. Leavitt in the Republican primary.Mary Schwalm/Associated PressTake, for instance, Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. When pressed about whether he agrees, Mr. Mowers has said he harbors concerns about voting “irregularities around the country.”That was too wishy-washy for Ms. Leavitt, who repeats Mr. Trump’s falsehoods unequivocally.“We need candidates who are willing to speak truth about the election, who are willing to push back,” she said during an interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, where she also bragged that Facebook had removed an interview she had done with the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon in which she asserted that the election had been stolen. “If you’re not willing to say what happened in 2020, then, gosh, you don’t deserve to be elected.”Ms. Leavitt later accused Mr. Mowers of siding “with Joe Biden and the Democrats by refusing to stand for election integrity and support audits.” She has also said she would support Mr. Jordan for speaker rather than Mr. McCarthy, though she later said she would back Mr. McCarthy.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Abrams’s Struggles: Stacey Abrams has been trailing her Republican rival, Gov. Brian Kemp, alarming those who celebrated her as the master strategist behind Georgia’s Democratic shift.Battleground Pennsylvania: Few states feature as many high-stakes, competitive races as Pennsylvania, which has emerged as the nation’s center of political gravity.The Dobbs Decision’s Effect: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of women signing up to vote has surged in some states and the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage are hard to see.How a G.O.P. Haul Vanished: Last year, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans was smashing fund-raising records. Now, most of the money is gone.At a recent debate, when asked whether he would support impeaching President Biden, Mr. Mowers said he would want to have hearings to look into the issue. Ms. Leavitt said without qualification that she would support any impeachment charge against the president.Each candidate has been savaging the other as a creature of Washington. Mr. Mowers’s campaign operates a “fake MAGA Karoline” website, which accuses her of having “never held a real job outside the swamp,” attending private school in Massachusetts and being registered to vote from the “penthouse” apartment where she lived in Washington before moving back to New Hampshire to run for office.On a site operated by Ms. Leavitt’s campaign, titled “backdoor Matt,” the campaign refers to Mr. Mowers as a “Fauci foot soldier” for his role working in the administration for Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus coordinator. It also refers to him as a “big pharma bro” who worked as a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical company.“Matt Mowers is the swamp,” the website proclaims, noting that he voted in two states — New Hampshire and New Jersey — in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.Mr. Mowers, a former Trump campaign aide, at a rally in 2020 in New Hampshire.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThe race has grown so close and so heated that it is drowning out New Hampshire’s competitive Senate race, with ads from both campaigns blanketing the 5 p.m. news.A recent poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center showed Mr. Mowers leading Ms. Leavitt by a razor-thin margin: 26 percent to 24 percent, barely more than the 2.2 percent margin of error, though 26 percent of likely voters said they remained undecided. A third Trump-aligned candidate, Gail Huff Brown — whose husband, the former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand — was trailing with 16 percent. Two other lesser-known candidates have gained little traction in the race.Money has also poured into the contest, with several outside groups spending millions of dollars trying to defeat Ms. Leavitt, who some Republicans fear could be a weaker opponent against Mr. Pappas..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“Mowers probably has a slight advantage in running against Pappas, because he’s already done it,” said Thomas D. Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general and longtime Republican strategist. “But she’s engaging because of her youth, her energy and her fierce competitiveness. The momentum is with her.”Even top House Republicans are torn over the race, signaling lingering divisions in the party that could shape how it defines itself no matter who wins. For Mr. McCarthy, who is campaigning to be speaker, a victory by Mr. Mowers would add a reliable ally to his ranks. Ms. Leavitt would be a wild card more in the mold of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other hard-right lawmakers who have sometimes proved a thorn in Mr. McCarthy’s side.A senior Republican strategist close to Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Mowers was one of several candidates who ran in 2020 whom the leader was supporting this election cycle, in part because he believed their name recognition and established networks of donors would position them for victories in the general election.Ms. Leavitt, who was an assistant in the Trump White House, repeats the former president’s falsehoods unequivocally.Brian Snyder/ReutersBut Ms. Stefanik, who has styled herself in Mr. Trump’s image and has ambitions to rise in the party, is backing Ms. Leavitt, who previously worked as her communications director. She calls Ms. Leavitt “a rising star in the Republican Party who will carry the torch of conservative values for generations to come.”The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Mr. McCarthy, has spent more than $1.3 million supporting Mr. Mowers. Another super PAC that supports moderate Republicans, Defending Main Street, has spent over $1.2 million and is running an ad that describes Ms. Leavitt as a “woke Gen-Z’er” and plays a Snapchat video she once posted where she uses crude language to refer to her viewers.E-Pac, Ms. Stefanik’s outside group that supports conservative female candidates, has maxed out to Ms. Leavitt’s campaign, and Ms. Stefanik has served as an informal adviser to her former aide.Ms. Leavitt has leaned into the attacks to paint herself as a victim. “I am officially the top target of DC’s money machine,” she posted on Twitter this week. “The Establishment knows I am the greatest threat to their handpick puppet Matt Mowers.”Ms. Leavitt’s backers view the money elevating her opponent and the increasingly negative attacks against her as signs of fear from Mr. Mowers and Mr. McCarthy, who they say is trying to put together a compliant conference and views Ms. Leavitt as a maverick who would be difficult to control.In order to sell himself as the Trumpier candidate, Mr. Mowers has advertised his 2020 endorsement from the former president on his campaign mailers, even though Mr. Trump has not made an endorsement in the current contest. (A top Trump aide said he was “still thinking about the race.”)Despite the heated attacks and the stylistic differences, operatives with both campaigns admit there is little that distinguishes the candidates on policy. In their ads introducing themselves to voters, Ms. Leavitt and Mr. Mowers both come across as deeply angry about the state of the country under Mr. Biden’s leadership and pitch themselves as fighters who want to secure the border and stand in the way of Mr. Biden’s agenda. Both oppose abortion rights at the federal level, saying the issue should be left to states.Their rivalry has given Democrats renewed hope of holding the seat. Collin Gately, a spokesman for Mr. Pappas, said the contest had given New Hampshire voters “a front-row seat to the MAGA show” that has prompted both candidates to “run to the right.”“Their eventual nominee is getting weaker by minute while we’re building a bipartisan coalition to win in November,” Mr. Gately said. More

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      Matt Castelli’s Long-Shot Race to Defeat Elise Stefanik

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      GLENS FALLS, N.Y. — Matt Castelli has spent much of his career in the shadows.Over nearly 15 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, he hunted down terrorists in one way or another. Half-Sicilian, with a glistening black beard, he has the look of a global Everyman — someone who you might imagine, in the immortal words of Indiana Jones, “speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom” and can “blend in, disappear” in any society.Much of what Castelli did in government service he can’t talk about — so it’s hard to know exactly what his accomplishments are. Now, after stints with the National Security Council under the Obama and Trump administrations, Castelli is attempting a radical career shift.He’s running to unseat Representative Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 Republican in the House, who has made an abrupt transition of her own — a Harvard-educated darling of the G.O.P. establishment who is now a pro-Trump bomb-thrower.Castelli, 41, has not received much help from national Democrats, who have all but written off Stefanik’s upstate New York district as a lost cause. In 2020, she won re-election by nearly 18 percentage points, running nine points ahead of President Trump.But after trouncing his primary opponent, a more progressive Democrat, by more than 60 percentage points in Tuesday’s primary, Castelli argues that he has more of a chance to win the North Country, as the area is known, than party officials and pundits expect. (Stefanik ran uncontested.)“This is a moderate district,” Castelli said last week over beers at Fenimore’s Pub in Glens Falls. “And Stefanik is no longer a moderate.”Elise Stefanik and other Republicans defended Donald Trump after the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago. Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesA major component of Castelli’s strategy is leaning into that word: moderate. His campaign collected more than 6,600 signatures to put him on the ballot for the Moderate Party, taking advantage of New York election laws that allow candidates to run on multiple tickets. That total was more signatures than he collected to make the Democratic Party ballot and nearly twice as many as the rules required.He figures there could be thousands of independents and disaffected Republicans who might not stomach voting for a Democrat but would choose a Chevy-pickup-driving, American-flag-waving national security specialist who is not shy about rejecting the left-wing inclinations of, say, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx.Motivated after Sept. 11 …Raised in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., by a Republican mother and Democratic father, Castelli played baseball in high school, then went to Siena College, a private Franciscan institution near Albany. He was inspired to get a master’s degree in national security studies at Georgetown University after Sept. 11, then joined the C.I.A., where, he says, he “straddled” the agency’s operational and analytical wings as a targeting specialist and, later, a leader of various teams.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAug. 23 Primaries: The Democratic establishment in Florida and New York had a good night. Here are some key takeaways and a rundown of who won and who lost.The Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Challenging DeSantis: Florida Democrats chose Representative Charlie Crist, a former Republican, to take on Gov. Ron DeSantis, setting up a contest between a centrist and a hard-right G.O.P. incumbent.After spending five months in Barack Obama’s National Security Council, he spent a year as a director for counterterrorism in Donald Trump’s tumultuous National Security Council, serving under Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then Gen. H.R. McMaster. Castelli then returned to the C.I.A. for about two years in a liaison role while attending business school at Northwestern University on the side, before leaving for the private sector.During his time in two administrations, Castelli also had a front-row seat to the rise of groups like the Islamic State, which gave him a direct appreciation for the blowback America faced in the Islamic world after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After seven C.I.A. officers were killed by a suicide bomber in 2009 at an American base in Khost, Afghanistan, Castelli took a more “operational role,” he said, declining to go into details.… and again after Jan. 6But it was the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Castelli says, that motivated him to leave his job at a health care company to run for public office. Last year, he moved upstate for the first time and now lives in Glens Falls, an old lumber-mill and paper-factory town near Lake George, and announced his run against Stefanik in September. That has fueled the accusation from Stefanik’s local political machine that Castelli is a carpetbagger — a transplant from Washington, D.C., or, worse, Poughkeepsie.In Castelli’s telling, however, his decision to run against Stefanik was inspired by her defense of Trump and embrace of his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election — even after the assault on the Capitol — offended his sense of patriotism.“It was an attack against our country,” he said. “For those of us who swore an oath to the Constitution, this was an effort to overturn all of that. And for me, it was galling.”Castelli estimates he has put at least 40,000 miles on his Chevy driving around the 21st District, which, at around a third of the state, is one of the country’s largest by geographic area. Plattsburgh is the district’s most populous city, but most of the area is rural — and Stefanik was known to run up 40-point margins over her previous Democratic opponents. More