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      How a Christian Cellphone Company Became a Rising Force in Texas Politics

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      GRAPEVINE, Texas — Ahead of what would usually be a sleepy spring school board election, a mass of fliers appeared on doorsteps in the Fort Worth suburbs, warning of rampant “wokeness” and “sexually explicit books” in schools, and urging changes in leadership.The fliers were part of a broad effort to shift the ideological direction of school boards in a politically crucial corner of Texas, made possible by a campaign infusion of more than $420,000 from an unlikely source: a local cellphone provider whose mission, it says, is communicating conservative Christian values.All 11 candidates backed by the company, Patriot Mobile, won their races across four school districts, including the one in Grapevine, Texas, a conservative town where the company is based and where highly rated schools are the main draw for families. In August, the board approved new policies limiting support for transgender students, clamping down on books deemed inappropriate and putting in place new rules that made it possible to be elected to the school board even without a majority of votes.The entry of a Texas cellphone company into the national tug of war over schools is part of a far more sweeping battle over the future of Texas being waged in the suburbs north of Dallas and Fort Worth.The company’s efforts have been seen as a model by Republican candidates and conservative activists, who have sought to harness parental anger over public schools as a means of holding onto suburban areas, a fight that could determine the future of the country’s largest red state.“If we lose Tarrant County, we lose Texas,” Jenny Story, Patriot Mobile’s chief operating officer, said. “If we lose Texas, we lose the country.”Glen Whitley, the top executive in Tarrant County, Texas, recognizes the rising political clout of Patriot Mobile in his part of the state. Emil Lippe for The New York TimesGlen Whitley, the top executive in Tarrant County, said the company has become an important player in politics in this part of the state. “They’ve been successful in taking over the school board in Grapevine-Colleyville, in Keller and Southlake,” Mr. Whitley, a Republican, said. He said the company appeared to be setting its sights next on city council races next year.“They’re coming after Fort Worth,” Mr. Whitley said.Patriot Mobile representatives are a frequent presence on the conservative political circuit across the country, taking praise from Steve Bannon at the Conservative Political Action Conference, buying tables at nonprofit fund-raisers and meeting with candidates from inside and outside of Texas.Modeled after a progressive, California-based cellphone provider founded in the 1980s, the company unabashedly embraces its partisan agenda, donating money to anti-abortion and other conservative causes. Lately, it has begun spending money on behalf of Republican political candidates.Peter Barnes, who helped start Credo Mobile, the California cellphone company that funded progressive causes, said he long expected that other firms would follow a similar path.“The business model is pretty simple and we expected that something similar would emerge on the right,” he said of the plan for channeling profits into politics. “But it didn’t — until now.”In North Texas, Patriot Mobile’s political spending has supported digital advertising, door hangers and campaign mailers as well as get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of its chosen candidates.Patriot Mobile openly embraces its partisan agenda, donating money to anti-abortion and other conservative causes. Emil Lippe for The New York TimesIts political activism has already changed things on the ground in Grapevine, where the nine-year-old company is based. The new policies on books and transgender issues passed 4-to-3, with the two Patriot Mobile-backed candidates making the difference.More on U.S. Schools and EducationDrop-Off Outfits: As children return to the classroom, parents with a passion for style are looking for ways to feel some sense of chic along the way to school.Turning to the Sun: Public schools are increasingly using savings from solar energy to upgrade facilities, help their communities and give teachers raises — often with no cost to taxpayers.High School Football: Supply chain problems have slowed helmet manufacturing, leaving coaches around the country scrambling to find protective gear for their teams.Teacher Shortage: While the pandemic has created an urgent search for teachers in some areas, not every district is suffering from shortages. Here are the factors in play.An array of high school students in this increasingly diverse area responded with a walkout from class, led by transgender and nonbinary students. Parents opposed to the changes have begun meeting to figure out their own response.In Grapevine’s harvest-and-wine-themed downtown, where upscale coffee shops and restaurants can be found near displays of “Ultra MAGA” sweatshirts, Patriot Mobile is headquartered in a cluster of offices unmarked from the outside.The company’s logo adorns a conference room where Senator Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, leads a packed Bible study every Tuesday. Along one cubicle hangs a Texas flag with silhouettes of assault rifles and the words “Come and Take It,” in a nod to a well-known slogan from the Texas revolution.“We just said, ‘Look, we’re going to put God first,’” said Glenn Story, the founder and chief executive, sitting in his office on a recent afternoon, a guitar signed by Donald Trump Jr. hanging on the wall. “Which is why I haven’t erased that from the board,” he said, pointing to a list of core values written on a whiteboard, beginning with “Missionaries vs. Mercenaries.”Under Glenn Story, the chief executive, Patriot Mobile has become a growing influence in communicating conservative Christian values in Texas. Emil Lippe for The New York Times“Our mission is to support our God-given Constitutional rights,” said Ms. Story, the chief operating officer and Mr. Story’s wife.“And to honor God, always,” said Leigh Wambsganss, a vice president at the company who also heads the political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action, founded by the company’s executives.Corporations donate regularly to state and local political campaigns, but a regional company, founded with a partisan mission and willing to spend money in backyard races, is unusual. School boards across the country are increasingly becoming political battlegrounds, attracting larger sums of money and national groups into what had once been largely invisible local contests.Patriot Mobile’s political activities are focused on suburban Tarrant County, north of Fort Worth, in large part because the county has been trending blue, narrowly carried by President Biden in 2020 and by the former Democratic congressman and current candidate for governor, Beto O’Rourke, during his 2018 Senate run.Long a bastion of well-regarded schools, conservative churches and largely well-off, white neighborhoods, the area nurtured strong Tea Party groups during the Obama administration and, more recently, those that supported a Republican primary challenger to the right of Gov. Greg Abbott. It has a reputation, among some in the party, as a hotbed for hard-right politics.Downtown Grapevine, Texas, is where Patriot Mobile has its headquarters. Emil Lippe for The New York TimesThe new policies voted on in the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District have divided parents and raised concern among some teachers, some of whom said they feared becoming targets of the new school board.One of the new board members suggested as much during a Republican forum over the summer, saying the board had a “list” of teachers who she believed were activists promoting progressive ideas about race and equity.“They are just poison and they are taking our schools down,” the board member, Tammy Nakamura, said.Some teachers have begun removing books from their classrooms rather than abide by new rules that require titles to be posted online so that they can be publicly reviewed. The district canceled its annual Scholastic book fair after previous concerns about books that were “mis-merchandised” and were not age-appropriate, a district spokeswoman said.“You now have the school board approving library books, and I feel that is completely micromanaging the administration,” said Jorge Rodríguez, a school board member who voted against the new policies, adding that more than a quarter of the district’s 14,000 students were economically disadvantaged. “We’re here to educate kids and this is not helping.”The top spokesman for the district resigned a few months after being hired, citing the “divisive” atmosphere. The district’s superintendent said recently that he planned to retire at the end of the school year.A neighborhood in Grapevine. New policies in the school district there have divided parents. Emil Lippe for The New York Times“I’ve always been a staunch conservative,” said Christy Horne, a parent whose two children go to elementary school in the district. But the attacks on teachers were too much for her, Ms. Horne said. “It got personal.”But for Mario Cordova, another parent in the district, the new school board leadership has rightly given more control over curriculum and reading material to parents, many of whom were dismayed by what they saw their children learning in remote schooling during the pandemic.“Parents across the district voted for a change on the board last May and are happy to see them follow through,” Mr. Cordova wrote in an email. Opponents of the changes are “crying wolf,” he added. “This crowd has convinced themselves they cannot teach children without incessant conversations about sex and gender.”For many parents and teachers, an early sign that their schools had become a political battleground came last year with complaints over the first Black high school principal at Colleyville Heritage High School.Some parents contended that the principal, Dr. James Whitfield, had been promoting “critical race theory” and were rankled by an email he sent, days after the death of George Floyd, expressing solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters and a desire to create greater equity.“He’s going to start a diversity advisory committee? At our school? He’s going to say that Black Lives Matter?” said Dr. Whitfield, describing the reaction he encountered. The fight made national headlines and the district eventually reached a settlement with Dr. Whitfield that included his departure as principal.The district superintendent has said the decision was not about race.The fight over comments that Dr. James Whitfield made supporting Black Lives Matter protesters when he was principal of Colleyville Heritage High School made national headlines. Emil Lippe for The New York TimesA few months after Dr. Whitfield’s departure, opponents of a diversity plan in neighboring Southlake won control of the local school board, with help from a political action committee, Southlake Families. One of the founders was Ms. Wambsganss, a parent in Southlake schools and a former television news anchor. Another was Tim O’Hare, who is the Republican nominee in November’s election to lead Tarrant County.Parents both in Southlake and in Grapevine-Colleyville have been offended by the sexual content, including explicit descriptions of sexual activity, in some books offered to students, as well as certain discussions of gender and race, said Ms. Wambsganss, now at Patriot Mobile.“Parents do not believe that gender issues should be discussed in K through 12,” she said. “Especially Christian parents do not want multiple genders discussed with their children by someone who is not their parents.”She added: “I always say, it’s not about homosexuality. It’s not about heterosexuality. Stop sexualizing kids in either of those arenas.”The victories by Patriot Mobile-backed candidates surprised some parents who did not agree with the new direction in the district.On a recent morning, a dozen of those parents and community members gathered at the local botanical garden. For many, it was the first time they had met after finding one another through one of the many proliferating Facebook pages dedicated to the school district conflicts.“I ask myself every day, what did I bring my children into,” said Katherine Parks, who moved to the area from France.Marceline, a student at Grapevine High School, helped organize a walkout.Emil Lippe for The New York Times“We were Swift Boated by these people,” said Tom Hart, a Republican former city councilman in Colleyville, referring to the political attacks that helped sink John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. “We cannot combat $400,000 in funding from the outside.”As parents met to strategize, some students at Grapevine High School, where the Gay-Straight Alliance club was shuttered for lack of a faculty sponsor, have already begun to find ways to protest. A student started a book club for reading banned books. A group of friends organized a walkout.“We can find solidarity, and we can find safety in each other,” said Marceline, who asked that only their first name be used out of concern for possible reprisals. “Because we cannot trust the adults.”About 100 students joined in the walkout. No similar protest has taken place at nearby Colleyville Heritage High School, and for many students, the beginning of the school year has proceeded, more or less, as it always has.In Grapevine, books and the discussion of gender and race continue to be hotly debated topics.Emil Lippe for The New York Times More

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      Ex-US army medic allegedly lured migrants on to flights to Martha’s Vineyard

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      Ex-US army medic allegedly lured migrants on to flights to Martha’s VineyardPerla Huerta was reportedly sent to Texas from Florida to fill planes chartered by DeSantis, offering gift cards to asylum seekers A former US army combat medic and counterintelligence agent allegedly solicited asylum seekers to join flights out of Texas to Martha’s Vineyard that Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, chartered.Perla Huerta was sent to Texas from Tampa to fill the planes at the center of the trips, which many have argued could amount to illegal human trafficking, a person briefed on an investigation into the case told the New York Times.In September, dozens of asylum seekers were transported to Martha’s Vineyard, an affluent community in Massachusetts, and were promised cash assistance, help with housing and other resources if they traveled to the state. DeSantis claimed responsibility for the flights, portraying it as a protest against the Joe Biden White House’s immigration policy.The flights – one of which made a stop in Florida – departed from San Antonio and therefore have drawn scrutiny from the sheriff’s office there.Huerta was discharged from the US army in August after serving the military branch for two decades. A migrant told CNN that a woman named “Perla” offered him clothes, food, and money in exchange to help find other migrants, mostly from Venezuela, to board the flights to Massachusetts. She gave him $10 McDonald’s gift cards to be handed out to the asylum seekers who agreed to join the flights.Florida officials confirmed a payment to the airline charter company, Vertol Systems, for $615,000 on 8 September. The money comes from a state budget signed earlier this year giving DeSantis $12m for a program to deport migrants.Vertol Systems offers aviation maintenance and training services and performs work for the US government. The company has networked with Florida’s Republican power brokers over the years.The charter has contributed money to some of DeSantis’s top allies, including the Congress member Matt Gaetz and Florida’s public safety director in charge of immigration policy, Larry Keefe, according to NBC News.Attorneys representing the asylum seekers have filed a federal class-action lawsuit against DeSantis and others, contending that the plaintiffs were misled into thinking they would receive benefits upon arrival to Martha’s Vineyard.However, those benefits are only available for refugees, a specific status that the asylum seekers do not currently fall under.Some legal experts have deemed DeSantis’s acts as human trafficking or smuggling. The group Lawyers for Civil Rights labeled the move as an “appalling” political stunt.In the San Antonio area, the Bexar county sheriff, Javier Salazar, launched an investigation examining the flights that took off from there.Upon the asylum seekers’ arrival, aid group workers quickly gathered food as well as supplies and set up shelter. Island residents set up a church to house the migrants and provided translation services.The asylum seekers were also receiving clothing from community thrift shops, and people were increasingly calling to volunteer to help them and donate to them.Many of the asylum seekers ended up at a military base in Cape Cod with little knowledge of what would happen next.The flights are an escalation of Republican officials sending hundreds of asylum seekers to predominantly Democratic areas. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has sent more than 100 migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela by bus from Texas to the Washington DC home of Vice-President Kamala Harris.Abbot has also sent buses to New York City.TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsFloridaUS militaryTexasRon DeSantisMassachusettsnewsReuse this content More

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      Former warden and brother accused of killing migrants near US-Mexico border

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      Former warden and brother accused of killing migrants near US-Mexico borderMichael Sheppard has since been fired from his job at Texas jail and faces, along with his brother, a charge of manslaughter After stopping for water near the US-Mexico border, one migrant was shot dead and another was wounded when they were fired on by the warden of an allegedly abusive Texas jail and his brother last week.Michael Sheppard – the warden of West Texas Detention Facility, a privately-owned jail which once housed migrants detained by the federal government – and Mark Sheppard each face a charge of manslaughter after the 27 September shooting in rural Hudspeth county, roughy 90 miles (145km) from El Paso.Prosecutors charged the Sheppard brothers, both 60, two days after the shooting. Michael Sheppard has since been fired from his job.According to Texas’s public safety department, the victims in the case were among several migrants standing alongside a road drinking water from a reservoir when the Sheppards drove up in a truck. The migrants hid when the pickup first passed, but then the driver backed the truck up, got out, leaned over the hood and fired two gunshots at the group.One of the group’s members, a man, was struck in the head and killed. Another – a woman – was struck in the stomach and injured before eventually being brought to the hospital, officials said. Neither of the victims’ names was immediately released to the public.Investigators wrote in court records that witnesses reported hearing one of the men in the pickup hurl derogatory words at them and make the engine roar, the Associated Press reported.Using a description of the pickup as well as surveillance cameras, authorities later found the truck and the Sheppard brothers.The Sheppards – before they were arrested – claimed to investigators they were hunting at the time of the shooting.A spokesperson for the West Texas Detention Facility’s proprietor, Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections, later told media outlets that the company had dismissed Michael Sheppard “due to an off-duty incident unrelated to his employment”. The spokesperson wouldn’t elaborate, citing an “ongoing criminal investigation”.The University of Texas and Texas A&M immigration law clinics and the immigration advocacy group Raices wrote a 2018 report that detailed multiple allegations of abuse – physical and verbal – against African migrants held at the West Texas Detention Facility.The report alleges that the warden “was involved in three of the detainees’ reports of verbal threats [and] in incidents of physical assault”.Authorities had trouble following up on the report’s allegations because many of those interviewed were soon deported, co-author Fatma Marouf told the Associated Press.Though the report stops short of naming that official, Democratic congressmember Lloyd Doggett of Texas over the weekend confirmed that Michael Sheppard was the warden to which the 2018 report referred.Doggett on Saturday joined other Texas Democrats in Congress in calling for a federal investigation in the shooting with which the Sheppard brothers have been charged.“The dehumanizing, the demeaning of people who seek refuge in this country, many of whom are people of color, is what contributed to the violence we see here,” Doggett said.Overall, in August, US authorities said they stopped migrants 203,598 times, an increase of 1.8% from 199,976 times in July but a decrease of 4.7% from the same month in 2021.
      The Associated Press contributed reporting
      TopicsUS-Mexico borderTexasUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Abbott and O’Rourke clash on abortion and immigration in Texas debate

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      Abbott and O’Rourke clash on abortion and immigration in Texas debateDemocratic challenger aiming to wrest governorship away from rightwing Abbott in November election Immigration, abortion and border security all came up in Friday’s contentious, rapid-paced gubernatorial debate in Texas, where Beto O’Rourke is trying to help the Democrats wrest back the far-right leaning state from Greg Abbott and the Republicans.Uvalde families stand with Beto O’Rourke amid Republican silence on gun reformRead moreTopicsTexasUS politicsBeto O’RourkeGreg AbbottReuse this content More

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      5 Takeaways From the Campaign Trail

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      Democratic nominee Tina Kotek.Pool photo by Jamie ValdezOregon never used to be a battleground. But a poll by The Oregonian found a dead heat between the Republican governor candidate, Christine Drazen, and the Democrat, Tina Kotek, with Betsy Johnson, an independent, at 18 percent. The Fifth Congressional District is a toss-up; two other Democratic seats are in play. Republicans say Portland chaos is the reason. More

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      Uvalde families stand with Beto O’Rourke amid Republican silence on gun reform

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      Uvalde families stand with Beto O’Rourke amid Republican silence on gun reformFamilies of those killed in May school shooting support Democrat in race against Texas governor Greg Abbott A small photo of Jacklyn Casarez, one of the children killed during the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in May, graced the front of a greeting card held by Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, who visited a Rio Grande Valley park Friday morning before the one and only staged debate with incumbent governor Greg Abbott.“Maybe you don’t consider yourself a political person,” Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was also killed in the 24 May shooting at Robb elementary, said Friday during a pre-debate news conference.TopicsTexasBeto O’RourkeGreg AbbottTexas school shootingUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Beto O’Rourke and Greg Abbott Clash in Texas Debate Heavy on Attacks

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      HOUSTON — Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and his Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, faced off Friday evening in the first and only debate in the race for Texas governor, a confrontation filled with sharp disagreements and back-and-forth accusations of lying. Sitting at tables in a university performance hall with no audience, the two candidates staked out their vastly different positions on the biggest issues in the state, including gun violence, immigration, crime and abortion. But if the debate was the marquee event of a campaign for the Texas governor’s mansion that is likely to cost more than $100 million, it did not seem to deliver a key moment that would significantly propel or hobble either candidate. That outcome appeared likely to benefit Mr. Abbott, who has been leading in the polls and has commanded a larger campaign war chest going into the final stretch.The hectic pace of the exchanges — strictly limited by the moderators to 30 or 60 seconds — devolved at times into rhetorical finger-pointing between the two politicians over whose beliefs, diametrically opposed, were more outside the mainstream.“Beto’s position is the most extreme,” Mr. Abbott said, suggesting that his Democratic rival supported allowing abortions at any point in a pregnancy.“It’s completely a lie,” Mr. O’Rourke responded. “I never said that, and no one thinks that in the state of Texas.” He added: “He’s saying this because he signed the most extreme abortion ban in America. No exception for rape, no exception for incest.”For weeks, the two candidates have clashed repeatedly on the airwaves, but they had yet to spar in person. Mr. O’Rourke tried to confront Mr. Abbott during a news conference in Uvalde after the massacre at an elementary school there in May, accusing him of doing nothing to prevent such violence, before Mr. O’Rourke was escorted out. Mr. Abbott did not respond at the time.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Sensing a Shift: As November approaches, there are a few signs that the political winds may have begun to blow in a different direction — one that might help Republicans over the final stretch.Focusing on Crime: Across the country, Republicans are attacking Democrats as soft on crime to rally midterm voters. Pennsylvania’s Senate contest offers an especially pointed example of this strategy.Arizona Senate Race: Blake Masters, a Republican, appears to be struggling to win over independent voters, who make up about a third of the state’s electorate.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.On Friday, Mr. Abbott similarly tried to ignore Mr. O’Rourke’s attacks as much as possible, rarely looking at his opponent as he spoke or listened.Mr. O’Rourke went after Mr. Abbott from the start, blaming the governor’s “hateful rhetoric” for the killing of an undocumented migrant in West Texas this week and saying that the governor had “lost the right to serve this state” because of the police failures in the response to the Uvalde shooting.Mr. Abbott repeatedly accused his challenger of misrepresenting facts. “He just makes this stuff up,” he said.Mr. O’Rourke, a polished debater, appeared more at ease with the fast format of the debate. Mr. Abbott at times seemed to rush to make his points, and struggled with a question about whether he believed that emergency contraception was the “alternative” for someone who became pregnant from rape or incest in Texas, given that abortion is banned even in those cases.“An alternative, obviously, is to do what we can to assist and aid the victim,” Mr. Abbott said. “They’re going to know that the state, through our Alternatives to Abortion program, provides living assistance, baby supplies, all kinds of things that can help them.”It appeared clear that Mr. O’Rourke was the strongest challenger Mr. Abbott has had in his political career, stretching back into the 1990s. Mr. Abbott has never faced a primary opponent of note, and in his previous runs for governor, he easily swept aside Democratic opposition.The hourlong debate was held in the border city of Edinburg, far from the large population centers of this increasingly urbanizing state but deep in the heart of Hispanic South Texas, where Mr. Abbott and Republicans have increasingly made inroads. The location also put a spotlight on a topic that has been among the most effective issues for Mr. Abbott: the record numbers of unauthorized migrants continuing to arrive at the southern border.The candidates, both in red ties, debated from a sitting position; Mr. Abbott has used a wheelchair since he was 26, when an oak tree fell on him while he was jogging, paralyzing him below the waist.The candidates received no time for introductory comments and gave 30-second closing remarks, a format that played to Mr. Abbott’s strengths as a direct, often terse speaker, and limited Mr. O’Rourke’s tendency to build long rhetorical flourishes. And the timing, on a Friday evening when many Texans are more consumed with high school football, appeared likely to reduce the number of people watching live.Chris Evans, a spokesman for Mr. O’Rourke, said before the debate that the Abbott campaign had proposed the terms and would not accept any changes. “They declined to have voters in the audience,” he said. An Abbott spokesman, Mark Miner, said that Mr. O’Rourke was in “no position to run the state if he can’t even comprehend simple debate rules.” Democrats in Texas have pinned their hopes on Mr. O’Rourke before, but so far he has managed only to be victorious in defeat. In his name-making 2018 run for Senate, he came within three percentage points of unseating Senator Ted Cruz, a strong showing in Republican-dominated Texas, but still a losing one. Friday’s debate, just a few weeks before early voting begins in Texas, came at a crucial moment for both campaigns, especially Mr. O’Rourke’s. Over the summer, some polls had suggested a tightening race after the Uvalde killings and the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. But more recent surveys show Mr. Abbott more firmly in control, with a lead of about seven percentage points.For Mr. O’Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso and a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, the debate was a chance to recapture momentum and his most direct opportunity to prosecute his case against Mr. Abbott, a two-term incumbent who has led the state for eight years under unified Republican control of state government.For Mr. Abbott, it was a night to make it through unscathed. His campaign had prepared for weeks for the encounter, seeing Mr. O’Rourke as a skilled debater with significant experience from his run for president in 2020. The governor navigated tough questions, including one that in many ways launched Mr. O’Rourke into this race: the failure of the energy grid last February. Mr. Abbott stuck to his talking points — “the grid is more resilient and reliable than it’s ever been,” he said — and Mr. O’Rourke did not appear able to capitalize on the exchange.“It seemed pretty even, and a bit of a tie probably benefits Governor Abbott in this case,” said Álvaro J. Corral, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. “I didn’t see a moment that indicated a change in that underlying dynamic.”As the campaign entered its final months, Mr. Abbott has pressed his fund-raising advantage — $45 million on hand as of the last filing in mid-July, versus $23 million for Mr. O’Rourke — and went statewide with television ads at least two weeks before Mr. O’Rourke did so. Now both campaigns are bombarding Texans with messages, often negative, on television and online.Before the debate, Mr. O’Rourke held a news conference in a playground in Edinburg with several parents and relatives from Uvalde whose children were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School. The families rode a bus together from Uvalde that morning to press for action on gun control; Mr. O’Rourke criticized Mr. Abbott for setting rules that would not allow the parents to watch from inside the hall.The massacre took up significant time early in the debate. Mr. O’Rourke, who during the 2019 campaign urged taking away AR-15-style rifles after a deadly mass shooting in El Paso, emphasized his moderated position, calling to raise the age to buy an AR-15 to 21 from 18.Mr. Abbott said that was unrealistic, citing recent court decisions striking down gun restrictions.“We want to end school shootings,” he said. “But we cannot do that by making false promises.”Reid J. Epstein More

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      Activists Flood Election Offices With Challenges

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      Activists driven by false theories about election fraud are working to toss out tens of thousands of voter registrations and ballots in battleground states, part of a loosely coordinated campaign that is sowing distrust and threatening further turmoil as election officials prepare for the November midterms.Groups in Georgia have challenged at least 65,000 voter registrations across eight counties, claiming to have evidence that voters’ addresses were incorrect. In Michigan, an activist group tried to challenge 22,000 ballots from voters who had requested absentee ballots for the state’s August primary. And in Texas, residents sent in 116 affidavits challenging the eligibility of more than 6,000 voters in Harris County, which is home to Houston and is the state’s largest county.The recent wave of challenges have been filed by right-wing activists who believe conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 presidential election. They claim to be using state laws that allow people to question whether a voter is eligible. But so far, the vast majority of the complaints have been rejected, in many cases because election officials found the challenges were filed incorrectly, rife with bad information or based on flawed data analysis.Republican-aligned groups have long pushed to aggressively cull the voter rolls, claiming that inaccurate registrations can lead to voter fraud — although examples of such fraud are exceptionally rare. Voting rights groups say the greater concern is inadvertently purging an eligible voter from the rolls.The new tactic of flooding offices with challenges escalates that debate — and weaponizes the process. Sorting through the piles of petitions is costly and time-consuming, increasing the chances that overburdened election officials could make mistakes that could disenfranchise voters. And while election officials say they’re confident in their procedures, they worry about the toll on trust in elections. The challenge process, as used by election deniers, has become another platform for spreading doubt about the security of elections.“It’s a tactic to distract and undermine the electoral process,” said Dele Lowman Smith, chairwoman of the DeKalb County Board of Elections in Georgia. Her county is among several in Georgia that have had to hold special meetings just to address the challenges. The state’s new Republican-backed election law requires that each challenge receive a hearing, and the process was taking up too much time in regular board meetings.The activists say they are exercising their right to ensure that voter rolls are accurate.“If a citizen is giving you information, wouldn’t you want to check it and make sure it’s right?” said Sandy Kiesel, the executive director of Election Integrity Fund and Force, a group involved in challenges in Michigan.But in private strategy and training calls, participants from some groups have talked openly about more political aims, saying they believe their work will help Republican candidates. Some groups largely target voters in Democratic, urban areas.It is not unusual for voter rolls to contain errors — often because voters have died or moved without updating their registrations. But states typically rely on systematic processes outlined in state and federal law — not on lists provided by outside groups — to clean up the information.Still, groups have submitted challenges before. True the Vote, a Texas group behind the misinformation-laden film “2,000 Mules,” challenged more than 360,000 voters in Georgia before Senate runoff elections in 2021.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.The new tactics and types of challenges have spread wildly since, as a broad movement has mobilized around former President Donald J. Trump’s lies that the election was stolen. An influential think tank with close Trump ties, the Conservative Partnership Institute, has distributed a playbook that instructs local groups on how to vet voter rolls. Another national group, the America Project, backed by Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, influential members in the election denial movement, have helped fund a Georgia outfit that has challenged ballots across the state. America Project’s support was first reported by Bloomberg News.In mid-September, another Georgia group, Greater Georgia, co-sponsored a Zoom training session about how to file challenges with roughly a dozen activists. The group, which was founded by former Senator Kelly Loeffler, said the goal was protecting “election integrity.”The areas it focused on — counties in the metro Atlanta area — have the highest concentration of Democratic voters in the state. The leader of the training, Catherine McDonald, who works for the Voter Integrity Project, told participants she believed Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, won their Senate races in 2021 in part because judges refused to hear cases challenging what she considered illegal voting.“There were more than enough illegal votes,” Ms. McDonald said at the outset of the training, according to a transcript of the event obtained by The New York Times. “None of the judges in Fulton or DeKalb would take the case.”Greater Georgia declined to comment on the training.Thousands of voters have been challenged in Georgia’s Gwinnett County.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesOf the challenges brought in Gwinnett County in Georgia, 15,000 to 20,000 were rejected, while a further 16,000 or so remained undecided. In many cases, the methodology was found to be flawed or misguided. In Forsyth County, Ga., 6 percent of the 17,000 voters challenged were removed from the rolls, according to county records, after election officials determined that the submissions either did not meet necessary requirements or were factually incorrect.In Michigan, the secretary of state’s office said an attempt to challenge 22,027 ballots at once was invalid — state law says challenges must be submitted one at a time rather than in bulk, Jonathan Brater, director of the state’s Bureau of Elections, wrote in a letter to local officials..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.Mr. Brater highlighted other issues with the group’s work. The activists used the U.S. Postal Service’s change of address system as evidence indicating a voter’s registration isn’t valid. But many people in that system, including students and members of the military, are still eligible to vote at their previous address, he wrote. Other challenges were based on a glitch that listed Jan. 1, 1900, as a place-holder registration date for people registered before new software was introduced.In interviews with The Times, leaders with the group behind the effort, Election Integrity Fund and Force, said they did not have clear evidence that the voters listed were ineligible. They were simply prompting elections officials to make a closer examination of some potential errors, they said.They weren’t aware of any voters removed from the rolls as a result, they said.Election Integrity Fund and Force has been working in Michigan since the 2020 election, promoting skepticism about the election’s legitimacy. This month, it sued the governor and secretary of state in an attempt to decertify President Biden’s win in the state. It has also sent volunteers knocking on doors to survey residents about the registered voters in their homes. They presented their results to election officials as evidence of problems with the voter rolls.But officials who reviewed the group’s findings said they were riddled with errors and leaps in logic. “They don’t have a grasp of how things actually work,” said Lisa Brown, the county clerk for Oakland County in the Detroit suburbs.Ms. Brown said a colleague found a friend on the group’s list of problematic registrations because the friend forwards her mail. “She’s a snowbird. So, yeah, she forwards her mail to Florida when she’s down there, but she still lives here,” Ms. Brown said.Ms. Kiesel, the group’s executive director, said her group planned to send lists of names to Michigan election officials before the November election. The lists will also go to poll workers, she said.If voters are challenged at polling places, their ballots would be immediately counted. But the ballots would also be marked and could be reviewed later if a candidate or group sued, officials said.Ms. Kiesel has shared her group’s plans with various coalitions of election activists in Michigan, including one with ties to the Conservative Partnership Institute, according to audio of conference calls obtained by The Times. A lawyer who aided Mr. Trump in his effort to overturn the 2020 results, Cleta Mitchell, is leading the institute’s effort to organize activists.“We learned a lot by the challenges,” Ms. Kiesel said on one call with the coalition in August. “We need people to help us to do the same thing in the November election.”Election workers checking voter registrations in Lansing, Mich., on Election Day in 2020.John Moore/Getty ImagesChris Thomas, a former elections director for Michigan now working as a consultant for Detroit, said he did not expect the challenges to succeed. But one concern is that activists will use rejections to sow doubt about the legitimacy of elections if they don’t like the results.“They can’t get over the fact they lost,” Mr. Thomas said. “They are just going to beat the system into the ground.”Another canvassing operation fanned out across Harris County, Texas, over the summer. Volunteers with the Texas Election Network, a group with ties to the state Republican Party, went door to door, clipboards in hand, to ask residents if they were the voters registered at those addresses. The canvassing effort was first reported by The Houston Chronicle.Soon after, 116 affidavits challenging the registration of thousands of voters were filed with the Harris County Election Office, according to data obtained through an open records request by The New York Times. Each affidavit, sent by individual citizens, was written exactly the same.“I have personal knowledge that the voters named in this affidavit do not reside at the addresses listed on their voter registration records,” the affidavits said. “I have personally visited the listed addresses. I have personally interviewed persons actually residing at these addresses.”Each affidavit failed to meet the state’s standards, and after a quick investigation, all were rejected by the election administrator of Harris County. More