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    These Trump-Backed Candidates Won’t Promise to Accept Election Results

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    Six Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in key midterm states, all backed by Donald Trump, would not commit to accepting the November outcome. Five others did not answer the question.WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after President Donald J. Trump refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 election, some of his most loyal Republican acolytes might follow in his footsteps.When asked, six Trump-backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in midterm battlegrounds would not commit to accepting this year’s election results, and another five Republicans ignored or declined to answer a question about embracing the November outcome. All of them, along with many other G.O.P. candidates, have pre-emptively cast doubt on how their states count votes.The New York Times contacted Republican and Democratic candidates or their aides in 20 key contests for governor and the Senate. All of the Democrats said, or have said publicly, that they would respect the November results — including Stacey Abrams of Georgia, who refused to concede her 2018 defeat to Brian Kemp in the state’s race for governor. Mr. Kemp, now running against her for another term, “will of course accept the outcome of the 2022 election,” said his press secretary, Tate Mitchell.But several Republicans endorsed by Mr. Trump are hesitant to say that they will not fight the results.Among the party’s Senate candidates, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska and J.D. Vance in Ohio all declined to commit to accepting the 2022 results. So did Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan, and Geoff Diehl, who won the G.O.P. primary for governor of Massachusetts this month.The candidates and their aides offered an array of explanations. Some blamed Democratic state election officials or made unsubstantiated claims that their opponents would cheat. In Alaska, a spokesman for Ms. Tshibaka pointed to a new ranked-choice voting system that has been criticized by Republicans and already helped deliver victory to a Democrat in a House special election this year.Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican candidate for Senate in Alaska, at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Anchorage. She has also declined to say whether she will respect this year’s election results.Ash Adams for The New York TimesAn aide to Ms. Dixon, Sara Broadwater, said “there’s no reason to believe” that Michigan election officials, including Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state, “are very serious about secure elections.”To some degree, the stances by these Republican candidates — which echo Mr. Trump’s comments before the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections — may amount to political posturing, in an effort to appeal to G.O.P. voters who do not believe the former president lost in 2020. An aide to one Republican nominee insisted that the candidate would accept this year’s results, but the aide declined to be publicly identified saying so.And unlike Mr. Trump two years ago, the candidates who suggest they might dispute the November results do not hold executive office, and lack control of the levers of government power. If any were to reject a fair defeat, they would be far less likely to ignite the kind of democratic crisis that Mr. Trump set off after his 2020 loss.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.But they do have loud megaphones in a highly polarized media environment, and any unwarranted challenges from the candidates and their allies could fuel anger, confusion and misinformation.“The danger of a Trumpist coup is far from over,” said Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University who in early 2020 convened a group to brainstorm ways Mr. Trump could disrupt that year’s election. “As long as we have a significant number of Americans who don’t accept principles of democracy and the rule of law, our democracy remains in jeopardy.”The positions of these Republican candidates also reflect how, over the last two years, some of those aligned with Mr. Trump increasingly reject the idea that it is possible for their side to lose a legitimate election.“You accept the results of the election if the election is fair and honest,” said John Fredericks, a syndicated talk radio host who was a chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaigns in Virginia in 2016 and 2020. “If it’s not fair and honest, you don’t.”Still, many Republican candidates, including several who have cast doubt on the 2020 outcome, said they would recognize this year’s results. Darren Bailey, the Republican nominee for governor of Illinois — who said in a June interview that he did not know if the 2020 election had been decided fairly — responded that “yes,” he would accept the 2022 result.In Nevada, the campaign of Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for Senate, said he would not challenge the final results — even though Mr. Laxalt, a former state attorney general, helped lead the effort to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat in the state, spoke last year about plans to file lawsuits to contest the 2022 election and called voter fraud the “biggest issue” in his campaign.Joe Lombardo, left, a Republican running for governor of Nevada, and Adam Laxalt, center, the party’s nominee for the Senate, said they would not challenge the state’s results.Roger Kisby for The New York Times“Of course he’ll accept Nevada’s certified election results, even if your failing publication won’t,” said Brian Freimuth, a spokesman for Mr. Laxalt..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.And Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who said during his successful Republican primary campaign for Senate that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, promised to uphold voters’ will.“Yes, Dr. Oz will accept the result of the PA Senate race in November,” Rachel Tripp, an Oz spokeswoman, wrote in a text message.Three other Republican Senate candidates — Herschel Walker in Georgia, Joe O’Dea in Colorado and Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska — committed to embracing their state’s election results. So did several Republicans running for governor, including Mr. Kemp, Joe Lombardo in Nevada and Christine Drazan of Oregon.Aides to several Republican nominees for governor who have questioned the 2020 election’s legitimacy did not respond to repeated requests for comment on their own races in November. Those candidates included Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, Kari Lake of Arizona, Tim Michels of Wisconsin and Dan Cox of Maryland.Ms. Lake was asked in a radio interview this month whether she would concede a defeat to Katie Hobbs, her Democratic rival and Arizona’s secretary of state. “I’m not losing to Katie Hobbs,” Ms. Lake replied.Ms. Hobbs’s spokeswoman, Sarah Robinson, said her candidate “will accept the results of the election in November.”Aides to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Don Bolduc, the Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire, declined to answer questions about acknowledging the results. Mr. Johnson has been a prolific spreader of misinformation about the 2020 election and the Capitol riot. Mr. Bolduc claimed that the 2020 contest was stolen from Mr. Trump until Thursday, when he announced two days after winning his primary that President Biden had won legitimately.During a Republican primary debate in Michigan in June, Ms. Dixon would not commit to honoring the results of the primary — which she went on to win — or the general election, pre-emptively accusing Ms. Benson, the secretary of state, of election fraud.“If we see the secretary of state running a fair election the way she should be, then that’s a different story,” Ms. Dixon said. “We have to see what she’s going to do to make sure it’s going to be a fair election.”In a statement, a representative for Ms. Benson said she and her staff “work tirelessly to ensure the state’s elections are secure and accurate, and expect every candidate and election official to respect the will of the people.”A crowd in Phoenix watched in September 2021 as the findings of a widely criticized Republican-led review of the state’s 2020 votes were presented to state lawmakers.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesIn Arizona — where Republicans spent months on a government-funded review of 2020 ballots that failed to show any evidence of fraud — Mr. Masters, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for Senate, baselessly predicted to supporters in July that even if he defeated Senator Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat, enough votes would somehow be produced to flip the result.“There’s always cheating, probably, in every election,” Mr. Masters said. “The question is, what’s the cheating capacity?”A Masters aide, Katie Miller, sent The Times an August article in The Arizona Republic in which Mr. Masters said there was “evidence of incompetence” but not of fraud in the state’s primary election. Ms. Miller declined to say if Mr. Masters would respect the November results.Mr. Kelly “has total trust in Arizona’s electoral process,” said a spokeswoman, Sarah Guggenheimer.An aide to Mr. Vance, Taylor Van Kirk, cited the candidate’s primary-season endorsement from Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose. At the time, Mr. Vance predicted “a successfully run primary election.” But Ms. Van Kirk would not say if Mr. Vance would recognize the November outcome. Mr. Vance did not respond to messages.Mr. Vance’s Democratic opponent, Representative Tim Ryan, “will accept the results of the election,” said his spokeswoman, Jordan Fuja.In Alaska, Republican hesitancy to accept election results centers on the new ranked-choice voting system. After losing an August special election for the House, Sarah Palin warned baselessly that the method was “very, very potentially fraught with fraud.”Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Ms. Tshibaka, who is challenging Ms. Murkowski, a fellow Republican, said his candidate would not commit to honoring the race’s outcome. Mr. Murtaugh said — not without merit — that the new voting system “was installed to protect Lisa Murkowski.”Ms. Murkowski’s spokesman, Shea Siegert, said that “the Alaskan people can trust” the state’s elections.Jonathan Felts, a spokesman for Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, the state’s Republican nominee for Senate — who in Congress voted against certifying the 2020 election — declined to say if Mr. Budd would uphold the state’s results and claimed without evidence that Cheri Beasley, the Democratic nominee and a former State Supreme Court justice, might try to disenfranchise voters.Ms. Beasley said, “I trust that our 2022 election will be administered fairly.”Officials on other Republican campaigns expressed worries that if voters heard too much skepticism about the validity of this year’s elections, it could lead to a replay of the Georgia Senate races in January 2021, when Democrats eked out two narrow victories after Mr. Trump spent weeks railing falsely about election fraud.“The most important thing is to not get depressed about the elections and say, ‘Oh, it’s going to be stolen, so what’s the point of doing this?’” Mr. Diehl, the Republican nominee for governor of Massachusetts, said in a recent radio interview. Mr. Diehl’s spokeswoman, Peggy Rose, replied “no comment” when asked if he would agree to the outcome of the November election.His Democratic opponent, Maura Healey, the state’s attorney general, said, “We will always accept the will of the people.” More

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      The Campaign to Troll Dr. Oz for Living in New Jersey

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      John Fetterman’s race for Senate in Pennsylvania has employed an unusual campaign strategy.John Fetterman, the cartoonishly imposing progressive lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who is running for a Senate seat, hasn’t spent much time campaigning since having a stroke in May. It’s an easy thing to forget. Fetterman, a Democrat, only recently resumed public appearances. Before that, though, he managed to keep attention on the Republican contender — Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity cardiothoracic surgeon once championed by Oprah Winfrey and now endorsed by Donald Trump — through probably the most modern means available: trolling. For much of the summer, Fetterman’s campaign sustained a viral media narrative that depicted Oz not just as a wealthy, out-of-touch celebrity with a tenuous connection to Pennsylvania, but as something that is, both regionally and nationwide, way more loathed: a guy from New Jersey.Oz was born in Ohio and raised in Delaware and has lived in New Jersey for decades. In February 2020, an article in People magazine led readers into the Mediterranean-influenced mansion that he and his wife “built from scratch 20 years ago” in Cliffside Park, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan, where Oz works. It was a flattering story that would soon enough backfire. Later in 2020, Oz formally adopted a Pennsylvania address — but early this summer, when he released a campaign video, the home he was speaking from looked a lot like the one he’d invited a magazine to photograph. Fetterman tweeted a tip: “Don’t film an ad for your Pennsylvania Senate campaign from your mansion in New Jersey.”From there, Fetterman escalated. He paid for a plane to fly over the New Jersey coastline, trailing a banner that read, “HEY DR. OZ. WELCOME HOME TO N.J.! ♥ JOHN.” (Funnily, this seemed to be targeting vacationing Pennsylvanians.) He used Cameo, the service where you can shell out some cash to have a lower-tier celebrity wish your friend a happy birthday, to hire Nicole Polizzi, better known as Snooki from MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” to goad Oz some more: “I heard that you moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to look for a new job,” she told the camera. (Fetterman’s campaign would go on to release a similar video with Steven Van Zandt, known both for playing guitar in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and for playing Silvio Dante on “The Sopranos.”) When Oz visited Geno’s Steaks in South Philadelphia, Fetterman proclaimed it “a rite of passage for every tourist.” Taking things to an intensely local level, he even joked about Oz not pumping his own gas. (New Jersey law requires stations to do it for you.)Oz has not always helped his case. A video he filmed at a grocery store, trying to underline the effect of inflation, resurfaced recently: In it, he mispronounces the name of the regional chain before wandering the produce section without a basket, awkwardly piling his arms with ingredients for a crudité platter. The online ridicule this received led to a fund-raising windfall for Fetterman — and a surprisingly venomous attack from the Oz campaign, which said that if Fetterman had “ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke.”Questions about politicians’ authentic relationships to their constituencies are not rare, and the news media has been particularly attentive to them during the current midterm elections. CNN wondered if “charges of carpetbagging still matter,” especially for “a hyperpartisan electorate where party identification is the most important factor in the minds of voters”; a New York magazine column declared 2022 “the year of the political carpetbagger.” The year’s debates have mainly focused on candidates returning to homes that some see them as having abandoned. Ryan Zinke, who served as a Montana congressman until Trump tapped him to be the interior secretary, is seeking one of the state’s two House seats as accusations swirl that his primary residence might be in California. The globe-trotting Times columnist Nicholas Kristof was prevented from running for governor of Oregon because he did not meet a three-year residency requirement. Kelly Tshibaka, a Trump-backed Republican running against the center-right Lisa Murkowski in Alaska’s Senate race, was denied a sport-fishing license because she has not resided in the state for at least year. Nobody in Georgia seems especially bothered that the Republican Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, who grew up in the state and played college football there, has spent most of his adulthood in Texas.The reflexive attitude of New Jersey residents is a kind of friendly middle finger: Feel free to not like it here, but you’ll always be welcome.Charges that a candidate is “not really from here” typically carry an undertow of class or ideology or, in darker moments, ethnicity. Fetterman’s, of course, is not remotely the xenophobic attack you might imagine a Muslim candidate like Oz facing. (Though an Armenian lobbying group has targeted Oz’s Turkish background and dual citizenship.) Neither is it primarily ideological. And while there is an implied class element — the celebrity doctor, looking down on Manhattan from an estate atop a literal cliff — this has not been the most palpable aspect of the snipe. Fetterman’s insults are laced with a specific regional animus that’s hard to imagine working the same way anywhere else. (Not even when Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator, ran for a Senate seat in bordering New Hampshire in 2014.) It is, specifically, the idea that Oz is from New Jersey — a place that the rest of the country finds annoying and distasteful, and whose neighbors find it especially so — that resonates above all else.This mockery works, in part, because New Jersey itself accepts and revels in the region’s, and the nation’s, collective disdain. Many natives, myself included, know that there is no way to stave off the stereotypes, no matter how unfair or exaggerated they may be. The beaches are beautiful, sure, but they are usually crowded, sometimes rowdy and can even feature Chris Christie haranguing a constituent while brandishing an ice cream cone. Outsiders tend to see an obnoxious land of corrupt lawmakers, oil refineries and expensive tolls, the area you pass through on your way from Philadelphia to New York City. The state is less second rate than it is second place, constantly defined by what it is not (i.e., New York City) rather than what it actually is. New Jersey even struggles to lay claim to things that are genuinely its own: Ask somebody where the Giants and the Jets play football. Eric Adams, campaigning for mayor of New York City, nearly fell victim to this perceived uncoolness, accused of living primarily in a co-op across the Hudson in Fort Lee. The reflexive attitude of New Jersey residents, then, is a defensive posturing, a kind of friendly middle finger, a brash self-regard: Feel free to not like it here, but you’ll always be welcome. And anybody from the Garden State who pretends to be untouched by all this will ultimately face the same treatment Oz has received: There’s no use pretending. You’re just like the rest of us.New Jersey, in other words, is willing to go along with it. It’s not just Snooki or Little Steven. Bill Pascrell Jr., a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, tweeted that he would nominate Oz for the New Jersey Hall of Fame, where the doctor could join such luminaries as “Albert Einstein, Danny DeVito, Vince Lombardi, Meryl Streep, Bruce Springsteen and Yogi Berra.” What other state’s residents would so happily leverage how little their neighbors think of them? “There’s two types of people,” Anthony Bourdain once said. “People who come from New Jersey and admit it, and people who come from New Jersey and are lying.”Source photographs: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images; kali9/Getty Images; Michelle Gustafson/Bloomberg, via Getty Images. More

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      Lisa Murkowski and Kelly Tshibaka Advance in Alaska’s Senate Contest

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      Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a centrist Republican seeking a fourth full term in Washington, advanced to the general election along with her chief rival, Kelly Tshibaka, in the state’s Senate primary race, according to The Associated Press. Ms. Murkowski and Ms. Tshibaka each earned enough votes to advance to the general election in the fall as part of Alaska’s new open primary system. Ms. Murkowski is hoping to fend off a conservative backlash over her vote in the Senate to convict former President Donald J. Trump of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. With an estimated 50 percent of the vote reported, Ms. Murkowski and Ms. Tshibaka were neck and neck at just over 40 percent apiece. The nearest rival after them was in the single digits.Ballots are still being counted, and two other candidates will also advance as part of the state’s top-four system, but it was unclear which two.Ms. Murkowski, 65, is the only Senate Republican on the ballot this year who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his impeachment trial. She has been frank about her frustrations with Mr. Trump’s hold over the Republican Party, though she has maintained the backing of the Senate Republican campaign arm. She has also repeatedly crossed the aisle to support bipartisan compromises and Democratic nominees, including the nomination of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and the confirmation of Deb Haaland, the Interior secretary. And she is one of just two Senate Republicans who support abortion rights and have expressed dismay over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a move that eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years.Those stances have rallied both national and local Republicans against her, and her impeachment vote garnered her a censure from Alaska’s Republican Party. Mr. Trump, furious over her vote to convict him, summoned his supporters to line up behind Ms. Tshibaka, a former commissioner in the Alaska Department of Administration, who fashioned herself as an “America First” candidate who could more adequately represent conservatives in the state. “It’s clear that we are at a point where the next senator can either stand with Alaska or continue to enable the disastrous Biden administration that is damaging us more every day,” Ms. Tshibaka wrote in an opinion essay published days before the primary. “When I’m the next senator from Alaska, I will never forget the Alaskans who elected me, and I will always stand for the values of the people of this great state.”Kelly Tshibaka at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Anchorage in July. In addition to his endorsement, she has the backing of the Alaska Republican Party.Ash Adams for The New York TimesBut the new open primary system, paired with the use of ranked-choice voting in the general election, was designed in part with centrist candidates like Ms. Murkowski in mind, and was championed by her allies in the famously independent state. Voters in November can rank their top four candidates. If no candidate receives a majority, officials will eliminate the last-place finisher and reallocate his or her supporters’ votes to the voters’ second choices until one candidate has more than 50 percent of the vote.While she has never crossed that threshold in previous elections, Ms. Murkowski has overcome tough odds before: In 2010, she triumphed memorably with a write-in campaign after a stunning primary loss to a Tea Party challenger. That victory came largely because of a coalition of Alaska Natives and centrists. Ms. Murkowski has leveraged her seniority and her bipartisan credentials to make her case to voters in Alaska, highlighting the billions of dollars she has steered to the state through her role on the Senate Appropriations Committee and her role in passing the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law. She invokes her friendships with Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and the legacies of Alaska lawmakers like former Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young, who died in March, to show that there is still a place in Congress for her style of legislating. “You’ve got to demonstrate that there are other possibilities, that there is a different reality — and maybe it won’t work,” Ms. Murkowski said in an interview this year. “Maybe I am just completely politically naïve, and this ship has sailed. But I won’t know unless we — unless I — stay out there and give Alaskans the opportunity to weigh in.”Her challengers, however, are seeking to capitalize on the frustrations toward Ms. Murkowski in both parties. In addition to branding her as too liberal for the state, Ms. Tshibaka has seized on simmering resentment over how Ms. Murkowski’s father, Frank, chose her to finish out his term as senator when he became governor in 2002. Alyce McFadden More

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      Alaska Elections: Where to Vote and What’s on the Ballot

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      Do not be misled by Alaska’ long history of voting for Republicans: Its slate of primaries and a special election on Tuesday offers plenty of intrigue, with multiple big names on the ballot such as former Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator Lisa Murkowski.The races pose another test of the power of an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump. He is backing Ms. Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, for the state’s lone House seat, and also supports Kelly Tshibaka, Ms. Murkowski’s main Republican rival in the Senate primary.Here is a refresher on the rules for voting and what is at stake.How to voteThe registration deadlines for voting in person and requesting an absentee ballot have passed. Alaska does not have same-day registration for primaries, though it does for presidential elections.All registered voters, regardless of party affiliation, can participate in Alaska’s newly nonpartisan primaries.Where to voteAlaska’s voters can click here to look up their assigned place to vote. Absentee ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by Tuesday and received by state election offices by Aug. 26. They can also be hand-delivered to designated drop-off locations by 8 p.m. Alaska time on Tuesday, which is also when the polls close for in-person voting.Alaska offers no-excuse absentee voting — meaning voters are not required to provide a reason — with an option to receive ballots through the state’s secure online portal. Voters can choose to return their ballots by fax instead of mail but must do so by 8 p.m. on Tuesday.What is on the ballotMs. Murkowski was one of seven Republicans in the Senate who voted to convict Mr. Trump during his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, drawing a backlash from the former president and his supporters in her quest for a fourth term. Mr. Trump endorsed one her opponents, Ms. Tshibaka, a former commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Administration, in the primary.Another race creating national intrigue will decide who will fill the seat of Representative Don Young, a Republican who died in March, for the remainder of his term that ends in January. Mr. Young had held the seat since he was first elected to the House in 1973.The special election is headlined by Ms. Palin, who will face Nick Begich III, a Republican and the scion of an Alaskan political dynasty, and Mary S. Peltola, a Democrat and former state legislator. Voters will rank their choices in the special election. If no candidate receives a majority, officials will eliminate the last-place finisher and reallocate supporters’ voter to the voters’ second choices until one candidate has at least 50 percent.All three candidates, along with many others, are also listed separately on the regular primary ballot for the House seat, which will determine who will compete in November to represent the state for a full two-year term starting in January.Voters will also decide various races for governor and the State Legislature. Click here for a sample ballot. More

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      Can Lisa Murkowski Fend Off Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska?

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      Supporters of the senator hope that the state’s unique nonpartisan primary system will help her, but allies of Tshibaka, a Trump-backed challenger, see a path to victory.Paulette Schuerch, a Native Alaskan who helped Lisa Murkowski’s fabled write-in campaign for Senate in 2010, is now working for the senator’s Trump-backed opponent, Kelly Tshibaka.The breaking point for Schuerch, as she detailed in a telephone interview from her home in Kotzebue, a village 35 miles above the Arctic Circle, came in 2014. That year, Murkowski initially evaded insensitive comments about suicide made by Don Young, the state’s congressman, whom she had endorsed, before later asking him to apologize. Suicide is a delicate topic for many rural Alaskans, especially Alaska Natives, who have some of the highest rates of any ethnic group in the country.At a meeting on the margins of an annual gathering of Alaska Natives, Murkowski looked several of the delegates in the eye, Schuerch said, and told them: “Don’t you give me the stink eye and shake your heads at me. I see you.”“That really turned me off,” Schuerch recalled. “Suicide affects us all the time. I can’t support somebody who doesn’t understand that.”It’s a story Schuerch has told increasingly often, and she is now helping Tshibaka make inroads among Alaska’s Native population, which has long been a key element of Murkowski’s winning coalition.Tshibaka has been visiting villages in rural Alaska, participating in traditional events like the Utqiagvik blanket toss and crashing on the floors of schools in her sleeping bag.And while public polling in Alaska is scarce, Tshibaka’s campaign points to Schuerch’s break with Murkowski as a clear sign that the independent-minded senator may be in trouble in her re-election bid.On Saturday, former President Donald Trump is holding a rally for Tshibaka in Anchorage, Alaska’s most populous city. Tshibaka’s team is confident that Republican partisans have soured on Murkowski over her support for President Biden’s cabinet nominees — especially Deb Haaland, the secretary of the interior.In an oil-rich state where jobs are often scarce and energy is a top political issue, the Biden administration’s environmental conservation moves have rankled many rural Alaskans, who depend heavily on resource extraction for their livelihoods. Tshibaka has sought to exploit the Native community’s disquiet with Haaland, a Native American herself who has become a lightning rod in Alaska.Tshibaka often accuses the Biden administration of wanting to “turn the entire state of Alaska into a national park,” a line that appears to resonate with people like Schuerch.“I think after 21 years in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski is taking Alaska Natives for granted,” Schuerch said.A tricky path for a Trump-backed challengerComplicating the picture, however, is Alaska’s unique nonpartisan primary system, which voters approved as part of a 2020 ballot initiative and is being used this year for the first time.Under the system, the four candidates from any party who receive the most votes in the Aug. 16 primary are expected to proceed to the general election in November, when voters will rank them in order of preference. This is called ranked-choice voting.The ballot initiative, which passed narrowly by a popular vote, was pitched to Alaskans as a cure for gridlock and partisan polarization in a state that has one of the largest shares of independent voters in the country and prides itself on bucking national voting trends.It also happens to have been pushed in part by allies of Murkowski — including Scott Kendall, who is now running a super PAC, Alaskans for L.I.S.A., that supports her candidacy. (Officially, the name includes an acronym for “Leadership in a Strong Alaska.” Under federal election law, it’s illegal to use a candidate’s name in the name of a super PAC.)Murkowski has never received more than 50 percent of the vote in any of her winning campaigns for Senate.Ash Adams for The New York TimesAnd while Kendall insists that the top-four system was not put in place to benefit Murkowski, his former boss, there’s no question it has complicated Tshibaka’s path to victory.“It doesn’t allow the farthest-right Republican to knock out the moderate and be the only candidate in the general election,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, a political strategist who is supporting Murkowski. “The old primary system punished people who dared to be independent thinkers. You can’t do that anymore in Alaska.”By Lottsfeldt’s reckoning, Murkowski ought to emerge with about 55 percent of the vote after voters’ preferences are taken into account, while Tshibaka, whose positions on issues like abortion might turn off moderates, is likely to finish at around 45 percent.Tshibaka’s team is urging her supporters to use what’s known as “bullet voting,” in which voters do not rank any candidates besides their first choice — thus, they hope, denying thousands of second-choice votes to Murkowski.They note, too, that Murkowski has never received more than 50 percent of the vote in any of her winning campaigns for Senate, and they point to polls showing the senator to be deeply unpopular with the Republican base.It’s debatable whether Trump’s Alaska sojourn will help or hurt his preferred candidate. Tshibaka will probably cut television ads promoting his endorsement, using footage from Saturday’s rally, as candidates in other states have done.But there’s a popular bumper sticker in Alaska that reads, “We don’t give a damn how they do it Outside” — a slogan that speaks to the frontier state’s suspicion of the Lower 48, as Alaskans often refer to the rest of the continental United States.So Trump’s intervention, unless it is done with the sort of delicacy and tact that the former president is not known for, could easily backfire.“Trump is not from Alaska, period,” noted Lottsfeldt, who added that the former president’s visit comes after weeks of tough congressional hearings about his role in inciting the Capitol riot.“All I think it does is probably motivates people in the center to feel negative about Tshibaka,” Lottsfeldt said.What to read tonightUnder pressure to do more to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, President Biden issued an executive order that aims to ensure access to abortion medication and emergency contraception while preparing for legal fights to come, Michael Shear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg report.The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority prohibited the use of most drop boxes for voters to return absentee ballots, a move that came as Republicans in the state have taken a range of steps since the 2020 election to try to limit the influence of voters over the state’s government. Reid Epstein has the story.The ascent of Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, is perhaps the most prominent example of right-wing candidates for public office who explicitly aim to promote Christian power in America, Elizabeth Dias writes.Cities around the South have challenged the supremacy of coastal supercities, drawing a steady flow of creative young people. In her Big City column, Ginia Bellafante asks:Will new abortion bans put an end to that?viewfinderPresident Biden, Jill Biden and other members of their family watched fireworks in celebration of Independence Day.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesSeeking symbolism for the FourthOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Here’s what Sarah Silbiger told us about capturing the image above:You can always count on photographing certain details on July 4. Kids with drippy Popsicles, rhinestone American flag T-shirts and oversize mascots of the Founding Fathers.But what I find most interesting are the different photo-ops the White House creates. In 2019, I spent hours in the rain outside the Lincoln Memorial covering President Donald Trump’s display of tanks and a Blue Angels flyover.In 2020, we photographed the White House from about half a mile away, in a field. Talk about social distancing.In 2021, President Biden’s White House adopted a somber tone, to recognize American resilience during Covid, but cautiously celebrated the beginning of the country’s emergence from the pandemic thanks to vaccines.This year, the absence of distance or masks made for a picture-perfect image of Biden’s extended family on a balcony of the White House. The bright white spotlight on the family, set up by White House officials, signaled to the news media that they, too, recognized the moment as an important photo-op.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you on Monday.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Alaska

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      SITKA, Alaska — As the only Republican senator fighting for her seat less than two years after voting to convict Donald Trump, Lisa Murkowski could be one of the crowning casualties in his war to rid the party of dissenters. Mr. Trump has insisted that voters here in Alaska won’t forgive Ms. Murkowski for her recent transgressions, and that Kelly Tshibaka, the Republican challenger whom he endorsed, “stands for Alaska values.”What I imagine he meant was that Ms. Tshibaka has the courage to confront bullies, the willingness to put state before political party, and a general resilience that comes from years of living in “Alyeska,” the Aleut word for “the great land.” The only problem with his argument is that, over the past 20 years, it’s Ms. Murkowski who has demonstrated all three. And it might be just enough to save her political career.As the state with the highest percentage of voters refusing to declare a party affiliation (more than half of voters here identify as independent), Alaska has a rich tradition of rewarding candidates who stand up to powerful figures like Mr. Trump. In the early 20th century, James Wickersham, Alaska’s congressional delegate, battled to give the territory the right to govern itself, insisting on its difference from the “Outside.” As recently as the 1990s, Gov. Wally Hickel was saying that Alaska deserved to be called its own “unique country.” And Alaska’s longtime congressman, Don Young, was so willing to stand up to the powers that be that he once held a 10-inch knife to John Boehner’s neck. (The two later became friends, and Mr. Boehner served as Mr. Young’s best man.)The daughter of an Alaska governor, Ms. Murkowski understands this tradition better than most. She infuriated her Republican colleagues in 2017 with her vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act and rejected Mr. Trump’s nominees, voting against both Betsy DeVos as secretary of education and Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court justice. In that sense, she represents ideals all but lost in American political life: She may not wield a knife on the House floor, but her independent thinking and ability to consider each issue individually are relics of a time when party loyalty mattered less than your relationship with your constituents.That approach has hurt her standing in the Republican Party. After she voted to convict Mr. Trump, he declared that she represented “her state badly and her country even worse.” He even threatened to come to Alaska to campaign against her — now that would be a reality show I’d watch. While such saber-rattling would have been enough to send most moderate Republicans scurrying into their holes, Ms. Murkowski held fast.To understand her resilience and resolve, you need only to look at her wrist. There, you’ll find a bracelet engraved with her last name, along with the words “Fill it in. Write it in.” This was a gift from her husband, who modeled it on the silicone wristbands her campaign issued in 2010 after she lost her primary to a Republican challenger blessed by the national party. Ms. Murkowski won the general election as a write-in candidate thanks to a motley crew of centrists, Democrats and Alaska’s Native community. (Ms. Murkowski’s vote against the health care repeal was largely seen in the state as a “thank you” card to the villages that allowed her to pull this off.)Kelly Tshibaka, meanwhile, returned to the state of her birth just three years ago — about as long as we keep salmon in the freezer before putting it into our Dungeness traps. In an attempt to shake the carpetbagger label, her campaign released a video showing her at work on a set-net operation in Cook Inlet. The move backfired when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game fined her $270 for not having a crew license. (I was also fined by that agency, for working on a sea cucumber dive boat without a license. I did not issue a news release afterward blaming my political opponents for the fine.)If the tribes, sportfishermen, A.T.V.ers, commercial fishermen and conservationists in Alaska agree on one thing, it’s the responsibility of the state to control its fisheries and maintain a “sustainable yield” through strict regulations, a duty written into the Alaska Constitution. The footage of Ms. Tshibaka illegally handling a salmon showed someone desperate for authenticity — but also a candidate either ignorant of, or just willing to break, Alaska’s fish laws.Ms. Tshibaka has also been taken to task for her unsteady relationship to the truth. In 1975, her parents moved to the state for the pipeline boom and spent time in a tent at Russian Jack Springs Park for their honeymoon. A photo from this period has become Exhibit A of the “homeless to Harvard” story arc Ms. Tshibaka has promoted to describe her Alaska upbringing. As the veteran Alaska newspaper columnist Dermot Cole recently pointed out, her parents weren’t homeless. They were camping.After finishing high school, Ms. Tshibaka left to attend college in Texas, then Harvard Law, before spending 17 years in Washington. She wrote an article praising an organization that advocated gay conversion therapy (she later apologized to anyone she might have offended), described the “Twilight” books and movies as “evil,” and warned against the “addictive” qualities of witchcraft — positions not exactly in line with Alaska voters’ distaste for people telling them how to live their lives.Both she and Ms. Murkowski have presented themselves as lifelong Alaskans running against the political “establishment” in the rest of the country. But it’s Ms. Tshibaka who salutes the flag at Mar-a-Lago, telling high school students in Nome that Mr. Trump’s policies were “super great for our state.” In February, Mr. Trump hosted a fund-raiser for Ms. Tshibaka at his Florida club, though he then turned around and charged her $14,477 for use of the facilities. She moved back to Alaska only in 2019, when she was hired by the Republican governor, with the state paying $81,000 in moving expenses to bring her and her family north.Preening for a national audience at CPAC and on conservative talk shows, as Ms. Tshibaka has been doing, could hurt her chances in the August primary. The Democrat who went up against the Republican incumbent senator Dan Sullivan in 2020, Dr. Al Gross, discovered this to his grief. Hosting Zoom calls from his Airstream, courting donors across the country, he raised $19 million, the highest take of any Alaska Senate candidate ever. But come election time, the national exposure seemed to hinder more than help; Dr. Gross lost to Mr. Sullivan by 13 percentage points.Ms. Murkowski plays a different game.If history is any guide, soon she’ll arrive at the small airport here in Sitka dressed in fleece and denim, ready to wolf down wilted iceberg lettuce at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon, pumping hands with the “cut, kill, dig, drill” flannel-wearing good old boys at Orion Sporting Goods, dancing at Native celebrations.While I don’t always agree with her, when I watch her work a room, it’s difficult to take seriously Mr. Trump’s prediction that Alaska voters won’t forgive her. The more relevant question seems to be whether Ms. Murkowski will forgive him. “I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me,” she said shortly after the Capitol riot.The idea that Mr. Trump could fly up to Alaska and take her down, as he has so many others, could actually win Ms. Murkowski votes. One thing he might discover in the attempt: He doesn’t have the first idea of the values of this state he has visited only during refueling stops on Air Force One — the closeness to the land, to blood, to the sound ice shards make on a pane of glass at 40 below. All this might play as curiosity or nostalgia in the Lower 48. But it’s real up here.We don’t need more greatness in Alaska — just someone who understands what we already have, and is courageous enough to defend it against those who do not.Brendan Jones (@BrendanIJones), a writer and commercial fisherman, is the author, most recently, of the novel “Whispering Alaska.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Lisa Murkowski Bets Big on the Center in Alaska

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      ANCHORAGE — Sitting in a darkened exhibition room at the Anchorage Museum on a recent Tuesday morning, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska conceded that she might lose her campaign for a fourth full term in Congress, where she is one of a tiny and dwindling group of Republicans still willing to buck her party.“I may be the last man standing. I may not be re-elected,” she said in an interview after an event here, just days after breaking with the G.O.P. to support confirming Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee and the first Black woman to serve there. “It may be that Alaskans say, ‘Nope, we want to go with an absolute, down-the-line, always, always, 100-percent, never-question, rubber-stamp Republican.’“And if they say that that’s the way that Alaska has gone — kind of the same direction that so many other parts of the country have gone — I have to accept that,” Ms. Murkowski continued. “But I’m going to give them the option.”In a year when control of Congress is at stake and the Republican Party is dominated by the reactionary right, Ms. Murkowski is attempting something almost unheard-of: running for re-election as a proud G.O.P. moderate willing to defy party orthodoxy.For Ms. Murkowski, 64, it amounts to a high-stakes bet that voters in the famously independent state of Alaska will reward a Republican centrist at a time of extreme partisanship.She has good reasons to hope they will. Though it leans conservative, Alaska is a fiercely individualistic state where the majority of voters do not align with either major political party. And under a new set of election rules engineered by her allies, Ms. Murkowski does not have to worry about a head-to-head contest with a more conservative opponent. Instead, she will compete in an Aug. 16 primary open to candidates of any political stripe, followed by a general election in which voters will rank the top four to emerge from the primary to determine a winner.Despite her penchant for defecting from the party line, Ms. Murkowski also has powerful help from the Republican establishment; Senator Mitch McConnell’s leadership political action committee announced last week that it had reserved $7.4 million worth of advertising in Alaska to support her candidacy.So she has embarked on a re-election campaign that is also an effort to salvage a version of the Republican Party that hardly exists anymore in Congress, as seasoned pragmatists retire or are chased out by right-wing hard-liners competing to take their places.“The easy thing would have been to just say, 20 years is good and honorable in the United States Senate. It’s time to, as I always say, it’s time to get my season ski pass at Alyeska and really get my money’s worth,” Ms. Murkowski said, referring to the nearby ski resort. “But there is a different sense of obligation that I am feeling now as a lawmaker.”Still, Ms. Murkowski, the daughter of a former Alaska senator and governor, faces a tough race. Her vote last year to convict former President Donald J. Trump at his impeachment trial on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol prompted Alaska’s Republican Party to censure her and join Mr. Trump in embracing a right-wing primary challenger, Kelly Tshibaka.Ms. Murkowski is the daughter of a former Alaska senator and governor.Ash Adams for The New York TimesA view of Anchorage, the biggest city in a famously independent state.Ash Adams for The New York TimesAnd while there is now no Democrat going up against Ms. Murkowski in the race, it is not clear whether she can attract enough support from liberal voters to offset the conservatives who have been alienated by her stance against Mr. Trump. Many liberals have been angered by Ms. Murkowski’s opposition to sweeping climate change policies, as well as her support in 2017 for the $1.5 trillion Republican tax law that also allowed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.So Ms. Murkowski has been reminding voters of her flair for pursuing bipartisan initiatives, such as the $1 trillion infrastructure law that is expected to send more than $1 billion to her state, and promoting her strong relationships with Democrats. At an Arctic policy event in the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center, she appeared with Senator Joe Manchin III, the centrist West Virginia Democrat, who was wearing an “I’m on Team Lisa” button and proclaimed, “I’m endorsing her 1,000 percent.”All of it is fodder for her staunchest opponents. Ms. Tshibaka, a Trump-endorsed former commissioner in the Alaska Department of Administration, has worked to paint Ms. Murkowski as a liberal and to rally the state’s conservative base against her. She is trying to capitalize on longstanding antipathy for the senator on the right, which was incensed when she voted in 2017 to preserve the Affordable Care Act and by her opposition in 2018 to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation.“It’s time for a change. We feel forgotten,” Ms. Tshibaka told supporters at the opening of her Anchorage campaign office this month. “We feel unheard, and we don’t feel like these votes and decisions represent us.”Standing atop a desk, she urged them to “rank the red,” meaning to place her as their top choice without ranking any other candidate on the ballot.“We feel unheard, and we don’t feel like these votes and decisions represent us,” said Kelly Tshibaka, Ms. Murkowski’s leading challenger.Ash Adams for The New York TimesMs. Tshibaka, whose campaign did not respond to requests for an interview, told the crowd of supporters how Ms. Murkowski’s father, Frank, named his daughter to finish out his term as senator once he became governor in 2002, deriding what she called the “Murkowski monarchy.”Supporters grabbed slices of pizza and picked up bumper stickers, as well as decals that showed Ms. Murkowski embracing President Biden.“Nothing surprises me at this point. I don’t understand why she makes the decisions she makes,” said April Orth, 56, who called Ms. Murkowski’s vote to confirm Judge Jackson “an injustice to the people of the United States of America.”Ms. Tshibaka emphasized her conservative credentials and support from Mr. Trump, regaling the crowd with stories about her visit to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., for a campaign event. (The February event cost her campaign $14,477.10 for facility rental and catering, according to her latest campaign filing.)Joaquita Martin, 55, a paralegal, called Mr. Trump’s support “an incredibly powerful endorsement” of Ms. Tshibaka, adding that “I identify as a conservative, and Murkowski can call herself Republican all day long, but if that’s the definition of Republican, I’m out. That’s not me.”Ms. Murkowski’s decision to seek another term did not come lightly. Ms. Murkowski famously lost her Republican primary election in 2010 to a Tea Party-backed candidate, then ran anyway as an independent and triumphed in a historic write-in campaign with a coalition of centrists and Alaska Natives.April Orth, 56, is a supporter of Ms. Tshibaka. “Nothing surprises me at this point,” she said of Ms. Murkowski. “I don’t understand why she makes the decisions she makes.”Ash Adams for The New York TimesDeventia Townsend, a registered Democrat, and his wife, Charlene. “She has so much courage,” Mr. Townsend said of the senator. “She votes from her heart.”Ash Adams for The New York TimesOf the seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Mr. Trump last year, Ms. Murkowski is the only one facing voters this year. She has not shied away from that distinction; she speaks openly of her disdain for Mr. Trump and his influence on her party. She has also supported Deb Haaland, Mr. Biden’s interior secretary and the first Native American to serve in the post, and boasted of her lead role in negotiating the infrastructure law.It has made for some unpleasant moments, she and her family say.“On one hand, had she chosen not to run, I would have been completely supportive because it’s just been like, ‘Damn girl, this has been a long haul,’” said Anne Gore, Ms. Murkowski’s cousin. “But on the other hand, you’re like, ‘Oh, sweet mother of Jesus, God on a bicycle — thank God you’re running’ because, you know, we can’t lose any more moderates.”While Ms. Murkowski has never secured more than 50 percent of the vote in a general election, this year she could stand to benefit from the new election rules, which advantage candidates with the broadest appeal in a state where most voters are unaffiliated.“I don’t think it changes their behavior, but it rewards behavior that is in line with the sentiment of all Alaskans, rather than the partisan few,” said Scott Kendall, a former legal counsel to Ms. Murkowski who remains involved with a super PAC supporting her re-election and championed the new rules.Mr. Kendall said his push for the statewide changes was independent from the senator’s campaign, arguing that his goal was “treating every Alaska voter the same and giving them the same amount of power.”There is little question that it has made for a friendlier landscape for Ms. Murkowski and appeals to the middle. At least one candidate, the libertarian Sean Thorne, jumped into the race because of the potential to prevail in a broad primary.For now, Ms. Murkowski is focusing on the basic needs of her state.Earlier this month, she stood, beaming, before about 1,200 local, tribal and community leaders who had flown across the state for a symposium explaining how Alaska stood to gain from the infrastructure law, which she singled out as perhaps her proudest accomplishment.“This is going to be an Alaska that is better cared for than ever before and an Alaska with a higher quality of life, whether you’re here in Anchorage or whether you’re in a remote village,” she declared. She mingled through the buzzing crowd, introducing herself as Lisa and embracing longtime friends.Ms. Murkowski’s campaign is focusing on the basic needs of her state and trumpeting the bipartisan infrastructure legislation that was passed last year.Ash Adams for The New York TimesTribal leaders talked about how the law would give them a chance to connect communities with broadband and ensure they had clean drinking water. A Kwethluk city employee waited to give the senator a handout describing a port project, while another village official asked for help with a broken washateria, first built in 1975, that had left them without running water since Christmas. And then there were the constituents who wanted a brief word about Ms. Murkowski’s work in Washington.Deventia Townsend, 62, a retired Army veteran and registered Democrat, had come to the forum with his wife, Charlene, to see if they could get help with some home repairs. But when he saw Ms. Murkowski, he stopped her to express his gratitude for her vote for Judge Jackson.“She has so much courage,” Mr. Townsend said of the senator. “She votes from her heart.”Later, at a pizza party at a local bar to benefit her campaign, Ms. Murkowski talked to supporters about her friendship with Mr. Manchin and long-gone titans of the Senate in both parties, name-dropping former Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and quoting former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska as she recalled a bygone era when camaraderie and common purpose tempered partisanship on Capitol Hill.Perhaps her own candidacy could prove there was still hope for that kind of politics.“You’ve got to demonstrate that there are other possibilities, that there is a different reality — and maybe it won’t work,” Ms. Murkowski said in the interview. “Maybe I am just completely politically naïve, and this ship has sailed. But I won’t know unless we — unless I — stay out there and give Alaskans the opportunity to weigh in.”Kitty Bennett More

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      Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump Out-Raised Primary Rivals

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      Despite their pariah status in their party, House Republicans who broke with the former president have raised more than their G.O.P. foes.WASHINGTON — All seven House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump and are seeking re-election have out-raised their primary opponents, many of whom have received Mr. Trump’s backing, according to campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission this week.In Wyoming, Representative Liz Cheney, who was all but exiled by her party for bluntly condemning Mr. Trump’s false election claims and has emerged as one of the lead lawmakers on the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, raked in $2 million during the last quarter, entering 2022 with nearly $5 million in cash on hand. Her opponent, Harriet Hageman, who has drawn the vociferous support of Mr. Trump and his family, raised $443,000 last quarter and has about $380,000 cash on hand.Representative Fred Upton, a centrist who has held his seat in southwest Michigan for more than three decades, brought in $726,000 and has about $1.5 million cash on hand, well ahead of the challenger Mr. Trump has endorsed, Steve Carra, a state representative who raised $134,000 last quarter and has $200,000 cash on hand.Joe Kent, a Trump-backed Army Special Forces veteran prolific on social media and conservative talk shows, appeared to come closer to matching the fund-raising totals of his opponent, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, but still trailed her in both quarterly hauls and cash on hand.The disclosures illustrate the foothold that establishment conservatives and well-funded political action committees still hold among the party’s donor class, despite Mr. Trump’s continuing grip on the Republican base. They also reflect how the former president’s endorsements, which he has dangled as threats over Republican lawmakers he deems insufficiently loyal to him, have yet to translate into significant donations for the candidates he backs.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Trump vs. DeSantis: Tensions between the ex-president and Florida governor show the challenge confronting the G.O.P. in 2022.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.By contrast, Mr. Trump’s political operation is doing far better than his party in raking in money, having raised more than $51 million in the second half of 2021 and entering 2022 with more than double the cash on hand of the Republican National Committee.“The massive fund-raising hauls of some of these incumbents reflects a lot of people’s support for the positions they took,” said Alex Conant, a veteran Republican political strategist. “There’s only a handful of them, but they have a huge donor pool to draw from. And Trump has always struggled to translate his political capital to others.”Even with their hulking war chests, the Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump last year for his role in inciting the Capitol riot are expected to face grueling primary battles after inflaming the wrath of conservative voters. Some may still opt to retire, joining three of their colleagues who also voted to impeach Mr. Trump and already said they would not run for re-election in 2022.Mr. Upton said in a statement on Wednesday that he saw his fund-raising numbers as evidence of a “hunger for restoring civility and solving pressing problems” that was “resonating with people across America,” but added that he was still deliberating over whether he would run for re-election.Some of the financial disparities reflect straggling primary fields that have yet to be narrowed or candidates who only decided recently to enter their races. In South Carolina, for example, Mr. Trump endorsed a primary challenger to Representative Tom Rice on Tuesday, elevating Russell Fry, a state representative, over Graham Allen, a conservative media personality who had raised the most money in a crowded primary. Mr. Rice’s latest disclosure showed him with five times as much cash on hand as Mr. Allen.“Congressman Tom Rice of South Carolina, the coward who abandoned his constituents by caving to Nancy Pelosi and the radical left, and who actually voted against me on impeachment hoax #2, must be thrown out of office ASAP,” Mr. Trump wrote in his endorsement.Mr. Rice shot back with a retort of his own: “I’m glad he’s chosen someone. All the pleading to Mar-a-Lago was getting a little embarrassing. I’m all about Trump’s policy. But absolute pledge of loyalty, to a man that is willing to sack the Capitol to keep his hold on power, is more than I can stomach.”For Trump-backed candidates, more help from the boldfaced names of the party’s right flank is likely on the way. On Tuesday evening, a day after campaigns were required to file their latest Federal Election Commission disclosures, Mr. Kent held a fund-raiser with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., at which couples that donated or raised $25,000 were invited to attend a private reception and take a picture with the former president.Mr. Kent has previously complained on Twitter that Ms. Herrera Beutler was “running on America Last PACs not grass roots donations,” referring to big-money political action committees that once dominated campaign fund-raising, rather than the small-dollar contributions that are a growing source of financing for Republican campaigns.But as Ms. Hageman’s fund-raising totals illustrate, Mr. Trump’s backing alone does not guarantee an immediate financial windfall. Mr. Trump has targeted Ms. Cheney as one of his most high-profile detractors in Congress, hammering away at her for months and vowing to depose her. Last month, his son, Donald Trump Jr., joined an elite fund-raiser for Ms. Hageman hosted by tech billionaire Peter Thiel at his Miami compound. The donations raised there were not reflected on the report her campaign submitted this week.Ms. Hageman has chalked up Ms. Cheney’s fund-raising prowess to support from Democrats and out-of-state Republicans. A spokesman for Ms. Hageman’s campaign said she had raised more than half of her funds from within Wyoming.Establishment Republicans have rallied to Ms. Cheney’s side. Former President George W. Bush gave her the maximum donation of $5,800, while Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, and former Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, have each helped raise money for her.Mr. Bush also gave to Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted to convict Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial and is also facing a Trump-backed primary challenger. Ms. Murkowski out-raised that challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, raising $1.2 million last quarter, while Ms. Tshibaka raised about $600,000.“If you’d seen 100 Republicans voting to impeach Trump, the donor pool would have been more diluted,” Mr. Conant said. “They’re in a unique position to raise a lot of money.”Rachel Shorey More