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    Talk About Abortion, Don’t Talk About Trump: Governors Give Biden Advice

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    At an annual gathering in Arizona, Democratic governors offered a series of explanations for the president’s political struggles and suggested ideas for selling voters on his re-election.America’s Democratic governors brag about booming local economies, preside over ribbon-cuttings of projects paid for with new federal legislation and have successfully framed themselves as defenders of abortion rights and democracy.Almost all of them are far more popular in their home states than the Democratic president they hope to re-elect next year.While President Biden is mired in the political doldrums of low approval ratings and a national economy that voters are sour on, Democratic governors are riding high, having won re-election in red-state Kentucky last month and holding office in five of the seven most important presidential battleground states.The governors, like nearly all prominent Democrats, are publicly projecting confidence: In interviews and conversations with eight governors at their annual winter gathering at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix over the weekend, they expressed on-the-record optimism that Mr. Biden would win re-election.But also like many Democrats, some privately acknowledged fears that former President Donald J. Trump could win a rematch with Mr. Biden. They also said that Mr. Biden, at 81 years old, might not compare well with a younger Republican like Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida or even former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.The governors offered a series of explanations for Mr. Biden’s political struggles and supplied free advice. Here are six ways they believe he can raise his standing ahead of next year’s election.Talk more about abortion.Mr. Biden barely says the word abortion in his public statements, a fact that frustrates fellow governors hoping he can, as many of them have, use anger over the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade to improve his political fortunes.“We should talk about all the threats to women’s health care, including abortion, and use that word specifically,” said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. “We should be talking about it like that because Americans are awake. They are angry that this right could be stripped away and we are the only ones fighting for it.”On abortion politics, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey acknowledged that “it’s widely known that this is probably an uncomfortable reality for him,” given that Mr. Biden, a practicing Catholic, once voted in the Senate to let states overturn Roe v. Wade and his stance on abortion rights has evolved over the years.Mr. Murphy said Mr. Biden must be forthright about discussing the likelihood that Republicans would aim to enact new abortion restrictions if they win control of the federal government in 2024 and emphasizing the Democratic position that decisions about abortion should be left to women and their doctors.“That has to be laid out in a much more crystal-clear, explicit, affirmative way,” he said.Stop talking about Trump.The governors broadly agreed that Mr. Trump would be the Republican nominee. They don’t love Mr. Biden’s recent turn to focus more attention on his predecessor.“You’ve got to run for something and not against someone,” said Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky. That is easy for Mr. Beshear to say — he is among the nation’s most popular governors and just won re-election in a deep-red state.Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas urged the president to stop talking about Mr. Trump altogether. Be positive, she said, and let others carry the fight to Mr. Trump.“If I were in Biden’s shoes, I would not talk about Trump,” she said. “I would let other people talk about Trump.”Appeal to moderate Republicans and independents.Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota also said Mr. Biden needed to adopt some of Mr. Trump’s penchant for bragging.“He’s been modest for so long, to watch him do it now feels a little uncomfortable,” Mr. Walz said.Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina said his constituents were hoping Republicans would nominate someone other than Mr. Trump.Mr. Murphy said hopefully that Republicans supporting someone else in their primary might stay home or wind up voting for Mr. Biden next year.“What if Trump is the nominee? What’s the behavior pattern among the Haley, DeSantis and Chris Christie supporters? Where do they go?” Mr. Murphy said. “I find it hard to believe that a majority of them are going to Trump.”Tell people what Biden’s done.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, fresh off a prime-time Fox News debate against Mr. DeSantis that seemed meant in part to elevate the ambitious Mr. Newsom to the role of Mr. Biden’s leading defender, lamented “the gap between performance and perception.”He was one of several governors who said their constituents felt good about their lives but were pessimistic about the state of the country.“People feel pretty good about their states, feel pretty good about their communities, even their own lived lives,” Mr. Newsom said. “You ask, ‘How are you doing?’ They say, ‘We’re doing great, but this country’s going to hell.’”Mr. Newsom said Mr. Biden’s biggest problem was that he had not been able to communicate to voters that he is responsible for improvements in their lives.“People just don’t know the record,” he said. “They don’t hear it. They never see it.”In North Carolina, which last week became the 40th state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Cooper said people who are newly eligible for health care were not likely to credit Mr. Biden or White House policies.“The people who are getting it don’t really associate it with anybody other than finally being able to get health care for themselves,” he said.Focus more attention on legislative achievements.The governors all seemed to agree that they would like to see Mr. Biden spend more time cutting ribbons and attending groundbreakings for new projects paid for by infrastructure, climate and semiconductor funding he signed into law.“I would be doing those morning, noon and night,” Mr. Murphy said.Ms. Kelly of Kansas, who won her red state twice, said Mr. Biden should announce the opening of new projects and factories because she said it would focus attention away from his age.“I would spend a lot of time doing those just because they’re relatively easy and they are energizing,” she said.And Mr. Walz, whom his fellow governors voted the new chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said Mr. Biden’s challenge would be explaining to people the future benefits of investments being made now.“The problem is going to be, it’s going to take us 20 years to build all this infrastructure out,” Mr. Walz said. “Whether they see it within the next 11 months or not, that’s what we need to tell the story.”Find some Democrats with enthusiasm.No governor at the Phoenix gathering expressed more desire to give Mr. Biden another term in the White House than Mr. Newsom, who used a 40-minute chat with reporters to take a victory lap from his debate with Mr. DeSantis, a ratings bonanza for the Fox News host Sean Hannity that doubled as the largest audience of the California governor’s political career.Mr. Newsom, who since the middle of last year has evolved from a friendly critic of Mr. Biden’s political messaging to one of his most enthusiastic supporters, said his fellow governors needed to perform like old-school politicians who could deliver a constituency for an ally through force of will by activating supporters to follow political commands.“We, the Democratic Party, need to get out there on behalf of the leader of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, and make the case and do it with pride,” Mr. Newsom said. “We’ve got to wind this thing up.”The task may be difficult. Mr. Cooper described “a general malaise and frustration” that has Americans blaming Mr. Biden for forces often beyond his control.But Mr. Newsom said that if others were wary of carrying the torch for Mr. Biden in the next year, he was not afraid to do so all by himself.“If no one’s showing up doing stuff, I’m going to show up,” he said. “I can’t take it. I can’t take the alternative. I can’t even conceive it.” More

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      Democrats, Feeling New Strength, Plan to Go on Offense on Voting Rights

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      After retaining most of the governor’s offices they hold and capturing the legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats are putting forward a long list of proposals to expand voting access.NEW ORLEANS — For the last two years, Democrats in battleground states have played defense against Republican efforts to curtail voting access and amplify doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections.Now it is Democrats, who retained all but one of the governor’s offices they hold and won control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, who are ready to go on offense in 2023. They are putting forward a long list of proposals that include creating automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote before they turn 18, returning the franchise to felons released from prison and criminalizing election misinformation.Since 2020, Republicans inspired by former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies sought to make voting more difficult for anyone not casting a ballot in person on Election Day. But in the midterm elections, voters across the country rejected the most prominent Republican candidates who embraced false claims about American elections and promised to bend the rules to their party’s advantage.Democrats who won re-election or will soon take office have interpreted their victories as a mandate to make voting easier and more accessible.“I’ve asked them to think big,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said of his directions to fellow Democrats on voting issues now that his party controls both chambers of the state’s Legislature. Republicans will maintain unified control next year over state governments in Texas, Ohio, Florida and Georgia. In Texas and Ohio, along with other places, Republicans are weighing additional restrictions on voting when they convene in the new year.Democratic governors in Arizona and Wisconsin will face Republican-run legislatures that are broadly hostile to expanding voting access, while Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor-elect of Pennsylvania, is likely to eventually preside over one chamber with a G.O.P. majority and one with a narrow Democratic majority.And in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court is weighing a case that could give state legislatures vastly expanded power over election laws — a decision with enormous implications for the power of state lawmakers to draw congressional maps and set rules for federal elections.Democrats have widely interpreted that case — brought by Republicans in North Carolina — as dangerous to democracy because of the prospect of aggressive G.O.P. gerrymandering and the potential for state legislators to determine the outcome of elections. But it would also allow Democrats to write themselves into permanent power in states where they control the levers of elections.The Supreme Court’s deliberation comes as many Democrats are becoming increasingly vocal about pushing the party to be more aggressive in expanding voting access — especially after the Senate this year failed to advance a broad voting rights package.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      In Minnesota, a G.O.P. Lawmaker’s Death Brings Home the Reality of Covid

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Minnesota, a G.O.P. Lawmaker’s Death Brings Home the Reality of CovidMinnesota Republicans celebrated election victories with a gala party. A state senator’s death from Covid-19 underlined the consequences of the G.O.P.’s rejection of health experts’ guidance.Dana Relph’s father, State Senator Jerry Relph of Minnesota, died from Covid-19 after attending a celebratory dinner with other Republicans following Election Day. Credit…Caroline Yang for The New York TimesJan. 18, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETRepublicans in the Minnesota State Senate were feeling jubilant after the November election. They had held onto a slim majority following an onslaught by Democrats trying to win control. Now, it was time to party.More than 100 senators, their spouses and their staff members gathered for a celebratory dinner at a catering hall outside the Twin Cities on Nov. 5, two days after Election Day. Masks were offered to guests on arrival, but there was little mask wearing over hours of dining and drinking, at a moment when a long-predicted surge in coronavirus infections was gripping the state.At least four senators in attendance tested positive for Covid-19 in the days that followed. One was the Republican majority leader, Paul Gazelka, the state’s most outspoken opponent of mask mandates and shutdown orders during the pandemic. He compared his symptoms to a “moderate flu” and recovered. So did two other senators who had tested positive after the dinner.“Our future cannot be prolonged isolation, face coverings and limited activities,” Mr. Gazelka said defiantly in announcing his positive test.The fourth was Senator Jerry Relph, a Vietnam veteran and grandfather from St. Cloud, Minn. Struggling to breathe after testing positive for the coronavirus, he was admitted to a hospital in mid-November. He died on Dec. 18, at age 76.His daughter Dana Relph, who watched her father fight the disease as well as the cruel isolation it forces on patients and families, is still furious at Republican leaders for holding the dinner and the refusal of Mr. Gazelka to take responsibility.Mr. Relph died on Dec. 18 after being admitted to a hospital in mid-November.Credit…Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune, via Associated Press“Why are you throwing a party with 100-plus people in the middle of a pandemic?” said Ms. Relph, 44, who was not allowed to visit her father until the day he died. “Why would you choose to do that when we know people are going to be eating and drinking and taking their masks off, where their inhibitions will be lowered? Why would you even consider that responsible behavior?”Mr. Gazelka declined an interview request, and a spokeswoman said he would not respond to Ms. Relph “out of respect for privacy requested from the family.”Ten months into the coronavirus crisis, the ongoing Republican resistance to mask wearing and social distancing is a striking political phenomenon: G.O.P. officials have abetted the spread of the virus to friends and colleagues, even fatally so, because they don’t take the science seriously.Four Democratic members of Congress tested positive this month after being in lockdown at the Capitol on Jan. 6 with Republicans who refused to wear masks. Luke Letlow, just elected to Congress as a freshman Republican from Louisiana, died of Covid-19 in December, days before he was to be sworn in. According to the election data site Ballotpedia, six state lawmakers have died from Covid-19, including the speaker of the New Hampshire State House and a Virginia state senator who succumbed on New Year’s Day. All six were Republicans.G.O.P. officials and voters have amplified President Trump’s misinformation about risk factors. After two packed campaign rallies in Minnesota for the president over the summer, defying state orders and federal guidelines, coronavirus cases spiked in the surrounding counties.And while Republicans insist that their freedom was at issue in refusing to wear masks or enforce mandates, such events and the death of Mr. Relph raise urgent questions as to where individual “freedom” ends and where responsibility to others begins in a pandemic during which breathing shared air can be fatal.“It’s ironic that Senator Gazelka, as majority leader, was always the person most outspoken in opposing the governor’s emergency order and would state to us over and over again that Minnesotans would do the responsible thing,” said Richard Cohen, a Democrat who retired from the Legislature last month. “And now it is alleged that because of a caucus event, where apparently many people were not wearing masks, a caucus member became ill and then passed away.”An owner of the catering hall, John Schiltz, said that his servers had worn masks and gloves throughout that evening, and that none had later tested positive. Although masks were offered to guests, state guidelines at the time allowed them to be removed at tables.Mr. Schiltz said the dinner was the only event any group had booked at his venue in November before he had to close on Nov. 20. As of that date, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, restricted bars and restaurants to takeout and delivery service only amid a surge in virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.Paul Gazelka, the leader of the Republican majority in the Minnesota State Senate, spoke outside the State Capitol in October.Credit…Leila Navidi/Star Tribune, via Associated PressPressed about the dinner in a radio interview in late November, Mr. Gazelka, 61, who is reported to be considering a run for governor, said he had no regrets.The Coronavirus Outbreak More