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    Florida Sex Scandal Shakes Moms for Liberty, as Group’s Influence Wanes

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    The conservative group led the charge on the Covid-era education battles. But scandals and losses are threatening its power.Moms for Liberty, a national right-wing advocacy group, was born in Florida as a response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates. But it quickly became just as well known for pushing policies branded as anti-L.G.B.T.Q. by opponents.So when one of its founders, Bridget Ziegler, recently told the police that she and her husband, who is under criminal investigation for sexual assault, had a consensual sexual encounter with another woman, the perceived disconnect between her public stances and private life fueled intense pressure for her to resign from the Sarasota County School Board.“Most of our community could not care less what you do in the privacy of your own home, but your hypocrisy takes center stage,” said Sally Sells, a Sarasota resident and the mother of a fifth-grader, told Ms. Ziegler during a tense school board meeting this week. Ms. Ziegler, whose husband has denied wrongdoing, said little and did not resign.Ms. Sells was one of dozens of speakers who criticized Ms. Ziegler — and Moms for Liberty — at the meeting, an outcry that underscored the group’s prominence in the most contentious debates of the pandemic era.Perhaps no group gained so much influence so quickly, transforming education issues from a sleepy political backwater to a rallying cry for Republican politicians. The organization quickly became a conservative powerhouse, a coveted endorsement and a mandatory stop on the G.O.P. presidential primary campaign trail.Yet, as Moms for Liberty reels from the scandal surrounding the Zieglers, the group’s power seems to be fading. Candidates endorsed by the group lost a series of key school board races in 2023. The losses have prompted questions about the future of education issues as an animating force in Republican politics.Donald J. Trump, the dominant front-runner for the party’s nomination, makes only passing reference in his stump speeches to preserving “parental rights” — the catchphrase of the group’s cause. Issues like school curriculums, transgender students’ rights and teaching about race were far less prominent in the three Republican primary debates than abortion rights, foreign policy and the economy. And the most prominent champion of conservative views on education — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — has yet to unite conservatives behind his struggling presidential bid.John Fredericks, a Trump ally in Virginia, said the causes that Moms for Liberty became most known for supporting — policies banning books it deemed pornographic, curtailing the teaching of L.G.B.T.Q. issues and policing how race is taught in schools — had fallen far from many voters’ top concerns.“You closed schools, and people were upset about that. Schools are open now,” he said. “The Moms for Liberty really have to aim their fire on math and science and reading, versus focusing on critical race theory and drag queen story hours.”He added: “It’s nonsense, all of it.”The two other founders of Moms for Liberty, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, have distanced themselves from Ms. Ziegler, saying she has not been an officer in the national organization since early 2021. Ms. Ziegler did not respond to a request for comment.In a statement, Ms. Descovich and Ms. Justice dismissed criticism that the group was hypocritical. They argue that it is not opposed to racial justice or L.G.B.T.Q. rights, but that it wants to restore control to parents over their children’s education.“To our opponents who have spewed hateful vitriol over the last several days: We reject your attacks,” Ms. Descovich and Ms. Justice said. “We are laser-focused on fundamental parental rights, and that mission is and always will be bigger than one person.”Ms. Justice declined to answer questions about the continued influence of their organization or their electoral losses.Tina Descovich, left, and Tiffany Justice, the two other founders of Moms for Liberty, distanced themselves from Ms. Ziegler.Matt Rourke/Associated PressNearly 60 percent of the 198 school board candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty in contested races across 10 states were defeated in 2023, according to an analysis by the website Ballotpedia, which tracks elections.The organization claims to operate 300 chapters in 48 states and to have about 130,000 members.Jon Valant, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank, found in a recent study that the group had an outsize presence in battleground and liberal counties. Yet in those areas, the policies championed by Moms For Liberty are broadly unpopular.“The politics have flipped on the Moms for Liberty, and they’re turning more people to vote against them than for them,” Mr. Valant said.In November, the group announced that it had removed the chairwomen of two Kentucky chapters after they had posed in photos with members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence. That came several months after a chapter of Moms for Liberty in Indiana quoted Adolf Hitler in its inaugural newsletter. The year before, Ms. Ziegler publicly denied links to the Proud Boys after she had posed for a photo with a member of the group at her election night victory party.The episodes have transformed the group’s image and alienated it from the voters it once claimed to represent. The group was at one time particularly strong in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, where education issues helped spur Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, to victory in the 2021 governor’s race. (This year, Mr. Youngkin failed in his high-profile attempt at a Republican takeover of the Virginia Statehouse.)Anne Pogue Donohue, who ran for a school board seat in Loudoun County, Va., against a candidate endorsed by the group, said she saw a disconnect between the cause of Moms for Liberty and the current concerns of voters.On social media, Ms. Donohue, a former government lawyer and mother of two young children, faced a barrage of personal insults, death threats and accusations that she was trying to “groom” children to become transgender, she said. But during her in-person interactions with voters, she added, a vast majority of parents seemed more concerned with practical issues like math and reading scores, support for special education and expanding vocational and technical programs.Ms. Donohue won her seat by nearly seven percentage points.“There is a pushback now,” she said. “Moms for Liberty focuses heavily on culture-war-type issues, and I think most voters see that, to the extent that we have problems in our educational system that we have to fix, the focus on culture-war issues isn’t doing that.”One place where Moms for Liberty maintains a stronger hold is the state where the group has had perhaps the most influence: Florida.Since forming in 2020, the group has aligned itself with Mr. DeSantis, backing his parental-rights-in-education law that critics nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay.” The law prohibits classroom instruction on L.G.B.T.Q. topics.Mr. DeSantis then campaigned for conservative candidates for local school boards, turning nonpartisan races into ones heavily influenced by politics. Several school boards with newly conservative majorities ousted their superintendents.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has been aligned with Moms for Liberty, with the group backing his controversial parental-rights-in-education law.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn Brevard County, the school board is now entirely conservative except for Jennifer Jenkins, whom Mr. DeSantis has already listed as someone he would like to help defeat in 2024.Ms. Jenkins, an outspoken Moms for Liberty critic who wrested Ms. Descovich’s school board seat from her in 2020, said the organization, while small, had remained a vocal fixture in school board meetings, with about 10 regulars who sometimes bring along people from Indian River and other nearby counties.“Their members are definitely more extreme than they ever were before,” said Ms. Jenkins, who has been a frequent target of the group. They have picketed outside her house, sent her threatening mail and, she said, taken photos of her in the grocery store as recently as a couple of weeks ago.On Tuesday, some Moms for Liberty members from Brevard and Indian River Counties attended a Brevard County School Board meeting to protest books that they say should be pulled from schools. Most of the books they named had already been formally challenged.Still, one by one, group members stood behind the lectern and read explicit scenes from the books until the board’s chairwoman — whom Moms for Liberty and Mr. DeSantis endorsed last year — warned them to stop.It was what the speakers wanted: Under a Florida law enacted this year, if a school board denies a parent the right to read passages deemed “pornographic,” then the school district “shall discontinue the use of the material.” In other words, cutting off the reading would effectively result in pulling the book from schools, board members said.“I highly encourage all of you to look at this statute,” Julie Bywater, a member of the Brevard County chapter of Moms for Liberty, told the school board.Such tactics have become typical for Moms for Liberty members. In response, opponents have started showing up to school board meetings in force, trying to counter the group’s message — including in Sarasota, where Ms. Ziegler’s critics turned out to try to push her out.The school board, which includes several conservatives who have aligned with Ms. Ziegler before, voted 4 to 1 on Tuesday for a nonbinding resolution urging her to resign; Ms. Ziegler was the only one on the board to vote against it. More

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

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

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

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

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      Election Day Guide: Governor Races, Abortion Access and More

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

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      Virginia Republicans Look to Neutralize Abortion as an Election Issue

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      The state’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, has a strategy to win the state. If it halts Democrats’ momentum on the issue, it could be a model for the party in 2024.Abortion has been a losing issue at the polls for Republicans across the country since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But now in Virginia, which holds elections in early November, the party thinks it has hit upon a formula to stop the electoral drubbings.Legislative races across the state will offer a decisive test of a strategy led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has united Republicans behind a high-profile campaign in support of a ban on abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. The party calls it a “common sense” position, in contrast to Democrats, who it says “support no limits.”The strategy is meant to defuse Republicans’ image as abortion extremists, which led to losses in last year’s midterms and threatens further defeats next month in an Ohio referendum and the Kentucky governor’s race.The approach is similar to one being pursued by Republican Senate candidates in battleground states like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where the party has been open to some exceptions, a stance that research shows is more popular than an outright ban.Virginia Republicans aren’t looking to win over abortion-rights supporters so much as they want to neutralize the party’s disadvantage with swing voters. The hope is that these voters will prioritize a competing set of issues such as crime and the economy, on which Republicans have an advantage in some polls.All 140 seats in the state’s General Assembly are on the ballot this fall, with Republicans looking to take full control. Democrats have made the threat to abortion rights their No. 1 issue, pouring money into ads and looking to motivate voters in an off-year election with President Biden’s unpopularity dimming enthusiasm.If Republicans take majorities in both legislative chambers under Mr. Youngkin, a governor with national ambitions, it would clear the way for Virginia to become the last Southern state to sharply restrict abortions.Since mid-October, Mr. Youngkin’s political action committee has run a $1.4 million ad campaign taking the offensive on the issue. Accusing Democrats of “disinformation,” it promotes the 15-week limit with exceptions as “reasonable” and “common sense.”The Younkin ad, targeted at swing districts and echoed by the ads of individual Republicans running, shatters the formula of most G.O.P. candidates in battleground states after the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, who dodged abortion in midterm races and often lost.“We’re just simply not going to repeat 2022,” said Zack Roday, the coordinated campaigns director for Mr. Youngkin’s political group.Kaitlin Makuski, the political director of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a national anti-abortion group with close ties to Mr. Youngkin, said that if Virginia Republicans prevailed this year, it would be a clear signal to candidates in 2024 that leaning into a 15-week ban can be successful.“He and his team looked back at what they saw in 2022 and realized we can’t continue burying our head in the sand,” she said of the governor. “We need to move forward. This is a great template to follow.”Existing Virginia laws, which Democrats want to keep in place, allow abortions with no restrictions through the second trimester, about 26 weeks, and thereafter if three doctors certify that a pregnancy would “irremediably impair” the mother’s health.“Virginia has in place a law that parallels Roe v. Wade, that allows women to have freedom of choice to make their own health decisions,” said Senator Mamie Locke, chairwoman of the Virginia Senate Democratic caucus. “Why do you have to change the law to this 15-week ban? What’s ‘reasonable’ about that?”Democrats point to other Republican-led states that have banned abortion in almost all circumstances and say a 15-week limit is a ruse that will give way to stricter limits if Republicans gain full control of government. Last year, Mr. Youngkin told conservative activists that he would “happily and gleefully” sign any bill to “protect life.” The governor has insisted he is only interested in a 15-week limit.A 15-week ban, just past the first trimester of pregnancy, polls well in some surveys. A Gallup poll this year found that 69 percent of U.S. adults support abortion in the first trimester, but support falls to just 37 percent in the second trimester.In a Washington Post-Schar School poll this month, Virginia voters were equally divided on the 15-week ban with exceptions: 46 percent supported such limits and 47 percent opposed them.But in an illustration of how abortion polling can yield conflicting results, 51 percent of voters in the poll said they trusted Democrats to do a better job handling abortion vs. 34 percent who trust Republicans.Even if a 15-week ban doesn’t convert many voters for whom abortion rights are a top issue — and most of those who say so are Democrats — the G.O.P. bet is that they can neutralize the issue with independent voters. In the Washington Post poll, independents said they trusted Democrats more on abortion, but Republicans more than Democrats on crime and the economy.“Youngkin thinks the Republicans have an advantage on a set of issues people care about. They don’t on abortion, so they have to reduce the level of threat so people don’t vote on that issue,” said Bob Holsworth, the founding director of the School of Government at Virginia Commonwealth University. “He wants them to vote on these other issues where he thinks he’s in better shape.”Danny Diggs, a Republican running for State Senate in a crucial district around Newport News, enlisted his adult daughter Michelle to record an ad about his support for a 15-week limit. “Take it from me,” she says in the ad, her father “will not cater to the extremes.”Danny Diggs during a debate in September in Newport News, N.H. He is supporting a 15-week ban on abortions, with exceptions.Kendall Warner/The Virginian-PilotOver the weekend, as Mr. Diggs, a retired sheriff, greeted voters at a seafood festival in Poquoson, a town on Chesapeake Bay, he said he would vote against any bill limiting abortion earlier than 15 weeks. “I’m good with the 15 weeks, that’s what I’ve told people,” he said.Charles Salas, 53, who is retired from the Army, greeted Mr. Diggs as he stood beside a Republican Party tent and liked what the candidate had to say. On abortion, he sounded more conservative than Mr. Youngkin’s proposed 15-week cutoff. “I haven’t decided how early but I think it should be early enough,” he said. “I don’t believe it should be on demand and I shouldn’t have to pay for it,” he said.Ann Holland, a 58-year-old school district employee, said she was undecided in the election, but on the abortion issue, she wanted women to have broad leeway to make a choice. “I was in my third month and didn’t know,” she said with a laugh. “No morning sickness, no nothing.”Mr. Diggs said that in knocking on the doors of thousands of Republicans and independent voters, the top issues he heard about were public safety and education. Abortion did not often come up. “I don’t think it’s as important as the Democrats hope that it is,” he said. More

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      Conservative Election Activists Use Virginia as a Dry Run for 2024

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      Inspired in part by Donald Trump’s baseless rigged-election claims, the activists are trying to recruit supporters to serve as poll watchers and election workers in the state’s legislative contests.In 2021, after Republican victories in Virginia, conservative activists were so proud of their work training poll watchers, recruiting election workers and making other attempts to subtly influence the voting system that they wrote a memo called “The Virginia Model.” The memo detailed ways that other states could follow Virginia’s lead in protecting so-called election integrity.Now these activists are turning their attention back to Virginia, which is a month away from tossup elections that will decide control of the state’s closely divided legislature and offer both national parties clear evidence of their electoral strengths and weaknesses heading into 2024.Every Tuesday night, Virginia Fair Elections, the group that drafted “The Virginia Model,” holds trainings for poll watchers aligned with its mission and encourages conservative activists to register to work at the polls. The organization also hosts trainings for new members of local election boards.The trainings are permeated by an undercurrent of mistrust in the electoral system: Poll watchers are encouraged to arrive early and insist on being as close as legally possible to election workers, voters and ballot machines; to make sure to inspect those machines; and to look for any evidence of potential fraud.“All of us have eyes on,” Clara Belle Wheeler, a former member of the Virginia State Board of Elections who now leads the trainings, said at the end of an hourlong training session for poll watchers last Tuesday, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. “I’m watching.”The group, like many others across the country, is taking its cues from former President Donald J. Trump, who has continued to make baseless claims that American elections are rigged. Behind the scenes and at public events, conservative activists who share his beliefs have been working to overhaul voting laws and recruit activists and supporters to serve as poll watchers and election workers.In numerous counties and localities across Virginia, conservative activists have been appointed to local election boards, the bodies that are in charge of determining early voting hours and locations, leading some to move early polling locations or reduce voting access on the weekends. The state also withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, an interstate clearinghouse for voter data that helps ensure secure elections, but became a flashpoint on the right based on a widely debunked conspiracy theory.Democrats and voting rights groups say these moves could have significant consequences — that seemingly small changes and pressures on the system could add up and potentially affect the outcome of an election. They worry that overly aggressive poll watchers could intimidate voters, or that conspiracy-minded Trump supporters who insert themselves in the election process could interfere with the results.“This is sort of like a death by 1,000 cuts, and there’s no necessarily one thing that you can point to and say, ‘That’s what’s going to swing the election,’” said Aaron Mukerjee, the voter protection director for the Virginia Democratic Party. “Taken together, the goal is to disenfranchise enough voters that they can win the election.”It is often difficult to determine whether changes to election laws or other attempts to intervene in the voting process ultimately affect outcomes. Turnout alone does not determine how many voters may have been affected. In the Trump era, changes in voting patterns have scrambled the longtime presumption that higher turnout helps Democrats and lower turnout aids Republicans.And there is no evidence that Republican election activists aided victories in Virginia in 2021, nor that their policies and activities necessarily benefit either party. During that election, poll watchers at 13 voting sites were observed being disruptive, according to reports filed by elections workers.In the run-up to the 2021 election, activists trained by Virginia Fair Elections collected claims of malfeasance and filed a lawsuit challenging at least 390 ballot applications that were missing Social Security numbers. The suit was dismissed, but conservative news outlets focused on the complaint and began to argue that the coming vote in Virginia would be “stolen,” as many activists believed had happened in 2020. (Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, ended up winning, and his party made gains in the legislature.)Nonetheless, Republican-aligned groups like Virginia Fair Elections continue to try to tighten voting laws.Virginia Fair Elections is managed by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that was formed in 1996 with moderate fund-raising in the low six figures annually. But as the think tank shifted its focus to so-called election integrity efforts after the last presidential contest, it raised over $508,000 in 2021, according to data kept by ProPublica.That money included a $125,000 grant earmarked for the “Virginia Fair Elections project” from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of groups that have proliferated myths about voter fraud. Its board includes Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer who played a key role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.In 2021, the “Virginia Model” executed by Virginia Fair Elections became the blueprint for the Election Integrity Network, a national coalition guided by Ms. Mitchell that quickly became one of the most influential organizations seeking to change voting laws and recruit local activists.Last year, Virginia Fair Elections hosted a two-day gathering conceptualized by Ms. Mitchell. The group boasted of having trained 4,500 poll watchers and election officials, and of covering 85 percent of polling locations in Virginia on Election Day in 2021 and during the 45 days of early voting.Cleta Mitchell has guided the Election Integrity Network, one of the most influential organizations seeking to change voting laws and recruit activists to serve as poll watchers and election workers.Matt Rourke/Associated PressIn August, Virginia Fair Elections held a similar meeting at a Sheraton hotel outside Richmond. The daylong event featured 12 discussions, including a keynote speech from Mollie Hemingway, a well-known conservative columnist. A panel discussion held just after lunch highlighted one front in which the network has made significant gains: county election boards and registrars, who serve as the chief election officials in Virginia localities.“The most important thing we do, however, is the hiring, and sometimes the firing, of the general registrar, and I think just as critical, if not more so, is the appointment, the training and potentially the dismissal of election officers,” John Ambrose, a Republican who serves as the vice chair of the electoral board of Richmond, told the audience to loud applause, according to an audio recording of the panel obtained by Documented, a liberal investigative group, and shared with The Times.Ms. Wheeler and the president of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy did not respond to text messages seeking comment. Virginia Fair Elections did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Under a peculiarity of Virginia law, the party of the most recently elected governor holds the advantage in the partisan makeup of local election boards. After Mr. Youngkin won the governor’s office in 2021, boards across the state flipped to 2-to-1 Republican control from 2-to-1 Democratic control.Groups like Virginia Fair Elections worked to place people they had trained on local election boards across the state, which meant that in many places, conservative priorities became policy.At least 10 counties in Virginia, including at least four with predominantly Black populations, have canceled Sunday voting for the coming elections. Some of the 10 counties, among them Richmond, Spotsylvania, Virginia Beach and Chesterfield, contain major population centers.Sundays are popular voting days for Black communities, where “Souls to the Polls” events led by churches have a long history of fostering community and helping protect against intimidation at the polls.“Democracy is coming under attack, whether it’s the Republican-led electoral boards throughout different localities who are cutting down on Sunday voting, or even closing early-vote locations that were in predominately Black communities,” said Joshua Cole, a pastor and a Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates in the Fredericksburg area. He pointed to the Mattaponi Baptist Association of Virginia, a local association of Black churches, several of which are no longer able to hold Souls to the Polls events.“Don’t take that right away from Christians, especially African American Christians, when it’s been a staple in the community for years,” he said.Joshua Cole, a Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates, has been critical of the push for counties to cancel Sunday voting, which are traditionally popular voting days for Black communities. Ryan M. Kelly/Associated PressSome local election officials acknowledged that the shift in partisan control was the main cause for the changes.“The reason Sunday voting is no longer an option for the City of Richmond is because the political representation from our electoral board has changed from Democratic to Republican since 2021,” said Katherin Cardozo-Robledo, the executive assistant to the electoral board in Richmond, a city whose population of about 230,000 is roughly 45 percent Black.Others, however, said there simply wasn’t enough demand.“We have elections every November in Virginia, so we did not continue it last year, either,” said Mary Lynn A. Pinkerman, who oversees elections in Chesapeake, which is roughly 30 percent Black. “Our city has approximately 176,000 voters, and when we tried it after being told there would be busloads coming, we only had 170 voters come that day. We do not have enough of a demand for it in our city.”With just a month left before polls close in Virginia, both parties are focused on the legislative elections, but the conservative activists have larger goals in mind.“What we’re doing is so critical,” Sheryl Stanworth, an attendee at the Tuesday training, said during the gathering. “We’ve got a presidential election to be looking forward to.” More

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      What We Can Do to Make the House Less Dysfunctional

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      The disarray engulfing the House of Representatives has been unprecedented, yet somehow it has also felt inevitable. No sitting speaker has ever been removed before, but the process that brought about Kevin McCarthy’s overthrow was the culmination of several related trends that have amounted to a repudiation of coalition building in American politics.That process has been overdetermined in an era of partisan polarization and geographic sorting (Americans increasingly live in communities full of like-minded partisans), but that doesn’t mean we are powerless against it. The rules of our politics should be designed to counteract our worst vices, not to reinforce them. That means we particularly need to rethink party primaries — which give our politicians all the wrong incentives.The upheaval in the House is rooted in the dynamics of an era of deadlock. American politics isn’t just polarized but nearly tied, and it has been that way for much of the past 30 years. The average House majority since 1995 has been just over 30 seats. The average over the previous century was more than 80 seats. The current Congress and the previous one, with their incredibly slim House majorities (first Democratic and then Republican), are rare in historical perspective.Such narrow majorities empower the fringes of our politics. Only eight Republican members voted to remove their speaker, but when the majority’s margin is so small (and the minority party can be relied on to play its lock-step part), a tiny tail can wag the dog. Razor-thin majorities are inherently unstable, yet neither party seems capable of broadening its appeal and therefore its coalition.Mr. McCarthy’s ouster was also a function of the centralization of power in Congress. The toppling of the speaker might suggest that House leaders are too weak, but partisan dissatisfaction with Mr. McCarthy had to do with the effectively impossible expectations members now have of party leaders. The members who rebelled against him claimed to want regular order in the House, but they also insisted that legislative outcomes must conform to strict partisan goals.These are plainly contradictory demands: Regular order involves cross-partisan negotiation and bargaining and so would result in legislative outcomes that are more durable but less ideologically satisfying. In the end, the rebels revealed their real priorities. They kicked out the speaker for passing a continuing resolution with Democratic votes, putting their weight behind the notion that party leaders must tightly control the House and prevent cross-partisan coalitions from forming. The Democrats’ unanimity in supporting the speaker’s removal evinced the same view.But perhaps above all, the tumult in the House is a function of deformed expectations of Congress itself. Members are increasingly pulled in different directions by the imperatives of legislative work and those of electoral politics.A legislature is an arena for negotiation, where differences are worked out through bargains. But our polarized political culture treats deals with the other party as betrayals of principle and failures of nerve. Traditionally, winning an election to Congress has meant winning a seat at the negotiating table, where you can represent the interests and priorities of your voters. Increasingly, it has come instead to mean winning a prominent platform for performative outrage, where you can articulate your voters’ frustrations with elite power and show them that you are working to disrupt the uses of that power.These expectations coexist, sometimes within individual members. But they point in very different directions, because the latter view does not involve traditional legislative objectives and so is not subject to the incentives that have generally facilitated Congress’s work. Instead, some members respond to the incentives of political theater, which is often at least as well served by legislative failure as success. This impulse is evident in both parties, though it is clearly most intense among a portion of congressional Republicans.Most members still have a more traditional view of their job, and most voters do too, and yet today’s most powerful electoral incentives nonetheless militate toward the more populist, performative view. That’s because electoral incentives for most members of the House now have to do with winning party primaries.This is not only because geographic sorting has made more seats safe in general elections but also because the parties have grown institutionally weak and so have little say over who runs under their banners. Whether justifiably or not, even established incumbents and swing-seat members often worry most about primary challenges and therefore about voters who do not want them to give ground or compromise. This effectively means they find it politically dangerous to do the job Congress exists to do.This is a perverse misalignment of incentives. And it contributes to the dynamics that shaped the drama in the House, because it ultimately undermines the imperative for coalition building. Our parties are deadlocked in part because neither really strives to significantly broaden its coalition — doing so would involve playing down some priorities that most energize primary voters. Power is centralized in Congress to avert unpredictable cross-partisan coalitions and more effectively stage-manage a partisan Kabuki theater.But more than anything, party primaries now leave both voters and members confused about the purpose of Congress and so disable the institution.While there are some reforms of Congress’s procedures that could help it work better — like a budget process that did not culminate in needlessly dramatic crisis moments and a committee system with more genuine legislative power — it is also increasingly clear that nominee selection reforms are in order.Primaries did not create our polarized culture war. They have been widely used to select congressional candidates in most of the country for over a century, and since the 1970s they have also dominated presidential candidate selection in both parties. But party primaries have come to interact with our embittered political culture in destructive ways. As Nick Troiano argues in a forthcoming book, primaries are bad for voters, bad for parties and bad for the country.We can’t go back to the preprimary system in which party professionals deliberated about candidate selection. No politician wants to tell his or her most intensely devoted voters that they are the problem, and in any case that older approach had its own grave deficiencies. So reformers have to look for ways forward within the primary system. They should structure primary elections in ways that incentivize actual legislative work and draw into politics a type of officeseeker inclined to appeal to a broader range of voters and to build coalitions.Ranked-choice voting in primaries could be particularly promising. A ranked-choice election allows voters to select multiple candidates in order of preference and then have their vote count on behalf of their second or third choice if their first or second choice is not among the top vote getters. In most forms, it is essentially an automatic runoff. From the point of view of candidates, such a system creates a strong reason to be many voters’ second choice, as well as the first choice of some. That naturally invites a coalition-building mind-set and could do a better job of attracting candidates capable of broad appeal both on the campaign trail and in office. It would compel politicians to feel accountable to a broader swath of voters, even in safe districts where only the primary matters.This was the experience of the Virginia Republican Party, which turned to a ranked-choice process to select its gubernatorial nominee in 2021 and through it landed on a candidate, Glenn Youngkin, capable of winning in a purple state. Similar reforms at the primary stage could plausibly help both parties, though there is reason to think that Republicans would have more to gain from deploying them, because at this point they appear to suffer more from the tendency of primaries to yield candidates who turn off winnable but uncommitted voters in the general election and who have little interest in the jobs they are elected to perform.Republicans tend to be more staunchly opposed to such proposals and to assume they would only benefit the left. The evidence so far does not support that assumption. As my American Enterprise Institute colleague Kevin Kosar argued in a recent paper, Republicans have particularly strong reasons to consider such reforms — at least in primaries.Deploying ranked-choice methods in general elections could tend to further weaken the parties, which is not the right way to take on our broken political culture. The two parties as institutions are actually moderating forces, because each has an interest in making its tent as broad as possible. But ranked-choice primaries would strengthen the parties by reinforcing their ability to nominate candidates with broad appeal and better aligning primary, general election and governing incentivesRanked-choice methods would be particularly valuable in congressional primaries because, as we have seen, Congress particularly suffers from the tendency of members to neglect coalition building and deplore negotiation. The dysfunction of the national legislature is also the source from which most other constitutional dysfunctions now radiate. But if they prove effective, similar reforms might ultimately be of use in presidential primaries as well and in primaries for state and local offices.There is no silver bullet for what ails our politics. And ideas like these should be pursued as experiments, state by state. There is always a risk that they could make things worse. But the risks we run by doing nothing are plainly mounting.Yuval Levin, a contributing Opinion writer, is the editor of National Affairs and the director of social, cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream.”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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      ‘Virginia Is the Test Case’: Youngkin Pushes for G.O.P. Takeover This Fall

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      Glenn Youngkin, a popular Republican governor with national ambitions, is trying to help his party take full control of state government in crucial legislative races this year. Virginia, whose off-year elections are usually closely watched as an indicator of the national mood, has been mostly out of the spotlight this year, overshadowed by the Republican presidential primary and the looming general election clash.But with every seat in the Legislature up in eight weeks, the stakes are unusually high, with Republicans in position to swing the entire state, just four years after Democrats did the same. The effort, led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a popular Republican with national ambitions, is likely to serve as an early read on the politics of 2024, spinning out lessons for both parties, especially on abortion.Democrats have made abortion rights their top issue, warning that if Republicans win full control of the General Assembly, then Virginia will join other Southern states by sharply restricting abortion access.A winning night for Democrats on Nov. 7, however, will show that abortion remains just as potent a get-out-the-vote issue for the party as it has been in a string of state elections since the reversal of Roe v. Wade.With Mr. Youngkin overseeing his party’s message, the Republican pitch to turn out voters is less conservative red meat than roast chicken — a Republican comfort menu of tax cuts, job creation and parental influence over schools, which the governor labels “common-sense conservative policies.”On abortion, Mr. Youngkin, who is not on the ballot, wants to ban the procedure after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. If Republicans take majorities in both legislative chambers — and both are in play — the takeaway is likely to be that the party cracked the code with suburban swing voters on abortion by offering a more middle-of-the-road position than the near total bans passed in deep-red states.“This election is going to matter, it’s going to set things up for 2024,” said Don Scott, the Democratic leader of the Virginia House of Delegates, who is one his party’s lead strategists. “If Virginia goes the wrong way, the narrative is going to be the Republicans have figured out the right election combination to overcome their extremism on abortion.”And it could be a road map for Republicans in other states who are looking to defuse the issue after election losses following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.All 40 seats in the Virginia Senate and all 100 in the House are on the ballot. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and Democrats narrowly control the Senate. Strategists on both sides agree that each chamber is up for grabs.Supporters signed the campaign bus to commit to voting early.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“Folks, hold our House and flip our Senate, we know how to do this,” Mr. Youngkin urged a crowd on Saturday in a swing House district south of Richmond. He added: “Virginia is the test case.”He did not mention that another upshot of Republicans’ taking full control of state government is that Mr. Youngkin would further ascend as a national figure. Although he earlier teased a presidential run for 2024 — encouraged by many wealthy out-of-state donors and conservative media outlets who still yearn for him to get in the race — he has batted away the calls for months, saying his sole focus is turning the state.Although he has not ruled out a late entry into the primary, the political calendar and the polls argue strongly against such a move. Filing deadlines for the ballot in the early primary states of South Carolina and Nevada will have passed by November. In a recent Roanoke College Poll, 51 percent of Virginians approved of Mr. Youngkin’s job as governor, but only 9 percent of Republicans in his home state want him to be the 2024 nominee, versus 47 percent who favor Donald J. Trump.Mr. Youngkin, a wealthy former financial executive, has raised record sums for the Spirit of Virginia, his political committee supporting legislative candidates. The group says it pulled in $3.3 million in August and has raised $12 million since March. It is underwriting a tour of swing districts with Mr. Youngkin urging supporters to sign the side of a bus to show their commitment to voting early starting Sept. 22 — a practice that Mr. Trump had made toxic with the G.O.P. base, but has recently embraced.With Democrats lacking a comparable state leader this year, Virginia’s Democratic U.S. senators, Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, have raised alarms in recent weeks that the party was falling behind in fund-raising and mobilization.The White House heard the pleas, and President Biden directed the Democratic National Committee to funnel $1.2 million to the Majority Project, the Democratic group in Virginia coordinating door-knockers and other voter outreach in key districts.During Mr. Trump’s presidency, Virginia Democrats won full control of state government in elections in 2017 and 2019. In 2021, Mr. Youngkin and down-ballot Republicans profited from a backlash over pandemic-era school closures as well as rising inflation under Mr. Biden.“I’d love to have said that Virginia is solidly blue; that’s clearly not the case,” Mr. Warner said in an interview. Control of each chamber is likely to come down to a handful of races: four seats in the Senate and seven in the House that are considered tossups, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.Many of the seats are in the exurbs of Virginia’s metropolitan areas — greater Washington, Richmond and Hampton Roads — a frontier of swing voters, many college-educated, the kind of voters who have had starring roles in elections across the U.S. in recent years.Democratic strategists said they needed to win only one of the four tossup Senate seats to hold their current majority. They are encouraged that Democratic congressional candidates carried all of the districts in the 2022 midterms. Republicans counter that Mr. Youngkin won the same districts in his 2021 election, and that he remains popular.Mr. Youngkin branded himself the “parents’ rights” candidate, and is aiming to bring his success on education issues to the state races.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesOne of the most closely watched races is between two first-time Senate candidates in Loudoun County, a Washington exurb that became a national flashpoint in 2021 after conservative attacks on its public school policies on diversity and transgender students.Mr. Youngkin seized on those cultural issues to brand himself the “parents’ rights” candidate, which helped power his victory. In office, he banned critical race theory in K-12 schools (although educators said C.R.T. had no influence on curriculums), set up a tip line for parents to report about teachers and gave parents control of the names and pronouns their children used in school.Whether these issues still motivate voters is one of the unknowns in this year’s election. Mr. Youngkin is betting that they do and is holding a “Parents Matter” town hall-style event in Loudon County on Tuesday. Over the weekend, the governor went on “Fox News Sunday” to announce he had pardoned a father arrested in a 2021 incident at a Loudoun County School Board meeting where the father had criticized officials after his daughter was sexually assaulted in school.Russet Perry, the Democrat running for the open Senate seat in the county, said that when she knocks on the doors of swing voters, the top education issue she hears is concerns over school shootings, not culture-war matters.“Parents are a little tired of the politics intentionally injected into the schools by people who do not live here, including Glenn Youngkin,” said Ms. Perry, a former prosecutor with a daughter who is a high school freshman in public school.Across the state, the Democratic message is that Republicans are “extremists” and if they win full control in Richmond, they will seek strict abortion limits.But Mr. Youngkin has mostly focused his message elsewhere. In his 18-minute speech to rally Republicans on Saturday in Prince George, Va., he did not utter the words “abortion” or “pro-life,” instead stressing “common sense” policies.After a half-hour of greeting supporters, as aides hustled him to his car, he responded to a reporter’s shouted question about whether he would sign a six-week abortion ban.“Virginians elected a pro-life governor,” he said. “At the end of the day, I think we can ask all kinds of hypothetical questions. What I’ve been very clear on — and I’d appreciate you writing it clearly — is that I support a bill to protect life at 15 weeks.” More

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      Virginia’s Youngkin Pauses on Possible 2024 Campaign

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      Glenn Youngkin was seen as a promising candidate after he was elected governor of Virginia, a Democratic-leaning state. But he appears to be putting national aspirations on hold.Virginia’s governor is putting the presidential hoopla on ice.Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican whose surprising election in a blue-trending state set off instant talk of a presidential run, has tapped the brakes on 2024, telling advisers and donors that his sole focus is on Virginia’s legislative elections in the fall.Mr. Youngkin hopes to flip the state legislature to a Republican majority. That could earn him a closer look from rank-and-file Republicans across the country, who so far have been indifferent to the presidential chatter surrounding him in the news media, and among heavyweight donors he would need to keep pace alongside more prominent candidates. He has yet to crack 1 percent in polls about the potential Republican field.Backing away for now is also a bow to political reality. Mr. Youngkin has a shortage of clean conservative victories in the divided Virginia legislature, compared with, say, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who stole much of Mr. Youngkin’s thunder on “parents’ rights” issues in education.An effort by Mr. Youngkin last year to raise his profile by campaigning for Republicans around the country fizzled when most proved too extreme for voters and lost their races.Tellingly, Mr. Youngkin’s two top political advisers, who guided his gubernatorial victory and were mapping out a 2024 strategy, both took jobs this month with a super PAC that supports the presidential candidacy of Mr. DeSantis.Asked about his presidential decision timeline this week, Mr. Youngkin said, “Listen, I didn’t write a book, and I’m not in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina.” Instead, he said, he is putting his full focus on November’s statewide Virginia election, when all 140 seats in both chambers of the General Assembly are on the ballot. A decision to enter the 2024 campaign in November would be historically late, well past the first Republican debate in August.“I am wholly focused on the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I’m looking forward to these elections,’’ Mr. Youngkin said during an appearance to promote Virginia’s agricultural exports. Standing outdoors at a terminal for barges near Richmond — dressed in a blue suit and tie rather than the red fleece vest he wore while seeking office, a symbol of his suburban dad-ness — the governor, 56, said that gaining majorities in the legislature “is what this year is all about.”His political fund-raising committees announced last week that they had collected $2.75 million in the first three months of the year, surpassing the best quarterly results of any prior Virginia governor and providing a war chest that could help Republicans in local races.Success, however, is far from assured. Virginia Democrats plan to campaign heavily on Mr. Youngkin’s unsuccessful push for a 15-week abortion ban, an issue that has mobilized voters in state after state since the reversal of Roe v. Wade.Mr. Youngkin in January at a rally for Kevin Adams, a Senate candidate, in Virginia Beach.Kristen Zeis for The New York Times“There is no amount of money that is going to overcome the regressive policies that Glenn Younkin and the MAGA Republicans have been trying to impose on Virginia,” said Susan Swecker, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia.She predicted that suburban voters who favored Mr. Youngkin in 2021 would broadly reject Republicans, after the Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion last year and as conservatives press for national restrictions, most recently through a federal judge in Texas who revoked the 23-year-old approval of a common abortion pill.“We’re going to remind voters of this every single day: Don’t treat women like second-class citizens,” Ms. Swecker said.Republicans are counting on Mr. Younkgin’s strong job approval rating, 57 percent in a poll last month from Roanoke College, and his fund-raising prowess as a wealthy former financial executive who can connect with the G.O.P. donor class well beyond his state.Francis Rooney, a former Republican congressman from Florida whose family owns construction, real estate and insurance businesses, donated $100,000 to Mr. Youngkin in November.“We need to be doing things as Republicans to get back to a broader majority,’’ said Mr. Rooney, praising the governor’s appeal to independents and some Democratic voters. But when asked what Mr. Youngkin had told donors about his presidential ambitions, he said, “I don’t think anybody knows other than him.”Recently, Mr. Youngkin’s top political strategist, Jeff Roe, who continued to advise him after guiding the 2021 race, signed on as a consultant to a super PAC preparing the ground for a DeSantis presidential run.Another top Youngkin strategist, Kristin Davison, joined the same DeSantis group, Never Back Down. (Mr. Roe and Ms. Davison also continue to consult for Mr. Youngkin.)The day after Mr. Roe’s new job was reported, Mr. Youngkin named a new adviser to run his political action committee, Spirit of Virginia. That strategist, Dave Rexrode, has a long history in local Virginia elections.“If you look at where House and Senate districts are in play, the governor has a high job approval in all these districts,” Mr. Rexrode said. “They like what he’s doing in Richmond, and they want to send allies to work with the governor.”In his first year in office, Mr. Youngkin signed a bill giving parents a veto over schoolbooks with “sexually explicit content,’’ a measure rooted in one mother’s objection to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” in the curriculum. Elizabeth Frantz/ReutersVirginia’s legislative races will be contested based on new maps that were drawn without regard for incumbents, deeply scrambled familiar political geographies and led to a wave of retirements. Both parties consider the House of Delegates, where Republicans hold a slight majority, and the State Senate, which Democrats narrowly control, to be in play.In his first year in office with the divided legislature, Mr. Youngkin won $4 billion in tax cuts while giving teachers a 10 percent raise in a budget deal with Democrats. He also signed a bill giving parents a veto over schoolbooks with “sexually explicit content,” a measure rooted in one mother’s objection to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” in the curriculum.This year, Democrats stopped Mr. Youngkin’s proposed 15-week abortion ban. But on his own, he has rolled back the policies of earlier governors of both parties that automatically restored voting rights to people leaving prison. He has used executive orders to try to rescind environmental mandates from previous administrations, including on power-plant emissions and gas-powered vehicles.On Monday, Mr. Youngkin was asked about the ruling by the Texas judge last week invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. If upheld, it would reduce access to abortions for Virginia women, even though abortion is legal in the state.Mr. Youngkin said he didn’t “have much of an opinion” on the case, which is making its way through appeals courts. “And we’ll just have to wait to see how that gets finalized,” he said.If Mr. Youngkin does wait until after November’s elections to enter the presidential primary, he not only will miss the first Republican debate in August, but he will also start considerably behind his potential rivals in fund-raising and voter attention. He would be bucking recent history, when very few presidential hopefuls waited past summer and none went on to win their party nomination.But the 2024 cycle could be different, with former President Donald J. Trump directing fire and fury at early challengers who pick up steam, notably Mr. DeSantis, who has fallen back in polls.Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said missing the first debate could be a blessing. “The people who are in it are going to get banged up” by Mr. Trump, he said.If Virginia Republicans win control of both chambers of the legislature, Mr. Youngkin would emerge as “the fresh face, the new conqueror” of a state that, through 2020, was under full Democratic control, Mr. Sabato said.Given the electoral losses Republicans have repeatedly suffered in the Trump era, Mr. Youngkin “can step in and promise to put the party together,” he added. At least, he said, “that’s their theory.” More