Pinned

The G.O.P. establishment scores a rare victory in ousting Madison Cawthorn.

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Representative Madison Cawthorn at his election night watch party in Hendersonville, N.C., on Tuesday.Credit...Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — In his campaign headquarters the morning after his electoral victory, Chuck Edwards showed no interest in dissecting one of the biggest political upsets so far in this year’s Republican primary season.

Mr. Edwards, 61, a three-term state senator and business owner, thwarted Representative Madison Cawthorn’s turbulent re-election bid in North Carolina, beating him in Tuesday’s primary in a rare defeat of a Trump-backed Republican incumbent.

“I’m excited for the opportunity to unify the Republican Party, put the primary behind us and focus our attention towards the real issues,” Mr. Edwards said on Wednesday, seated at a sleek mahogany conference table at his campaign office in downtown Hendersonville.

What went unspoken was that many voters saw him as the establishment candidate who benefited from the boost of old-guard Republicans at home and in Washington. Mr. Cawthorn, 26, had alienated two powerful Republicans with a litany of political and personal errors and scandals: Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

A political group supporting Mr. Tillis, who endorsed Mr. Edwards, poured money into an ad campaign that painted Mr. Cawthorn as a fame-seeking liar. Other top North Carolina Republicans, including the state’s House speaker and State Senate leaders, also came to Mr. Edwards’s side.

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State Senator Chuck Edwards spoke during a candidate debate in Asheville, N.C., last month.Credit...Angela Wilhelm/The Asheville Citizen-Times, via Associated Press

In most Republican primaries across the country, old-fashioned establishment candidates in the Romney and Bush mold have been on the run amid intraparty battles and challenges from a far-right wing energized by former President Donald J. Trump. But as Mr. Edwards’s low-key postelection demeanor suggested, the state’s establishment seemed unwilling to claim victory when the word establishment itself has become an insult in Republican politics.

Asked about those who saw him as the establishment figure in the race, Mr. Edwards said people had different definitions of the label.

“It is true I have established conservative principles and a track record of getting things done,” he said. “I’ve established that I can cut taxes. I’ve established that I can balance budgets. I’ve established that I can pass bills to outlaw sanctuary cities.”

Of course, Mr. Cawthorn’s defeat was not solely the work of the establishment. He appeared to struggle with two key demographics: unaffiliated voters, who make up more than 40 percent of his district, and those in Henderson County, which includes his hometown of Hendersonville and helped carry him to victory in the last Republican primary.

A barrage of bad press and personal and political mistakes helped turn voters against Mr. Cawthorn. Many said in interviews that they still supported Mr. Trump, but that they viewed Mr. Cawthorn as irresponsible, immature and unbecoming of public office. Mr. McCarthy, for his part, told reporters in March that he had spoken to Mr. Cawthorn after the freshman congressman had implied members of his own party invited him to orgies and to use cocaine with them.

Mr. Cawthorn had been accused of engaging in insider trading, was pulled over for speeding, charged with driving with a revoked license and had been stopped for trying to bring a gun through airport security a second time. Photos and videos of him partying and emulating sexual antics circulated. Most damaging were reports that he frequently missed votes and had abandoned constituency offices.

Mr. Edwards jumped into the race after Mr. Cawthorn announced last year that he would run in a new district near Charlotte. Mr. Cawthorn ended up changing his mind and returning to his old district after the new district was redrawn and tilted Democratic.

Mr. Edwards, who owns several McDonald’s franchises and has served in the state legislature since 2016, has built a staunch conservative brand to the right of what used to be considered the traditional establishment Republican. He has pushed measures to overhaul tax laws, enact a constitutional amendment for voter identification and require county sheriffs to work with immigration enforcement agencies.

In his campaign office Wednesday, days after a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, Mr. Edwards said he did not believe limiting gun ownership for law-abiding citizens would solve societal problems. And he declined to condemn the racist conspiracy theory that police say motivated the Buffalo gunman — and that has been echoed by members of his own party. That unfounded theory essentially holds that elites are using immigration and falling birthrates to replace white people and destroy white culture.

“I don’t focus on rhetoric, I focus on results,” Mr. Edwards said. “I condemn open borders and the fact that we’re losing the sanctity of our nation by not enforcing immigration laws at the border.”

On Tuesday night, at a shuttered mechanics shop in Hendersonville that was converted into an event space for Mr. Cawthorn’s election party, the mood had started upbeat as people mingled over snow cones and games of cornhole. Foldout tables were decked with small candy bowls and flower-vase centerpieces. There were party favors for guests: cupcakes, star-shaped sunglasses and beaded necklaces in red, white and blue. A face painter waited for children to stop by her stand.

But as night fell, the crowd grew larger and antsier. People wearily chatted around the foldout tables and compared results on their phones.

Mr. Cawthorn abruptly conceded the race to Mr. Edwards, shortly after praising Mr. Trump for his endorsement and expressing confidence that the final results would break in his favor to the cheers of supporters. Mr. Edwards said that when the two spoke that night, Mr. Cawthorn offered his full support.

Late Tuesday night on Twitter, Mr. Cawthorn congratulated Mr. Edwards on securing the Republican nomination. He wrote that it was time for Republicans in the district “to rally behind the Republican ticket to defeat the Democrats’ nominee this November.”

Mr. Cawthorn’s spokesman said on Wednesday that the tweet was the congressman’s only statement for now.

Outside Mr. Edwards’s campaign headquarters, people strolling a shop-lined street were unsurprised by his win. Milton Ready, a North Carolina historian who identified himself as an unaffiliated voter who leans Democratic, said he cast a ballot for Mr. Edwards because he seemed like an establishment Republican — but not one obsessed with publicity.

“And,” Mr. Ready added, “I don’t think anyone in the world worries about his sex life or how fast he drives.”

Blake Hounshell
May 18, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ET

Republican panic grows after Mastriano wins.

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State Senator Doug Mastriano after winning the Republican nomination for governor of Pennsylvania on Tuesday.Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

The aftershocks of Tuesday’s big primaries are still rumbling across Pennsylvania, but one impact is already clear: Republican voters’ choice of Doug Mastriano in the governor’s race is giving the G.O.P. fits.

Conversations with Republican strategists, donors and lobbyists in and outside of Pennsylvania in recent days reveal a party seething with anxiety, dissension and score-settling over Mastriano’s nomination.

In the run-up to Tuesday night, Republicans openly used words and phrases like “suicide mission,” “disaster” and “voyage of the Titanic” to convey just what a catastrophe they believed his candidacy will be for their party.

An adviser to several Republican governors, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there was wide displeasure with the outcome, calling him unelectable. The Mastriano campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Some in Pennsylvania blame Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader and the state’s most powerful donor, for sticking with Bill McSwain for governor despite Donald Trump’s blistering anti-endorsement; others point the finger at Lawrence Tabas, the state party chairman, for failing to clear the field; still others say that Trump should have stayed out of the race altogether instead of endorsing Mastriano. Tabas did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

An 11th-hour effort to stop Mastriano failed when both McSwain and Dave White, a self-funding candidate who spent at least $5 million of his own money, refused to drop out and support former Representative Lou Barletta, whose supporters insisted he was the more viable option.

Many Republicans thought that idea was futile and far too late; several said a serious effort to prevent Mastriano from winning should have begun last summer, while others said that Yass and his allies could have dropped McSwain sooner.

“Had they kept their powder dry, they could have seen the lay of the land, when Mastriano’s lead was 8-10, and backed Barletta,” said Sam Katz, a former Republican candidate for governor who now backs Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee.

“Had they spent $5 million in three weeks, they might have forced Trump to make a different choice and changed everything,” Katz added.

Mastriano had amassed nearly 45 percent of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.

Matthew Brouillette, head of Commonwealth Partners, which bankrolled McSwain’s campaign, noted that his organization also backed Carrie DelRosso, who won the lieutenant governor’s race. He said the criticism was coming largely from “consultants and rent-seekers who don’t like us as we disrupt their gravy trains.”

Ties to Jan. 6 and QAnon

Mastriano’s vulnerabilities are legion, G.O.P. operatives lament.

The state senator and retired U.S. Army colonel has taken a hard line on abortion, which he has said should be illegal under all circumstances. He organized buses to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington and can be seen on video crossing police lines at the Capitol as the rally became a riot. He has also been a leading advocate of the baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Mastriano’s name has appeared in documents released by the committee investigating the Capitol riot, and he claims to have been in close personal contact with Trump about their shared drive to overturn President Biden’s victory. In February, the committee demanded “documents and information that are relevant to the select committee’s investigation” in a letter to Mastriano. He has refused to say whom he would appoint as secretary of state, a critical position overseeing election infrastructure and voting.

Mastriano has appeared at events linked to QAnon, the amorphous conspiracy theory that alleges there is a secret cabal of elite pedophiles running the federal government and other major U.S. institutions. He also has made statements that veer into Islamophobia.

He is likely to be an especially weak candidate in the crowded suburbs around Philadelphia, the state’s most important political battleground. On the other side of the state, the editorial page of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has already all but officially endorsed Shapiro as “the only statewide candidate who did everything the Pennsylvania way.”

Operatives in both parties expect Shapiro to blitz Mastriano with advertising portraying him as a dangerous extremist while Mastriano’s shoestring organization struggles to raise money.

Even before Mastriano clinched the nomination, Shapiro’s campaign aired an ad highlighting his views on abortion and the 2020 election as well as his ties to Trump, who lost the state to Biden by 80,000 votes.

Mastriano gave scant indication during Tuesday’s victory speech that he was ready to shift toward a more palatable general election message. Listing his early priorities as governor, he said, “mandates are gone,” “any jab for job requirements are gone,” critical race theory is “over,” “only biological females can play on biological female teams” and “you can only use the bathroom that your biological anatomy says.”

The Mastriano matchup also plays to Shapiro’s carefully cultivated image as a fighter for democracy, though his campaign plans to focus primarily on bread-and-butter economic issues such as jobs, taxes and inflation.

As attorney general, Shapiro was directly involved in the Pennsylvania government’s litigation after the 2020 election, and oversaw at least 40 cases of alleged voter fraud — winning every single one.

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Josh Shapiro campaigning in Meadville, Pa.Credit...Jeff Swensen for The New York Times

Wait-and-see mode

Will national Republicans help Mastriano or shun him? Right now, the major players in governor’s races appear to be waiting to see how the race develops before making that determination.

Some Republicans believe the national “tailwinds” blowing in their favor might help Mastriano win despite all of his weaknesses, but for now, Democrats are thrilled to be facing him in November. They note that Shapiro performed better than Biden did in Pennsylvania during his re-election race as state attorney general, and expect Shapiro to be flooded with donations from in and outside the state.

On Tuesday night, the Republican Governors Association issued a lukewarm statement acknowledging Mastriano’s victory, but suggesting he was on his own for now.

“Republican voters in Pennsylvania have chosen Doug Mastriano as their nominee for governor,” Executive Director Dave Rexrode said. “The R.G.A. remains committed to engaging in competitive gubernatorial contests where our support can have an impact.”

The statement left room for the possibility that the G.O.P. governors might help Mastriano should the Pennsylvania race be close in the fall.

“We make those decisions based on where we think we can be effective,” Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, the co-chairman of the governors’ group, said on CNN on Sunday. “Our policy has long been we get involved in races where we think we can win. So, that candidate, whoever gets elected in Pennsylvania, will have to show that they’re going to make it a good race.”

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What to read

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On the record

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Malcolm Kenyatta at a breakfast for Democratic candidates in Boalsburg, Pa., in April.Credit...Marc Levy/Associated Press

It all comes down to turnout. Young turnout.

Of the many unknowns hanging over the general election contests across the country this fall, a big one for Democrats is: Will young progressives turn out?

The question haunts many party leaders, who worry that widespread disillusionment with President Biden and with politics more broadly will lead many younger voters to stay home in November. That’s the traditional pattern in midterm elections, and it is what happened in the Virginia governor’s race last year. It’s a constant source of frustration for Democratic strategists, since younger voters lean left.

Malcolm Kenyatta, a dynamic 31-year-old state representative who lost to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania in the state’s Democratic primary for an open Senate seat, went straight to that point when I met him at his watch party last night in Philadelphia.

Kenyatta had the backing of the Working Families Party, a scrappy progressive outfit centered in New York that supports like-minded candidates. Its leftist politics are vastly different from Biden’s centrism, but the group tends to rally behind the Democratic Party’s official nominees once primaries end.

So it didn’t surprise me when Kenyatta urged his followers to unite behind Fetterman, who also swims in many of the same leftward circles, but has tried to transcend his image as a Bernie Sanders-style progressive as the general election ramps up.

Kenyatta told me he would do his “level best” to help unite the party.

“The only fault line that exists is between people who care about democracy and those who are autocratic, racist fascists who want to turn this nation into something that it’s never been,” Kenyatta said.

The argument Kenyatta would make to young voters who might be souring on the Democratic Party, he said, was that “when you elect a bigger, bolder Democratic majority,” it makes it easier to pass major progressive priorities like universal prekindergarten and student debt relief.

Kenyatta, a gay Black man who recently married his longtime partner, said he was confident that Republican candidates were out of the cultural mainstream.

“Most people do not want to ban books and cancel Elmo and Mickey Mouse,” he said. “Most Americans think that’s ridiculous.”

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— Blake

Is 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.

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Neil Vigdor
May 18, 2022, 5:55 p.m. ET

A Michigan election denier who was parodied by ‘S.N.L.’ is disqualified as a candidate.

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Melissa Carone at the Michigan House Oversight Committee in Lansing, Mich., on Dec. 2, 2020.Credit...Jeff Kowalsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Melissa Carone was supposed to be a star witness for Rudolph W. Giuliani on his election denial tour, but she is perhaps better known as a caricature on “Saturday Night Live” — a mercurial purveyor of wild conspiracy theories about fraud and miscounted ballots whom Mr. Giuliani shushed in the middle of her testimony.

Her next move was to run for the legislature in Michigan, joining a host of election deniers across the nation who have sought public office since former President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But her plans were short-circuited on Tuesday, when the Michigan Department of State disqualified Ms. Carone, 35, a former election contractor, as a Republican primary candidate for a State Senate seat outside of Detroit.

The office said that Ms. Carone, along with 10 other legislative candidates, had made false statements on an affidavit that candidates were required to submit to election administrators. On one of the forms that was signed by Ms. Carone, she had attested that she did not have any unpaid fines for election law violations and that all of her public campaign filings were up-to-date. The county clerk where Ms. Carone was running for office said on Wednesday that had not been the case.

It was the second time in recent months that Ms. Carone had been disqualified as a candidate: The Macomb County Clerk & Register of Deeds barred her in March from the Aug. 2 primary for state representative.

When she signed the affidavit, Ms. Carone had owed at least $125 in late fees for missing the deadline twice for quarterly campaign filings in 2021, according to a letter from the clerk that was obtained by The New York Times. She had also failed to file an annual statement for 2022 for her campaign and an amendment to a quarterly report last October, the letter said.

Ms. Carone, who was played by the “Saturday Night Live” cast member Cecily Strong in the show’s cold open in December 2020, blamed the situation on a former campaign manager whom she said in an interview on Wednesday did not file the paperwork.

She accused Republican election officials and the party’s leaders of conspiring to keep her off the ballot.

“This is how our elected officials keep good candidates from getting elected,” Ms. Carone said. “I’m going to fight it. Even if I don’t end up on the ballot, my voice will be heard. I’m not going anywhere. I will still be exposing these establishment sellout RINOs in the Michigan G.O.P.”

Anthony G. Forlini, a Republican who is the Macomb County clerk, said on Wednesday that his office had been following the law and that the disqualification of Ms. Carone was not politically motivated.

“From our standpoint, she was kicked off the ballot because she basically perjured herself,” Mr. Forlini said.

Mr. Forlini said that it is a felony in Michigan to make a false statement on affidavits like those signed by candidates.

“We’re just sticking to the letter of the law,” he said. “She likes the drama, and she’s been feeding on it.”

Mr. Forlini said that he could not speak to the specifics of Ms. Carone’s recent disqualification by the Michigan Department of State, a separate agency headed by Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state.

A spokeswoman for that agency said on Wednesday that she could not further discuss the nature of the false statements that led to Ms. Carone’s disqualification, which was announced in conjunction with the other candidates who were barred on Tuesday.

A receipt filed with the secretary of state’s office showed that Ms. Carone had paid $125 in late fees with a check on March 24, three days after she signed the affidavit attesting that she did not owe anything.

Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, rejected Ms. Carone’s assertions that there was a concerted effort to keep her off the primary ballot.

“Terrible candidates seem to find it hard to take accountability for themselves so they pass the blame to others,” he said in an email on Wednesday.

Ms. Carone claimed she was contracted by Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company that has been the target of a baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory about rigged voting machines. The company called her claims defamatory and sent her a cease and desist letter.

During an election oversight hearing held by legislators in Michigan in December 2020, she testified that she had observed over 20 acts of fraud — not counting ballots found in rivers and under a rock — and that at least 30,000 ballots had been counted multiple times. A judge in Wayne County Circuit Court had already found Ms. Carone’s claims — made in an affidavit seeking to stop the certification of votes — were “not credible.”

At times combative and glib, Ms. Carone’s performance was widely mocked, including by “Saturday Night Live.”

“To be honest with you, I didn’t watch it for a really long time,” she said on Wednesday. “I think it’s funny. That kind of stuff doesn’t make me mad. I don’t care.”

Jonathan Weisman
May 18, 2022, 5:07 p.m. ET

Herschel Walker skirts question: Was President Biden lawfully elected?

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Herschel Walker, a Republican Senate candidate, campaigned in Macon, Ga., on Wednesday.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times

Herschel Walker, the former football star who is running in Georgia’s Republican Senate primary, declined on Wednesday to say whether President Biden was lawfully elected in 2020.

“I don’t know whether he” was, he told a few reporters after a speech at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in Macon, Ga. He said he thinks there were problems with the results. “And I think everybody else thinks there was problems, and that’s the reason right now everybody’s so upset,” he said.

Mr. Walker said the nation needs to find out what the problems were. “I think right now they’re having trials and having all these, these hearings, but it seems like nothing is ever getting done,” he said. “And that’s what’s so amazing.”

Several lawsuits that made sweeping claims of election fraud in 2020 have been filed and dismissed in Georgia, and reviews elsewhere failed to show that Mr. Trump was cheated of victory.

Mr. Walker has not made election denial central to his campaign for the Republican Senate nomination ahead of Georgia’s primary on Tuesday, nor has he made it an issue in his anticipated campaign this summer and fall against Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat. But his unwillingness to answer the question — was President Biden lawfully elected? — speaks to the lingering power of the issue among Republican voters in Georgia, which was perhaps ground zero in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

Former President Donald J. Trump has lifted Mr. Walker, who once played in a failed professional football league that Mr. Trump used to own, from a political neophyte to prohibitive front-runner for the Republican nomination for Senate.

Mr. Trump is under investigation in Fulton County, north of Macon, for his phone call shortly after the 2020 election to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, during which he told Mr. Raffensperger to “find” him the votes to overturn Mr. Biden’s narrow victory in the state.

Several Black voters in Macon, Ga., on Wednesday pointed to Mr. Walker’s longtime connection to Mr. Trump to question his candidacy. One of those voters, Roderick McGee, called Mr. Walker “a puppet on a string.”

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Katie Glueck
May 18, 2022, 3:30 p.m. ET

As Fetterman pivots to the general election, getting Black voters to turn out for him will be a campaign imperative.

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Supporters of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania celebrate his victory in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

YORK, Pa. — Last week, a leader of a historic Black cemetery cornered Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania at a campaign event here with a pressing message.

“I told him that I’d like to work with him on trying to increase the diverse content of his campaign,” the official, Jeffrey Kirkland, said last Thursday, noting in an interview that he was one of the few people of color in attendance at the event. Mr. Kirkland supports Mr. Fetterman, and said that the candidate was receptive. But he stressed that it would behoove Mr. Fetterman “to try to do something to motivate the African American vote.”

“Turnout will be the key,” he added.

Less than a week later, Mr. Fetterman is his state’s Democratic Senate nominee. And engaging and turning out Black voters in this fall’s general election will be among his campaign’s biggest imperatives as he competes in one of the most closely divided states in the nation.

In the Senate primary, Mr. Fetterman won every county in the state, according to the available data on Wednesday, though without exit polling, it is difficult to gauge precisely how he performed with Black voters. In some Philadelphia neighborhoods that are home to high percentages of Black voters, he appeared to trail State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta, who represents Philadelphia in the statehouse and was vying to be the state’s first Black and first openly gay senator.

Still, Mr. Fetterman performed strongly in other counties that are home to significant Black populations, including Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County and Harrisburg’s Dauphin County, and he was ahead in Philadelphia County.

Yet throughout the primary campaign, Mr. Fetterman was dogged by a 2013 incident that could continue to shape how Black voters across the state view him. When Mr. Fetterman was the mayor of Braddock, Pa., he brandished a shotgun to stop and detain an unarmed Black jogger, telling police he had heard gunshots in his neighborhood. He has declined to apologize or say he did anything wrong, and some party strategists worry that episode could affect turnout in the general election.

Asked about his plans for ensuring Black voters turn out for him in November, Mr. Fetterman said he would do so “by championing issues that are important in the Black community, by running on our record,” he said, noting that Braddock is a majority Black city. “I’ve dedicated my entire career to working in the interests of marginalized Black communities.”

Trip Gabriel
May 18, 2022, 2:11 p.m. ET

Pennsylvania’s crucial Republican Senate primary is in a state of suspended animation.

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Dr. Mehmet Oz spoke at his election night watch party in Newtown, Pa. on Tuesday.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

With Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary still deadlocked on Wednesday, attention turned to uncounted ballots, including potentially tens of thousands of mail-in votes. Dr. Mehmet Oz was clinging to a small lead of about 2,500 votes, or 0.2 percent, over David McCormick, which could trigger a recount.

Recounts in Pennsylvania are automatic in races with less than a 0.5 percent gap. To avoid that outcome, either Dr. Oz, the celebrity physician, or Mr. McCormick, a West Point graduate and former hedge fund chief, would need to win a strong majority of outstanding votes. A recount could take more than a week to complete.

With both campaigns urging that every vote be counted — just as in 2020, when President Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania wasn’t called for four days — former President Donald J. Trump weighed in on Wednesday with opposing advice. He encouraged Dr. Oz, whom he had endorsed, to declare victory preemptively. “It makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots they ‘just happened to find,’” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, restating the falsehood that ballots that have not been counted on election night are invalid.

In the meantime, the general election matchup for the Senate seat is in a state of suspended animation, with the landslide Democratic winner, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, recovering from surgery after he suffered a stroke days before the vote.

Mr. Fetterman, Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick have all shown the ability to raise large sums of money — the two Republicans also have vast personal wealth to tap — guaranteeing an expensive, high-profile fight this fall in one of the Senate’s most crucial races.

Under Pennsylvania’s recount rules, the secretary of state would need to order the procedure before June 1 in this contest, and it would need to be completed by June 7. Unlike in some states, candidates cannot request a recount, but individual voters may, and have until May 22 to petition their county election boards to do so. Campaigns usually recruit voters to request recounts on their behalf.

Both campaigns projected they would ultimately prevail. On election night, Mr. McCormick said there were “tens of thousands of mail-in ballots that have not been counted.” His top strategist, Jeff Roe, wrote overnight on Twitter, “Based on how many uncounted absentee ballots there are and the margin by which Dave has won them so far, that’s why we are confident of victory.”

But the Oz camp was also confident. On Wednesday, Dr. Oz’s campaign manager, Casey Contres, wrote on Twitter, “While we look to get a better sense of the remaining votes today, we are optimistic Dr. Oz will win.”

Still, with so many ballots outstanding statewide, and the candidates closely matching each other in most counties, it is unclear if either could gain enough of a lead to escape a recount.

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Michael C. BenderMaggie Haberman
May 18, 2022, 11:50 a.m. ET

Michael C. Bender and

Primaries show the limits, and the depths, of Trump’s power over the G.O.P. base.

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People waiting for former President Donald J. Trump to speak at a rally in Delaware, Ohio.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

The tumultuous start to the Republican primary season, including a down-to-the-wire Senate race that divided conservatives in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, has shown how thoroughly Donald J. Trump has remade his party in his image — and the limits of his control over his creation.

In each of the most contentious primary races this month — including two closely watched contests next week in Alabama and Georgia — nearly every candidate has run a campaign modeled on the former president’s. Their websites and advertisements are filled with his images. They promote his policies, and many repeat his false claims about election fraud in 2020.

But Mr. Trump’s power over Republican voters has proved to be less commanding.

Candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump lost governor’s races in Idaho and Nebraska, and a House race in North Carolina. In Senate contests in Ohio (where his pick won earlier this month) and Pennsylvania (which remained too close to call Wednesday morning), roughly 70 percent of Republicans voted against his endorsement. In contests next week, his chosen candidates for Georgia governor and Alabama senator are trailing in polls.

Long known for being dialed into his voters, Mr. Trump increasingly appears to be chasing his supporters as much as marshaling them. Republican voters’ distrust of authority and appetite for hard-line politics — traits Mr. Trump once capitalized on — have worked against him. Some have come to see the president they elected to lead an insurgency as an establishment figure inside his own movement.

Trumpism is ascendant in the Republican Party, with or without Mr. Trump, said Ken Spain, a Republican strategist and former National Republican Congressional Committee official.

“The so-called MAGA movement is a bottom-up movement,” Mr. Spain said, “not one to be dictated from the top down.”

The primaries aren’t the first time conservative voters in Mr. Trump’s red-capped constituency have demonstrated their independence from the patriarch of the Make America Great Again movement.

In August, at one of Mr. Trump’s largest post-presidential campaign rallies, the crowd booed after he urged them to get vaccinated against Covid-19. In January, some of the most influential voices in Mr. Trump’s orbit openly criticized his pick for a House seat in Middle Tennessee, Morgan Ortagus — who had served in the Trump administration for two years as State Department spokeswoman but was deemed insufficiently MAGA.

These mini-rebellions have tended to flare up whenever Mr. Trump’s supporters view his directives or endorsements as not Trumpy enough.

“There’s no obvious heir apparent when it comes to America First — it’s still him,” said Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and White House counselor. “But people feel they can love him and intend to follow him into another presidential run — and not agree with all of his choices this year.”

Still, Republican candidates remain desperate to win Mr. Trump’s endorsement. In Georgia’s Senate race, Mr. Trump’s support for Herschel Walker kept serious rivals away. In some contested races, his endorsement has proved to be hugely influential, as it was in North Carolina’s Senate primary on Tuesday, where Representative Ted Budd cruised to victory against a former governor and a former congressman.

But the emergence of an autonomous wing of the MAGA movement — one that is more uncompromising than Mr. Trump — has allowed even candidates without Mr. Trump’s endorsement to claim the mantle.

“MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” Kathy Barnette said during a Pennsylvania Senate primary debate in April.

The late surge from Ms. Barnette, who portrayed herself as a higher-octane version of Mr. Trump, eroded support for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the longtime television personality whom Mr. Trump endorsed, from conservatives who questioned his political credentials. As a result, Mr. Oz was running neck-and-neck with David McCormick, the hedge fund executive who had withstood a flurry of criticism from Mr. Trump. Still, Mr. Oz held about one-third of the vote.

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Republican Senate candidate Kathy Barnette at her election watch party Tuesday night in Elizabethtown, Pa. Ms. Barnette portrayed herself as a higher-octane version of Mr. Trump.Credit...Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

Outside Ms. Barnette’s election night party on Tuesday, Diante Johnson, a Republican activist and the founder and president of the Black Conservative Federation, said she was proud of how the conservative author and commentator fought against the party powers that be.

“The knife came to her and she didn’t back up,” Mr. Johnson said. “Every Trump establishment individual that came after her, she stood there and fought.”

Ms. Barnette’s rise stunned Mr. Trump, who never considered the possibility of endorsing her candidacy, advisers said.

But his base’s increasing autonomy should surprise no one.

As president, Mr. Trump governed in a constant state of concern about tending to his supporters. Even though he was elected in part as a deal-making political outsider — he had spent much of his adult life toggling between political parties — he rarely made a significant decision without considering how his base would react.

Those instincts prevented him from reaching a significant deal with Congress over immigration policy and fueled battles with Democratic leaders that led to repeated government shutdowns. His fear of appearing weak to his base voters drove his decision to not wear a mask in public for months into the pandemic.

While Mr. Trump has indicated he is inclined to run for president for a third time in 2024, some advisers said the volatile and intensely fought primaries have risked alienating some of his supporters.

Advisers have urged Mr. Trump to make amends with former primary rivals. But the former president hasn’t called Jim Pillen, the Republican nominee for governor in Nebraska who beat Mr. Trump’s preferred candidate, Charles W. Herbster. In Ohio, about 718,000 Republicans voted for someone other than the Trump-endorsed victor, J.D. Vance.

And there is plenty of dust still to settle.

In the Pennsylvania governor’s race, Mr. Trump backed Doug Mastriano last week over Lou Barletta, a former congressman who was an early supporter of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“Where in the hell is the loyalty?” said former Representative Tom Marino, another early Trump 2016 supporter, at a campaign rally last week.

“Loyalty to what?” Mr. Trump shot back in an interview on Monday. Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Barletta for losing a 2018 Senate bid and not fighting harder to back the former president’s bogus claims that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election.

“My loyalty is to a guy that was in there fighting,” Mr. Trump said. “And Mastriano was the guy that was fighting. I didn’t even see Lou Barletta fighting for it.”

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Supporters of the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, watch a campaign video at a rally in Warminster, Pa. Mr. Trump backed Mr. Mastriano over Lou Barletta, an early supporter of his 2016 presidential campaign.Credit...Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Chris Christie, who is also believed to be considering a presidential campaign in 2024, suggested the results of the primaries so far demonstrate a desire to move on from the baggage that Mr. Trump imposes on the party.

“What I think the majority of these primaries are going to tell you is that the party wants to go back to winning,” Mr. Christie said. “Between 2018 and 2020, we lost the House, the Senate and the White House. That’s the second time that’s happened in our party’s history. The other time that happened was when Herbert Hoover was president.”

Other Republicans caution against reading too much into Mr. Trump’s endorsement scorecard. Tony Fabrizio, a pollster who has worked with Mr. Trump for several years, described the early contests as a jumble, providing no single insight into what Mr. Trump’s backing has meant.

Each race was shaped by the candidate, the rivals and the politics of the state, he said. In Ohio, Mr. Vance’s history of criticizing Mr. Trump made voters skeptical. Similarly, Dr. Oz’s previous support for abortion rights was an impediment with Pennsylvania conservatives in the base. In North Carolina, however, Mr. Budd was a better fit.

“In Ohio, it was a test of Trump papering over never-Trump deficiencies,” Mr. Fabrizio said. “In Pennsylvania it is a test of Trump papering over ideological deficiencies. And in North Carolina, it is the perfect harmony of no never-Trump or ideological deficiencies.”

Blake Hounshell
May 18, 2022, 10:45 a.m. ET

Kenyatta, who lost to Fetterman, urges young progressives to show up at the polls this fall.

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Malcolm Kenyatta, a 31-year-old Pennsylvania state senator, at a demonstration in Philadelphia earlier this month. Credit...Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times

Of the many unknowns hanging over the fall’s general election contests across the country, a big one for Democrats is: Will young progressives turn out?

The question haunts many party leaders, who worry that widespread disillusionment with President Biden and with politics more broadly will lead many younger voters to stay home in November. That’s the traditional pattern in midterm elections, and it is what happened in the Virginia governor’s race last year. It’s a constant source of frustration for Democratic strategists, since younger voters lean left.

Malcolm Kenyatta, a dynamic 31-year-old state senator who lost to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania in the Democratic primary for an open Senate seat in the state, went straight to that point in an interview on Tuesday at his election night watch party in Philadelphia.

Mr. Kenyatta urged his followers to unite behind Mr. Fetterman, an ally of Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive lawmaker from Vermont. Mr. Kenyatta said he would do his “level best” to help unite the center with the left wing of the party.

“The only fault line that exists is between people who care about democracy and those who are autocratic, racist fascists who want to turn this nation into something that it’s never been,” Mr. Kenyatta said, alluding to the newly anointed Republican nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano.

The argument he would make to young voters who might be souring on the Democratic Party, Kenyatta said, was that “when you elect a bigger, bolder Democratic majority,” it makes it easier to pass major progressive priorities such as universal prekindergarten and student debt relief.

Mr. Kenyatta, an openly gay Black man who recently married his longtime partner, said he felt confident that Republican candidates are out of the cultural mainstream.

“Most people do not want to ban books and cancel Elmo and Mickey Mouse,” Mr. Kenyatta said. “Most Americans think that’s ridiculous.”

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Blake Hounshell
May 18, 2022, 8:15 a.m. ET

Who is Ted Budd, the Republican nominee for Senate in North Carolina?

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Representative Ted Budd spoke at a rally headlined by former President Donald J. Trump in Selma, N.C., last month.Credit...Veasey Conway for The New York Times

Representative Ted Budd’s first television advertisement announcing his run for Senate in North Carolina featured him, the owner of a gun range, posing with a monster truck named the “Liberal Agenda Crusher.”

The gag is that Mr. Budd, a temperamentally low-key Republican House member who grew up on a family farm that he still owns, is too vanilla for such crass campaign stunts.

“You know, this is all a bit much for a guy from Davie County,” he says.

The ad was meant as a sendup of over-the-top campaign ads, and included a number of subtle digs at one of Mr. Budd’s opponents, former Gov. Pat McCrory. Mr. Budd’s campaign team had hoped to include “pyrotechnics” and a flamethrower, his aides said, but the county did not allow it.

“We wanted to show him as just a guy you want to hang out with,” said Casey Phillips, Mr. Budd’s longtime ad-maker.

But Mr. Budd’s folksy, down-home demeanor comes packaged with a hard ideological edge that attracted former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement last June. Now that Mr. Budd has become the Republican nominee for Senate thanks to Tuesday’s win, his challenge will be to defeat Cheri Beasley, the Democrat, in the general election in November.

“We all know that Joe Biden is a weak leader who won’t stand up to the radical left,” Mr. Budd says in the ad. “Today, the U.S. Senate is the last line of defense against becoming a woke, socialist wasteland, and I’m running to stop that.”

Mr. Budd, 50, is a member of the Freedom Caucus, the far-right wing of the Republican Party in the U.S. House. When he was first elected to Congress in 2016, local news media coverage depicted him as a conservative insurgent and a political neophyte. His introductory ad in that race showed him attacking government waste with a chain saw.

Mr. Budd managed to secure the backing of the Club for Growth, an influential anti-tax group known for its fiercely competitive interview process and small-government ideology. With the group’s support, he defeated a field of 16 other Republicans and was ushered into Congress along with a hard-line nucleus of House members who became some of Mr. Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill.

He was one of 147 House lawmakers who voted against certifying President Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, though he condemned the “mob violence I witnessed at the Capitol” on Jan. 6, 2021, “in the strongest possible terms.”

After the election, Mr. Budd signed a letter urging the Justice Department to investigate voter fraud and irregularities. Text messages published by CNN show Mr. Budd pushing a baseless conspiracy theory to Mark Meadows, who was then the White House chief of staff, suggesting that Dominion Voting Systems might have ties to George Soros, the liberal billionaire.

Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Budd in 2021 after his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, passed up the opportunity to run for the North Carolina seat that opened up when Senator Richard Burr announced his retirement.

Calling Mr. Budd onstage at the North Carolina Republican Party’s annual conference, Mr. Trump praised him in generic terms, calling him “a great politician, but, more importantly, he’s somebody that loves the state of North Carolina.” But his next line betrayed a motive closer to Mr. Trump’s heart: that Mr. Budd had “always been with me, always been with Mark and Deb and all of us,” meaning Mr. Meadows and his wife.

Mr. Budd estimated his net worth in the low millions on his personal disclosure form, last filed in 2018. He still owns the indoor shooting range and gun shop in Rural Hall, just north of Winston-Salem, which he valued at $3 million.

Mr. Budd met his wife, Amy Kate, on an evangelical group’s mission abroad to the former Soviet Union, where they traveled to present-day Ukraine and Moscow. They home-schooled their three children, a fact Mr. Budd made sure to note in the monster truck ad.

He has a master’s degree in business administration from the Wake Forest University School of Business and a master’s degree in theology and public education from the Dallas Theological Seminary, an evangelical institution in Texas.

Mr. Budd’s record as a rock-ribbed fiscal conservative in Congress developed out of his family roots in business, according to his campaign team.

His father, Richard Budd, built a janitorial supply company in Winston-Salem into a facilities-services company that now operates across the southeastern United States. Both Ted Budd and his father have divested from the company, which is now run by Ted’s brother, Joe.

Nick Corasaniti
May 18, 2022, 7:30 a.m. ET

Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor, plans to steer Pennsylvania to the right.

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Doug Mastriano, a far-right state senator, had been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.CreditCredit...Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator running for governor of Pennsylvania, had just cataloged a host of right-wing policy goals for his potential administration during a campaign rally in Big Run on Wednesday: cuts to regulations, banning abortion, banning the teaching of critical race theory and forcing everyone to reregister to vote.

To sum it up, Mr. Mastriano drew a comparison with a prominent conservative governor.

“We’re going to make Ron DeSantis look like an amateur down there in Florida,” he said.

With his primary victory on Tuesday, Mr. Mastriano has established himself as one of the most conservative candidates in the country running for statewide office in November, promising to set his perennial swing state on a path parallel to deep-red states on issues like abortion, climate change and elections.

In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Mr. Mastriano made many of those policy goals from his campaign speech, including banning transgender athletes in school sports.

“This is infectious here because we all love freedom,” Mr. Mastriano said. “Our number one goal is first to restore freedom.”

A retired Army colonel who has placed his conservative Christianity at the center of his campaign, Mr. Mastriano rapidly rose to prominence after the 2020 election, establishing himself as the chief ally and promoter of former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the results in Pennsylvania.

He held a hearing in Gettysburg in late November featuring Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had served as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. The former president joined by phone. Mr. Mastriano wrote a letter to a Justice Department official in December 2020, asking for investigations into debunked falsehoods about the election. Mr. Mastriano also attended the rally at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the mob attack on the Capitol. Before the event, he posted on Facebook offering bus rides for the rally. His campaign reported spending at least $3,000 chartering buses.

Mr. Mastriano has made Mr. Trump’s false claims about election fraud central to his campaign, with “restore voting integrity” listed as one of his five top issues on campaign postcards. He has pledged to repeal no-excuse mail voting in the state, end contracts with certain voting machine companies, enact “universal voter ID” and ban private funding in elections.

“The elections were corrupted and compromised,” Mr. Mastriano told the crowd in Big Run, claiming that “a lot more people than otherwise” had voted for Mr. Trump and not had their vote counted. (Mr. Trump lost by more than 81,000 votes in Pennsylvania and there is no evidence of any widespread fraud in the state.)

The governor of Pennsylvania also appoints the secretary of state, giving Mr. Mastriano considerable influence over election operations if he wins in November.

Though he was a key ally of Mr. Trump during his effort to subvert the election, including making a visit to the White House, Mr. Mastriano was unable to earn an endorsement from the president for most of the primary campaign, as some of his opponents sought to claim the mantle of Mr. Trump’s brand of politics in the state.

But his strict adherence to falsehoods about the 2020 election and future changes to election law, on top of a resilient if incremental lead atop sporadic state polling, earned him a late endorsement from Mr. Trump that helped boost Mr. Mastriano farther above the crowded Republican primary field.

In a phone interview with The New York Times on Monday, Mr. Trump highlighted Mr. Mastriano’s efforts after the 2020 election as the impetus for his eventual endorsement. “Mastriano was the guy that was fighting,” the former president said.

Throughout the campaign, Mr. Mastriano has crafted his candidacy in the style of the former president. His stump speeches — meandering, occasionally crass and often boastful — are delivered without notes or a prompter, only a smartphone timer to track how long he’s spoken.

At a recent event in Erie, Pa., Mr. Mastriano jumped from a litany of criticisms about Democratic policies on crime, elections and the border to a host of pledges to make far-right policy aims such as complete bans on abortion and transgender bathroom access an immediate reality. Like Mr. Trump, he disparaged his rivals with new monikers, and repeatedly attacked the media and members of his own party he deemed weak.

“They sound like a preacher on pro-life and all that, but when they get into office, it’s ‘we can’t look at that pro-life legislation this year because someone in the Southeast might lose their seat,’” Mr. Mastriano said. “Are you kidding me? So that person’s job is more important than that baby’s life. I find that disgusting.”

His unorthodox campaign — members of the press are sometimes denied access to his events, and he has rarely made himself available to the media — is fueled in large part on an active social media presence, powered by a Facebook account with more than 100,000 followers. He has campaigned in largely conservative areas and attended events featuring speakers from the QAnon movement.

He leans heavily on his Christian faith. His campaign posts daily prayers and reflection, including participating in “21 days of fasting and prayer” that ended on Tuesday. Both Mr. Mastriano and his wife, Ruddy, regularly refer to God in their speeches. His primary night rally featured worship music from a Christian rock band, and multiple prayers led from the stage. His lawn sign includes a Bible citation.

“Our motto on our sign is John 8:36, which means if Jesus set you free,” Mr. Mastriano said at the event in Erie, gesturing to the crowd, who joined the candidate in finishing the phrase, “you are free indeed.”

At his primary night rally on Tuesday night, speaking briefly from the stage before results began posting, Mr. Mastriano delivered a focused attack on the media for what he claims are unfair attacks on Christianity and his personal faith.

“My campaign has no place for hate, bigotry and intolerance, and that’s the same for any media outlet,” Mr. Mastriano said. “If I read any articles where you’re attacking Christians or attacking them as hateful or intolerant, we won’t have the time of day for you.”

He later added: “You’re not going to bully us.”

Michael C. Bender contributed reporting.

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Katie Glueck
May 18, 2022, 6:37 a.m. ET

John Fetterman: The left-leaning Pennsylvania politician in gym clothes.

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John Fetterman, the Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who is running for the Senate, speaking to voters in Lemont Furnace last week.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

PITTSBURGH — John Fetterman, the liberal lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who won his state’s Democratic nomination for Senate on Tuesday, seemed to be cruising into what is shaping up as one of the most closely watched general elections in the country this fall. Then a stroke upended his plans.

Mr. Fetterman, the 6-foot-8, hoodie-wearing former mayor of Braddock, Pa., was not a favorite of the party establishment, but he electrified some progressive voters and a broader slice of the Democratic electorate that embraced his blunt-spoken, accessible style and welcomed his pledges to fight aggressively for party priorities in Washington.

“I’m just doing my thing,” he said in an interview last week. “I’m just a dude that shows up and just talks about what I believe in, you know?”

After canceling campaign events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Fetterman, 52, announced that he had had a stroke, was recovering and had not suffered any cognitive damage.

He was still in the hospital on Tuesday, when his campaign announced that he would undergo “a standard procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator,” adding, “It should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke.”

It was unclear when he would be able to resume campaigning.

The health scare carried ramifications far beyond Pennsylvania. Democrats hold a majority in the Senate only by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. The party’s vulnerability had already been highlighted when Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico suffered a stroke in January.

It also seemed jarring given Mr. Fetterman’s vigorous public image; he often was dressed as if he’d just left the gym.

“He may not look like a Senate candidate for New York or California, but he’s just fine for Pennsylvania,” said Ed Rendell, a Democratic former governor of the state. “He’s a very believable candidate for the working class.”

Mr. Fetterman, who holds a degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, served for 13 years as the mayor of Braddock, where he attracted attention for his efforts to revitalize a struggling steel town — and scrutiny over a 2013 episode in which he brandished a shotgun to stop an unarmed Black jogger, telling the police he had heard gunshots.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 but gained an enthusiastic following, and went on to defeat an incumbent to win his party’s nomination for lieutenant governor in 2018. In that role, he maintained an active presence around the state, building name recognition that played an important role in his primary victory.

“He spent a lot of time in communities throughout the state,” said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who did not take sides in the primary. “That’s something he’s been able to build on.”

Mr. Fetterman also made a name for himself in national progressive circles, receiving the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2018 after he backed Mr. Sanders’s 2016 presidential primary bid. And he gained fresh prominence with a broader range of voters as a cable-television fixture when Pennsylvania’s 2020 votes were being counted.

Several months later, he entered the Senate primary, the first major Democratic candidate to jump into the race, and cemented an overwhelming fund-raising advantage over his nearest rivals.

Mr. Fetterman campaigned on issues like raising the minimum wage, promoting criminal justice reform and supporting voting rights, abortion rights and protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people.

But he attracted just as much attention for his style, and some saw him as skilled at connecting with blue-collar voters. He favored basketball shorts and sweatshirts over button-downs and khakis and spent significant time campaigning in rural, working-class counties that had overwhelmingly voted for former President Donald J. Trump, hoping to improve Democratic margins in those areas.

Mr. Fetterman has repeatedly described himself as a progressive in the past, but in the Senate race he did not seek the left-wing mantle. He rejected a suggestion last week that he would join the “Squad,” a group of left-wing members of Congress, should he win.

Republicans and some Democrats, however, believe that he may be vulnerable to criticism that he is too far to the left for one of the most closely divided states in the nation, and especially for its more centrist suburbs, which have been vital to recent Democratic gains in the state.

“It’s good that Fetterman is going to these areas where Democrats have done poorly in these Republican counties, but I think his bigger challenge is going to be these suburban communities,” said former Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who said he had voted for President Biden.

Mr. Dent warned that Mr. Fetterman is seen by some as a “Bernie Sanders Democrat.”

The lieutenant governor lives in Braddock with his three children and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the second lady of Pennsylvania, who has embraced the acronym “SLOP” and who, like Mr. Fetterman, has an active social media presence.

She insisted that he get checked out after feeling unwell on Friday, the Fettermans said.

His campaign said Monday that Mr. Fetterman had been “again evaluated by the neurologist who once again reiterated that John will make a full recovery.”

Reid J. Epstein
May 18, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

Deniers of the 2020 vote thrive even as Trumpism drifts. Here are five primary takeaways.

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A high-spending contest between David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon, was likely headed for a statewide recount with the race too close to call.CreditCredit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate contest, the biggest and most expensive race of a five-state primary night, is a photo finish between David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon. It appears headed to a statewide recount.

The night delivered a split decision for former President Donald J. Trump, with his choice for Idaho governor falling well short, Dr. Oz in a virtual tie and his candidates for Senate in North Carolina and governor in Pennsylvania triumphant.

On the Democratic side, voters pushed for change over consensus, nominating a left-leaning political brawler for Senate in Pennsylvania and nudging a leading moderate in the House closer to defeat in Oregon as votes were counted overnight.

Here are a few key takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries, the biggest day so far of the 2022 midterm cycle:

Republican voters mostly rewarded candidates who dispute the 2020 election results.

The Republican candidates who did best on Tuesday were the ones who have most aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election results and have campaigned on restricting voting further and overhauling how elections are run.

Doug Mastriano, the far-right candidate who won the G.O.P. nomination for Pennsylvania governor in a landslide, attended the rally on Jan. 6, 2021, that led to the assault on the Capitol and has since called for decertifying the results of the 2020 election.

Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who beat a former governor by over 30 percentage points in the state’s Republican primary for Senate, voted last year against certifying the 2020 election results — and, in the aftermath of that contest, texted Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, to push the bogus claim that Dominion Voting Systems might have had a connection to the liberal billionaire George Soros.

On Tuesday, Mr. Budd refused to say that President Biden was the legitimate 2020 victor.

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Representative Ted Budd easily won North Carolina’s Republican primary race for Senate.Credit...Allison Lee Isley/The Winston-Salem Journal, via Associated Press

Voters in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary for Senate sent a more mixed message: Kathy Barnette, a far-right commentator who centered her campaign on Mr. Trump’s election falsehoods, trailed her narrowly divided rivals Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz early Wednesday.

But Ms. Barnette, with roughly 25 percent of the vote, performed far better than many political observers had expected just two weeks ago, when she began a last-minute surge on the back of strong debate performances.

Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz are hardly tethered close to reality on election matters. Both have refused to acknowledge Mr. Biden as the rightful winner in 2020, playing to their party’s base of Trump supporters.

The success of the election deniers comes after a year and a half in which Mr. Trump has continued to fixate on his 2020 loss and, in some places, has called on Republican state legislators to try to decertify their states’ results — something that has no basis in law.

The G.O.P. will feel bullish about the Pennsylvania Senate race. The governor’s contest is another story.

Republicans avoided what many saw as a general-election catastrophe when Ms. Barnette, who had a long history of offensive comments and who federal records show had finished ninth in the fund-raising battle in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, slipped far behind Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz.

Both Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Dr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, have largely self-financed their campaigns and could continue to do so, though neither would have much trouble raising money in a general election.

The eventual winner will face Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat who has long been a favorite of progressives but has recently tacked to the center as his primary victory became assured.

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David McCormick waited with supporters in Pittsburgh as votes were counted. Credit...Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

With nearly all of the vote counted, the margin between Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz was well under one-half of one percent, the threshold to trigger automatic recounts for statewide races in Pennsylvania. Before that can happen, thousands of mailed-in votes are still to be counted from counties across the state.

Whoever emerges from the Republican Senate primary will be on a ticket with, and will probably be asked to defend positions taken by, Mr. Mastriano. He has run a hard-right campaign and enters the general election as an underdog to Josh Shapiro, the state’s Democratic attorney general.

Trump’s endorsement is still worth a lot. But Republican voters often have minds of their own.

In Ohio this month, J.D. Vance received 32 percent of the vote. In Nebraska last week, Charles W. Herbster got 30 percent. And on Tuesday alone:

  • Dr. Mehmet Oz was hovering around 31 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania.

  • Bo Hines took 32 percent in a House primary in North Carolina.

  • Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin of Idaho lost her primary for governor with about a quarter of the vote.

All of these candidates were endorsed by Mr. Trump in competitive primaries. And the outcome of these races has established the value of his endorsement in 2022: About one-third of Republican primary voters will back the Trump candidate.

In some races, like Mr. Vance’s for Senate and Mr. Hines’s, that’s enough to win and for the former president to claim credit. Elsewhere, as in Mr. Herbster’s bid for governor, the Trump-backed candidate fell short.

To be sure, Mr. Trump has won far more races than he has lost, and he saved face on Tuesday night with his late endorsement of Mr. Mastriano as polls showed the Pennsylvania candidate with a strong lead.

Mr. Trump’s early endorsement of Mr. Budd in North Carolina’s Senate race choked off support and fund-raising for Mr. Budd’s establishment-minded rivals, including former Gov. Pat McCrory.

But in Nebraska, Mr. Herbster and Mr. Trump couldn’t compete with a local political machine and millions of dollars from Gov. Pete Ricketts. In Pennsylvania, some local Republicans never warmed to Dr. Oz despite the Trump endorsement.

None of this bodes well for Mr. Trump’s Georgia picks, who are facing cash disadvantages and, unlike in the primary contests so far this year, entrenched incumbents. The Georgia primaries are next week.

Conor Lamb said electability matters most. Voters agreed — and chose John Fetterman.

When he burst onto the national political scene in 2018 by winning a special election to a House district Mr. Trump had carried by 18 points, Conor Lamb presented himself as the Democrat who could win over Republican voters in tough races.

Mr. Lamb made electability his central pitch to Pennsylvania voters in this year’s Senate race. Democratic voters didn’t disagree — they just decided overwhelmingly that his opponent, Mr. Fetterman, was the better general-election choice in the race.

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Representative Conor Lamb with supporters on Tuesday in Pittsburgh. He had far more endorsements than Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, but less voter enthusiasm.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Mr. Fetterman, who left the campaign trail on Friday after suffering a stroke and had a pacemaker installed on Tuesday, outclassed Mr. Lamb in every aspect of the campaign.

The lieutenant governor raised far more money than Mr. Lamb, even though the congressman employed the same fund-raising team used by Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. Mr. Fetterman’s muscular liberal agenda also energized more voters than Mr. Lamb, who, from the day he entered Congress, distanced himself not only from Democrats’ left wing but also from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he refused to back as the party’s leader.

In the end, Mr. Lamb turned out to be perfect for the resistance-era Democrats of 2018 and 2020, when primary voters took a win-at-all-costs posture. But now that the party controls Congress and the White House, Pennsylvania Democrats decided to go with a candidate they viewed as more of a fighter.

Progressives had a good night elsewhere, too: In Oregon, Representative Kurt Schrader, a veteran Democratic centrist, was trailing badly to a left-leaning opponent, Jamie McLeod-Skinner. She had hit Mr. Schrader, who was endorsed by Mr. Biden, for voting against key elements of the Democratic leadership’s policy agenda.

Madison Cawthorn found out the hard way that voters have a limit.

Two years ago, Representative Madison Cawthorn burst into Congress like a rocket, winning an upset victory over a Trump-endorsed candidate in a primary for his western North Carolina district and became an instant national media sensation.

On Tuesday, he lost his primary and left his election-night party without giving a concession speech.

In the end, even the Trump-friendly Republican voters of western North Carolina had had enough. The flurry of embarrassing videos from Mr. Cawthorn’s personal life, which emerged after he angered fellow Republicans with wild claims that members of Congress had used cocaine and held orgies, turned out to be too much.

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Representative Madison Cawthorn at his election night watch party in Hendersonville, N.C. He left without giving a concession speech.Credit...Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times

This wasn’t an instance of Republicans choosing electability over a firebrand. Mr. Cawthorn was in little danger of losing a general election, though Democrats would have thrown a ton of money against him to try.

Instead party leaders, in both Washington and North Carolina, sought to rid themselves of a problem child in their midst by coalescing around Chuck Edwards, a state senator backed by Senator Thom Tillis and an array of other North Carolina Republicans.

The defeat for now ends Mr. Cawthorn’s brief political career, which began with the promise of being the youngest person ever elected to Congress.

Now, at age 26, he is left with an enormous social media following and potentially lucrative career opportunities outside electoral politics.

A correction was made on 
May 18, 2022

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated Madison Cawthorn’s age. It is 26, not 27.

How we handle corrections

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Azi PaybarahNeil Vigdor
May 18, 2022, 2:01 a.m. ET

Who won, who lost and which races haven’t been called yet.

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Supporters of Dr. Mehmet Oz waited at his election night watch party in Newtown, Pa., while votes were counted.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

The marquee election on Tuesday evening, the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, is going down to the wire, but consequential races were decided, setting up general election matchups for the fall.

Here is a rundown of the winners and losers in some of the most important contests:

The Mehmet Oz, Dave McCormick and Kathy Barnette race in Pennsylvania is too close to call, despite Trump’s endorsement.

The high-spending Republican Senate race in Pennsylvania, between Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity television physician, and Dave McCormick, the wealthy leader of a hedge fund, is nail-bitingly close. Neither candidate conceded, and an official recount is likely.

Both Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick are rich, resided in other states for years, and spent millions attacking one another. Though former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Dr. Oz, the race was extremely tight, with thousands of mail-in ballots to be counted starting Wednesday.

Another candidate, the author and 2020 election denier Kathy Barnette, surged to an unexpectedly strong third-place showing, in part by casting herself as the more authentic MAGA candidate. Ms. Barnette, who publicly espoused homophobic and anti-Muslim views for years, also benefited by a late advertising blitz from the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth.

Doug Mastriano, an election denier, won the Republican primary election for governor in Pennsylvania.

Doug Mastriano, a retired colonel and state senator who has propagated myriad false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, won the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor.

He defeated a crowded field of challengers and was endorsed just a few days ago by Mr. Trump. He will face Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania who emerged unopposed from the Democratic primary for governor.

Mr. Shapiro’s victory lap on Tuesday was cut short. He announced earlier that day that he had tested positive for the coronavirus with mild symptoms and was isolating.

With Mr. Mastriano’s victory, Republicans will now try to win a battleground state with a central figure in trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

John Fetterman got a pacemaker hours before winning the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania.

John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, had a stroke on Friday and a pacemaker put in on Tuesday, which kept him off the campaign trail in the waning days of the race.

In November, he will try to help Democrats pick up a key Senate seat that is being vacated by Republican Patrick J. Toomey, a fiscal conservative who occasionally broke with his party.

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Gisele Barreto Fetterman speaking at the watch party for her husband, John Fetterman, after he won the Democratic Senate primary.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Mr. Fetterman dominated the race, wearing a uniform of sweatshirts and shorts while tapping into voters’ frustration with Washington. In the primary, he defeated Representative Conor Lamb, a moderate some thought could appeal to white, blue-collar workers the party has been losing for years, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a young state legislator and rising star in the party who got married just over two months ago.

Ted Budd, anointed by Trump, won North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary in a runaway victory.

Representative Ted Budd, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump and the influential anti-tax group Club for Growth, won the Republican nomination for Senate. Mr. Budd, who skipped all four debates in the race, defeated nine other candidates, including Pat McCrory, a former governor, and former Representative Mark Walker.

Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court and the first Black woman to have served in that role, will face Mr. Budd after cruising to victory in the Democratic primary for Senate. The outcome never appeared to be in doubt, with Democrats clearing the field of serious challengers for Ms. Beasley, who would become North Carolina’s first Black senator if elected.

Republicans are done with Madison Cawthorn

Crumbling under the weight of repeated scandals and blunders, Representative Madison Cawthorn was ousted on Tuesday by Republican primary voters in western North Carolina, a stinging rejection of the Trump-endorsed candidate.

Mr. Cawthorn, 26, lost to Chuck Edwards, a state senator, in a crowded primary in the 11th District that resembled a recall effort for many Republicans, who grew fed up with Mr. Cawthorn’s antics.

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Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina shortly before conceding his race Tuesday night.Credit...Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times

At about 10:30 p.m., Mr. Cawthorn conceded the race to Mr. Edwards, who had gained the support of many prominent Republicans in North Carolina, including Senator Thom Tillis.

Mr. Cawthorn, who entered Congress as a rising star in 2020, was besieged by scandal, from falsely suggesting that his Republican colleagues routinely throw cocaine-fueled orgies, to being detained at an airport after trying to take a loaded gun through security. Last month, after salacious images of him surfaced online showing him wearing women’s lingerie as part of a cruise ship game, he wrote on Twitter that “digging stuff up from my early 20s to smear me is pathetic.”

A 26-year-old political novice won a House primary in North Carolina with Trump’s help

Bo Hines, a 26-year-old political novice who enthralled Mr. Trump, drawing inevitable comparisons to another North Carolinian — Mr. Cawthorn — catapulted to a win in the Republican primary for a House seat outside Raleigh.

Mr. Hines, a onetime football phenom who was an All-American at North Carolina State University before transferring to Yale, topped seven other candidates in the primary in the 13th District.

His victory is perhaps the most audacious example of Mr. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party, with the former president endorsing Mr. Hines in March in the newly drawn tossup district. Mr. Hines was also backed by the Club for Growth, the influential anti-tax group.

Mr. Hines will face Wiley Nickel, a two-term state senator and criminal defense lawyer who did advance work for President Barack Obama. He positioned himself as a progressive who can work with people on both sides of the aisle.

Idaho’s Republican governor stamped out a Trump insurgent: the lieutenant governor

Gov. Brad Little of Idaho weathered a Republican primary challenge by Janice McGeachin, the lieutenant governor, who had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and made headlines for defying Mr. Little’s pandemic orders.

Ms. McGeachin had sought to win over ultraconservatives in the deep-red state that Mr. Trump overwhelmingly carried in 2016 and 2020. She had played up how she had issued a mutinous but short-lived ban on coronavirus mask mandates when Mr. Little had briefly left the state.

But Ms. McGeachin appeared to muster less than 30 percent of the vote in Idaho, which holds separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor — the genesis of the strained pairing.

An establishment Democrat thwarted a far-left rival running for the House in Kentucky

In an open-seat race in Kentucky’s only blue House district, Democrats favored an establishment candidate in Tuesday’s primary over a rival state lawmaker who ran on the far left and has been a vocal leader of the police accountability movement in Louisville.

The party favorite, Morgan McGarvey, the Democratic leader in the State Senate, defeated Attica Scott, a state representative, in the Third District. The two had been vying to succeed to Representative John Yarmuth, who was first elected in 2006 and is retiring. The chairman of the House Budget Committee, Mr. Yarmuth is the lone Democrat from Kentucky in Congress.

Mike Baker
May 18, 2022, 12:24 a.m. ET

Brad Little, Idaho’s governor, defeats the Trump-backed lieutenant governor to win his G.O.P. primary.

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Gov. Brad Little of Idaho speaking to reporters in Boise last month at an event highlighting a bill providing funding for behavioral health care.Credit...Keith Ridler/Associated Press

Gov. Brad Little of Idaho won his Republican primary on Tuesday, overcoming a challenge from a lieutenant governor who had secured an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump and had spoken at a recent white nationalist conference.

Mr. Little, whose primary victory was called by The Associated Press early Wednesday, most likely secured himself a second term in a state that hasn’t elected a statewide Democrat in two decades.

Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin had challenged Mr. Little after feuding with him over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and portraying him as insufficiently Republican, even as he slashed taxes, cut regulations and approved one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans. She had spent the campaign networking with militia members, the John Birch Society and the political committee led by the white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

The state’s Republican Party has been locked in a feud between factions, with traditional G.O.P. members sounding alarm that far-right elements in the state were seizing control of the party apparatus. One group of conservatives recently formed an alliance called “Take Back Idaho” in hopes of keeping the state from straying toward those extremes.

Parts of Idaho have long been a home base for anti-government militias or racists seeking a whites-only homeland. Many people seeking refuge from liberal policies elsewhere have also moved into the state, but so have more moderate voters arriving in fast-growing cities like Boise.

Mr. Little is set to face off against one of two Democrats in November — Stephen Heidt, a teacher who lives outside Boise, or Shelby Rognstad, the mayor of Sandpoint, a small city in northern Idaho. Another candidate poised to be on the ballot: Ammon Bundy, who led an armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge in 2016. He is running as an independent.

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Jazmine Ulloa
May 17, 2022, 10:24 p.m. ET

Madison Cawthorn loses his re-election bid after a deluge of scandals.

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Representative Madison Cawthorn at his election night watch party in Hendersonville, N.C.Credit...Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times

Chuck Edwards, a three-term state senator and business owner, has edged out Representative Madison Cawthorn in the Republican primary for a House seat representing North Carolina’s 11th District.

Luke Ball, a representative for Mr. Cawthorn, said late Tuesday that the congressman had called Mr. Edwards to concede. Mr. Edwards’s narrow triumph was called by The Associated Press.

The outcome served as a rebuke of Mr. Cawthorn, a right-wing firebrand and the youngest freshman in Congress, who was once seen as a rising star of the Republican Party.

It is also a significant victory for the old guard Republicans in North Carolina and Washington who in recent months had been feuding with Mr. Cawthorn over his personal and political errors and foibles.

Mr. Edwards, 61, has served in the state Legislature since 2016 and has built a staunch conservative brand by pushing measures to overhaul tax laws, enact a constitutional amendment for voter identification, and require county sheriffs to work with immigration enforcement agencies.

He entered the race with a natural constituency of traditional Republican primary voters, as well as endorsements from Senator Thom Tillis and most of the members of the Legislature in his district. Like Mr. Cawthorn, he was born and raised in rural Hendersonville, a city of 14,000 south of Asheville.

Mr. Edwards will now face Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a Christian minister and organizer who is the Democratic nominee, for the House seat overseeing a largely rural and working-class Republican stronghold tucked against the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains.

Mr. Edwards’s triumph capped months of political turbulence for Mr. Cawthorn, 26, who faced an avalanche of bad press and political attacks from establishment Republicans at home and in Washington over his numerous run-ins with the law, childish behavior and sexual innuendo, and what his opponents described as a lack of political leadership.

The winner on Tuesday had needed to draw only 30 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff in a crowded field split among seven other challengers. But late Tuesday, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Cawthorn were both clearing the 30 percent threshold.

Mr. Cawthorn had hoped to win by heavily promoting his endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump.

But Mr. Cawthorn, who has used a wheelchair since a car crash that almost took his life at 18, struggled to overcome a series of old and new personal and political errors. He previously faced accusations that he had lied about key parts of his background and that he had been sexually and verbally aggressive toward women.

In recent months, he also has been accused of engaging in insider trading, charged with driving with a revoked license and stopped for trying to bring a gun through airport security — a second time. Photos and videos of him partying and emulating sexual antics circulated.

In March, he said on a conservative YouTube channel that people he had admired in Washington had invited him to orgies and used cocaine. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, told reporters he had spoken with Mr. Cawthorn and told him that he had lost trust in him.

But perhaps most damaging was Mr. Cawthorn’s track record of missing important votes in Congress and his announcement last year that he would run in a new district near Charlotte, only to change his mind and return to his old district after the new district was redrawn and tilted Democratic.

It also changed the dynamics in the race, providing the opening that Mr. Edwards and Michele Woodhouse, the elected Republican chair of Mr. Cawthorn’s district and once one of Mr. Cawthorn’s staunch supporters, needed to jump into the electoral contest.

One of Mr. Edwards’s tag lines was “Always for the mountains,” a jab at Mr. Cawthorn for moving away.

Reid J. Epstein
May 17, 2022, 9:48 p.m. ET

Mail ballot problems will delay results in two counties in Pennsylvania and Oregon.

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Checking ballots in Clackamas County, Ore., on Tuesday. The county is warning that its results will be delayed because of printing errors on the ballots. Credit...Gillian Flaccus/Associated Press

The counting of ballots will be delayed by days in two counties, one in Pennsylvania and one in Oregon, after printing errors forced officials to reproduce thousands of ballots by hand to have them properly counted by machines, officials in the two counties said Tuesday.

The delays could slow race calls in key contests should they be very close, including the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania and a Democratic House primary in Oregon.

Sherry Hall, the clerk of Clackamas County, Ore., which stretches from the southeastern suburbs of Portland to Mount Hood and is the state’s third-largest county by population, said nearly two-thirds of ballots had faulty bar codes that caused vote-counting machines to reject them.

“It just says, ‘Unable to read the bar code,’” Ms. Hall said. “There is not enough intensity of the black ink on the bad bar codes.”

In Oregon, where all voting takes place by mail, state law requires ballots that cannot be read by machines to be reproduced by hand by teams of two elections officials, one from each major party. One person reads the faulty ballot’s choices, while the other marks the choices on a new ballot. Once a batch is completed, the two switch places and double-check the work on each ballot, Ms. Hall said.

The county had received about 21,000 ballots by Monday, with several thousand more expected in drop boxes Tuesday. In Oregon, ballots postmarked by Election Day will count as long as they are received at county offices within a week of the election.

Oregon officials have until June 13 to certify the results of Tuesday’s primary.

Oregon has competitive primaries for governor in both major parties. Clackamas County also has a closely watched Democratic primary for Oregon’s Fifth Congressional District, where Representative Kurt Schrader, a moderate Democrat endorsed by President Biden, faces a stiff challenge from Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a progressive who has been endorsed by many local Democratic leaders.

In Lancaster County, Pa., a heavily Republican area between Harrisburg and Philadelphia, county officials said about 21,000 absentee ballots contained incorrect identification codes, preventing machines from properly reading them. Lancaster County is the sixth-largest by population in Pennsylvania.

County commissioners blamed the state’s vote-by-mail law and the county’s ballot vendor, which they said the county had contracted with after its previous vendor also produced error-prone ballots.

“This problem and the ongoing problems with the logistics of elections flows directly from the mail ballot law,” the three commissioners said in a statement Tuesday. “Counties must run elections based on state law. This law is too complicated. It has too many short deadlines.”

John Trescot, the lone Democrat on the board, urged the public to trust the delayed vote-counting process.

“We have done this before,” he said. “We know how to do it correctly. Unfortunately, with over 21,000 mail-in ballots, it is going to take time. It may take several days.”

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