T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019 | 5
world
The Republican competing in the do-
over race in North Carolina’s Ninth Con-
gressional District has been running an
ad featuring circus music and wobbling
clown dolls. The dolls, he says in the
commercial, represent “the crazy liberal
clowns” of today’s Democratic Party.
“They’re not funny,” the candidate,
state Senator Dan Bishop, declares.
“They’re downright scary.”
Affixed to the clown heads are the
faces of some of the opposing party’s
more left-leaning national stars, includ-
ing Representative Ilhan Omar of Min-
nesota, Senator Bernie Sanders of Ver-
mont and Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Another
prominent face is that of Mr. Bishop’s
Democratic opponent, Dan McCready
— a Marine combat veteran who does
not support Nancy Pelosi as House
speaker and whose motto is “country
over party.”
This rare redo election, set for Sept.
10, has emerged as an opportunity for
Republicans to battle-test a 2020 strat-
egy that seeks to stuff all Democrats,
even the most moderate ones, into a sort
of conceptual clown car driven, as an-
other of Mr. Bishop’s ads puts it, by “so-
cialists” and “radicals” who “hate the
values that make America great.”
State officials called for the new con-
test in February after evidence surfaced
that the 2018 campaign of the previous
Republican candidate, Mark Harris, had
funded an illegal vote-harvesting
scheme in rural Bladen County. The
head of the state elections board called it
“a tainted election” — an embarrass-
ment for Republicans and for Mr. Harris,
who is sitting out the new race for what
he said are health reasons.
Since then, Republicans have argued
that an even greater danger to America
has surfaced in the Democratic Party.
President Trump has laid the ground-
work for the strategy with his racially
inflammatory attacks on four liberal
first-term Democrats in Congress, all of
whom are women of color. And the mes-
sage that Democrats are not just wrong,
but crazy or even dangerous, is now cen-
tral to Republican campaigns in a num-
ber of battleground districts around the
country, as well as in governor’s races
this year in Louisiana and Mississippi
that feature Democratic candidates
more moderate than Mr. McCready.
At the same time, the message has
been consistently reinforced by Repub-
licans of national stature like Donald
Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son,
who on Tuesday sent out a fund-raising
email with the subject line “Democrats
vs. America,” in which he said the party
“hates the American flag” and, among
other things, “promotes terrorism.”
In North Carolina’s Ninth District,
which covers part of Charlotte and a
number of exurban and rural counties to
the east, Mr. Bishop’s attacks on Mr. Mc-
Cready come amid a notable lack of re-
pentance among area Republicans forthe allegations of electoral fraud in rural
Bladen County.
The man at the center of the allega-
tions, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., was
charged in February in connection with
misconduct related to absentee ballots
during a 2016 election and the 2018 pri-
mary. And on Tuesday, he was charged
with obstruction of justice and illegal
possession of an absentee ballot, among
other crimes, in connection with themidterm election that was overturned.
Charles Ray Peterson, the Republican
chairman of the county commission,
noted that Mr. Dowless had previously
run get-out-the-vote operations for
Democrats, too.
Last month, the county Republican
Party posted a Facebook message that
accused Democrats of election chi-
canery: “Please just vote,” it said. “It
takes a lot of Republicans to out vote allof the living, dead and illegal Demo-
crats.”
A recent poll leaked to reporters and
conducted on behalf of Mr. McCready’s
campaign showed the race tied among
likely voters. But a key question is
whether a window of opportunity has
closed for Mr. McCready, who fell short
in the midterm by fewer than 1,
votes. The district has not elected a
Democrat to the seat since 1962, and Mr.Trump won the district by more than 11
percentage points in 2016. Some Repub-
lican observers are hoping that the anti-
Trump tide that allowed Democrats to
retake the House in November has re-
ceded. They also feel more confident
that the new nationwide message paint-
ing Democrats as out of touch has
changed the narrative in their favor.
“We’re no longer talking about mean,
nasty Republicans,” said Larry Sha-heen, a Republican political strategist
who supports Mr. Bishop. “Now it’s, are
we electing a socialist Democrat or a
capitalist Republican?”
Mr. Bishop, 55, is well suited to the
task of pressing an aggressive case
against Mr. McCready and his fellow
Democrats. An accomplished corporate
lawyer from Charlotte, he has served in
both the state House and Senate, emerg-
ing as one of the more controversial and
combative members of a Republican-led
Legislature that aggressively sought to
give traditionally moderate North Car-
olina a shove to the right.
“I think I am reputed to be something
of a battler in the General Assembly,” he
said.
Three years ago, Mr. Bishop was the
sponsor of House Bill 2. Before it was re-
pealed, the legislation, known nationally
as the “Bathroom Bill,” plunged the
state into political chaos with its require-
ment that transgender people use rest-
rooms in government and public build-
ings that correspond with the gender on
their birth certificate. The furor over the
bill, and the threats of corporate boy-
cotts and canceled sports events, helped
deliver a Democrat, Roy Cooper, to the
governor’s mansion, but Mr. Bishop
boasted of standing up to the “radical
transgender agenda.”
Still, since easily winning the Republi-
can primary in the current race, Mr.
Bishop has not particularly emphasized
the bill, saying that voters were “tired”
of the controversy. In an interview last
week, Mr. Bishop instead stressed his
role in the sound fiscal management of
the state, which he said had allowed for
surpluses, teacher pay increases and
new funds for road construction.
“My basic view of it is practicing good
fiscal management on a good, disci-
plined basis over an extended period of
time produces great results,” he said.
His opponent, Mr. McCready, enjoys a
pronounced money advantage in the
race, with more than $1.7 million in cash
on hand at the end of June, compared to
about $345,000 for Mr. Bishop. Mr. Mc-
Cready is also a known quantity in much
of the district after campaigning for the
seat for 27 months.
On a recent weeknight, Mr. McCready,
36, was chatting up a room full of Afri-
can-American preachers, many of
whom he had met before the midterms.
The coming vote, he told them, was “the
people’s chance to get justice” for a
scheme that “targeted” older, black and
Native American voters.
“We ran into what we now know is the
largest case of election fraud in recent
American history,” he said. “When we
ran into that, I chose to fight.”
At Bladen Hardware in Elizabeth-
town, a city of about 3,500 people, big
questions about the direction of the
country seemed to be on people’s minds.
Austin Adams, 24, a clerk at the store,
said he plans to vote for Mr. McCready
so he could help serve as a check on Mr.
Trump. “I love my country,” he said,
“But that whole nationalism, it kind of
closes people off and it divides.”
The store sells a good deal of firearms,
and Mr. Adams said that many
customers have come in worried about
the country’s drifting leftward and im-
pinging on their rights as gun owners.
“That’s what I hear a lot around here,”
he said. “A lot of people say the left is
straight crazy.”Republicans test attack strategies in North Carolina
ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C.In rare do-over election,
effort emerges to paint all
Democrats as ‘socialists’BY RICHARD FAUSSETState Senator Dan Bishop, center, in Pembroke, N.C. Mr. Bishop, a Republican, is running for Congress in a redo election that was called after the 2018 contest was overturned.PHOTOGRAPHS BY LOGAN R. CYRUS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESThe election, set for Sept. 10, has emerged as an opportunity for Republicans to battle-
test a 2020 strategy arguing Democrats are crazy, or even dangerous.Mr. Bishop’s Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, in Charlotte, N.C. A window of op-
portunity may have closed for Mr. McCready, whose motto is “country over party.”One month after a wobbly debate per-
formance that reinforced the perceived
weaknesses of the ostensible front-run-
ner — Is he too old? Too nostalgically
moderate? Too politically brittle to de-
fend himself when challenged? — for-
mer Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
settled behind his center-stage lectern
on Wednesday night and supplied some
answers: He is still old. He is still nostal-
gic. And he is still the front-runner, until
someone can prove otherwise.
Far from perfect, and rarely exactly
steady, Mr. Biden nonetheless achieved
at least some of the goals that seemed to
elude him last time.
He had promised before the debate
that this time he would not be so “polite.”
About 30 minutes in, after listening to
liberal rivals lash his health care vision
as insufficiently ambitious and dismiss
concerns about cost as a Republican
talking point, Mr. Biden widened his
eyes a bit. He waved a hand, slicing the
air. He had just the word.
“This idea is a bunch of malarkey,” he
said of the criticisms, leaning on a trade-
mark Bidenism. He accused his peers of
underselling the trillions of dollars that
a “Medicare for all”-style plan might
cost, turning toward two more progres-
sive rivals — Senator Kamala Harris of
California and Mayor Bill de Blasio of
New York — to level the kind of zealous
defense of center-leftism that has often
escaped him in this campaign: “I don’t
know what math you do in New York,”
Mr. Biden said. “I don’t know what math
you do in California. But I tell ya, that’s a
lot of money.”
Throughout the evening, he plowed
through a series of forceful defenses of
his service alongside former President
Barack Obama, frequently eager to
wrap himself in Mr. Obama’s legacy on
issues from health care to climate andnever missing a chance to remind audi-
ences of his association with sunnier
Democratic times.
Certainly, he did acknowledge some
differences: He said he would renegoti-
ate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a ma-
jor trade agreement for which he advo-
cated as vice president.
Even while his record was under at-
tack, Mr. Biden, 76, played the happy
statesman, or tried to, occasionally slip-
ping as he addressed far younger con-
tenders. “Go easy on me, kid,” Mr. Biden
said to Ms. Harris, a United States sena-
tor and former attorney general of Cali-
fornia who is 54 years old, as they took
the stage.
In an exchange with Julián Castro, the
former federal housing secretary and
San Antonio mayor, Mr. Biden referred
to him as “Julián” and then thought bet-
ter of it — “excuse me, the secretary.”
Discussing criminal justice reform
with Senator Cory Booker, who has been
sharply critical of Mr. Biden’s record on
that matter, he jokingly skipped ahead,
calling him the president and stopping
himself as he lightheartedly grabbed
Mr. Booker’s arm — “excuse me, the fu-
ture president.”
And in an opening statement that
seemed to reinforce the introductory
theme of his campaign — taking relent-
less aim at President Trump — Mr. Bi-
den nodded to the diversity of fellow
Democrats onstage, appearing sensi-
tive to the balance of running against
them as a white male septuagenarian.
“We are strong and great because of
this diversity, Mr. President, not in spite
of it,” he said, pushing back against Mr.
Trump’s latest grievance-powered rhet-
oric. “So Mr. President, let’s get some-
thing straight. We love it. We are not
leaving it. We are here to stay, and we’re
certainly not going to leave it to you.”
Mr. Biden’s standing atop the field is
far from assured, and some rival cam-
paigns still consider him a paper-tiger
favorite, doomed to crumble eventually
under the weight of his lengthy record
and indiscipline on the stump.He has still struggled to communicate
a detailed affirmative blueprint of what
his presidency might look like and has
yet to face Senator Elizabeth Warren,
who has fashioned herself as the candi-
date with a policy plan for every occa-
sion, on a debate stage.
And his first debate performance was
so rocky, and so alarmed even close al-
lies and advisers, that he did not have a
high bar to clear Wednesday night.
But the forum provided a chance to
articulate, at least in broad strokes, a
compelling argument for the kind of de-
liberately paced change he is espousing,
one night after Ms. Warren and Senator
Bernie Sanders outlined their shared
promise of far more extensive social and
economic upheaval. It was also an op-
portunity to move beyond his disquiet-
ing showing five weeks ago, when an
evening of wandering and defensive an-
swers seemed to threaten a bedrock
claim of Mr. Biden’s candidacy: that no
other Democrat has the presence and
moxie to stare down Mr. Trump.After the first debate, some of Mr. Bi-
den’s supporters have urged him to fo-
cus on the future rather than rehashing
the more controversial elements of his
past.
“To the extent he spends his time get-
ting wrapped up in relitigating state-
ments or comments or votes from 30 or
40 years ago, I think we lose, all of us,
collectively,” said Senator Chris Coons, a
Delaware Democrat and close ally of Mr.
Biden’s. “What is constructive is when
our candidates put their best foot for-
ward on the debate stage, and show how
they would be the best answer to the
question that Middle America is asking:
If we give you back the keys, Demo-
crats, where will you take us?”
At times on Wednesday, Mr. Biden ap-
peared particularly keen to embrace the
“middle” part. He made clear that he
was familiar with his opponents’
records on sensitive matters like crimi-
nal justice and policing, issuing criti-
cisms of those records that could have
come from another candidate further tothe left. But on immigration, Mr. Biden
proudly adopted a more centrist mantle,
at a time when many Democratic strat-
egists fear some in the presidential field
are veering too far with calls to decrimi-
nalize unauthorized border crossings.
“The fact of the matter is, you should be
able to, if you cross the border illegally,
you should be able to be sent back,” Mr.
Biden said. “It’s a crime.”
When pressed on the number of de-
portations that took place while Mr.
Obama was in the White House — amid
the shouts of some protesters — Mr. Bi-
den staunchly defended the administra-
tion’s broader approach. But as Mr. de
Blasio needled Mr. Biden over whether
he had personally spoken up, Mr. Biden
showed a flash of exasperation.
“I was vice president,” he said. “I am
not the president. I keep my recommen-
dation in private. Unlike you, I expect
you would go ahead and say whatever
was said privately with him. That is not
what I do. What I do say to you is, he
moved to fundamentally change the
system.”
While Mr. Biden was crisper and more
energetic on Wednesday than he was in
the first debate, his verbal tics and sig-
nature self-interruptions were hardly
eradicated. He still cut himself off, at
times with a well-worn trail-off: “Any-
way... ”
Mr. Biden’s advisers said ahead of the
debate that they anticipated that he
would be the main target of the other
candidates onstage, and candidates
from Mr. de Blasio to Ms. Harris to Mr.
Booker aimed to deliver. But throughout
the debate, Ms. Harris was also the sub-
ject of repeated criticism across the
stage, from Senator Michael Bennet on
health care to Representative Tulsi Gab-
bard on criminal justice.
In one early exchange on health care,
Mr. Biden signaled quickly that he
would gladly join the effort. “You can’t
beat President Trump with double-talk,”
he said, accusing Ms. Harris of vacillat-
ing and equivocating in her health care
plans. Ms. Harris landed some of herown zingers — “They’re probably con-
fused because they’ve not read it,” she
said of the Biden campaign’s critique of
her proposal — but often found herself
on the defensive, occasionally demoting
the former vice president to “Senator Bi-
den” as she collected herself for a re-
sponse.
Ms. Harris and Mr. Booker are partic-
ularly eager to chip away at Mr. Biden’s
expansive backing among black voters,
who still recall him fondly from his eight
years as Mr. Obama’s sidekick.Yet one lesson of Mr. Biden’s first de-
bate is how durable much of his support
seems to be so far. While Mr. Biden ini-
tially saw his standing fall a bit in polls,
with Ms. Harris especially rising, he ap-
pears to have reestablished a comfort-
able lead in recent surveys.
A Quinnipiac University national poll
released Monday showed Mr. Biden well
ahead of his competitors: He was the
choice of 34 percent of Democratic vot-
ers and Democratic-leaning voters, the
survey found, while Ms. Harris came in
at 12 percent. Among black voters the
numbers were starker: Mr. Biden had
the support of 53 percent of black Demo-
cratic voters; Ms. Harris claimed only 7
percent.
Perhaps channeling some confidence
from those poll numbers, Mr. Biden vig-
orously defended his own record
throughout the debate, appearing more
comfortable than he had in June.
Not every flourish worked. In his clos-
ing statement, Mr. Biden seemed to
show his age a little while trying to pro-
mote a way to join his campaign. “Go to
Joe 30330,” he said, apparently conflat-
ing a website with a text message desti-
nation. The result, instead, was ma-
larkey.Too moderate? Too nostalgic? ‘Malarkey,’ candidate says
NEWS ANALYSISBY MATT FLEGENHEIMER
AND KATIE GLUECKFrom left, Senator Cory Booker, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator
Kamala Harris. Mr. Biden was crisper on Wednesday than in his previous debate.ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES“I don’t know what math you do
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