Daily Political Briefing
July 28, 2021, 8:29 p.m. ET
The Senate voted on Wednesday to take up a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure deal, as Republicans joined Democrats to pave the way for action on a crucial piece of President Biden’s agenda.
The 67-to-32 vote, which included 17 Republicans in favor, came just hours after centrist senators in both parties and the White House reached a long-sought compromise on the bill, which would provide about $550 billion in new federal money for roads, bridges, rail lines, transit projects, water systems and other physical infrastructure programs.
Among those in support of moving forward was Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and a longtime foil of major legislation pushed by Democratic presidents. Mr. McConnell’s backing signaled that his party was — at least for now — open to teaming with Democrats to enact the plan.
The deal still faces several obstacles to becoming law, including being turned into formal legislative text and clearing final votes in the closely divided Senate and House. But the vote was a victory for a president who has long promised to break through the partisan gridlock gripping Congress and accomplish big things supported by members of both political parties.
If enacted, the measure would be the largest infusion of federal money into the public works system in more than a decade.
“We look forward to moving ahead, and having the opportunity to have a healthy debate here in the chamber regarding an incredibly important project for the American people,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and a lead negotiator for his party in the bipartisan talks.
The compromise, which was still being written on Wednesday, includes $110 billion for roads, bridges and major projects; $66 billion for passenger and freight rail; $39 billion for public transit; $65 billion for broadband; $17 billion for ports and waterways; and $46 billion to help states and cities prepare for droughts, wildfires, flooding and other consequences of climate change, according to a White House official who detailed it on the condition of anonymity.
In a lengthy statement, Mr. Biden hailed it as “the most significant long-term investment in our infrastructure and competitiveness in nearly a century.”
“Neither side got everything they wanted in this deal,” he said. “But that’s what it means to compromise and forge consensus — the heart of democracy. As the deal goes to the entire Senate, there is still plenty of work ahead to bring this home. There will be disagreements to resolve and more compromise to forge along the way.”
Many of the provisions were unchanged from an outline the group agreed upon last month. But it appeared to pare spending in a few areas, including reducing money for public transit to $39 billion from $49 billion and eliminating a $20 billion “infrastructure bank” meant to catalyze private investment in large projects.
“We’ve still got a long ways to go before we get to the finish line,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. “But this was a vitally important first step.”
Those concessions generated grumbling among progressives who were already angry at being excluded from the infrastructure talks and concerned that it omitted key priorities. Several liberal Democrats warned that they might not support the measure in the closely divided House until a $3.5 trillion budget plan including investments in climate change, health care, education and child care programs had been approved and funded.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York took to Twitter to chastise Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a leading Democratic negotiator of the bipartisan plan, for comments suggesting she might not vote for that more ambitious package, which party leaders plan to push through both chambers unilaterally, over the opposition of Republicans.
“Good luck tanking your own party’s investment on childcare, climate action, and infrastructure while presuming you’ll survive a 3 vote House margin - especially after choosing to exclude members of color from negotiations and calling that a ‘bipartisan accomplishment,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
Still, the agreement drew more than enough support to clear its first major hurdle.
“We intend to show over the coming days — as we work through this bill together in a collaborative process on the floor of the Senate — to continue to demonstrate that we can do things together,” Ms. Sinema said at a celebratory news conference.
The loss of the infrastructure bank appeared to cut in half the funding for electric vehicle charging stations that administration officials had said was included in the original agreement, jeopardizing Mr. Biden’s promise to create a network of 500,000 charging stations nationwide.
The new agreement significantly changes how the infrastructure spending will be paid for, after Republicans balked at a pillar of the original framework: increased revenue from an I.R.S. crackdown on tax cheats, which was set to supply nearly one-fifth of the funding for the plan.
Instead, negotiators agreed to repurpose more than $250 billion from previous Covid relief legislation, including $50 billion from expanded unemployment benefits that have been canceled prematurely this summer by two dozen Republican governors, according to a fact sheet reviewed by The New York Times. That is more than double the repurposed money in the original deal.
The new agreement would save $50 billion by delaying a Medicare rebate rule passed under President Donald J. Trump and raise nearly $30 billion by applying tax information reporting requirements to cryptocurrency. It also proposes to recoup $50 billion in fraudulently paid unemployment benefits during the pandemic.
Emily Cochrane and
After weeks of debate and discussion, the White House and a bipartisan group of senators said on Wednesday that they had reached agreement on an infrastructure bill.
The $1 trillion package is far smaller than the $2.3 trillion plan that President Biden had originally proposed and would provide about $550 billion in new federal money for public transit, roads, bridges, water and other physical projects over the next five years, according to a White House fact sheet.
Lawmakers have yet to release legislative text of the bill, which the Senate voted to advance in an initial vote Wednesday evening. But if enacted, the package would mark a significant step toward repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and preparing it for the 21st century.
Here’s a look at the bipartisan group’s agreement for the final package.
Funding for roads and bridges
The package provides $110 billion in new funding for roads, bridges and other major projects. The funds would be used to repair and rebuild with a “focus on climate change mitigation,” according to the White House.
That funding would only begin to chip away at some of the nation’s pressing infrastructure needs, transportation experts say.
Investments in public transit
Public buses, subways and trains would receive $39 billion in new funding, which would be used to repair aging infrastructure and modernize and expand transit service across the country.
While the amount of new funding for public transit was scaled back from a June proposal, which included $49 billion, the Biden administration said it would be the largest federal investment in public transit in history.
Big investments in rail and freight lines
The deal would inject $66 billion in rail to address Amtrak’s maintenance backlog, along with upgrading the high-traffic Northeast corridor from Washington to Boston (a route frequented by East Coast lawmakers). It would also expand rail service outside the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
Other provisions in the bipartisan deal include $55 billion to fund clean drinking water initiatives and $7.5 billion toward building out the nation’s network of electric vehicle charging stations.
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President Biden will formally announce on Thursday that all civilian federal employees must be vaccinated against the coronavirus or be forced to submit to regular testing, social distancing, masking requirements and restrictions on most travel, two people familiar with the president’s plans said Wednesday.
White House officials said the administration is still reviewing the specific details of the policy, which the president is expected to announce in a speech from the White House. In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Biden said his remarks will reveal “the next steps in our effort to get more Americans vaccinated.”
The president’s move is expected to be similar to an announcement on Wednesday by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who said that tens of thousands of state employees would be required to show proof of vaccination or submit to weekly testing. Mr. Cuomo also said that “patient-facing” health care workers at state-run hospitals would be required to be vaccinated as a condition of their employment. Two days earlier, New York City announced that all 300,000 municipal employees must be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing.
The federal plan will not force employees to get a shot unless they work directly with patients at hospitals run by the Veterans Affairs department. But public health officials are hoping that the prospect of extra burdens for the unvaccinated will help convince more people to get one.
Mr. Biden’s decision to embrace stricter vaccine rules for federal workers follow days of deliberations and reflect growing concern among top federal health officials about the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, which poses a special threat to children, older Americans and those with weakened immune systems, including cancer patients. But that concern, officials said, must be balanced against the threat of a backlash that could drive opposition to vaccination. Recent research has shown that vaccines remain effective against the worst outcomes of Covid-19, including those involving the Delta variant.
Asked by a reporter on Tuesday whether he would require vaccinations for the nation’s nearly two million federal workers, Mr. Biden was blunt.
“That’s under consideration right now,” he said, adding, “But if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were.”
Mr. Biden did not provide details, but administration officials said the idea being debated was similar to the New York City mandate.
It was not clear if Mr. Biden was planning something similar for the military, although he does have the authority to do so. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has said he would not be comfortable with a mandate until the Food and Drug Administration had fully approved the vaccine.
The officials said that this was not a matter of simply firing federal employees who refused to be vaccinated, but that the government could add burdens or restrictions — like extensive testing or a ban on all but essential travel — for those who did not willingly get the protections. They said there was evidence that making life inconvenient for those who refuse the vaccine works reasonably well to increase inoculation rates.
The move underscores the need by Mr. Biden and his top health advisers to grapple with the limits of his legal authority when it comes to forcing Americans to be vaccinated. Aides say the president has no power to order all Americans to get a shot, nor can he require children to be vaccinated as a condition of attending school; that is a function reserved for state or local governments.
The House of Representatives will once again require all lawmakers and staff members to wear masks inside, a sharp reversal of policy as growing fears about the Delta variant reach the doorstep of Congress. Senators will be encouraged to mask up, too, but are not required to do so.
In a memo late Tuesday night, Dr. Brian P. Monahan, Congress’s top doctor, said he was recommending the change based on new C.D.C. guidance and the nature of the Capitol, where thousands of people traveling from across the country mix each week. Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the change official on the House floor Wednesday morning.
“For the Congress, representing a collection of individuals traveling weekly from various risk areas (both high and low rates of disease transmission), all individuals should wear a well-fitted, medical-grade filtration mask (for example an ear loop surgical mask or a KN95 mask) when they are in an interior space,” Dr. Monahan wrote to House officials.
In a letter to top Senate leaders, Dr. Monahan dispensed the same advice but stopped short of recommending a mask mandate. The Senate is a smaller body, and for much of the pandemic, its members wore masks voluntarily. Most Senators are vaccinated.
The House triumphantly dropped its longtime mask requirement six weeks ago in a show of optimism that the grip of the pandemic was loosening.
Since then, at least one House lawmaker and an aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi have tested positive for the coronavirus after being fully vaccinated. Others on Capitol Hill have gone into voluntary quarantine after exposure to individuals who were sick with Covid-19, and on Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee called off a business meeting after staff members tested positive for the virus, a committee aide said. At the same time, new cases have skyrocketed across the country.
Like broader mask guidance from the C.D.C. and aggressive interventions being considered by President Biden to increase the nation’s vaccination rate, the new mask mandate in the House is likely to test the patience of a weary public and the opposition Republican Party, which is eager to accuse Democrats of undermining confidence in vaccines and jeopardizing the health of the recovering economy. Republicans in the House immediately protested and raised the prospect that they may refuse to comply.
“Make no mistake — The threat of bringing masks back is not a decision based on science, but a decision conjured up by liberal government officials who want to continue to live in a perpetual pandemic state,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, wrote on Twitter.
House rules say that any lawmaker who does not wear a mask in specified spaces in the Capitol complex can be fined $500 or more. Several Republicans were fined earlier this year for that reason. But it is unclear what Ms. Pelosi and other House leaders would do if many Republican members refuse to go along.
Signs of such resistance were seen on Wednesday morning minutes after Ms. Pelosi announced the updated rules. When a staff member designated to work on the House floor handed a mask to Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, she tossed it back at the person, according to another aide who witnessed the exchange and requested anonymity to describe it.
Asked about Mr. McCarthy’s comments on Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi did little to hide her scorn. “He’s such a moron,” Ms. Pelosi was heard to say by reporters.
Ms. Pelosi’s spokesman later said he could not verify her precise words, but that the speaker indeed felt that Mr. McCarthy’s position on the issue “is moronic.”
Senate Republicans have taken a more conciliatory tack, with their top leaders pleading with conservatives who have refused vaccination to get inoculated. For instance, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, plans to begin using tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds to run radio ads in his home state promoting the coronavirus vaccines as a “modern medical miracle” and urging his constituents to accept them.
“If you haven’t been vaccinated, do the right thing for you — for your family — and get vaccinated right now,” said Mr. McConnell, who recounts his own fight with polio in the ad. “I’m Mitch McConnell and I approved this message.”
A day after President Biden warned that cyberattacks could lead to a “real shooting war,” he signed an executive order on Wednesday aimed at preventing hackings on America’s critical infrastructure.
While the order has been in the works for some time, the need was driven home by a series of major ransomware attacks, including against Colonial Pipeline, which provides the East Coast with 45 percent of its gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.
The order was mostly filled with voluntary measures for companies to meet a series of online security standards, like encrypting data and requiring two-factor authentication for all users on a system, to stymie hackers who possess stolen passwords. In a call with reporters Tuesday night, a senior administration official said the idea was to develop “cybersecurity performance goals” to assess how prepared each company or utility was.
The effort is a way to get beyond the “woefully insufficient” patchwork of mandates and voluntary actions to protect electric utilities, gas pipelines, water supplies and industrial sites that keep the economy running, the official said.
Such efforts have been tried before, dating to the presidency of George W. Bush. But Mr. Biden is the first president to talk about the issue — almost every week — as a national security imperative. It was the central topic of his meeting in June with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. And on Tuesday, visiting the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Mr. Biden gave a grim assessment of where he believed the constant, short-of-war attacks on the United States, both state-sponsored operations and criminal ransomware, are headed.
“If we end up in a war, a real shooting war with a major power,” he told the intelligence officers there, “it’s going to be as a consequence of a cyberbreach of great consequence. And it’s increasing exponentially — the capabilities.’’
Mr. Biden’s chief challenge now is a lack of authority to mandate changes. He has already imposed security standards on providers of software to the federal government, betting that if a company is banned from selling to the government, it will also suffer in the commercial marketplace. He has ordered a series of increased protections for federal agencies, 10 of which were affected by the SolarWinds hacking last year, a broad invasion of the software “supply chain” used by 18,000 companies and governments.
But key elements of American infrastructure are run by private companies — and in Colonial Pipeline’s case, Russian-speaking hackers brought down the distribution system almost accidentally, after attacking the company’s business systems. That was followed by another ransomware attack on JBS, the world’s largest beef producer, which paid $11 million to start running again.
For years, many industries have maintained informal organizations that share cyberthreat information or best practices. But there are so many holes in the system that it has been relatively easy for Iran, Russia, China and ransomware groups to find ways to place malicious software in the systems, or initiate attacks that freeze data and make it impossible to operate, as happened to Colonial Pipeline and JBS.
The measures outlined in the new national security memorandum, called “Improving Cybersecurity for Critical Infrastructure Control Systems,” are being coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Commerce Department’s unit that sets industrial standards.
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The Justice Department sent another warning shot on Wednesday to Republican state legislatures that have pursued private audits of voting tabulations, broadly viewed as efforts to cast doubt on the results of the presidential election.
The department warned that auditors could face criminal and civil penalties if they destroyed any records related to the election or intimidated voters in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and other laws.
Department officials previously told the Republican-led Arizona State Senate in May that its audit and recount of the November election in Maricopa County, widely seen as a partisan exercise to fuel grievances over Donald J. Trump’s loss, might violate the Civil Rights Act. Last month, the department also sued Georgia over its sweeping voting law, accusing the state’s Republican-led legislature of trying to violate the rights of Black voters.
While the Justice Department did not name the Arizona audit in its guidance documents, it said it was concerned that some jurisdictions conducting audits could imperil election records, especially “if the election records are given to private actors who have neither experience nor expertise in handling such records and who are unfamiliar with the obligations imposed by federal law,” it said in one document.
The admonishment came in election-related guidance documents issued as part of the department’s larger plan to protect access to the polls, announced by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in June. Another document released on Wednesday said that the department could scrutinize states that reverted to prepandemic voting procedures, which may not have allowed as many people to vote early or by mail.
The huge increase in government aid prompted by the coronavirus pandemic will cut poverty nearly in half this year from prepandemic levels and push the number of Americans in poverty to the lowest level on record, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the vast but temporary expansion of the safety net.
The country has never cut poverty so much in such a short period of time, and while poverty has fallen most among children, it has dropped among Americans across states, racial groups and age groups. The development is especially notable since it defies economic headwinds — the economy has nearly seven million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic.
But it has come at extraordinary cost. Annual spending on major programs is projected to rise fourfold to more than $1 trillion. And without further expensive measures, millions of families may find the escape from poverty brief. The three programs that cut poverty most — stimulus checks, increased food stamps and expanded unemployment insurance — have ended or are scheduled to soon revert to their prepandemic size.
The findings come as Democrats and Republicans in Congress remain divided, spurring sharp debate about the future of the safety net.
The Biden administration imposed new sanctions on a group of Syrian prisons and officials on Wednesday as part of its effort to pressure the government of President Bashar al-Assad to end human rights abuses.
The sanctions were the first to be directed at Syria by the Biden administration, which called for a resolution to the civil war that has gone on for more than a decade.
“Today’s designations promote accountability for abuses committed against the Syrian people and deny rogue actors access to the international financial system,” Andrea M. Gacki, the director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a statement. “This action demonstrates the United States’ strong commitment to targeting human rights abuses in Syria, regardless of the perpetrator.”
The Treasury Department put sanctions on eight Syrian prisons, five Assad government officials who work in the institutions that run those facilities, two militia groups and two militia leaders.
The Syrian government has tortured 14,000 Syrians to death, and 130,000 Syrians are missing or remain “arbitrarily detained,” according to the Treasury Department.
The sanctions were announced in coordination with the State Department, which noted that some of the prisons appeared in photographs provided by a Syrian defector who had worked as an official photographer for the Syrian military and exposed the government’s treatment of detainees.
“These actions underscore the U.S. commitment to promote respect for human rights and accountability for abuse against Syrians,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement.
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The number of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender elected officials has continued to surge, growing by about 17 percent in the last year to nearly 1,000 nationwide — more than double the number just four years ago, according to a new annual report.
Their ranks now include two governors, two United States senators, nine members of Congress, 189 state legislators and 56 mayors, according to the report from the L.G.B.T.Q. Victory Institute, which provides training to candidates seeking public office. All told, the group identified 986 L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials.
“There are more L.G.B.T.Q. folks who are taking the plunge and deciding to run for office,” said Annise Parker, the institute’s president and chief executive. The mayor of Houston from 2010 to 2016, Ms. Parker was one of the first openly gay mayors of a major American city.
This is the fifth year that the institute has surveyed the nation, and total L.G.B.T.Q. representation in elected offices has risen to 986 today, from 843 in 2020, 698 in 2019 and 448 in 2017, out of roughly a half-million elective positions.
Of all racial groups, Black L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials grew at the fastest rate in the last year, with a 75 percent increase in representation, according to the report. The number of multiracial L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials rose by 40 percent.
The institute tracks federal officeholders, statewide officials, and state legislators, as well as municipal and judicial officials. Every state except Mississippi now has at least one elected officeholder who identifies as L.G.B.T.Q., the report said.
The partisan divide is lopsided: 73 percent of L.G.B.T.Q. officials are Democrats, and less than 3 percent Republicans, the institute said.
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Biden Pledges to Bolster Federal Purchases of Domestic Goods
President Biden unveiled a plan to increase the percentage of U.S.-manufactured components required in products purchased by the federal government from 55 percent to 75 percent.
In recent years, “Buy American” has become a hollow promise. But my administration is going to make “Buy American” a reality. And I’m putting the weight of the federal government behind that commitment. We’re going to make the biggest enforcement changes to the Buy America Act in 70 years. Right now, if you manufacture a vehicle — I suspect you guys know about that — that gets purchased by the federal government, the law says that, and there’s about 600,000 vehicles the federal government owns by the way, and replaces and buys, that substantially all the vehicle, substantially all should be made in America. But because of loopholes over time, you know what “substantially all” means today? If 55 percent of it was made in America, you can go ahead and get all the rest of it purchased other places. First, 55 percent is not high enough. And second, contractors don’t have to tell us the total domestic content of their products. They just have to tell us that they hit the threshold. Nobody checking. They got a new sheriff in town. We’re going to be checking. [applause] Today, I’m directing the budget office to issue a rule to raise the amount of domestic content required to be considered made in America from 55 percent to 75 percent. [applause] “Substantially all” is going to mean substantially all. And starting with critical products, instead of taking contractors at their word that they’ve hit the threshold, we’re going to start making them give us the details so that we can do more to support American manufacturing.
President Biden traveled to Lehigh Valley, Pa., to bolster support for his infrastructure package on the day of a critical breakthrough with Republicans on the Hill, who said they had resolved the biggest sticking points to a final agreement on a far-reaching infrastructure plan, and planned to vote to allow the package to advance.
After touring a plant that produces Mack trucks, Mr. Biden underscored the importance of American manufacturing and unveiled a new proposal to support domestic production by increasing the amount of U.S.-made products purchased by the federal government.
“In recent years, ‘Buy America’ has become a hollow promise,” Mr. Biden said. “My administration is going to make ‘Buy America’ a reality, and I’m putting the weight of the federal government behind that commitment.”
Standing in front of two Mack trucks and an oversized American flag, Mr. Biden said he was making the biggest enforcement changes in the “Buy America” law in 70 years, with the goal of funneling tens of billions of dollars into jobs in communities like Allentown.
The federal government procures about $600 billion of goods a year, including everything from helicopter blades to office furniture, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Biden announced on Wednesday that he was changing the “Buy American” rules related to purchases made with taxpayer dollars. The plan is to increase the percentage of component parts that need to be manufactured domestically from 55 percent to 60 percent, with a graduated increase to 75 percent.
“55 percent is not high enough,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the domestic content of products provided by contractors. “We got a new sheriff in town.”
He added: “if American companies know we’re going to be buying from them, they’re going to be more inclined to hire and make key investments in the future in their companies.”
Mr. Biden’s efforts to promote the economy and his infrastructure plan, however, came alongside concerning new data about the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, and the possibility of variants to come. Anxiety about the pandemic has begun to rise again, and Mr. Biden was expected to announce on Thursday that civilian federal workers will be required to get vaccinated or get weekly tests.
Wearing a mask for part of his trip, Mr. Biden brushed aside reporters’ questions about the possibility of imposing vaccination requirements.
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for universal masking in schools and told vaccinated Americans that they should begin wearing masks again in the many counties in the country where the virus is surging. At the same time, officials in Congress and the White House reinstituted indoor mask requirements for staff to counter the surge.
The return to masking in the West Wing came just over two months after Mr. Biden and senior officials shed their face masks, in the biggest sign of a triumphant return toward normalcy since he took office.
Republicans have made Americans’ concerns over rising prices their primary line of attack on President Biden’s economic agenda, seeking to derail trillions of dollars in spending programs and tax cuts by warning that they will produce rocketing 1970s-style inflation.
They have seized on the increasing costs of gasoline, used cars and other goods and services to accuse the president of stoking “Bidenflation,” first with the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill he signed in March and now with a proposed $3.5 trillion economic bill that Democrats have begun to draft in the Senate.
There are unusually large amounts of uncertainty over the path of inflation in the coming months, given the vagaries around restarting a pandemic-stricken economy. Yet even many economists who worry high prices will linger longer than analysts initially expected say there is little reason to believe the problem will worsen if Mr. Biden succeeds in his attempts to bolster child care, education, paid leave, low-emission energy and more.
“There’s been a lot of fear-mongering concerning inflation,” Joseph E. Stiglitz, a liberal economist at Columbia University, said on Tuesday during a conference call to support Mr. Biden’s economic plans. But the president’s spending proposals, he said, “are almost entirely paid for.”
Still, rising inflation fears have forced the president and his aides to shift their economic sales pitch to voters. The officials have stressed the potential for his efforts to lower the cost of health care, housing, college and raising children, even as they insist the current bout of inflation is a temporary artifact of the pandemic recession.
But the political danger for Mr. Biden, and opportunity for Republicans who have sought to derail his plans, is clear. The issue has given Mr. Biden’s opponents their clearest and most consistent message to attack an agenda that remains popular in public opinion polls.
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AUSTIN, Texas — The widow of a Texas congressman who died early this year of Covid-19 lost to a freshman state representative on Tuesday in a special runoff election between Republicans seeking to fill the vacant House seat.
State Representative Jake Ellzey, who narrowly missed capturing the Republican nomination for the seat in 2018, defeated Susan Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, died in February about two weeks after testing positive for the coronavirus. Mr. Ellzey obtained 53.3 percent of the vote and will join the second-largest congressional delegation — 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats — in the U.S. House behind California.
Mr. Ellzey, basking in what he described as “a great day of celebration,” credited his victory to a positive message that played well among his future constituents.
In May, both candidates had captured far below the 50 percent majority needed to avoid a runoff in a 23-way contest for the state’s Sixth Congressional District, which represents three counties just south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan region.
In the end, the runoff election, which drew far fewer voters than the primary, was less about two ideologically similar candidates and more about how much sway former President Donald J. Trump would have in getting people to cast ballots for Ms. Wright, whom he endorsed before the primary.
As Mr. Ellzey closed in on victory, experts credited him for building a methodical and well-structured campaign in the face of powerful outside opposition forces. Ms. Wright’s loss also raised questions about the depth of Mr. Trump’s endorsement.
“Trump can’t point at a candidate and say ‘I endorse that person, that’s my person, elect him,’” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “He’s got to help with fund-raising, he’s got to help with messaging, he’s got to help by showing up. And he didn’t do that in this race.”
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