11:32 AM ET

By Maggie Haberman

George Soros Bankrolls Democrats’ Fight in Voting Rights Cases

A Democratic legal fight against restrictive voting laws enacted in recent years by Republican-controlled state governments is being largely paid for by a single liberal benefactor: the billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Mr. Soros, the Hungarian-born investor whose first major involvement in American politics was a voter-mobilization drive in the 2004 presidential race, has yet to commit the many millions of dollars that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s allies hope he and other like-minded billionaires will pour into the “super PAC” directly aiding her campaign.

But it turns out that Mr. Soros has already agreed to put as much as $5 million into the litigation effort, which Democrats hope will erode restrictions on voter access that they say could otherwise prove decisive in a close election.

The lawsuits — which are being led by a lawyer whose clients include Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — are attacking a variety of measures, including voter-identification requirements that Democrats consider onerous, time restrictions imposed on early voting that they say could make it difficult to cast ballots the weekend before Election Day, and rules that could nullify ballots cast in the wrong precinct.

The lawyer, Marc Elias, who specializes in voter-protection issues, was in contact with Mr. Soros in January 2014 when Mr. Elias was exploring a series of federal lawsuits before that year’s midterm election and in advance of the 2016 campaign, according to Mr. Soros’s political adviser, Michael Vachon. (Mr. Elias declined to comment on Friday about the funding of the lawsuits.)

The goal is to try to influence voting rules in states where Republican governors and Republican-led legislatures have enacted election laws since 2010, and to be ready to intervene if additional measures are passed over the next 17 months.

Mr. Soros described himself as “proud” to be part of the legal battles. “We hope to see these unfair laws, which often disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in our society, repealed,” he said.

Two suits that Mr. Soros is supporting were filed in Ohio and in Wisconsin last month. He is also helping to pay for a case that Mr. Elias and several other groups filed last year in North Carolina.

Democrats say the new laws disproportionately affect the poor, minorities and young people. A Government Accountability Office study last October found that states with more stringent voter identification laws had a larger decline in voter turnout than states that did not have such new restrictions.

Republicans have argued that the new laws are much-needed protection against election fraud, and dismiss the litigation — which could soon expand to cases in Georgia, Nevada and Virginia, Democrats say — as little more than a gambit to energize minority voters in support of Democratic candidates.

But Mr. Vachon described it as an attempt to push back at Republicans who he said were “using the legislative process” for partisan purposes.

“It is disingenuous to suggest that these laws are meant to protect against voter fraud, which is nearly nonexistent,” he said. “Clearly they are meant to give Republicans a political advantage on Election Day.”

Mr. Elias’s clients include four major national Democratic Party committees — as well as the Clinton presidential campaign, which is not a party to the lawsuits, though her team has spoken favorably of them.

But Mrs. Clinton seized on voting rights this week, attacking some of her potential Republican opponents in a speech in Houston on Thursday for voting laws enacted in their states, and calling for automatic voter registration nationwide when people turn 18.

“I call on Republicans at all levels of government with all manner of ambition to stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of election fraud and start explaining why they’re so scared of letting citizens have their say,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Some of the Republicans she named, notably Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, responded in kind.

“Secretary Clinton doesn’t know the first thing about voting rights in New Jersey or in the other states that she attacked,” Mr. Christie said, according to The Record newspaper of Hackensack, N.J. “My sense is that she just wants an opportunity to commit greater acts of voter fraud around the country.”

And Mr. Walker said Mrs. Clinton’s “rejection of efforts to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat not only defies logic, but the will of the majority of Americans.”

Mr. Soros’s first foray into Democratic politics came in 2004, when he provided millions of dollars to try to unseat President George W. Bush, including through a voter mobilization drive called America Coming Together.

While Mr. Soros has not pledged money to the super PAC focused solely on Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Vachon said he has given $1 million this year to the research-focused super PAC American Bridge. The legal actions filed by Mr. Elias are in keeping with the type of advocacy Mr. Soros has favored: efforts at the nexus of policy, politics and movement-building.

Mr. Vachon said Mr. Elias first approached him early last year about supporting a voting rights lawsuit in North Carolina, where student identification cards are not considered acceptable forms of photo ID. The restrictions in North Carolina ended a program in which teenagers filled out a form and were then registered automatically to vote on their 18th birthday. Joining with the N.A.A.C.P., the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Elias argued that the law was onerous for younger voters in violation of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 from 21.

The North Carolina case is still pending.

But Mr. Elias and Mr. Vachon have discussed filing other suits in some of the 21 states that have added voting restrictions since the 2010 Republican electoral wave, if those states seek to tighten voting access any further.

“I expect there will be more,” Mr. Vachon said.

An earlier version of this post incorrectly described one on the groups joining in the voting rights lawsuit in North Carolina. It is the N.A.A.C.P., not the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund.

4:59 PM ET

By First Draft

First Draft Focus: The Week in Political Pictures

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican presidential candidate, called on Tuesday for the declassification of 28 pages of a 2002 Senate investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency

2:39 PM ET

By Alan Rappeport

Lincoln Chafee Draws Life Lessons From Having Worked With Horses

As he embarks on the campaign trail to begin his long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Lincoln Chafee, the former governor of Rhode Island, draws on a transformative experience that gives him a sense of confidence: his previous life as a farrier.

When Mr. Chafee announced his presidential campaign this week, it was noted that he was the first person to seek the White House who had worked as a farrier, a blacksmith who shoes horses.

After graduating from Brown in 1975, Mr. Chafee, the son of a senator, opted not to go into politics, law or business. Having worked summers doing construction, he wanted to do something more physically rigorous.

Mr. Chafee considered bricklaying, plumbing and carpentry before coming across a horseshoeing program at Montana State University.

“I had a horse growing up and always saw the guy come and put the horseshoes on,” Mr. Chafee recalled in an interview after his announcement on Wednesday. “I knew a little bit about that.”

Finding such work was not easy. Mr. Chafee visited eight racetracks across the country before a blacksmith in Lexington, Ky., agreed to take him on as an apprentice. There he learned the art of removing shoes, paring hoofs and filing horses’ feet.

After his apprenticeship, Mr. Chafee heard that there was a shortage of farriers in Canada — where his fondness for the metric system blossomed. He spent the rest of his 20s working on racetracks in Calgary and Edmonton, where he earned as much as $50,000 a year.

“It was life-altering,” Mr. Chafee said of learning a new craft and dealing with rejection before getting his blacksmithing break. “The confidence it gave me has served me for the rest of my career.”

After seven brutal winters in Canada, Mr. Chafee said he had a yearning to return to the United States and life on the East Coast. So he came home, ready to enter the family business of politics.

2:07 PM ET

By Maggie Haberman

Republican Candidates Assail Hillary Clinton on Voting Rights

Three Republican presidential hopefuls struck back at Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday after she accused them of trying to curtail voting rights.

In a speech Thursday, Mrs. Clinton said that some in the Republican field were “deliberately trying to stop” young people and minorities from exercising their right to vote.

On Friday, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey seemed to relish the fight.

“Secretary Clinton doesn’t know the first thing about voting rights in New Jersey or in the other states that she attacked,” Mr. Christie said, according to The Record newspaper of New Jersey. “My sense is that she just wants an opportunity to commit greater acts of voter fraud around the country.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said in a statement: “Hillary Clinton’s rejection of efforts to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat not only defies logic, but the will of the majority of Americans. Once again, Hillary Clinton’s extreme views are far outside the mainstream.”

His response represented one of the few times that any of the many Republican candidates in the 2016 field have described Mrs. Clinton’s views as so far left as to be outside mainstream politics. For Mrs. Clinton it is familiar territory: “Liberal” was a tag that was often affixed to her as a criticism in the 1990s and when she ran for the United States Senate from New York in 2000.

Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who was also named by Mrs. Clinton, went on Fox News and suggested that being able to vote was no different than needing travel documents.

“She just went into my home state and dissed every person who supports having an identification to either get on an airplane or vote,” Mr. Perry said on Friday.

A spokesman for Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, did not respond to an email request for comment.

Mrs. Clinton’s no-holds-barred speech on voting rights, calling for automatic registration and sweeping changes to early voting nationally, was a rare time she has invoked her potential rivals, especially by name.

But, just as when she said she would go even further than President Obama has on executive changes to the immigration system, Mrs. Clinton could be putting Republicans in a politically delicate position, since their responses on both issues are unlikely to please Hispanic, African-American and younger voters.

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9:15 AM ET

By Alan Rappeport and Steve Eder

Rubios on the Road Have Drawn Unwanted Attention

Senator Marco Rubio has been in a hurry to get to the top, rising from state legislator to United States senator in the span of a decade and now running for president at age 44.

But politics is not the only area where Mr. Rubio, a Republican from Florida, has an affinity for the fast track. He and his wife, Jeanette, have also shown a tendency to be in a rush on the road.

According to a search of the Miami-Dade and Duval County court dockets, the Rubios have been cited for numerous infractions over the years for incidents that included speeding, driving through red lights and careless driving. A review of records dating back to 1997 shows that the couple had a combined 17 citations: Mr. Rubio with four and his wife with 13. On four separate occasions they agreed to attend remedial driving school after a violation.

Mr. Rubio’s troubles behind the wheel predate his days in politics. In 1997, when he was cited for careless driving by a Florida Highway Patrol officer, he was fined and took voluntary driving classes. A dozen years later, in 2009, he was ticketed for speeding on a highway in Duval County and found himself back in driver improvement school.

Things got more complicated in 2011 when Mr. Rubio was alerted to the fact that his license was facing suspension after a traffic camera caught him failing to stop at a red light in his beige Buick. His lawyer, Alex Hanna, paid a $16 fee to delay the suspension and eventually it was dismissed.

“Senator Rubio’s license has always been in good standing,” Mr. Hanna said in a statement provided by Mr. Rubio’s campaign. “This matter was resolved by the court system and at no point was the license suspended by the D.M.V.”

That was not the last time Mr. Rubio was ticketed. In 2012 he was caught failing to obey a stop sign, but the infraction was dismissed.

Ms. Rubio’s driving record is even messier.

According to the records, her driver’s license faced suspension on three occasions, including after a 2009 episode where she was driving a white Cadillac at 58 miles per hour on a road in West Miami with a speed limit of 35 m.p.h. She paid a $302 fine and agreed to attend a four-hour course at a local traffic school.

However, Ms. Rubio, who also took a four-hour basic driver improvement course after a careless driving incident in 2000, failed to complete the class and had to pay another $34 penalty.

The lessons apparently did not stick. A year later, in 2010, she was stopped for driving 23 m.p.h. in a school zone where the speed limit was 15 m.p.h. She was fined $185.

It is not clear how the numerous infractions have affected the Rubios’ car insurance policy or premiums. On at least one occasion, Ms. Rubio was cited for lacking documentation that her car was insured.

The Rubios have spent more than $1,000 paying traffic penalties over the years, but after Mr. Rubio was elected to the Senate in 2010 they took a different approach to handling their tickets.

Mr. Rubio hired Mr. Hanna, a Miami-based lawyer and donor, whose website sales pitch says, “Have you received a traffic ticket? Don’t pay it.” With Mr. Hanna’s help, Mr. Rubio’s last two citations were dismissed and seven of Ms. Rubio’s last eight were cleared.

Mr. Rubio’s campaign had no comment on the traffic violations or whether Ms. Rubio’s license was ever actually suspended.

And not all accidents become police matters. Earlier this year, Ms. Rubio, a former cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins, sideswiped a Porsche Panamera while driving her husband’s Ford F-150 truck to a donor event at the Delano Hotel in Miami Beach. According to the Miami Herald, the police declined to take a report on the incident because it was a “minor” fender bender.

If Mr. Rubio is fortunate to make it as far as the White House, there will be many perks that come with the job. Chief among them, however, might be having a driver.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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7:00 AM ET

By The New York Times

Today in Politics: Campaign Trail Makes Room for Long Fly Balls and Weekend

Good Friday morning from Washington. Though the ever-growing Republican field will make for a hectic late summer, for now, there’s room to mix work and play, as, for example, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey proved deft with a softball bat, and as a group of Republican candidates prepared for a day of roast pork and motorcycles.

When seven Republican presidential hopefuls roll into Iowa this weekend for Senator Joni Ernst’s inaugural “Roast and Ride,” only one — Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin — will truly be cruising.

That’s right, Mr. Walker, a Harley-Davidson aficionado who owns a 2003 Road King, will be the only likely 2016 candidate riding alongside Ms. Ernst and her husband, Gail, on the 39-mile route between Big Barn Harley-Davidson in Des Moines (where the event kicks off) to a day of speeches, retail politics, horseshoes and, of course, roast pork in Boone.

Mr. Walker has had breakout moments in Iowa before, including an energetic speech at a forum this year that helped propel him onto the national stage.

But Ms. Ernst’s pork-and-hog extravaganza — her answer to former Democratic Senator Tom Harkin’s steak fry — seems tailor-made for Mr. Walker.

Not only is he an avid motorcycle rider, but he also knows a thing or two about hunting. His most recent campaign for governor featured a $50 “Hunters for Walker” package, which included a camouflage drink koozie, an orange hunter’s T-shirt and a black gun sock with the Walker logo.

But Mr. Walker will not have the day to himself — the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida will also attend.

Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Rubio each have ties to the state. In 2008, Mr. Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses. And Mr. Rubio visited the state several times during the 2014 cycle when he campaigned on Ms. Ernst’s behalf.

And his efforts did not go unnoticed. Ms. Ernst offered Mr. Rubio a ride on the back of her bike this weekend. No official word yet on if he plans to take her up on it.

Ashley Parker

Stay tuned throughout the day: Follow us on Twitter @NYTpolitics and on Facebook for First Draft updates.

What We’re Watching Today

Mr. Graham, who is positioning himself early on as strong on security and foreign policy, will be in Iowa on Friday, too, for a town-hall-style meeting in Des Moines, and a public gathering at a V.F.W. hall in Waterloo.

In the morning, the Labor Department will release its unemployment numbers for May.

And on Saturday, President Obama will deliver the eulogy at the funeral of Beau Biden, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.‘s son, in Delaware.

Bush Details Attack Plan for When, er, if He Runs

Jeb Bush is no longer bothering to play coy.

After months of pretending that he was not quite a candidate for president (even as he acted like one), then teasing an uncertain “announcement” in Miami about whether he might run on June 15 (as if there was any doubt), aides to Mr. Bush all but declared his candidacy on Thursday night.

In an email, they laid out a hectic, presidential-candidate-esque schedule of travel to early primary states after Mr. Bush’s technically unresolved announcement, calling it (with refreshing, if clever candor) the “Jeb Announcement Tour.”

After returning from a five-day trip to Europe, where he will visit Estonia, Germany and Poland, Mr. Bush will barnstorm across a classic nominating-state map of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the aides said.

Mr. Bush will be joined in Nevada by his son, George P. Bush, the popular new Texas land commissioner, whose fluency in Spanish will no doubt appeal to the state’s large Hispanic population.

– Michael Barbaro

Bulletins: Carson’s Good Year, Graham’s New Donor, O’Malley’s Ad

Mr. Carson‘s career transition from neurosurgeon to prolific public speaker turned lucrative fast, the financial disclosures he filed on Thursday show.

Ronald O. Perelman, the cosmetics billionaire, major political donor, old friend of Hillary Rodham Clinton‘s and supporter of John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, said he would give his backing and money this time to Mr. Graham.

A new ad from a “super PAC” supporting Martin O’Malley, a Democrat and the former governor of Maryland, repeats some of his previous criticisms of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bush.

Perry’s Indictment Is a Rare Challenge

There is a long history of political candidates with legal woes, but Mr. Perryseems to be breaking new ground in his Republican presidential bid, apparently becoming the first major party candidate to enter the White House race while under felony criminal indictment.

Research turned up no similar situation to that of Mr. Perry, who was indicted last year on state charges of abuse of power and coercion of a public official. The charges center on his efforts to force the resignation of the Travis County district attorney after a drunken-driving arrest by threatening funding to the state’s public integrity unit. He and his allies have characterized the charges as baseless and partisan, but Mr. Perry has so far been unable to get the indictment thrown out.

Criminal charges used to be the kind of thing that was considered disqualifying for high-profile presidential candidates, but not always. Eugene V. Debs, the labor activist turned socialist, ran in the 1920 presidential race from a federal prison cell in Atlanta, convicted on sedition act charges for agitating against the draft. He received nearly one million votes and came in third. Mr. Perry hopes to do much better than Mr. Debs.

— Carl Hulse

Our Favorites From Today’s Times

Republicans are likely to field 15 major candidates for president in 2016, more than any cycle in recent history. Here is a look at the number of candidates in each field since 1972 (in years when there was no party incumbent) at any given week before the election.

In part because of that crowded field, coming debates have been limited to the top 10 candidates as measured by polls, creating a frenzied competition to get on that list.

And Mrs. Clinton said on Thursday that Republicans were “deliberately trying to stop” young people and minorities — both vital Democratic constituencies — from exercising their right to vote, as she presented an ambitious agenda to make it easier for those groups and other Americans to participate in elections.

What We’re Reading Elsewhere

Some Democrats in early-contest states are worried about Mrs. Clinton’srecent drop in polls, as both Republicans and Democrats take aim at her, Politico reports.

Mr. Christie played well in a charity softball game on Wednesday for the families of police officers killed in the line of duty, hitting a fly ball to left that wasn’t a double only because a New York City police officer made a nice catch.

And Lincoln Chafee‘s mention in his campaign announcement that the United States should switch to the metric system came as a surprise, ABC News reports, to Donald W. Hillger, the president of the United States Metric Association.

Mr. Perry‘s campaign announcement unveiled an official song that was a little bit country, a little bit rap and a lot of Perry.

Some Trouble Amid Sanders’s Facebook Flood

Senator Bernie Sanders‘s popular Facebook presence is fueled largely by a flood of images overlaid with text of his musings and favorite quotes.

But that method has now caused him a little trouble. On Wednesday morning, the Sanders team posted a black-and-white photo of a haggard-looking child from Appalachia and with a quote from Mr. Sanders written across the bottom.

A few hours later, the photographer, Ross Taylor, posted a comment on the page: “So, Bernie Sanders is illegally using an image of mine for his campaign. They lifted it without contacting me first.”

Mr. Taylor, who took the picture nearly 20 years ago as part of a personal project, then reached out to Mr. Sanders’s office and quickly received a response.

“To their credit, they’ve been pretty cooperative,” Mr. Taylor said in an interview. He added that, after a few email exchanges, aides to Mr. Sanders indicated they were willing to pay compensation for use of the photo. The post has also been deleted.

“We apologized and took appropriate action to fix the issue,” said Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Mr. Sanders.

According to Mr. Briggs, most of the similar photos from Mr. Sanders’s Facebook page are from either The Associated Press or a stock photo site, both services the team pays for. But staff members do occasionally use a Google image search, raising the possibility of other fair-use issues, although none had arisen before Wednesday.

– Nick Corasaniti

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