HRR216SDA no start

Hi all. I was recently given an HRR216SDA in pretty nice shape by an older woman. "It didn't start" so she bought a new mower. I am pretty new to troubleshooting mowers. I'm trying to understand something about linkage at the carb. Here is a picture:



The yellow arrows point to a lever that is not connected to any springs and it does not seem to be engaged by any other parts. I can manually move this lever with my fingers, and it opens and closes a flapper in the carb directly after the air box. My question is, is this the correct operation or is something broken here? If this is supposed to be manually operated, what is the correct position for normal operation?

Separately, I'm troubleshooting the carb and spark but I'm curious if something is goofed up with the rest of the works.

Thank you for any insight.

That is the choke lever.
The throttle lever should come into contact with it near the end of the travel.
If not then the throttle cable anchor has come loose and allowed the cable to move foreward.
The cable needs to be set so the choke is fully applied when the cable is fully advanced but when closed the lever needs to trip the cut out switch.

The usual reason for this the cable is rusted so only has a limited movement.