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      New York’s Governor’s Race Is Suddenly Too Close for Democrats’ Comfort

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      For months, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has trusted that the state’s strong Democratic majority would keep her in office largely on the strength of a simple message: Her Republican opponent was too close to Donald J. Trump and would roll back abortion rights.But just two weeks before Election Day, a rapidly tightening contest has Ms. Hochul racing to expand her closing argument as Democrats warily concede they may have misjudged powerful fears driving the electorate, particularly around crime.In just the last few days, Ms. Hochul stood with Mayor Eric Adams to announce a new flood of police officers into New York City subways; she visited five Harlem churches to assure stalwart Black voters she was “laser-focused” on safety; and she highlighted new statistics showing that authorities were seizing more guns under her watch.“We believe in justice, the justice that Jesus teaches us, but it’s also about safety,” Ms. Hochul said at one of her stops in Harlem. “We are laser-focused on keeping you, your children and your grandchildren safe.”Her campaign has begun recalibrating its paid message, too, shifting the focus of millions of dollars in ad spending to highlight the governor’s efforts to stoke the economy and improve public safety, notably including a package of modest changes to the state’s bail laws that has divided her party. The spots trumpeting her record will run alongside a new ad tying Mr. Zeldin to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Anxious Democrats are hopeful that the changes can stabilize the governor’s campaign after weeks of increasingly shaky polls that show Ms. Hochul’s lead dwindling to single digits over Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican.The narrowing margin tracks closely with recent surveys showing that fears about public safety and inflation have eclipsed abortion and the former president as make-or-break issues for voters, eroding Democrats’ support even in liberal enclaves like New York City and its suburbs, while rewarding candidates like Mr. Zeldin who have made crime the visceral centerpiece of their campaign.“Maybe it was the right thing to do at the time,” David A. Paterson, the former Democratic governor, said of the decision by Democrats to spend precious time and money messaging on abortion rights this summer.“But these times, meaning September and October,” he continued, “really call for more conversation about what we do with convicted felons, what we do with the judges’ capacity to assess dangerousness, and obviously what we do with a significant number of people with mental illness walking the streets right now.”Ms. Hochul has used appearances with Mayor Eric Adams of New York City to highlight anti-crime initiatives.Yuki Iwamura/Associated PressThose issues are all but certain to figure prominently in the first and only televised debate between Ms. Hochul, 64, and Mr. Zeldin, 42, on Tuesday night.Certainly, Ms. Hochul remains the favorite in the race, and her campaign has tried to calm jittery allies. She has a vast fund-raising advantage, passable approval ratings and a two-to-one registration advantage statewide for Democrats over Republicans. While several polls last week showed a tight race, a Siena College survey from that period showed the governor still up by 11 points.“There is no question that the national environment has gotten tougher for Democrats in the last few weeks,” said Jefrey Pollock, Ms. Hochul’s pollster. “We are focused on making sure that every Democrat understands the stakes and votes. When Democrats vote in New York, we win.”But for Democrats who are not accustomed to close statewide races in New York, some level of panic appears to be setting in — that Mr. Zeldin could flip Black, Latino and Asian voters worried about public safety, but also that other rank-and-file Democratic voters may simply sit the race out because of apathy about Ms. Hochul and her low-key campaign.“It doesn’t feel like there’s a ton of groundswell from the bottom up,” Crystal Hudson, a left-leaning Brooklyn City Council member. “Perhaps Democrats are taking for granted that New York state is bluer than we think it might be.”In Manhattan, the borough president, Mark D. Levine, said he, too, had grown increasingly concerned in recent weeks that Democratic voters were missing the warning signs. On Sunday, he put together a rally with more than a dozen elected Democrats on the ultraliberal Upper West Side to “wake up Dems.” The event turned raucous when hecklers, some wearing Zeldin garb, tried to derail the speakers.“There hasn’t been a seriously competitive statewide election in 20 years and Democrats certainly in Manhattan and elsewhere have been taking November on autopilot,” Mr. Levine said afterward. “It’s not an exaggeration to say we can’t win statewide unless we get Democrats in Manhattan excited to vote.”The stakes have only grown in recent weeks amid a massive outside spending campaign by a handful of ultrawealthy conservative donors seeking to capitalize on the public safety debate to damage Ms. Hochul.Ronald S. Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics heir, put more than $9 million into a pair of pro-Zeldin super PACs at the start of September, almost single-handedly bankrolling statewide television ads that savage Ms. Hochul’s record on public safety. Just on Friday, one of the PACs reported new contributions totaling $750,000 — a sum that would take even Ms. Hochul, a prolific fund-raiser, days to raise from scores of donors — from a shell company that appears to be tied to Thomas Tisch, an investor from one of New York’s richest families.New York is not the only state dealing with increases in certain crimes since the onset of the pandemic, and the reality is more nuanced than Republicans would suggest. As Ms. Hochul likes to point out, the state remains safer than some far smaller, many run by Republicans.But a rash of highly visible, violent episodes on the subways and on well-to-do street corners around the state in recent months have left many New Yorkers with at least the perception that parts of the state are growing markedly less safe.In Ms. Hochul’s 14 months as governor, she has taken a nuanced approach to public safety issues. She has meaningfully tightened the state’s gun laws. She and Mr. Adams have pledged more money for mental health services for disturbed people who commit crimes. And she has initiated plans to put cameras in every subway car. Under pressure from Mr. Adams, a former police captain, Ms. Hochul used the state’s annual budget to strengthen bail restrictions and tighten rules for repeat offenders, over the objections of some more left-leaning colleagues.“He doesn’t own the crime issue,” Ms. Hochul said in an interview on Sunday about Mr. Zeldin. “Saying that more people should have guns on our streets and in our subways and in our churches as a strategy to deal with public safety — that’s absurd.”But until very recently, she had relatively little to say about it in the general election campaign, outside of criticizing Mr. Zeldin’s opposition to many gun control measures, and a single Spanish-language ad focused on Ms. Hochul’s gun policies.That omission has left some moderate Democrats fearing that the party has ceded the terms of the debate to Republicans like Mr. Zeldin, who have decried legislative attempts by the Democrats to make the system fairer as “pro-criminal” laws.After Ms. Hochul and Mr. Adams announced on Saturday that the state would pay for more police officers in the subways, Mr. Zeldin pilloried the plan as little more than a political gimmick.His own campaign platform calls for firing the Manhattan district attorney and declaring a state of emergency to temporarily repeal the state’s cashless bail laws, and other criminal justice laws enacted by the Democrat-run Legislature.“For Kathy Hochul, it wasn’t the nine subway deaths that drove her to action. It wasn’t a 25-year-high in subway crime. It wasn’t New Yorkers feeling unsafe on our streets, on our subways and in their homes,” he said on Sunday. “For Kathy Hochul, all it took for her to announce a half-ass, day-late, dollar-short plan was a bad poll.”Lee Zeldin, right, has received endorsements from numerous law enforcement unions, including the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesThe challenge for Ms. Hochul in shifting that narrative was on clear display on Sunday, as she shuttled up and down Harlem to speak at five different Black churches, usually a hotbed of Democratic support.At the first stop, Mount Neboh Baptist Church, the Rev. Johnnie Melvin Green Jr. gave a full-throated, personal endorsement of the governor from the pulpit, but he sounded alarmed about low turnout and the state of the race.Without naming Mr. Zeldin, the reverend warned that certain people had “hijacked” the public’s understanding of what was happening in the city, leading to “a race that shouldn’t be tight.”“I want to make something crystal clear because they aren’t going to explain it to you in the media,” he said, adding: “They want to make us afraid.”Jeffery C. Mays More

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      Fetterman-Oz Debate Tonight: What to Watch

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      The Pennsylvania Senate debate on Tuesday between Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, is likely to be among the most widely viewed of all midterm debates. It is a clash of two large personalities, who have by turns mocked and scathingly attacked one another, over matters trivial (fresh vegetables) and deeply serious (violent crime).Interest in the debate, for a contest that is critical to control of the Senate, is sky-high as polls show the race tightening two weeks before Election Day, and because of Mr. Fetterman’s recovery from a stroke two days before the May primary.The 60-minute debate will be broadcast at 8 p.m. Eastern time from a TV studio in Harrisburg, Pa. There will be no live audience. Here is what to watch for:How Fetterman soundsMr. Fetterman still has difficulty processing spoken words, and he will read the two moderators’ questions and Dr. Oz’s responses on large monitors with closed captions. The Fetterman campaign warns that the accommodation could slow down his responses, and it worries that Republicans will try to make snippets of the debate go viral with Mr. Fetterman’s pauses and dropped or slurred words. The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Florida Governor’s Debate: Gov. Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist, his Democratic challenger,  had a rowdy exchange on Oct. 24. Here are the main takeaways from their debate.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.Last Dance?: As she races to raise money to hand on to her embattled House majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in no mood to contemplate a Democratic defeat, much less her legacy.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.Major style differencesDon’t expect quick-witted repartee. The candidates have big differences in style. Dr. Oz spent 13 years as a TV host and has transitioned from an empathetic broadcast persona into a political candidate with sharp, succinct attack lines. Mr. Fetterman, even before his stroke, was a so-so debater with a meandering, regular-guy speaking style.Oz’s shift away from Fetterman’s healthA month ago, the Oz campaign was mockingly calling attention to Mr. Fetterman’s refusal to commit to a series of debates (a spokeswoman said he might not have had a stroke if he’d eaten his vegetables). But after the intense focus on the Democrat’s health appeared to produce a backlash, Dr. Oz’s camp now says it will stick to the candidates’ policy differences and to highlight what it calls Mr. Fetterman’s “extremism.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Who’s the real Pennsylvanian?Mr. Fetterman will likely attack his opponent as a “Hollywood doctor” who owns several houses, only moved to the state in 2020 and has poured $23 million of his fortune into the race. Dr. Oz may come back with the defense that he earned his fortune, while Mr. Fetterman received an allowance from his family until he was nearly 50. (He collected only a token salary as mayor of Braddock, Pa., for 13 years.)Attacks over abortionPerhaps Mr. Fetterman’s strongest issue against Dr. Oz, and one crucial in the battle for suburban voters, is Dr. Oz’s right-wing tack on abortion since he entered politics. Look for Mr. Fetterman to call attention to a statement Dr. Oz made that life begins at conception and terminating a pregnancy any time is “still murder.” A focus on crimeThis is the issue that Dr. Oz has leaned into most aggressively, accusing Mr. Fetterman of coddling criminals because of his advocacy for clemency for long-incarcerated men convicted of murder. Dr. Oz calls him “the most pro-murderer candidate” in the country. Viewers may hear Dr. Oz name individuals and their crimes for whom Mr. Fetterman advocated clemency. The focus on crime, especially homicides and street violence in Philadelphia, is meant to stir fears by voters outside the city. How will Mr. Fetterman defend his leadership of the state pardons board and his support for criminal justice reform?Energy and frackingWestern Pennsylvania has major reserves of natural gas. Because Mr. Fetterman cultivates an appeal to blue-collar union voters, especially in the Pittsburgh region, Dr. Oz will most likely seek to undermine him by attacking his past opposition to fracking, which provides thousands of jobs. Mr. Fetterman supports fracking now, but as recently as 2018 he opposed it. More

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      The John Fetterman-Mehmet Oz Debate: The Midterms in Miniature

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      Let’s imagine that someone wanted to design a debate scenario that captured the high-stakes, uncertain, migraine-inducing essence of this freaky election cycle. (Don’t ask me why. Politics makes people do weird stuff some times.) The final result could easily wind up looking an awful lot like the Senate showdown in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz.Here we are, two weeks out from Election Day, with Pennsylvania among a smattering of states set to determine which party controls the Senate. For various reasons, Pennsylvanians have had limited opportunities to take an extended measure of the candidates. With the race now tighter than a bad face lift, this debate may be the candidates’ last big chance for a breakout performance — or a catastrophic belly flop. Rarely have so many expectations been heaped onto one measly debate.Consider the stark contrast between the candidates’ core brands. On the Republican side, there’s Dr. Oz: a rich, natty, carpetbagging TV celebrity with a smooth-as-goose-poop manner and Mephistophelean eyebrows. Mr. Fetterman, the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, is 6-foot-8 and beefy, with tats, a goatee and the sartorial flair of a high school gym teacher — an anti-establishment, regular-Joe type better known for his trash-tweeting than for his oratorical prowess.Hovering over this hourlong prime-time matchup are questions about Mr. Fetterman’s health. He suffered a stroke in May that has left him with auditory processing issues, and he will rely on a closed captioning system in the debate. Voters can be unforgiving — and the opposition ruthless — about verbal stumbling. (Just ask President Biden.) And the closed captioning technology Mr. Fetterman uses can lead to lags between questions being asked and answered.Already there has been chatter about his performance on the stump. This month, an NBC reporter said that, in a pre-interview sit-down, Mr. Fetterman seemed to be having trouble understanding her. Republicans have accused him of lying about the severity of his condition and suggested he is not up to the job. A major blunder on the debate stage, or even the general sense that Mr. Fetterman is struggling, could prove devastating.On the other hand … Dr. Oz and his team have mocked Mr. Fetterman’s medical travails — which seems like a particularly jerky move for a medical professional. This may tickle the Republican base but risks alienating less partisan voters. In appealing to a general-election audience, Dr. Oz will need a better bedside manner to avoid coming across as a callous, supercilious jackass.And here’s where the dynamic gets really tense: After much back-and-forth between the campaigns, Mr. Fetterman agreed to only a single debate, pushed to this late date on the campaign calendar. There are no second chances on the agenda, and precious little time to recover if something goes sideways for either candidate.While the particulars of the Pennsylvania race are unusual, the minimalist approach to debating is ascendant. For the past decade, the number of debates in competitive races has been on a downward slide, and they appear headed the way of floppy disks and fax machines. This election season, barring unforeseen developments, the major Senate contenders in Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida, as in Pennsylvania, will face off only once — which is once more than those in Nevada, where debates seem to be off the table altogether. Likewise, the Republican and Democratic candidates in Missouri have yet to agree on conditions for appearing together.This trend is not limited to the Senate. Several candidates for governor have so far opted to shun debates. And starting with the 2024 presidential election, the Republican National Committee has voted to keep its candidates out of events hosted by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates unless it overhauls its rules for how the debates are conducted, including when they are held and who can be a moderator. Even if the committee eventually backtracks (which seems likely), its threat emphasizes just how far debates have fallen.This is a not-so-great development for a democracy already under strain.Once upon a time, candidates felt obligated to participate in debates. But as campaigning increasingly take place inside partisan bubbles, and the ways to directly communicate with voters proliferate, the contenders have become less inclined to brave this arena. Why endure intense, prolonged, unscripted scrutiny when it is so much less stressful to post on social media? Increasingly, campaigns are deciding these showdowns simply aren’t worth the work or the risk involved.But this misses the point. Debates aren’t supposed to be conducted for the electoral advantage of the candidates. They are meant to benefit the voting public. Debates require political opponents to engage face-to-face. They give voters an opportunity to watch the candidates define and defend their priorities and visions beyond the length of a tweet or an Instagram post. They are one of the few remaining political forums that focus on ideas. They contribute to an informed citizenry. Failure to achieve these aims suggests that the practice should be reformed, not abandoned.Admittedly, this seems like wishful thinking as members of both parties grow more comfortable with ducking debates. Republicans in particular are conditioning their supporters to believe that such matchups, and the journalists who typically run them, are biased against them.Those who view debates as some combination of boring, artificial and pointless will probably cheer their decline. (I feel your pain. I really do.) But the loss of this ritual is another troubling sign of our political times, and of a democracy at risk of sliding farther into crisis as its underpinnings are being steadily eroded.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Four Takeaways From the DeSantis-Crist Debate in Florida’s Governor Race

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist, his Democratic challenger, debated for the only time in the Florida governor’s race on Monday, a rowdy exchange featuring a raucous crowd and a slew of culture war issues that have dominated the state’s political discourse.Mr. Crist, a former congressman and governor with plenty of debate experience, gave a polished performance as he went on the attack. But no single moment from Mr. Crist seemed like it would upend the dynamics of the contest. Public polls show Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, comfortably ahead in the race, a rarity for Florida, which until recently had some of the tightest contests in the nation.The debate, initially scheduled for Oct. 12, was postponed because of Hurricane Ian, a destructive Category 4 storm that struck Southwest Florida on Sept. 28, killing more than 100 people.The moderator, Liz Quirantes of WPEC, struggled to keep quiet the audience in Fort Pierce, which regularly applauded, cheered, jeered and interrupted the exchanges. Some of Ms. Quirantes’s questions, which she said came from viewers, appeared to be leading the candidates toward conservative points of view. WPEC is a CBS affiliate owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group.Here are four takeaways:The DeSantis White House speculation isn’t going away.Mr. Crist repeatedly cast Mr. DeSantis as more interested in running for president in 2024 than in governing Florida.“Governor DeSantis has taken his eye off the ball,” Mr. Crist said, accusing the governor of focusing on national issues and fund-raising outside the state. (Mr. DeSantis has far out-raised Mr. Crist.)Twice, Mr. Crist asked Mr. DeSantis point-blank if he would serve a full, four-year term if re-elected. Mr. DeSantis ignored the question as the moderator noted that the candidates had agreed not to ask each other questions.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.A G.O.P. Advantage: Republicans appear to be gaining an edge in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, explains why the mood of the electorate has shifted.Ohio Senate Race: Tim Ryan, the Democrat who is challenging J.D. Vance, has turned the state into perhaps the country’s unlikeliest Senate battleground.Losing Faith in the System: As democracy erodes in Wisconsin, many of the state’s citizens feel powerless. But Republicans and Democrats see different culprits and different risks.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.“The only worn-out old donkey I’m looking to put out to pasture is Charlie Crist,” Mr. DeSantis said.The governor frequently turned his attention to President Biden, the Democrat he would most likely challenge if he were to seek the presidency, and tried to tie him to Mr. Crist. Mr. Biden’s approval rating is underwater in Florida, though the president still plans to travel to the state to rally for Mr. Crist and other Democrats next week.“Charlie Crist has voted with Joe Biden 100 percent of the time to give us these inflationary policies and to drive up the costs of everything that we’re doing,” Mr. DeSantis said.The partisan crowd was raucous inside the debate on Monday night, as well as outside the theater beforehand.Marco Bello/ReutersThe death toll from Hurricane Ian became a sticking point.At least 114 people died because of Hurricane Ian in Florida, making it the deadliest storm in the state in almost 90 years. Many of the dead were older or vulnerable people who became trapped in their homes or cars and drowned. The New York Times found that Lee County, home to the hard-hit city of Fort Myers, did not follow its own plans for evacuating people ahead of the hurricane.Mr. Crist accused Mr. DeSantis of not using his bully pulpit to encourage people to get out before the storm made landfall — and noted that more than 82,000 Floridians have died during the coronavirus pandemic under Mr. DeSantis’s watch.“Whether it comes to Covid or it comes to the hurricane, Ron ignored science,” Mr. Crist said.Mr. DeSantis countered that evacuations are mandated by county officials and not by the state. “Our message was, ‘Listen to your locals,’” he said. “It’s ultimately a local decision. But I stand by every one of our local counties.”Neither Mr. DeSantis nor Mr. Crist answered the question about whether there should be limits on construction along the Florida coast given the increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Mr. Crist blamed Mr. DeSantis for allowing the state’s property insurance market to fray; Mr. DeSantis countered that insurance rates had risen because of excessive lawsuits.DeSantis made false and misleading statements about abortion.It was clear from the start that Mr. Crist was eager to talk about abortion, one of Democrats’ preferred topics in an otherwise unfavorable election cycle. The first question was about housing policy, but he began by saying the election was “a stark contrast between somebody who believes in a woman’s right to choose” and Mr. DeSantis, who signed a 15-week abortion ban that, Mr. Crist emphasized, includes no exceptions for rape and incest.Later, asked whether abortion should be banned after a specific week in pregnancy, Mr. DeSantis made a number of false or misleading claims.He accused Mr. Crist of supporting abortion “up until the moment of birth.” That is a common Republican claim, but abortion until the moment of birth doesn’t exist, even in states without gestational limits. He also said Mr. Crist supported “dismemberment abortions,” a pejorative term for procedures performed later in pregnancy that, when they do happen, are often prompted by medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormalities. (More than 92 percent of abortions in the United States are performed much earlier, in the first trimester.)‘Culture war’ issues took up a lot of bandwidth.More than perhaps any other sitting governor, Mr. DeSantis has used issues like race and transgender rights to stir up his conservative base.That was on display in Monday’s debate, in which he gave a graphic and inaccurate description of gender-affirming care for transgender children, suggesting falsely that doctors were “mutilating” minors. In reality, gender-affirming care — which major medical associations, including pediatric associations, endorse — primarily involves social support, nonpermanent treatments like puberty blockers (which Mr. DeSantis also denounced), and hormonal treatments.Mr. Crist responded by bringing the topic, once again, back to abortion: “This reminds me of your position on a woman’s right to choose,” he said. “You think you know better than any physician or any doctor or any woman in a position to make decisions about their own personal health.”In a segment on education, Mr. DeSantis also repeated his frequent claims that Democrats like Mr. Crist want to teach white children to view themselves as oppressors because of their race. He acknowledged that it was important for history curriculums to include “all of American history,” including slavery and segregation, but said: “I’m proud of our history. I don’t want to teach kids to hate our country.”Mr. Crist scoffed at the idea that children were being taught to hate themselves or each other, saying, “I don’t know where you get that idea” — and then accusing Mr. DeSantis of focusing on the issue to avoid talking about abortion. More

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      Fetterman’s Debate Challenges: Selling Policies and Proving He’s Fit to Serve

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      WASHINGTON — When John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, faces his Republican opponent in a high-stakes debate on Tuesday night, he will face twin challenges: making the case for his policies while convincing voters he is healthy enough to serve.The debate, the first and only in a race that could determine whether Democrats keep control of the Senate, will look different than any other. Two 70-inch monitors above the heads of the moderators — scrolling the text of their questions, as well as transcribing the answers, attacks and ripostes of the Republican, Dr. Mehmet Oz — will be visible to TV watchers whenever a camera pans to the moderators.Mr. Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, needs the accommodations because the stroke he had in May left him with an auditory processing disorder, a condition that affects the brain’s ability to filter and interpret sounds, his primary care doctor said last week. He uses closed captioning to follow conversations. Sometimes his speech is halting. Sometimes he stumbles over his words. But he has “no work restrictions,” the doctor said.Democrats say this makes him seem relatable. Disability rights activists say Mr. Fetterman has been a victim of prejudice from Republicans and reporters who focus more on his health than the issues. But Mr. Fetterman — who also has a heart condition that his cardiologist says was exacerbated by his failure to seek care and take medicine — was cagey about answering health questions in the early months of his campaign, which has left him open to bipartisan criticism about a lack of transparency.“He handled the issue badly at first because he was evasive for months, and that’s changed,” said Shanin Specter, a politically active Philadelphia lawyer (and the son of former Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania), who said he is not supporting either candidate. “He should be more worried about the electorate’s concerns about his evasion than about his capacity.”The race pits Mr. Fetterman, a tall, tattooed figure who favors hoodies and shorts and casts himself as a working man, against Dr. Oz, a former TV celebrity — and newcomer to Pennsylvania residency — who was scolded by senators in 2014 for using his TV show to promote foods and dietary supplements that falsely promised weight loss. Dr. Oz has been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, who has said his long television run was proof of his political viability.The general election contest has tightened in recent days, as once-skeptical Republican voters fall in line with Dr. Oz. Polls show Mr. Fetterman’s solid lead has nearly vanished this month.Dr. Mehmet Oz’s campaign spent months taunting and openly mocking Mr. Fetterman as mentally unfit to hold office.Laurence Kesterson/Associated PressThe Oz campaign spent months taunting and openly mocking Mr. Fetterman as mentally unfit to hold office. But now, amid a social media backlash from some voters as well as disability rights activists, Dr. Oz and his allies are shifting course. They have insisted the debate will be about policies, not health.“I don’t think that viewers are tuning into this debate to learn about John Fetterman’s health status,” said Barney Keller, a senior strategist for Dr. Oz. “I think they’ll tune into the debate to learn about the contrast between the candidates on the issues.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.A G.O.P. Advantage: Republicans appear to be gaining an edge in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, explains why the mood of the electorate has shifted.Ohio Senate Race: Tim Ryan, the Democrat who is challenging J.D. Vance, has turned the state into perhaps the country’s unlikeliest Senate battleground.Losing Faith in the System: As democracy erodes in Wisconsin, many of the state’s citizens feel powerless. But Republicans and Democrats see different culprits and different risks.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.Mr. Fetterman has long sought to turn the Oz campaign’s attacks on his health to his advantage. “Recovering from a stroke in public isn’t easy,” he recently wrote on Twitter. “But in January, I’m going to be much better — and Dr. Oz will still be a fraud.”Still, Democrats worry that any off-key moment by Mr. Fetterman could go viral and affect the outcome of the race.“We are prepared for Oz’s allies and right-wing media to circulate malicious viral videos after the debate that try to paint John in a negative light because of awkward pauses, missing some words, and mushing other words together,” Rebecca Katz, Mr. Fetterman’s senior communications adviser, and Brendan McPhillips, his campaign manager, wrote in a memo on Monday.Although Mr. Fetterman has sat for one-on-one interviews with news outlets using closed captioning, the debate will move much faster — with cross-talk and interruptions — and it is unclear how the technology that Mr. Fetterman relies on will keep up, and how he will respond.His auditory processing issues mean that he typically avoids situations when voices and noise come from multiple directions. He has held no free-for-all meetings with voters or a gaggle of reporters..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Ahead of the debate, the Fetterman campaign sought to lower expectations. “John is five months post-stroke and Oz has spent the last two decades literally in a TV studio; if there’s a home-field advantage, it’s definitely his,’’ said Ms. Katz, who is overseeing his debate preparations.In an earlier debate during the Democratic primary race that predated Mr. Fetterman’s stroke, he was considered the least verbally dexterous of the three candidates, though he went on to win the nomination easily.“Please remember that John did not get where he is by winning debates, or being a polished speaker,” Ms. Katz said. “He got here because he connects with Pennsylvanians.”Mr. Fetterman, who had a stroke days before the Democratic primary in May, later had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted to address atrial fibrillation — an irregular heart rhythm — which was the underlying cause of the stroke. In June, the campaign released a statement from Mr. Fetterman’s cardiologist, Dr. Ramesh R. Chandra, that said the candidate also has cardiomyopathy, a weakened heart muscle.In a letter released last week, Mr. Fetterman’s primary care doctor, Dr. Clifford Chen, said he is “recovering well” from his stroke. He is continuing to get speech therapy, which experts say is standard treatment for an auditory processing disorder. Experts also say such disorders often improve with time, and do not render a person unable to hold public office.Research shows that people who have had strokes improve more rapidly in the beginning, said Dr. Clinton Wright, director of the division of clinical research at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. But Mr. Wright said the data show that patients can continue to improve a year after the stroke.“This is a teachable moment,” said Jean Hall, director of the Institute for Health and Disability Policy Studies at the University of Kansas. “My question would be, What if his stroke had resulted in him being deaf and he needed a sign language interpreter?”Medical experts say that is an apt comparison, though auditory processing disorders have nothing to do with hearing. Rather, people with such disorders have a hard time processing small sound differences in words, because their brains don’t hear sounds in the usual way. Closed captioning makes conversations easier to follow.“Auditory processing has nothing to do with a person’s intelligence or the ideas in their head or their thoughts,” said Dr. Peter Turkeltaub, a neurologist and director of the Cognitive Recovery Lab at Georgetown University Medical Center. “It’s just the input and output: Can you connect those ideas to the words you are hearing, and then can you take the ideas and connect them to your own words?”People with disabilities have long held public office. Franklin D. Roosevelt used a wheelchair, although he tried to hide it from the public. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Representative Jim Langevin of Rhode Island also use wheelchairs.But visible physical limitations are easier to explain to voters, said Lisa Iezzoni, a professor at Harvard Medical School who researches health disparities on people with disabilities. Because voters can’t clearly see Mr. Fetterman’s disability, however, he must fight “this perception that his mind was altered in some way.”In Mr. Fetterman’s first live television interview since his stroke, which was broadcast on Oct. 11 by NBC News, the reporter Dasha Burns told viewers that before the formal interview, Mr. Fetterman seemed not to follow her attempts at small talk without his monitor.“Quite frankly, it really infuriated me,” said Judy Heumann, a longtime leader in the disability rights movement, who helped pass the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990 and later served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. “Voters should be looking at what he’s doing and what he’s saying, and not whether he uses a communications device.”Over the weekend, Dr. Oz steered the conversation away from Mr. Fetterman’s health toward his policies. “I just want him to show up on Tuesday so we can talk to Pennsylvania about our policies, and let them see how extreme his positions have been,” he told Fox News.The Fetterman campaign believes that Dr. Oz and his allies in the right-wing news media went too far in calling attention for months to Mr. Fetterman’s sometimes halting speech and fumbling for words. They say it might work to Mr. Fetterman’s advantage, by lowering expectations for his performance.“Even if he stumbles on a few words here and there, I don’t think it’s a big deal to voters,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist. “There’s a lot more opportunity than risk for John Fetterman in this debate.”Dr. Iezzoni, the Harvard professor, said the debate would be a referendum on voters as well. The World Health Organization, she said, has described having a disability as a “universal human experience.” Seeing Mr. Fetterman use closed captioning — and answer questions in a halting, not necessarily fluent way — will test the public’s tolerance for differences, she said.“It will be interesting to know whether the public has empathy for human frailty, which we all experience in some way or another,” she said. “Will they be willing to look past it or do they demand perfection?”Katie Glueck More

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      DeSantis and Crist Will Debate

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      The first and only debate between Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, and Charlie Crist, his Democratic challenger, will go forward on Monday as in-person early voting begins in some of the state’s biggest counties.The debate, initially scheduled for Oct. 12, was postponed because of Hurricane Ian, a destructive Category 4 storm that struck Southwest Florida on Sept. 28, killing more than 100 people. The hurricane led Mr. DeSantis to ease election rules for the three hardest-hit counties — Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota — to allow large polling places, extend early voting and permit voters to request that mail-in ballots be sent to different addresses from the one kept on file, actions that contrasted with his overall push for more rigid voting policies in Florida.Mr. DeSantis, whose national profile has turned him into a 2024 Republican presidential contender in waiting, has far out-raised and outspent Mr. Crist in television ads. Public opinion polls have consistently showed Mr. DeSantis leading the race.Mr. Crist, a former governor and U.S. lawmaker, has cast his opponent as a divisive culture warrior and campaigned hard against the 15-week abortion ban that Mr. DeSantis signed into law in April. But he has struggled to shake up the contest in his favor.The debate, in Fort Pierce, Fla., is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Eastern. It will be live streamed on C-SPAN. New York Times reporters will offer live updates and analysis. More

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      The Week in Political News

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      Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesVoter turnout in Georgia is far outperforming that of previous midterm elections, rivaling presidential-year figures. On the first day of early voting, more than 130,000 people cast ballots — a more than 85 percent increase from the same day in 2018, according to the secretary of state’s office. More

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      New Hampshire’s Senate Debate Reveals a Surprising Point of Agreement

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      New Hampshire’s first Senate debate on Tuesday featured many jabs and parries that have been partisan staples of debates this year across the country, with Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, and her Republican opponent, Don Bolduc, trading accusations about abortion, energy, inflation and more.But the debate also produced a surprising zone of consensus: Both candidates agreed that the cap on income that is taxed to fund Social Security should be raised. The tax currently applies to the first $147,000 of income and is withdrawn from workers’ paychecks.“Take that cap off and millions of dollars will flow in,” Mr. Bolduc said.Ms. Hassan agreed: “You can ask the wealthiest Americans to pay a little bit more into the system,” she said.While Democrats in Congress have long favored lifting the cap for certain high earners, Republicans have widely opposed the idea, a third rail for many in the party.“If you think taxing the wealthy is going to save Social Security, you’re wrong,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said at a June hearing, after a report that Social Security would be unable to pay full benefits starting in 2035.Republicans have favored cutting benefits or raising the retirement age to keep the hugely popular benefit solvent. Mr. Bolduc, who is on the hard right on some issues, appeared to align with the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party on Social Security — at least regarding taxes. More