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      4 Takeaways From the Rubio-Demings Debate in Florida

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      Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and his Democratic challenger, Representative Val Demings, met for the only debate of the Florida Senate race on Tuesday, a fast-paced, fiery face-off that cruised through a series of the top issues affecting the country and the state.Mr. Rubio, who participated in around a dozen debates as a Republican presidential candidate in 2016, was polished and quick. Taking a more evocative approach, Ms. Demings sought to cast him as heartless, disconnected from the human impact of his policies on issues like abortion and guns.Still, she may not have gotten the kind of viral moment necessary to shift the trajectory of the race in her favor. For months, polls have shown Mr. Rubio with a lead in Florida, a perennial battleground state but one that has shifted to the right.Here are four takeaways:Sticking to the party line on abortion.The candidates largely hewed to their party’s talking points on abortion rights, with each aiming to paint the other as extreme. Ms. Demings accused Mr. Rubio of supporting abortion restrictions without exceptions for rape, incest and life-threatening medical conditions.“No, senator, I don’t think it’s OK for a 10-year-old girl to be raped and have to carry the seed of her rapist,” she said. “No, I don’t think it’s OK for you to make decisions for women and girls as a senator. I think those decisions are made between the woman, her family, her doctor and her faith.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Georgia Governor Race: A debate between Gov. Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams produced a substantive hour of policy discussion. Here are five takeaways.Aggressive Tactics: Right-wing leaders are calling on election activists to monitor voting in the midterm elections in search of evidence to confirm unfounded theories of election fraud.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.Mr. Rubio dismissed those attacks. While he called himself “100 percent pro-life” and indicated that he personally supported strict abortion laws, he cast the issue as theoretical, saying that bans without exceptions would be unable to pass because they lack popular support.For his part, Mr. Rubio pressured Ms. Demings to name a clear week limit on the procedure, falsely accusing her of backing abortion “on demand, for any reason, at any time, including the moment before birth.” She replied that she supported abortion until viability — the standard set by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, commonly understood to be around 24 weeks.A Florida phenomenon: property insurance chaos.A portion of the debate focused on an issue that’s fairly specific to Florida: a property insurance market in free-fall. Homeowners in Florida pay the highest premiums in the country, nearly three times the national average, according to the Insurance Information Institute. So far, six Florida property insurance companies have been declared insolvent and others are canceling or not renewing policies.Ms. Demings accused Mr. Rubio of doing nothing on the issue as a member of the state House, saying she had asked the governor to call a special session to tackle the crisis.Mr. Rubio countered that there had been a special session when he was speaker in 2007. Legislation passed that year expanded the offerings and reduced the rates of the state’s insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance. Mr. Rubio blamed former Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for another term as the Democratic nominee, for the sharp increase in rates since then.The temperature rose when guns came up.One of the most heated exchanges came when the moderator asked whether the candidates would support a federal ban on the sale of assault weapons to people under 21 — an idea that Mr. Rubio dismissed as useless, pointing out that a 15-year-old was accused in a recent shooting rampage in Raleigh, N.C.“Where did he get the gun? He didn’t get it from a gun show. He certainly didn’t buy it. He’s 15 years of age,” Mr. Rubio said. Instead, he promoted a “red flag” bill he sponsored to allow law enforcement authorities to confiscate guns if a person shows warning signs of violence — while denouncing as “crazy” a red-flag provision in the bipartisan gun law that Congress passed this year.He claimed that provision would allow “your co-worker who has a grudge against you” to “go to a judge and take away your guns.”Ms. Demings responded with clear anger, accusing Mr. Rubio of betraying the victims of massacres in Florida like the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando and the Parkland shooting, and of making promises to victims’ families that he “had no intentions of keeping.” She went on: “How long will you watch people being gunned down in first grade, fourth grade, high school, college, church, synagogue, the grocery store, a movie theater, a mall and a nightclub, and do nothing?”Rubio was more detailed on foreign policy.Mr. Rubio gave more detailed responses than Ms. Demings to questions about China and about how the United States should respond if Russia used tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine or attacked a NATO ally.Ms. Demings said repeatedly that the United States needed to hold Russia and China “accountable,” but gave no examples of what that might involve. At one point, she said that if China were to try to take over Taiwan, “there has to be a response,” and added that she and her colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee were discussing the matter. Mr. Rubio also, to some extent, deferred to other decision makers; he said, for instance, that the response to an attack on a NATO member would have to be a joint decision by the alliance. He also threw in a mocking line about transgender people, suggesting that the Pentagon needed to focus on military superiority rather than “proper use of pronouns.”But his responses contained a level of detail that Ms. Demings’s did not. Among other things, he discussed the range of ways Russia could escalate in Ukraine — short-range nuclear missiles and a conventional attack on an airport in Poland were two possibilities he mentioned — and called for efforts to decrease dependence on Chinese manufacturers and strengthen American military capacity in the Indo-Pacific region.Near the end of the debate, Ms. Demings accused him of feigning foreign policy expertise, saying, “Look, the senator can play national security expert all he wants.”Mr. Rubio replied, to applause: “I don’t know what she means by playing national security expert. I’m the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee and was the previous chairman of it, so it’s actually my job.” More

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      Rubio and Demings Have Their First and Only Debate

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      Follow our live coverage of Marco Rubio and Val Demings’s debate for Senate in Florida.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and his Democratic challenger, Representative Val Demings, will face off on Tuesday evening in a debate in Lake Worth Beach, Fla.It is the only scheduled debate in the Senate race in Florida, where polls have consistently shown Mr. Rubio ahead. Florida has trended to the right in the past few years, transforming from the nation’s most famous swing state to fairly reliable Republican turf. But with Mr. Rubio’s leads in the single digits, Democrats are holding out hope for an upset.Mr. Rubio, a onetime presidential candidate who is seeking a third term in the Senate, has focused heavily on crime and on economic issues like inflation that polls show are drawing swing voters toward Republicans.Ms. Demings, who was elected to Congress in 2016 after being the first woman to lead the Orlando Police Department, has not shied away from the issue of public safety but has also emphasized abortion and, in a state recently devastated by Hurricane Ian, climate change. A livestream of the debate will be available from WPBF-TV in Florida.According to Federal Election Commission filings, Ms. Demings has raised $65.5 million for her campaign, significantly more than Mr. Rubio’s $44.5 million. But Mr. Rubio has more money on hand for the final weeks of the campaign. More

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      5 Takeaways From the Utah Senate Debate

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      Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, and his independent challenger, Evan McMullin, a former C.I.A. officer, met Monday evening for their only debate, a largely genteel affair that showed flashes of tension mainly around Mr. Lee’s role in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep Donald J. Trump in the presidency.Here are five takeaways from an unusual debate in an unusual Senate race.Jan. 6 remains center stage.No race in the country has spotlighted the events after the 2020 election quite so much as the Senate contest in Utah. In part, that’s because Mr. McMullin and Mr. Lee agree on so many other issues. But it’s primarily because of the prominent role Mr. Lee played in cheerleading various efforts to use legal battles to keep Mr. Trump in power. Much of that cheerleading surfaced in text messages the senator sent to to the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.Mr. McMullin called Mr. Lee’s actions “the most egregious betrayal of our nation’s constitution in its history by a U.S. senator,” adding: “It will be your legacy.”Mr. Lee did ultimately vote to affirm President Biden’s election, and he fell back on the language that many Republicans have used when asked if the president was fairly elected. “Joe Biden is our president,” he said. “He was chosen in the only election that matters, the election held by the Electoral College.”But he strongly denied any wrongdoing before his vote to certify the election, saying his discussions about a search for “alternative” electors who would deny the election result was merely an exploration of rumors of such electors — rumors, he said, that proved to be untrue. He accused Mr. McMullin of “a cavalier, reckless disregard for the truth” and demanded an apology.The advantage of independence.Mr. McMullin took full advantage of his status as an independent running in a conservative state, agreeing with his Republican opponent on limiting abortion, castigating Mr. Biden for stoking inflation and saying the White House’s student debt relief program would only worsen inflation. And he vowed that he would not be a “bootlicker” for Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump.That caught Mr. Lee’s ear: “The suggestion that I’m beholden to either party, that I’ve been a bootlicker for either party, is folly,” he protested.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Questioning 2020: Hundreds of Republicans on the ballot this November have cast doubt on the 2020 election, a Times analysis found. Many of these candidates are favored to win their races.Georgia Senate Race: The contest, which could determine whether Democrats keep control of the Senate, has become increasingly focused on the private life and alleged hypocrisy of Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.Mr. McMullin was also free to embrace the most popular elements of the Democrats’ achievements, like allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.He portrayed Mr. Lee — largely accurately — as an outlier in the Senate for his consistent votes against bills, even those with broad bipartisan support, and put himself forward as a problem-solver in the mold of the Utahn he hopes to join in the Senate, Mitt Romney.“If we prevail, it will make Utah the most influential state in the nation, because nothing will get through the Senate without Utah’s support,” Mr. McMullin said..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.But there is a problem with his vow to be a true independent who would not caucus with either party: Without choosing sides at all, he might not be able to get any committee assignments, severely limiting his ability to wield influence.Mr. Lee was cutting in his dismissal of his opponent’s independent bid: “Supporting an opportunistic gadfly who is supported by the Democrat Party might make for interesting dinner party conversation,” he argued, but in such trying times, it made no sense for the people of Utah.Searching for distinctions on abortion.In virtually every other contested race this year, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has elevated abortion to the top of the agenda, especially for the Democrat in the race. The Senate contest in Utah has no Democrat, and no abortion-rights candidate.In conservative Utah, that allowed Mr. Lee to openly proclaim his joy over the end of Roe v. Wade and his support for allowing the states to decide whether abortion should be legal. “Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Lee said, “was a legal fiction.”Mr. McMullin said he, too, was “pro-life” and struggled to distinguish himself from his opponent, saying he opposed politicians at the extremes of both parties on the issue, those who would ban all abortions without exceptions and those who oppose all restrictions. But he did not say when he thought abortion should be legal or at what point in a pregnancy his opposition to abortion would kick in.Russia, Russia, Russia.Given Mr. McMullin’s C.I.A. background, Russia seemed like a fruitful avenue to pursue his prosecution of Mr. Lee as an extremist outlier, even in right-leaning Utah. He said the senator was the only member of Utah’s all-Republican congressional delegation not to be blacklisted by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and he castigated Mr. Lee for going to Moscow in 2019 to discuss relaxing some sanctions on the Putin regime.But Mr. Lee deftly eluded the attack, saying he had gone to Russia at the invitation of the nation’s ambassador to Moscow at the time, Jon Huntsman Jr. — a popular former Utah governor.Closing the gap? Not likely.Mr. McMullin has waged a surprisingly effective campaign against Mr. Lee in a state that gave Mr. Trump 58 percent of the vote in 2020. But to beat Mr. Lee, he must win over the state’s Democrats, most of its independents and every disaffected Republican he can find. And no one is sure such a coalition will add up to 50 percent of the vote.It is also not clear Monday night’s debate will advance Mr. McMullin’s cause. The audience was stacked with supporters of Mr. Lee, who booed Mr. McMullin’s jabs, especially about Jan. 6 and the 2020 election, and cheered on the incumbent. At times, Mr. McMullin seemed flustered that he was not getting traction with his most practiced lines of attack, especially his appeals to the Mormon faithful whose ancestors “trekked across the plains and the Rockies to achieve freedom here.”“I think about all the men and women, the 14 generations of Americans who have sacrificed for this grand experiment in freedom,” he said. “They trusted you, we trusted you, and with that trust and with your knowledge of the Constitution, Senator Lee, you sought to find a weakness in our system” to “overturn the will of the people.”But the Utahns who Hillary Clinton thought would recoil in 2016 from Mr. Trump’s immoralities did not come to her aid. And they were even less in evidence for Mr. Biden in 2020.Ultimately, Mr. Lee may have had the most effective attack line, one he used often: Mr. McMullin voted for Mr. Biden. More

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      5 Takeaways From Vance and Ryan’s Final Ohio Senate Debate

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      Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican, clashed bitterly over issues of ideology and fitness for office in their final debate in the state’s marquee Senate race, as Mr. Ryan painted his opponent as extreme, and Mr. Vance lashed Mr. Ryan as ineffective and more liberal than he lets on.The contest in a state that former President Donald J. Trump comfortably won twice has remained more competitive than national observers initially expected with Mr. Ryan, a strong fund-raiser, casting himself as an independent voice. Still, he has an uphill climb, and he has not had much assistance so far from national Democrats.Here are five takeaways from their heated hourlong debate in Youngstown, Ohio:A strikingly contentious and sometimes personal hour.The debate crackled with condescension as the two men sparred, reflecting the close nature of the race. At times they referred to each other as “pal,” “our guy” or “buddy.” Mr. Ryan even accused his opponent, in two languages, of being a fraud.“J.D. Vance, all due respect, is a fraud,” Mr. Ryan said as they discussed immigration. Then he invoked a saying from his “little Italian grandmother” that he said translated into, “‘You have two faces.’ One for the camera, and one for your business dealings.”Mr. Vance, for his part, argued that Mr. Ryan was only masquerading as a moderate, and that, for all of his years in government, he had not delivered.J.D. Vance supporters gathered in Youngstown before the Senate debate on Monday.Gaelen Morse for The New York TimesEach man tried to saddle the other with the problems of their national parties.Mr. Vance sought to paint Mr. Ryan as a generic Democrat closely tied to President Biden as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — whom, Mr. Ryan noted, he once challenged for a leadership role.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Questioning 2020: Hundreds of Republicans on the ballot this November have cast doubt on the 2020 election, a Times analysis found. Many of these candidates are favored to win their races.Georgia Senate Race: The contest, which could determine whether Democrats keep control of the Senate, has become increasingly focused on the private life and alleged hypocrisy of Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.“You can’t run from the policies that she supported, that she has shoved down the throat of the people in Ohio,” Mr. Vance said.Mr. Ryan declared, “If you want to run against Nancy Pelosi, move back to San Francisco and run against Nancy Pelosi,” alluding to Mr. Vance’s time there as a venture capitalist.Mr. Ryan, for his part, sought to tie Mr. Vance to the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has campaigned with Mr. Vance. And he looked for ways to highlight his independence from his party, saying, for instance, that “I disagree with President Biden when he’s talking about relaxing some of the regulations down on the border, completely disagree with that.”He also sharply criticized Mr. Vance’s evolution in supporting Mr. Trump. “You were calling Trump America’s Hitler,” he said, adding later that “then he endorsed you and you said he’s the greatest president of all time.”Mr. Vance disputed the characterization. When he was pressed to name an area of disagreement with Mr. Trump, he expressed concerns with some of the more hawkish members of the administration.“The thing that was wrong about the Trump administration is they put a lot of people in the administration, a lot of bad personnel folks, who actually advocated limitless nonstop wars,” he said.A supporter of Mr. Ryan before the debate.Gaelen Morse for The New York TimesA fight over what it means to be extreme on abortion.Ohio became the center of a debate over abortion rights earlier this year when a 10-year-old girl who had been raped traveled across state lines to receive an abortion because of Ohio’s ban on the procedure in many instances. The issue was a flash point in the debate.“J.D. and his extreme crew, they want to have a national abortion ban,” Mr. Ryan said as he pushed for codifying Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned in June. “They’re not happy with people having to go to Illinois. They want people to get a passport and have to go to Canada. Largest governmental overreach in the history of our lifetime.”It was language reminiscent of the privacy-focused message used in Kansas by defenders of abortion rights ahead of a ballot measure on the issue this summer.Mr. Vance has said the 10-year-old should have been able to get an abortion and tried to cast Mr. Ryan as being extreme in his support for abortion rights. He also tried to change the subject by noting that the man who was arrested and charged in the Ohio case was an undocumented immigrant. A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement previously confirmed his undocumented status.Mr. Vance, in an extraordinary leap, tried to pin the blame for the attack on Mr. Ryan: “She would never have been raped in the first place if Tim Ryan had done his job on border security.”Mr. Vance spoke supportively of Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week national abortion ban, but like many Republicans, was reluctant to discuss specifics on abortion exceptions he supported, saying that, for example, while many support exceptions in instances of incest, “an incest exception looks different at three weeks of pregnancy versus 39 weeks of pregnancy.”A question about “great replacement theory” led to the most raw exchange of the night.The candidates were asked about a racist conspiracy theory that concerns the notion of white people being replaced by nonwhite people and has helped inspire mass shootings across the country.Replacement theory has crept into right-wing media, most notably Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News, where Mr. Vance has been a favorite guest. Mr. Ryan lashed Mr. Vance for spending time with lawmakers who “stoke this racial violence” as he described the role the theory played in the Buffalo mass shooting.“You are so desperate for political power that you’ll accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies, of engaging in racism,” shot back Mr. Vance, who added that he is “married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants.”He has warned of an “invasion” from immigrants, and in a campaign ad, suggested loose border policies ensured “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” But he said on Monday that the issue was not “about whites or nonwhites,” but that he was concerned about illegal immigration. “You can believe in a border without being a racist,” he said.“I would never talk about your family, J.D.,” Mr. Ryan said. “You don’t want to talk about the fact that you’re with the extremists in that belief.”“That’s disgusting and I’ve never endorsed it,” Mr. Vance insisted.Senator Rob Portman was the most popular person onstage.Mr. Vance and Mr. Ryan are vying to replace Mr. Portman, the center-right Ohio Republican who is retiring — and while he has endorsed Mr. Vance, both invoked him repeatedly.For Mr. Ryan, doing so signals his interest in bipartisanship. For Mr. Vance, who won the primary with strength from the right, it is a nod to the mainstream.Mr. Vance repeatedly invoked the endorsement. Mr. Ryan noted times when they have collaborated.“I’m not quite sure why Rob Portman endorsed you,” Mr. Ryan said at one point. “You don’t agree with any of the compromises that he’s been able to make in the last year.”Trip Gabriel More

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      For Abrams and Kemp, a Debate Rematch Recalls a 2018 Exchange

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      ATLANTA — When they meet on the debate stage on Monday evening, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, and Stacey Abrams, his Democratic opponent, will mount a rematch from the 2018 campaign for governor.Their 2018 debate took place during Georgia’s early voting period, as it is again this year, against the backdrop of heightened attention to voting rights and access to the ballot. As Georgians took to the polls, many complained of hourslong lines and faulty voting equipment. According to an investigation by The Associated Press, thousands found their voter registrations in limbo as they tried to cast ballots. A majority of them were Black.Ms. Abrams, who founded the voting rights group New Georgia Project before running for governor, underlined those faults and placed the blame on Mr. Kemp, further criticizing him for remaining in his post as secretary of state while also running for office. But it was a back-and-forth exchange between Ms. Abrams and Mr. Kemp on who they believed should have access to the ballot that caught the most attention then and is still reverberating four years later.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Questioning 2020: Hundreds of Republicans on the ballot this November have cast doubt on the 2020 election, a Times analysis found. Many of these candidates are favored to win their races.Georgia Senate Race: The contest, which could determine whether Democrats keep control of the Senate, has become increasingly focused on the private life and alleged hypocrisy of Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.During the 2018 debate, Mr. Kemp accused Ms. Abrams of “encouraging people to break the law” on her behalf, suggesting that she had asked undocumented immigrants to vote for her in a video clip that was widely circulated in Republican circles. Ms. Abrams responded with a full-throated rebuke of the accusation and referred to a 2016 lawsuit that she and several voting rights groups had brought against Mr. Kemp to challenge his office’s voter registration regulations.“I have never in my life asked for anyone who is not legally eligible to vote to be able to cast a ballot. What I have asked for is that you allow those who are legally eligible to vote — to allow them to cast their ballots,” Ms. Abrams responded in the debate.“I realize that in the next response you’re going to say that it’s a function of my organization,” she continued, referring to the New Georgia Project, “because your tendency is to blame everyone else for the mistakes that you make. My responsibility as a leader is to see a problem and try to solve it.”For his part, Mr. Kemp responded by asking viewers to look up the video clip of her remarks, calling them “outrageous.” The moment in the debate exploded onto social media sites. It still draws attention, including in early September, when many social media users mistakenly believed a resurfaced clip came from a 2022 debate.Ms. Abrams lost to Mr. Kemp in November 2018 by fewer than 60,000 votes — a loss she owed in part to what she described as unfair voting laws. This year, the two candidates have paid less attention to ballot access as a campaign issue and focused more on abortion and the economy.Still, Georgia remains a battleground state after Ms. Abrams’s narrow loss in the 2018 race and Democrats’ winning both the presidency and two Senate seats in the state during the 2020 cycle. And the specter of Georgia’s new voting law, S.B. 202, looms large as voting rights groups and Ms. Abrams’s campaign warn that is disenfranchising voters.Monday’s debate also coincides with the first day of Georgia’s early voting period. Ms. Abrams, who is trailing Mr. Kemp by five to 10 points in most polls, has joined state Democrats in encouraging voters to cast ballots before Election Day. At the same time, Mr. Kemp has implored Republicans in the state not to trust the polls and instead to turn out en masse as his campaign works to shore up the party’s voter outreach strategy.The debate between Mr. Kemp, Ms. Abrams and the Libertarian candidate, Shane Hazel, will be broadcast on Georgia public television at 7 p.m. Eastern time. It will also be livestreamed on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s website and The Atlanta Press Club’s Facebook page. More

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      Warnock Hammers Walker in Senate Debate, Gesturing to an Empty Lectern

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      ATLANTA — Herschel Walker was not onstage on Sunday night for Georgia’s second U.S. Senate debate. But he was one of its main topics anyway.Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent and a Democrat, excoriated his Republican opponent, Mr. Walker, who chose not to attend the debate, arguing that Mr. Walker’s history of domestic violence, lies about his past and refusal to participate in the forum made him unqualified for office.Throughout the hourlong matchup in Atlanta, Mr. Warnock stepped out of character, opting for direct attack lines over the thinly veiled criticisms he has leveled at Mr. Walker for most of the campaign. He answered panelists’ questions with a mix of policy points and full-throated rebukes of Mr. Walker’s claims about his personal life, business prowess and academic record. He described Mr. Walker’s “well-documented history of violence” in reference to reports about Mr. Walker’s domestic violence against his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, calling them “disturbing.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.The Senate race’s lesser-known contender, the Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, did participate in the debate, bringing up policy points like supporting L.G.B.T.Q. rights and keeping the government out of health care and energy investments. He found common ground with Mr. Warnock as both hammered their opponent for his absence from the debate stage.“This race is about who’s ready to represent the people of Georgia in the U.S. Senate,” Mr. Warnock said as he pointed to an empty lectern meant for Mr. Walker, a former football star. “And by not showing up tonight for the job interview, by giving nonsensical answers about his history of violence, Herschel Walker shows he’s not ready.”Before the debate, Mr. Walker’s campaign issued a statement calling it a “one-sided sham” that would be more favorable to Mr. Warnock.Mr. Warnock’s debate performance on Sunday represents one of his most forceful criticisms of his opponent yet. The Democratic senator has not openly condemned Mr. Walker on the campaign trail, even as damaging reports about him have regularly trickled in. Mr. Warnock did not weigh in immediately after stories surfaced about Mr. Walker’s exaggerated professional success, his fathering of children he did not previously disclose and his ex-girlfriend’s claim that he paid for her to have an abortion despite his endorsement of a no-exceptions ban on the procedure.Mr. Warnock has usually saved his fire for the airwaves, where he and several Democratic groups have spent millions of dollars on anti-Walker messaging. But on Sunday, he brought that message to the debate stage, taking time to list Mr. Walker’s falsehoods toward the end of the forum.Mr. Warnock said of Mr. Walker: “He said that he graduated from college. He didn’t. He said that he was valedictorian of his class. He wasn’t. He said that he started a business that doesn’t even exist. And the other night when I said he pretended to be a police officer, he presented a badge as if that were proof that he really is a police officer. And now he wants us to think that he’s a senator.”The first debate in Georgia’s Senate race, an event on Friday that was hosted by Nexstar Media in Savannah, is most likely the only time Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock will have met on a debate stage. The Atlanta Press Club hosted the face-off on Sunday and invited all of Georgia’s Senate candidates to participate; Mr. Walker’s campaign declined in August and suggested that the press club’s staff members held partisan bias against Republican candidates.The debate comes just before Georgia’s early voting period is set to begin on Monday, a point that Mr. Warnock emphasized repeatedly. More

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      Why Herschel Walker May Win

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      Herschel Walker did himself significant good in Friday night’s debate in Georgia. That may be hard to recognize and even harder to accept, given his occasional struggles to get his words out, his passing acquaintance with policy details, his glancing relationship with the truth. But his performance serves as an important reminder to Democrats who’ve taken such heart from — and found such hope in — the blemishes and blunders of Republican candidates in crucial races: Being flawed and being doomed are very different things.The mess around Walker over the past two weeks and the mess of him over the entirety of his campaign have made it easy to focus on those flaws and forget the advantages that he, like all Republicans running in the midterm elections, possesses. But Walker spent Friday night remembering. He knew what he had to do to stay competitive in, and possibly win, the neck-and-neck Senate race against Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat — which could decide which party controls the chamber.He seized on President Biden’s unpopularity to cast Warnock as Biden’s dutiful manservant. “Can he tell me why he voted with Joe Biden 96 percent of the time?” Walker asked the moderators and the audience. He said Biden’s name so often that a strategy almost came across as a stutter.He dwelled, too, on Americans’ economic woes, the nature of which could well lead voters to punish Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress.And if he was rattled in the least by all the recent attention to a former girlfriend’s allegations that he paid for her to have one abortion and urged her to have another, he didn’t show it. Walker, who opposes abortion rights, emphatically denied her account and then sought to portray Warnock as the hypocrite, suggesting that Warnock’s Christian faith — he’s a Baptist preacher — was incompatible with his pro-choice politics.I think Walker has a lot of nerve. I think he has no business in the Senate. I think he’s unfit for political office, period. But he did a surprisingly effective job of showing that while he has enormous shortcomings, he won’t necessarily come up short in a Republican-friendly year in a Republican-friendly state.Walker’s out-of-wedlock children, Mehmet Oz’s minimal ties to Pennsylvania, J.D. Vance’s ambient ickiness — they’re marvelous grist for opposition ads. They’re priceless fodder for political journalists. And they’re surely why Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, issued his now-famous lament about “candidate quality,” sounding like a disgruntled carnivore who’d ordered a Wagyu rib-eye and was served cold Salisbury steak.But beyond the flaws are certain fundamentals, the ones that had prognosticators talking about a Republican wave in the first place. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has undoubtedly scrambled the G.O.P.-favorable calculus, but to what extent is unknown: There’s no tidy parallel or precedent to look to, no neatly predictive data. And the court’s ruling certainly hasn’t subtracted inflation from voters’ concerns.I could argue that the most meaningful moment in the Walker-Warnock debate wasn’t when Walker loopily held up some sort of law enforcement badge — and was scolded by one of the moderators for breaking a no-props rule — or when Warnock made cutting reference to Walker as an absentee father but when the moderators put a simple bar graph on the screen.It showed the results of a recent poll in which voters in Georgia were asked to name their top concern. The most common answer, given by about 40 percent of them, was the economy. The second most common answer, given by 18.6 percent, was threats to democracy. Access to abortion came in a distant third. Only 11.7 percent of respondents said that.Walker’s task on Friday night wasn’t to make voters excited about him. It was to make them less apprehensive. It was to affirm or reaffirm for them that, whatever his lack of charisma and no matter his deficit of coherence, he’s a reliable vessel for their concerns and a viable expression of their qualms.Were they angry about Biden’s use of an executive order to forgive billions of dollars in student loans? Walker let them know — succinctly and clearly — that he was, too. Did they feel that too many progressives demonstrated too much contempt for the police? He registered his own upset about that.It was as if he was going methodically through a checklist of the reasons Republicans were or should be on board with him, and he did so with a discipline that made prior characterizations of him as a hapless buffoon seem selective. Was he eloquent? Please. Was he articulate? Sporadically — and that was all that was necessary to exceed the expectations for him.He had something specifically for independent voters, too. He had unacknowledged and unapologetic conversions.During the debate, he swerved from past statements that he opposed abortion across the board — no exceptions — to an endorsement of a Georgia law that bans it after six weeks of pregnancy but makes various exceptions, including for medical emergencies and in cases of rape and incest if a police report has been filed.He also appeared to abandon prior claims that the results of the 2020 election weren’t trustworthy, saying for the record that Biden won. Walker might as well have been wearing a sandwich board upon which he’d scrawled: “See? Not half as kooky as you thought I was.”Will Donald Trump fume? Does it matter? Rather than Warnock trying to make Walker answer for his alliance with the former president, Walker insisted that Warnock defend his with the current one — a dynamic that doesn’t exactly track with media coverage of the midterms. We keep wondering how much Trump will wound Republican candidates. Warnock seemed plenty worried about how much Biden would wound him.So when he was asked whether Biden should run again in 2024, Warnock conspicuously dodged the question. “I think that part of the problem with our politics right now is that it’s become too much about the politicians,” he said. “You’re asking me who’s going to run in ’24? The people of Georgia get to decide who’s going to be their senator in three days — Monday.”That’s when early voting begins, and if you thought Walker’s candidacy had already ended, the debate challenged that assessment. It’s not because he dazzled but because he showed up, wearing his team’s colors and making his team’s case and not getting any fresh muck on the uniform. In an era this partisan, amid this much economic anxiety, with a Democratic president whose approval rating remains stubbornly low, that may be more than enough.I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).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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      in Elections

      What Was That Badge Herschel Walker Flashed in His Debate?

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      The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia was scolded by a debate moderator and derided online after flashing an honorary badge during an exchange with Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent.NewsNation via ReutersSAVANNAH, Ga. — Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate in Georgia’s pivotal Senate race, drew some head scratches — and a debate moderator’s rebuke — when he brandished an honorary sheriff’s badge on Friday while debating his Democratic opponent, Senator Raphael Warnock.In a moment that ricocheted online, Mr. Walker, a football legend endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, was responding to Mr. Warnock’s accusations that he had misrepresented himself as a law enforcement officer and had previously threatened to commit acts of violence.But Mr. Walker’s flaunting of the honorary badge, a recognition not unusual for celebrities to receive, brought new scrutiny to his credentials and the loosely defined relationships that can emerge between law enforcement agencies and famous people.The moment unfolded after Mr. Warnock made claims about Mr. Walker’s professional history, saying that Mr. Walker “has a problem with the truth.”“One thing I have not done — I’ve never pretended to be a police officer, and I’ve never threatened a shootout with police,” Mr. Warnock said, referencing controversies in Mr. Walker’s past. At which point, Mr. Walker flashed the badge in response, saying he had “worked with many police officers.”The badge was given to him in recognition of community service work he had done with the Cobb County sheriff’s department, according to his campaign spokesman, Will Kiley. Mr. Walker also has an honorary badge from the sheriff department in Johnson County in East Georgia, which includes his hometown, Wrightsville. Representatives for the sheriff’s departments in both counties were unavailable for comment.One of the debate moderators, the WSAV anchor Tina Tyus-Shaw, admonished Mr. Walker after he brandished the badge and asked him to put it away. She said that he was “well aware” of the debate’s rules against using props onstage.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.“It’s not a prop,” Mr. Walker countered. “This is real.” However, the badge he presented on the debate stage was not an authentic badge that trained sheriffs carry, but an honorary badge often given to celebrities in sports or entertainment. (It seems likely that Mr. Walker and the moderator attached different meanings to the idea of a prop. She was apparently saying that items used for demonstrations were not allowed; she was not referring to the validity of the badge.)It is not uncommon for athletes to be recognized by law enforcement. In 2021, Cobb County named the Atlanta Hawks legend Dominique Wilkins a special deputy.When Mr. Wilkins was sworn in, a sheriff’s spokeswoman noted to The Cobb County Courier that Mr. Wilkins did not have the same authority as a regular deputy sheriff to carry a weapon and arrest people. She characterized his role as being a liaison and partner.In 2021, the sheriff’s office in Henry County, Ga., which is about 30 miles southeast of Atlanta, gave a member of the N.B.A. Hall of Fame, Shaquille O’Neal, the title of director for community relations.Neil Warren, who was the Cobb County sheriff when he named Mr. Walker an honorary deputy sheriff, endorsed his Senate bid in July.In a statement at the time, Mr. Warren said that Mr. Walker “partnered with the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office for over 15 years” and “led trainings on leadership, advocated for mental health, encouraged countless officers, and was always there to lend a hand whenever we needed him.”But many others express significant skepticism about the kind of honorary recognition granted by law enforcement.“Georgia sheriffs were seriously handing out those badges like candy in a candy dish,” J.Tom Morgan, a former district attorney in DeKalb County, Ga., who was elected as a Democrat, said in an interview on Saturday. “That badge gives you no law enforcement authority. He doesn’t have the power to write a traffic ticket.”Mr. Morgan, who is now a professor at Western Carolina University, said the badges became so widely abused that the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association curtailed the practice of giving them out.“What would happen is somebody would get stopped for speeding, and they would whip out one of those badges,” he said. “And there were people charged with impersonating a police officer.”J. Terry Norris, the executive director of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, said in an email on Saturday that honorary credentials are not regulated by state law and offered at the pleasure of the law enforcement officials.“There is no arrest authority associated with honorary credentials,” Mr. Norris said.Mr. Walker has exaggerated his work in law enforcement before. In 2019, he told soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State that he was a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, which was false. He has also repeatedly said in campaign stump speeches that he worked as a member of law enforcement, but he did not.In Georgia, the role of sheriff is an elected partisan office, and there can be rewards for both the donors and recipients of honorary badges.According to the National Sheriffs’ Association, there are no formal guidelines stipulating the use and appearance of honorary badges — and what distinguishes them from real ones.“It should be understood that an honorary badge is for the trophy case,” Pat Royal, a spokesman for the National Sheriffs’ Association, said in an email on Saturday. Mr. Royal specified that he was referring to honorary badges in general, not Mr. Walker’s.Mr. Walker’s performance during the debate yielded a flurry of memes and widespread derision online.“In fairness to Herschel Walker,” George Takei, the actor known for his role on “Star Trek,” tweeted on Friday night, “I sometimes pull out my Star Fleet badge to get past security at Star Trek conferences.”Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator, defended Mr. Walker.“He was made an honorary deputy sheriff in Cobb County, Georgia, and spent 15 years helping that department and discussing with deputies how to handle mental health situations,” Mr. Erickson said on Friday night on Twitter. “But I know facts don’t matter on Twitter.”The image of Mr. Walker waving his badge during the debate called to mind another celebrity with a penchant for badges: Elvis Presley. During a meeting in 1970 with President Richard M. Nixon, the King famously asked for a federal narcotics agency badge. Mr. Presley’s widow, Priscilla Presley, discussed the badge’s allure in her memoir, “Elvis and Me.”“The narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him,” Ms. Presley wrote. More