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      Ballot Measures in Swing States Could Have Sizable Impact on 2024 Voting

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      While the midterm elections in November will decide control of Congress and some governors’ offices, there are other far-reaching issues at stake. Among them: the fate of voter ID rules, early voting expansion and ranked-choice voting.Ballot measures on these issues will appear in several battleground states, where most of the attention has been on marquee races, with a blizzard of campaign ads dominating the airwaves.But the outcome of those measures could weigh significantly on the 2024 presidential election, as Republicans and Democrats haggle over the guardrails of voting.Here is a roundup of ballot measures facing voters across the United States:ArizonaUnder a ballot measure embraced by Republicans, voters would be required to present photo identification when casting ballots in person. If it passes, the state would no longer accept two nonphoto forms of identification — such as a motor vehicle registration and a utility bill — in place of a government-issued ID card or a passport.The measure, which has been criticized by Democrats and voting rights advocates, would also create new requirements for voting by mail. Voters would be required to write their birth date and either a state-issued identification number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on an early ballot affidavit.MichiganA proposed constitutional amendment would create a permanent nine-day period of early in-person voting at polling sites, as well as an expansion of existing options for voters to visit clerks’ offices and other local election offices to cast early ballots.The measure, which was backed by a voting rights coalition and survived a wording-related challenge, with the Michigan Supreme Court weighing in, would also allow voters who are unable to present ID at the polls to sign an affidavit attesting to their identity.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.Michigan would also be required to pay for drop boxes and return postage for absentee ballots, in addition to mail expenses associated with applications.To prevent partisan groups from subverting election results, as supporters of former President Donald J. Trump tried to do in 2020 in Michigan when they put forward a slate of fake electors, canvassing boards in the state would be required to certify results based only on the official record of votes cast.NevadaNevada voters will decide whether to adopt ranked-choice voting for the general election and to overhaul the state’s primary system.Under a proposed constitutional amendment, primaries for statewide and federal offices, but not for president, would be open to all voters, with the top five vote-getters advancing to the general election. The law currently stipulates that voters must be registered as Democrats or Republicans in order to participate in their parties’ primariesIf approved in November, the measure would be placed on the ballot again in 2024 for voters to decide. The earliest that the changes could take effect would be in 2025.In a ranked-choice system during the general election, voters list candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority, officials would eliminate the last-place finisher and reallocate his or her supporters’ votes to their second choices until one candidate has at least 50 percent of the votes.Alaska recently adopted ranked-choice voting, and some Republicans blamed that system for the defeat of Sarah Palin, a former governor and the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, in a special House election in August.New York, Maine and Utah also have some form of ranked-choice voting, as do dozens of American cities.OhioCities and towns in Ohio would be barred from allowing non-U.S. citizens to vote in state and local elections under a constitutional amendment that seeks to rein in the home rule authority of municipalities.Opponents contend that federal law already bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections. But the measure’s supporters say that an explicit prohibition is needed at the state level, despite instances of voter fraud proving to be rare.The issue arose after voters in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a small village east of Dayton, voted in 2019 to allow noncitizens to vote for local offices. None have registered since then, though, according to The Columbus Dispatch.NebraskaEmulating other red states, Nebraska could require voters to present photo ID at the polls under a constitutional amendment supported by Gov. Pete Ricketts, a term-limited Republican who is leaving office in January. Critics say the rule change would disenfranchise voters.ConnecticutConnecticut is one of a handful of states that do not offer early in-person voting, but a proposed constitutional amendment could change that.The measure directs the Legislature to create a mechanism for early voting, which would be separate from accepting absentee ballots before Election Day. The timing and details would be decided by lawmakers, who could enact the changes by the 2024 election. More

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      Biden Tries to Reassure Voters on Health Care Costs Before Election

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      At an event in Southern California, the president says his administration is working to keep costs down and warns that Republicans will drive prices higher if they gain power.LOS ANGELES — President Biden on Friday tried to reassure Americans stung by high inflation that his administration was working to keep health care costs down, promising a community college audience in Southern California that he was committed to doing even more.But his remarks in Irvine, Calif. — the first of two West Coast speeches devoted to health care costs — come just days after government data revealed that overall inflation remains high as voters prepare to go to the polls for midterm elections early next month.Surveys show that Americans are deeply frustrated by the impact of sharply higher prices on their pocketbooks. They are expected to rebuke the president and his party in the elections, with most analysts predicting that Democrats will lose control of one or both chambers in Congress.Speaking to a friendly audience, Mr. Biden argued that Republicans would drive prices higher if they gained power. He noted their opposition to his efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which he said would force prices down for medication for millions of seniors. And he said Democrats had pushed through price caps on critical drugs like insulin.“If Republicans in Congress have their way, it’s going to mean the power we just gave Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices and other costs over time goes away — gone,” Mr. Biden said, standing in front of signs that said “Lowering Costs for American Families.” “Two-thousand-dollar cap on prescription drugs goes away — gone. The $35 month cap on insulin for Medicare is gone.”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.Mr. Biden’s three-state, four-day trip is also intended to boost the fortunes of Democratic candidates by using the presidential bully pulpit to highlight the party’s accomplishments. On Wednesday in Colorado, he stood next to Michael Bennet, one of the state’s two Democratic senators, to announce a new national monument — a key campaign promise for the embattled lawmaker.In Los Angeles on Thursday, Mr. Biden hailed the use of money from his infrastructure legislation to help complete a new subway line. During his remarks, he made certain to single out Representative Karen Bass, a Democrat who had fought for a provision that directs jobs on the project to local workers.“Local workers can be first in line for these jobs thanks to Karen,” Mr. Biden said. “I really mean it, Karen. Thank you very much.”At the community college in Irvine, Mr. Biden focused his attention on health care — and on Representative Katie Porter, a two-term Democrat running for re-election in a key swing district in Orange County.Ms. Porter, who is facing Scott Baugh, a Republican former state assemblyman, pushed for the drug pricing measure. At the event on Friday, Mr. Biden singled her out, crediting the success of Democratic legislation to her efforts to fight on behalf of her constituents..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-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs 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.“That’s why Katie’s leadership and the work of the Democrats in Congress was so consequential,” he said. “Katie, I’m not just being nice because I’m in your district. It happens to be true. No, no. I mean, you’re a fighter. You’re decent. You’re honorable and everybody respects you.”Friday’s event at the Irvine Valley Community College was an official one, not a campaign rally. But Ms. Porter used her time at the podium to assail Republicans.“Every single Republican in Washington voted against patients, against families and against taxpayers,” she said. “In the Senate, Republican politicians voted to limit how much Americans can save on prescription drugs and to prevent all patients from getting insulin. And House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has vowed that next term it’s his priority to return Big Pharma its unchecked power to charge patients whatever it wants.”She called that a “slap in the face” to the Californians she represents.Republicans sought to portray the president’s efforts to bolster candidates’ prospects as in vain. “Joe Biden is the last person Democrat candidates want to see on the campaign trail,” Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said after the event, noting reports that Democrats recently shifted money away from some California districts to candidates who need help more.“His policies are so unpopular House Democrats are being forced to abandon spending in California districts he won by double-digits,” Mr. McAdams said.Friday evening, Mr. Biden was scheduled to fly to Portland, Ore., a liberal community where the Democratic Party would not normally need the help of the sitting president. But Mr. Biden is hoping to help boost the fortunes of Tina Kotek, the Democratic candidate for governor.Although the state has not elected a Republican leader in decades, polls suggest that Ms. Kotek is in a tight, three-way race with Christine Drazan, the Republican candidate, and Betsy Johnson, a former Democrat who is being financed by Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike. The White House is hoping that a visit by Mr. Biden will help underscore the party’s commitment to her.Republicans predicted that the president’s trip will not prevent their party from grabbing the top electoral prize in the state.“Joe Biden’s disastrous policies continue to hurt Oregon families, and there has been no bigger fan of his out-of-touch approach,” said Kaitlin Price, a spokeswoman for the Republican Governors Association, citing Ms. Kotek, Ms. Johnson and Kate Brown, the state’s current Democratic governor.“This last-ditch effort from national Democrats is proof of their hysteria as they watch Christine Drazan take hold of once deep-blue Oregon that is desperate for change,” Ms. Price said. More

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      What Rachel Maddow Has Been Thinking About Offscreen

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      “The Rachel Maddow Show” debuted in the interregnum between political eras. Before it lay the 9/11 era and the George W. Bush presidency. Days after the show launched in 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and a few weeks later Barack Obama was elected president.And then history just kept speeding up. The Tea Party. The debt ceiling debacles. Donald Trump. The coronavirus pandemic. January 6th. The big lie. Maddow covered and tried to make sense of it all. Now, after 14 years, she has taken her show down to one episode a week and is launching other projects — like “Ultra,” the history podcast we discuss in this episode.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]But I wanted to talk to Maddow about how American politics and media have changed over the course of her show. We discuss the legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cycle of economic crises we appear to keep having, Maddow’s relationships with Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson, where the current G.O.P.’s anti-democracy efforts really started, how Obama’s presidency changed politics, how Maddow finds and chooses her stories, the statehouse Republicans who tilled the soil for Trump’s big lie and more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)MSNBC“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Our researcher is Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      Democrats Worry Katie Hobbs Is Stumbling in Arizona’s Governor Race

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      Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, has often been overshadowed by her Republican opponent, Kari Lake, in one of the country’s closest and most important contests.It’s angst season on the left — and perhaps nowhere more so than in Arizona, which appears determined to retain its crown as the most politically volatile state in America.Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races of the 2022 campaign.Lake, a telegenic former television anchor who rose to prominence as she pantomimed Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, has taken a hard line against abortion and routinely uses strident language on the stump. The Atlantic recently called her “Trumpism’s leading lady.” She has largely overshadowed Hobbs, whose more subdued personality has driven far fewer headlines.The immediate object of Democratic hand-wringing this week is a decision by Hobbs, who has served as Arizona’s secretary of state since 2019, to decline to debate Lake. Instead, Hobbs arranged a one-on-one interview with a local PBS affiliate, a move that prompted the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, a group established by a ballot initiative in 1998, to cancel its planned Q. and A. with Lake.Thomas Collins, executive director of the commission, said in an interview that the Hobbs campaign had never seriously negotiated over the format of a debate — and that, in any case, the organization was neither willing nor able to accommodate what officials there viewed as an “ultimatum” from the secretary of state’s team about policing the “content” of the event.He shared an exchange of letters and emails between the commission and Nicole DeMont, Hobbs’s campaign manager, who wrote in an email that Hobbs was “willing and eager to participate in a town-hall-style event” but would not join a debate that would “would only lead to constant interruptions, pointless distractions and childish name-calling.”On Wednesday, Lake repeated her challenge to debate Hobbs and accused Arizona PBS, which did not respond to a request for comment, of cutting “a back-room deal with that coward to give her airtime that she does not deserve.”Days earlier, Lake tried to ambush Hobbs during a town hall event at which the candidates made separate appearances onstage — a stunt that was clearly intended to embarrass the Democrat.Hobbs has said she was simply reacting to the way Lake conducted herself during a Republican primary debate in June, in which she dodged questions and repeated falsehoods about what happened in 2020. “I have no desire to be a part of the spectacle that she’s looking to create, because that doesn’t do any service to the voters,” Hobbs said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”Among those second-guessing Hobbs’s decision this week was Sandra Kennedy, a co-chairwoman of President Biden’s 2020 campaign in Arizona. “If I were the candidate for governor, I would debate, and I would want the people of Arizona to know what my platform is,” Kennedy told NBC News.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.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.Laurie Roberts, a liberal columnist for The Arizona Republic, published a scathing column on Hobbs this week in which she wrote that the Democratic nominee’s refusal to debate Lake “represents a new level of political malpractice.”And David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, criticized Hobbs on his podcast for what he said was a “mistake” in avoiding debates with Lake. He added, “I think it’s a recognition that Kari Lake is a formidable media personality.”Democrats have also noted that when Hobbs appeared on “Face the Nation” — directly after Lake gave an interview to Major Garrett of CBS News — she spent much of the eight-minute interview on the defensive rather than prosecuting a political argument against her opponent. Democrats called it a missed opportunity to highlight’s Lake’s slippery answers about the 2020 election.One reason for the fraying nerves among Democrats is their widely shared view that the stakes of the governor’s race in Arizona are existential for the party. Democrats fear that Lake, if elected, would conspire to tilt the state back into the Republican column during the 2024 presidential election and help usher Trump back into power. Her charisma and on-camera skills make her uniquely dangerous, they say.Hobbs allies push backPrivately, while Democrats acknowledge that anxiety about the governor’s race is running high, they insist that Hobbs is running about as well as any Democrat could.They note that the contest is essentially tied in polls even though Arizona is a purple state with a deep reservoir of conservative voting habits. The current Republican governor, Doug Ducey, won re-election by more than 14 percentage points in 2018. (Ducey is stepping down because of term limits.) And they say that Hobbs, unlike Lake, is aiming her pitch primarily at swing voters rather than at her party’s base.Lake has pressured Hobbs to participate in a debate.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesAccording to the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voter Index, which measures the past performance of states and congressional districts across the country, Republicans have a built-in advantage in Arizona of two percentage points.Some Democrats say Hobbs has failed to campaign vigorously enough, in contrast to the seemingly omnipresent Lake. Allies of Hobbs defend her by noting that she has been bopping around the state, but in something of an acknowledgment that she could do more, they say she is planning a third statewide tour as Arizona’s scorching heat dissipates this fall.“Katie Hobbs has been running an incredibly strong campaign, and the fact that this race is so competitive speaks to that,” said Christina Amestoy, a communications aide at the Democratic Governors Association, who dismissed the concerns as “angst from the chattering class.”Amestoy noted that Hobbs was drawing support from independents and Republicans as well as from partisan Democrats — a recognition, she said, that voters want “substance” over “conspiracy theories.”With the help of the governors group, which has transferred $7 million to the Arizona Democratic Party, Hobbs has spent more than $10 million on television ads since Labor Day. She has leaned heavily on two themes: her support for law enforcement, and a portrayal of Lake as an extremist on abortion.Several Hobbs ads show Chris Nanos, the grizzled sheriff of Pima County, in uniform. Nanos warns in one spot that Arizona law enforcement officers could be required to arrest doctors and nurses who perform abortions if Lake becomes governor. He says such a move would divert resources from fighting crime and illegal immigration.Other ads introducing Hobbs to voters have depicted her as a down-to-earth former social worker who drove for Uber as a state lawmaker to help make ends meet, an implied contrast to Lake, whose career as a newscaster made her moderately wealthy.The state of playDemocrats are counting on appealing to crossover voters in the suburbs, as they did when Biden won the state in 2020. They have highlighted Lake’s comments ripping Republicans who have criticized her as “a cavalcade of losers” and depicted her attempts to distance herself from previous hard-line remarks on abortion as duplicitous.Hobbs might benefit, too, from the strength of Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat who is polling comfortably ahead of Blake Masters, the Republican challenger in Arizona’s Senate race.Democrats in Arizona are running a coordinated statewide campaign that allows them, in theory, to reap economies of scale, target their spending and avoid duplicative efforts on traditional campaign activities like door-knocking and turnout operations.In contrast, Republicans in the state are in the midst of a power struggle between the fading establishment wing of the G.O.P., led by Ducey, and the emerging Trump-backed wing, spearheaded by Lake and Mark Finchem, the party’s nominee for secretary of state.In one small illustration of the infighting on the right, the Republican Governors Association has begun funneling its advertising money through the Yuma County Republican Party rather than the official state party, an unusual arrangement that speaks to the level of mutual mistrust between national Republican leaders and Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the state Republican Party.That has given Democrats slightly more bang for their advertising dollar, because Republicans were paying higher rates before they made the shift to the Yuma County Republican Party.Republicans, projecting increased confidence in Lake’s eventual victory, reveled in the Democratic shirt-rending over Hobbs — a welcome diversion, perhaps, from their own internal squabbles.“In a state where problems with illegal immigration and the economy are top of mind, Democrats were always going to be at a disadvantage because voters don’t believe their party can adequately fix the issues,” said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the R.G.A. “What Democrats couldn’t plan for was Katie Hobbs’s self-immolation in front of a national audience.”What to readThe House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol voted on Thursday to issue a subpoena to former President Trump, a move that will set off a fierce legal battle. Catch up with our live coverage of the day’s dramatic proceedings here.In state after state, Republicans are paying double, triple, quadruple and sometimes even 10 times more than Democrats are for television ads on the exact same programs, Shane Goldmacher reports.Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a Trump loyalist, has long antagonized Mitt Romney, the state’s other Republican senator. But now, as Lee finds himself in a surprisingly close race for re-election against Evan McMullin, an independent candidate, he’s pleading for Romney’s support. Jonathan Weisman explains.Michael Bender examines a peculiar phenomenon: how Republican candidates talk far more glowingly about Trump on rally stages than they do in televised debates.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      In Midterm TV Ad Wars, Sticker Shock Costs Republicans

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      Football fans in Las Vegas tuning into the Raiders game on Oct. 2 had to sit through multiple political ads, including one from Nevada’s endangered Democratic senator and another from a Republican super PAC trying to defeat her.The ads were each 30 seconds — but the costs were wildly different.The Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, paid $21,000. The Republican super PAC paid $150,000.That $129,000 disparity for a single ad — an extra $4,300 per second — is one sizable example of how Republican super PACs are paying a steep premium to compete on the airwaves with Democratic candidates, a trend that is playing out nationwide with cascading financial consequences for the House and Senate battlefield. Hour after hour in state after state, Republicans are paying double, triple, quadruple and sometimes even 10 times more than Democrats for ads on the exact same programs.One reason is legal and beyond Republicans’ control. But the other is linked to the weak fund-raising of Republican candidates this year and the party’s heavy dependence on billionaire-funded super PACs.Political candidates are protected under a federal law that allows them to pay the lowest price available for broadcast ads. Super PACs have no such protections, and Republicans have been more reliant on super PACs this year because their candidates have had trouble fund-raising. So Democrats have been the ones chiefly benefiting from the mandated low pricing, and Republicans in many top races have been at the mercy of the exorbitant rates charged by television stations as the election nears.The issue may seem arcane. But strategists in both parties say it has become hugely consequential in midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.From Labor Day through early this week, Senate Republican super PACs and campaigns spent more than their opponents on the airwaves in key races in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Hampshire, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact. But when measured in rating points — a metric of how many people saw the ads — the Democratic ads were seen more times in each of those states, according to two Democratic officials tracking media purchases.In other words, Democrats got more for less.“One of the challenges we face in taking back the House is the eye-popping differences between what Democrat incumbents and Republican challengers are raising — and what that affords them in terms of different advertising rates,” said Dan Conston, who heads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership that has raised $220 million and is one of the nation’s biggest television spenders.The price differences can be jarring.In Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate, paid $650 for a recent ad on the 6 a.m. newscast of the local Fox affiliate. The leading Republican super PAC paid $2,400.In Nevada, Ms. Cortez Masto paid $720 for an ad on CBS’s Sunday news show. Another Republican super PAC, the Club for Growth, paid $12,000.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.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.And in Arizona, Senator Mark Kelly has been paying $2,000 per spot on the evening news on the ABC affiliate. A Republican super PAC is paying $5,000.An analysis by The New York Times of Federal Communications Commission records, along with interviews with media buyers in both parties, shows just how much the different prices that candidates and super PACs pay is influencing the 2022 midterm landscape.“What matters at the end of the day is what number of people see an ad, which isn’t measured in dollars,” said Tim Cameron, a Republican strategist and media buyer, referring to the rating-points metric.The partisan split between advertising purchased by candidates versus super PACs is vast.In Senate races, Democratic candidates have reserved or spent nearly $170 million more than Republican candidates in the general election on television, radio and digital ads, according to AdImpact.The price that super PACs pay is driven by supply and demand, and television stations charge Republicans and Democrats the same prices when they book at the same time. So Democrats have super PACs that pay higher rates, too. But the party is less reliant on them. Republicans have a nearly $95 million spending edge over Democrats among super PACs and other outside groups involved in Senate races, according to AdImpact. That money just doesn’t go nearly as far.Several candidates who were weak at raising funds won Republican nominations in key Senate races, including in New Hampshire, Arizona and Ohio, and that has hobbled the party.“We’re working hard to make up the gap where we can,” said Steven Law, the head of the leading Senate Republican super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.But Democrats — buoyed by robust donations through ActBlue, the Democratic online donation-processing platform — are announcing eye-popping money hauls ahead of Saturday’s third-quarter filing deadline that are helping them press their advantage. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia raised $26.3 million. In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Senate nominee, raised $22 million. Mr. Ryan raised $17.2 million. Ms. Cortez Masto raised $15 million.“It’s a simple fact that candidates pay lower rates than outside groups, which means Democrats’ ActBlue cash tsunami could wipe out an underfunded Republican,” Mr. Law said.Republicans are hardly cash-poor. The Senate Leadership Fund alone has reserved more than $170 million in ads since Labor Day and raised more than $1 million per day in the third quarter. But the ad rates are eroding that money’s buying power.In the top nine Senate battlegrounds that drew significant outside spending, Republicans spent about 6.66 percent more on ads than Democrats from Labor Day through earlier this week, according to one of the Democratic officials tracking the media buys. But the Democratic money had gone further when measured by rating points, outpacing Republican ad viewership by 8 percent.In Nevada, for instance, the super PAC that paid $150,000 for the single commercial on Oct. 2, Our American Century, has been funded chiefly by a $10 million contribution by Steve Wynn, the casino magnate. Yet for a comparable price of $161,205, Ms. Cortez Masto was able to air 79 ads that week on the same station: daily spots each on the local news, daytime soap operas, “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” as well as in prime time — plus the Oct. 2 football ad, Federal Communications Commission records show.Las Vegas is perhaps the most congested market for political ads in the nation, with multiple contested House races, a swing Senate contest and a tight governor’s election, and some ballot measures. Both Democratic and Republican media-buying sources said the rates for super PACs had been up to 10 times that of candidates in some recent weeks.In a recent one-week period, Ms. Cortez Masto spent $197,225 on 152 spots on the local Fox station, an average price of $1,300 per 30 seconds. The Club for Growth Action, a Republican super PAC, spent $473,000 for only 52 spots — an average price of nearly $9,100 per 30 seconds.Republicans feel they have no choice but to pony up.“Republicans are facing a hard-money deficit, and it’s up to groups like Club for Growth Action to help make up the difference in these key races,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth.Some strategists have privately pressed super PACs to invest more heavily in digital advertising, where candidate rates are not protected. Super PACs pay similar amounts and sometimes can even negotiate discounts because of their volume of ads. But old habits, and the continued influence of television on voters, means much of the funds are still going to broadcast.“Super PACs have one charter: to win races. And so they spend there because they have to,” said Evan Tracey, a Republican media buyer. “They’re not running a business in the sense that shareholders are going to be outraged that they have to spend more for the same asset. It’s a cost of doing business.”The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has faced financial problems this year, cut millions of its reserved television “independent expenditures,” which are booked at the same rate as super PACs. Instead, in a creative and penny-pinching move, the committee rebooked some of that money in concert with Senate campaigns, splitting costs through a complex mechanism that limits what the ads can say — candidates can be mentioned during only half the airtime — but receives the better, candidate ad rates.Still, in Arizona, some of the canceled reservations from top Republican groups have further exacerbated the ad-rate disparity in the Senate race. That is because the party gave back early reservations only to have other super PACs step in — and pay even more.For instance, the Senate committee originally had reserved two ads for that Oct. 2 football game for $30,000 each and the Senate Leadership Fund had reserved another for $30,000. All three were canceled.Instead, a new Republican super PAC, the Sentinel Action Fund, booked two ads during the same game but had to pay $100,000 because rates had risen — forking over $10,000 more for one fewer ad.Data from one Republican media-buying firm showed that in Arizona, ads supporting Mr. Kelly, the Democrat, amounted to 84 percent of what viewers saw even though the pro-Kelly side accounted for only 74 percent of the dollars spent.The Sentinel Action Fund was paying $1,775 per rating point — a measurement of viewership — while Mr. Kelly’s campaign was spending around $300 per point, according to the Republican data. Blake Masters, Mr. Kelly’s Republican opponent, was receiving a price close to Mr. Kelly’s but could afford only a tiny fraction of the ad budget (around $411,000, compared with Mr. Kelly’s $3.3 million for a recent two-week period).“The disparity between Democratic campaigns’ strong fund-raising and Republican campaigns’ weak fund-raising is forcing the G.O.P. super PACs to make difficult decisions even though there continues to be a deluge of outside money on their side,” said David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.In Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund announced in August that it was making a $28 million television and radio reservation to prop up J.D. Vance, the best-selling author and first-time Republican candidate who emerged from the primary with a limited fund-raising apparatus.But despite outspending the Democratic candidate in dollars — the super PAC paid $3 million last week for ads, compared with Mr. Ryan’s nearly $1.5 million — Republicans were still at a disadvantage: Mr. Ryan’s campaign was sometimes getting more airtime, according to media buyers and F.C.C. records.The Republican super PAC was paying four or five times more than Mr. Ryan for ads on the same shows. And the sticker shock on big sports events is the most intense: On WJW, the Fox affiliate in Cleveland, last week’s Big Ten college football game cost Mr. Ryan $3,000 — and $30,000 for the Senate Leadership Fund. More

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      Hochul Hits the Road, Even if It Veers From the Campaign Trail

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is forgoing retail politics and instead relying on an aggressive ad strategy and staged events that highlight state investments.Earlier this year, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York convened over a dozen state lawmakers from Long Island at the governor’s mansion in Albany. Over breakfast, she sought to reassure them that she would prioritize their needs in the forthcoming state budget.Two weeks later, she fulfilled her promise. Just before the budget vote, her office slipped in a $350 million fund that could be spent with few restrictions on projects in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, a late-minute addition to the budget that caught most by surprise.Now, with about a month until Election Day, Ms. Hochul is reaping the political benefits from her shrewd maneuvering of state resources: Two weeks ago, she visited Long Island to announce the fund’s first grant — $10 million for a medical research center — drawing local fanfare and favorable news coverage in a key battleground region and the home turf of her Republican opponent, Representative Lee Zeldin.As she seeks her first full term as governor, Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo, has diligently wielded the governor’s office to her political advantage, pulling the levers of government to woo voters and casting herself as the steady, experienced hand.The governor has, until very recently, mostly avoided overtly political events such as rallies and other retail politics in which she personally engages with voters. But behind the scenes, she has kept busy fund-raising large sums of money to bankroll the multimillion-dollar barrage of television ads she has deployed to attack Mr. Zeldin, and cushion her lead in most public polls.She held a 10 percentage point lead over Mr. Zeldin in a Marist College poll released on Thursday, and an even larger lead in other recent major polls.While Mr. Zeldin has been actively campaigning and battling for media attention on a near-daily basis, Ms. Hochul has rarely issued official campaign schedules, and has agreed to debate Mr. Zeldin only once, much to his chagrin. Instead, over the past few weeks, she has mostly crisscrossed the state in her capacity as governor, using taxpayer-funded transport to make over 50 appearances in just as many days, the majority of them in voter-rich New York City.Representative Lee Zeldin, on a recent visit to a Hasidic neighborhood in Brooklyn, is pushing Ms. Hochul to agree to multiple debates.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesShe has kept a busy itinerary, shuffling from ceremonies and receptions — a monument unveiling in Buffalo, a fashion week event on Park Avenue, a Labor Day breakfast with union leaders — to carefully staged events to sign legislation and make government pronouncements related to public safety, climate change and economic development.On a Tuesday morning last month, Ms. Hochul spoke at back-to-back conferences in Manhattan before visiting a subway maintenance facility in Queens to announce putting security cameras inside subway cars. The following week, she drove an electric car to publicize an announcement in White Plains about state efforts to make vehicles in New York emission-free; later that evening, she delivered remarks at Carnegie Hall’s opening night gala.She has greeted President Biden in New York twice in two weeks.“What people want to see is a governor governing and she’s providing that,” Doug Forand, the founder of Red Horse Strategies, a consulting firm, who is working for a political action committee that is supporting Ms. Hochul. “The reality is that, as an incumbent, you’re going to be judged much more based on how you perform in your office than you are on how many debates you do or how many parades you walk in.”The immense advantages of the governor’s office as a campaign asset came into sharp focus last week. Joined by Senator Chuck Schumer in Syracuse, Ms. Hochul announced that a computer chip company, Micron, had decided to open a massive plant in the area, and had pledged to invest more than $100 billion over two decades. Ms. Hochul helped facilitate the deal by giving the company a $6 billion state subsidy — one of the largest incentives in state history.Shortly after, the Hochul campaign began to capitalize on the deal, promoting the investment as a consequential job-generator and “one of the largest economic development projects in U.S. history,” casting it as an example of Ms. Hochul’s business-friendly ethos.The governor strongly rejected the notion that voter-friendly economic projects, like the $10 million grant for the Long Island medical research center, was the result of political calculations in an election year.“You’ve seen events with me on Long Island since my first couple of weeks on the job,” said Ms. Hochul. “This is a continuation of our investment all throughout New York State.”Indeed, Ms. Hochul is largely running on her record during her 13 months in office, following her unexpected replacement of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Rather than proposing a grand policy vision for the next four years, she touts what she has accomplished. If anything, she has cast herself as a fierce defender of the status quo: She has hinged much of her campaign on protecting New York’s already-strict abortion rights and gun laws, while portraying Mr. Zeldin as a threat to both.A fashion week event in Manhattan was among the 50 or so events that Ms. Hochul attended in the last 50 days.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesBy relying on the governor’s office and the airwaves — she has spent $8.7 million on ad buys so far versus Mr. Zeldin’s $2 million, according to AdImpact — her campaign has, for the most part, adopted a so-called Rose Garden strategy, using the power of incumbency and the prestige of the governor’s office to attract free publicity and stay in the public eye.But her spotty presence on the campaign trail has rekindled concerns among some that her campaign may not be running an aggressive enough ground game to draw in voters in overlooked communities and deepen a broad coalition that could help her govern a full term.Camille Rivera, a political consultant at New Deal Strategies, said that while she expected Ms. Hochul to cruise to victory after uniting Democrats around animating issues, including reproductive rights, she said there had been “a lackluster engagement of Latino voters, in particular.”“The governor is missing an opportunity to take this and really campaign, campaign to solidify her base,” she said. “I’ve seen her in Queens and in the Bronx with elected officials, but I don’t think I’ve seen her doing that kind of people-to-people style engagement that can excite voters for the future if she wants to run again.”In response to questions from The Times, the Hochul campaign sent a list of over a dozen appearances the governor had made in recent weeks that it said were examples of campaigning, even though the events were not listed on her campaign schedule, including visits to small businesses in Ithaca and Bayside, Queens.Indeed, Ms. Hochul has been spotted nurturing relationships with elected officials in casual gatherings that her campaign does not necessarily announce to the media. In mid-August, for example, she visited a Latin American restaurant in Williamsburg to try a drink named in her honor alongside Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, and State Senator Julia Salazar.Over the past two weekends, Ms. Hochul’s campaign issued an unusually active schedule, a sign that she may begin to ramp up campaign-related events as Election Day nears and voters pay closer attention to the race.In a flurry of photo opportunities that spanned roughly four hours, she joined the Rev. Al Sharpton for his birthday celebration in Harlem on Oct. 1 before sitting with Dan Goldman, a Democrat running for Congress, at a Puerto Rican restaurant in the Lower East Side. By noon, she had traveled to Long Island to speak briefly to the campaign volunteers for two Democrats engaged in competitive House races there.Last Saturday, she joined Letitia James, the state attorney general, in Brooklyn to give remarks at two festivals, in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene, while the party’s field offices launched canvassing operations in 39 locations across the state, sending volunteers to knock on doors and register voters, according to the Hochul campaign.Even as Ms. Hochul’s campaign stirs to life, the governor’s Rose Garden strategy has a track record of success. Mr. Cuomo, a three-term Democrat, employed a similar approach in his re-election campaigns, drawing ire from his political critics and rivals even though he went on to win by large margins. “My campaign is basically my performance in office,” he said in 2014.Even though Ms. Hochul vowed to usher in a new era of open government in Albany, where bills are typically hashed out behind closed doors, some of the achievements she has pitched to voters in recent weeks were a result of the opaque, far-from-public-view policymaking she had vowed to eradicate.The $6 billion state subsidy the governor awarded to Micron was made possible by a bill she muscled through the State Legislature in the last days of this year’s legislative session. With little chance for lawmakers to review it, the bill, which designated $10 billion in tax breaks for microchip makers, received virtually zero public discussion.The $350 million fund that Ms. Hochul carved out for Long Island in the state budget followed a similar pattern.At the time, Ms. Hochul had just unveiled a secret deal she had negotiated with the Buffalo Bills to spend $850 million in taxpayer money to build a new stadium for the football team. Politicians from both parties denounced the agreement as a boondoggle, creating a political headache for Ms. Hochul, who was left to find ways to placate lawmakers in other parts of the state.Indeed, a few days before the $350 million fund for Long Island-based projects became public knowledge, Newsday published a scathing editorial that excoriated Ms. Hochul and the region’s lawmakers for not having scored a “big budgetary win” for Long Island in the looming budget deal.Ms. Hochul’s critics have denounced the $350 million pot of money, which can be spent with great flexibility at the discretion of the executive branch, as a “slush fund.” But it was also part of nearly $1.6 billion in similar funding for capital projects added late into the budget negotiations, which Patrick Orecki, the director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, described as a classic example of pork spending.“This funding really came at the 11th hour,” he said. “So it seems like they’re probably the result of political negotiations, rather than rigorous capital planning and identifying what the most urgent priorities of the state’s infrastructure are.” More

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      Hochul Leads Zeldin by 10 Points in Marist Poll, as G.O.P. Sees Hope

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, enjoys a healthy lead in New York, but Republican leaders are showing signs of cautious optimism that the race might be competitive.Gov. Kathy Hochul leads Representative Lee Zeldin by 10 percentage points in a Marist College poll of registered voters released on Thursday, a potential margin of victory that would be the narrowest in a New York governor’s race in nearly three decades.The poll suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo, would defeat Mr. Zeldin, a Republican from Long Island, by 51 percent to 41 percent, a poll result that included those who were undecided but were pressed to pick the candidate they were leaning toward.The governor’s lead over Mr. Zeldin narrowed to eight percentage points among voters who said that they would “definitely vote” in the Nov. 8 election, one of the marquee races for governor in the country.The survey marked the first time that Marist has polled the governor’s race in New York this year, and it suggested that Ms. Hochul’s lead may be narrower than some other major public polls have indicated in recent months.A poll released by Siena College in late September, for instance, found that the governor was ahead by a commanding 17 percentage points, up from 14 percentage points in a Siena survey from August. An Emerson College poll suggested that Ms. Hochul was up by 15 points in early September.The last time a candidate in a contest for governor of New York won by fewer than 10 percentage points was in 1994, when George Pataki, a Republican, upset the three-term Democratic incumbent, Mario M. Cuomo, by roughly three percentage points. (In 2002, Mr. Pataki won re-election with 49.4 percent of the vote, while two candidates, Carl McCall and Tom Golisano, split the rest of the vote.)There are other signals that national Republicans have grown more cautiously optimistic about the trajectory of the race. After initially taking a pass on spending for Mr. Zeldin, the Republican Governors Association transferred $450,000 last week to a pro-Zeldin super PAC running ads attacking Ms. Hochul. Still, the investment is a fraction of what the group is spending in swing states like Arizona and Michigan.Even so, with less than a month until Election Day, the Marist poll was the latest indication that, despite the favorable political climate for Republicans this cycle, Ms. Hochul remains strongly positioned to emerge victorious as she seeks her first full term.She has built a campaign juggernaut that has continued to significantly outpace Mr. Zeldin in spending and fund-raising, while publicizing her accomplishments during her one year in office since unexpectedly succeeding former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo after his resignation.While Mr. Zeldin has sought to appeal to New Yorkers’ concerns over inflation and public safety, Ms. Hochul has generated a storm of television and digital ads attacking Mr. Zeldin’s opposition to abortion rights, as well as his support of former President Donald J. Trump.For Mr. Zeldin to pull off a win in a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic, he would have to make significant inroads in voter-rich New York City, the state’s liberal stronghold, while winning by considerable margins in the suburbs and in upstate.But recent polls have suggested that those prospects may be far from reach.The Zeldin campaign has said he would need to secure at least 30 percent of the vote in New York City to remain competitive, but the Marist poll found him trailing Ms. Hochul 23 percent to 65 percent in the city. His small lead in the suburbs (three percentage points) and upstate (six percentage points) would not be enough to defeat Ms. Hochul statewide if the election were held today, the poll suggested.The Marist poll, however, indicated there might be more enthusiasm among Republicans, suggesting that Republicans were more likely to head to the polls. It suggested that a higher percentage of voters who said they supported Mr. Zeldin, 74 percent, said they “strongly supported” their candidate of choice, compared with 62 percent of those who said they would vote for Ms. Hochul.“Although Democratic candidates for governor and U.S. Senate lead in very blue New York, the race for governor still bears watching,” Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said in a statement. “Republicans say they are more likely to vote, enthusiasm for Zeldin among his supporters exceeds Hochul’s and any shift to crime in the closing weeks is likely to benefit Zeldin.”The poll was conducted a few days before two teenagers were shot in a drive-by shooting outside Mr. Zeldin’s home on Long Island last weekend, an incident that the congressman has used to play up his campaign message around public safety.Out of the 1,117 registered voters that the Marist poll surveyed over a four-day span last week via phone, text and online, 900, or about 70 percent, said that they definitely planned to vote in November. The poll had a margin of error of four percentage points.Nicholas Fandos More

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      In the House, These National Security Democrats Face Political Peril

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      A group of lawmakers who have pushed centrist foreign policy goals, many of them elected in the blue wave of 2018, are confronting troublesome re-election bids.They played a decisive role in kicking off Donald Trump’s first impeachment. They’ve pushed hard for centrist foreign policy goals, working with Republicans whenever the stars aligned. And they’ve been persistent critics of their own team, taking calculated potshots at President Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi as they try to cast themselves as pillars of political independence.Now, with the midterm elections less than a month away, as many as half a dozen of the moderate national security Democrats in the House are in peril, and maybe more.Many of them were elected amid the anti-Trump blue wave of 2018, in districts that Democrats might otherwise have struggled to win.Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former C.I.A. analyst who is fluent in Arabic and Swahili, has established herself as one of the top intelligence experts on Capitol Hill. Republicans have identified Slotkin as a top target this year.Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia still speaks in the argot of a former Navy commander and decorates her House office with photographs of the submarines and cruisers that populate the country’s largest naval base, in nearby Norfolk. During last year’s race for governor of Virginia, the winner, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, would have won Luria’s district by double digits. Her opponent, State Senator Jen Kiggans, is another Navy veteran and could easily unseat her.Representative Jared Golden of Maine, a retired Marine, is clinging to the most pro-Trump district held by a Democrat anywhere in the country. Golden squeaked into office in part because his Republican opponent, Bruce Poliquin, misplayed the state’s ranked-choice voting system, a mistake Poliquin seems to be rectifying during this year’s rematch.Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia is a former C.I.A. officer who has supplied some of the most memorable lines criticizing her party’s perceived leftward lurch. Although Spanberger’s seat in suburban Northern Virginia is now considered safer after Virginia’s redistricting cycle, her team says it is taking no chances.And Representative Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, a puckish former State Department official and human rights expert, has nudged the Biden administration to welcome more Afghan refugees, provide more help to Ukraine and seize the yachts of Russian oligarchs. Malinowski, whose Trump-leaning district grew slightly redder after New Jersey redid its maps, faces a stiff challenge from Thomas Kean Jr., who nearly defeated him in 2020.Together, they represent a fading tradition: the quaint notion that politics stops at the water’s edge. And all of them are vulnerable to being washed out in a red tide this fall. Their potential ousters, as well as a number of key retirements, threaten to hollow out decades of national experience in Congress at a time of great turmoil abroad.“They bring a lot of expertise to the table, which is really useful to have in-house on oversight committees rather than having to rely on the agencies all the time,” said Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona who fought in the Iraq war.Gallego, a member of the Armed Services Committee, added that experience working for the military or the C.I.A. exposed Democratic politicians to Americans from an array of working-class and rural backgrounds — which, he said, gave them valuable insights into the politics of those types of communities.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.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.These Democrats have also balanced out what some like-minded experts said was a risk that, in reaction to Trump’s foreign policy, the party might have drifted toward politically self-destructive isolationism at a time when voters were worried by the president’s seeming solicitousness toward authoritarian leaders in China, Russia and North Korea.“What they did is they served as ballast within the Democratic Party when there were some pretty loud voices that were trying to pull the Democrats off the cliff and into oblivion,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.Katulis pointed to a failed attempt by progressives last year to strip funding for Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense system, a move that the national security Democrats and pro-Israel groups quashed.Win or lose, change is on the horizon for DemocratsThree senior Democrats on the Armed Services Committee are also retiring: Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Jim Langevin of Rhode Island and Jackie Speier of California. So no matter what happens in November, decades of experience and interest in foreign policy on the left will be leaving Congress.And though other national security-minded Democrats, like Representatives Andy Kim and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, have been drawn into safer districts, a wave election for Republicans could threaten some of those seats, too.A Republican takeover of the House, moreover, would put the party in charge of important oversight committees, such as the intelligence panel, a platform Democrats used under Representative Adam Schiff of California to carry out investigations of the Trump administration. Those inquiries made news, damaged the president politically and ultimately helped lead to his first impeachment.If Republicans gain control of the House, even Democrats who survive the election will find themselves relatively powerless to help steer the country’s foreign policy, forced to play defense as their opponents control the agenda on the House floor and within each committee.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, has already vowed to begin investigations of the Biden administration in retaliation for what Democrats did during the Trump years.That’s no idle threat.Under President Barack Obama, Republicans seized on the administration’s handling of the 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, to damage the future political prospects of two senior Democratic leaders: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who went on to run for president in 2016, and Susan Rice, who served as United Nations ambassador and national security adviser. Rice’s appearances on Sunday talk shows to discuss the Benghazi attack hobbled her chances of succeeding Clinton and may have helped scuttle her opportunity to become Biden’s running mate in 2020.Highly politicized oversight of foreign policy has been known to jump-start political careers, too.One of the ringleaders of the Benghazi oversight push, Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas, issued a report that went beyond the criticisms of his fellow Republicans toward the Obama administration. His prominence on the issue caught the eye of Trump, who named him C.I.A. director and later secretary of state. Pompeo, a vocal critic of Biden’s foreign policy, is now widely understood to be considering a presidential bid in 2024.What to readIn races across the nation, Lisa Lerer and Katie Glueck write, Republican candidates are “waffling on their abortion positions, denying past behavior or simply trying to avoid a topic that has long been a bedrock principle of American conservatism.”Los Angeles has been rocked by the leak of a secretly recorded private discussion in which three members of the City Council used racist insults and slurs. One of the council members resigned on Wednesday, Jill Cowan and Shawn Hubler report.The conservative activist Leonard Leo, who has led efforts to appoint conservatives to federal courts, has quietly built a sprawling network and raised huge sums of money to challenge liberal values. Read Kenneth Vogel’s investigation.Online misinformation about the midterm elections is swirling in immigrant communities, researchers say, in even more languages, on more topics and across more digital platforms than it did in 2020. Tiffany Hsu explains.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More