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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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      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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      Is Ron DeSantis as Strong a Potential Candidate as He Seems?

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      The Florida governor looks to be well positioned to head into a hypothetical presidential primary in 2024. But past Republican darlings rose just as fast — only to fall quickly.In March 2015, the Republican National Committee held a donor retreat in Boca Raton, Fla. The belle of the ball was a Republican governor with a penchant for owning the libs, delighting Fox News and playing bare-knuckle politics.One speaker, a New York real estate mogul widely seen as an unserious blowhard, drew eye rolls among those present as he groused about how the R.N.C. should have held the event at Mar-a-Lago, his private club just down the road.The governor, who was polling well in Iowa, was running for president on a simple platform: Your enemies are my enemies, too. Almost universally, pundits speculated that he would be the one to beat in a G.O.P. primary that would be dominated by cultural resentment and anger over the current president’s policies.Well, that governor, short on cash and charisma, flamed out months before any 2016 primaries were even held. His name was Scott Walker. And the real estate mogul who bored the crowd was, of course, Donald Trump.American politics is no longer as predictable as it once was. Each day seems to violate one bit of received wisdom or another. But Walker’s rise and fall nevertheless offers a cautionary tale for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the current favorite to be the G.O.P. nominee in 2024.*“There are a lot of folks who have buzz right now,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of The Family Leader, a social conservative organization in Iowa. “Will they have buzz a year from now?”Vander Plaats, who has met DeSantis and said he was well regarded within Iowa Republican political circles, added, “I would rather be peaking at this stage versus not peaking at all.”Charlie Sykes, a conservative former radio host in Wisconsin who now works at The Bulwark, a website that has become a refuge for anti-Trump Republicans, said that despite his image as a fighter, Walker in person was “quite genial.” In his memoirs, Walker said he rejected Sykes’s advice to be more of a political pugilist because it just wasn’t his style.The fundamental question for DeSantis — a more combative person in private as well as in public — Sykes said, was, “How does that personality scale up? How will that wear?”*Key caveat: in a hypothetical world where Trump doesn’t run.The DeSantis buzzOn paper, DeSantis has a lot going for him.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.He has amassed a campaign hoard worthy of Smaug, the dragon in “The Hobbit.” A stocky former college baseball player and officer with the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, he projects the sort of strength that plays well in Republican politics. And he emerged from the pandemic bolstered, on the right at least, by the perception that he navigated the coronavirus relatively successfully in defiance of experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci.In polls, DeSantis consistently rates as the second choice of Republican voters, behind Trump but well ahead of any putative rivals. And in focus groups, voters often describe him as “Trump without the baggage,” according to Sarah Longwell, a G.O.P. strategist who opposes Trump.Like Walker, though, DeSantis risks peaking too early. Walker’s operation made a strategic error early on by parking much of its cash in a 527 committee, a tax-exempt organization that was barred from certain campaign activities. When the money dried up in the summer of 2015, his official campaign had trouble paying for the extensive apparatus it had built in anticipation of better fund-raising success.The early infatuation of Republican voters (and pundits!) with shiny objects is a timeworn tradition, too. Remember Marco Rubio, the “Republican savior”? Rand Paul, “the most interesting man in politics”? Rick Perry, the hot stuff of the early 2012 hustings? And it remains to be seen whether DeSantis, a wooden speaker with a reputation for burning through his staff, has the personal skills to go the distance.In interviews, Republican strategists and donors said that DeSantis looked to be in a strong position for 2024. His home in Florida gives him access to a deep-pocketed donor community that Walker lacked, several noted. He’s won allies in the political influencer community on the right. And his ability to appeal to both the Trump and Mitch McConnell wings of the party affords him room for maneuver in a Republican Party divided between two mutually hostile camps.But everyone I interviewed emphasized that anything could happen. Several mentioned that they expected Trump to avoid announcing a re-election run as long as possible — freezing the potential G.O.P. field in place and, possibly, crippling any nascent campaign organizations they hope to build.That could spell trouble for DeSantis, despite his fund-raising prowess, since he currently lacks the sort of national political operation necessary to win a presidential nomination. Under campaign finance rules, DeSantis won’t be able to reallocate much of his 2022 hoard to any presidential campaign, either.“One big difference is Trump,” said Mike DuHaime, a former political adviser to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who noted that the large G.O.P. field in 2016 was an important factor in that primary.But if Trump doesn’t run, he said, “I think a question for DeSantis is whether there will be other people in the same governors’ lane or ideological lane,” which could split the vote among similar candidates.DeSantis might also find, as Walker did before him, that being a governor has advantages and disadvantages. Just because donors gave to his re-election campaign does not mean they would necessarily finance a presidential run, for instance. And his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Ian will be scrutinized carefully for any signs of mismanagement or callousness.But on the positive side of the ledger, “being governor allowed him to strike a different path,” DuHaime said. “It gets you out of being a knee-jerk parrot for Trump, like many senators had to do.”Gov. Chris Christie with President Barack Obama in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe Christie precedentFor DeSantis’s confidants — and, by most accounts, his wife, Casey, is his closest political adviser — the more salient cautionary tale is that of Christie.The former New Jersey governor decided not to run in 2012, when he was at the peak of his popularity. He waited instead until 2016, when he ran into a buzz saw named Trump, and has long regretted it.“You have a moment,” Casey DeSantis has told associates, according to my colleague Matt Flegenheimer. And the DeSantises apparently believe that moment is now.Christie is making noises about running again in 2024. He told a reporter this weekend, “I don’t care who else runs. If I decide I want to run, I’m running.”But his criticism of Trump could be fatal. Trump remains popular among Republican base voters: In the most recent New York Times/Siena poll, 53 percent of those who voted for him in 2020 said they had a “very favorable” opinion of him, and 36 percent said their opinion of him was “somewhat favorable.”When Christie recently defended the Justice Department’s search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump fired back by posting a mocking photo.One key lesson DeSantis seems to have learned from Christie’s defenestration: Don’t embrace a Democratic president, metaphorically or otherwise.Photos of Christie warmly welcoming President Barack Obama when the two met after Hurricane Sandy devastated the New Jersey coastline in 2012 were weaponized against him four years later — with a handshake morphing into a “hug” that helped doom him in the 2016 G.O.P. primary.When DeSantis met President Biden last week after Hurricane Ian wrecked much of the west coast of Florida, their body language was rather different — professional, but hardly warm.“Mr. President, welcome to Florida,” DeSantis said as he handed over the lectern at their joint news conference. “We appreciate working together across various levels of government, and the floor is yours.”If Biden had any inclination to embrace his potential rival, he betrayed none of that in his remarks.“We have very different political philosophies, but we’ve worked hand in glove,” Biden said. And when the president praised the governor’s recovery efforts as “pretty remarkable so far,” DeSantis offered only a polite smile.What to readHouse Republicans have only a dozen members of color, but they are fielding a slate of 67 Black, Latino, Asian or Native American candidates in November, by the party’s count. Jonathan Weisman spoke to many of them.In the two parties’ efforts to control Congress, New York has become surprisingly competitive. Nicholas Fandos writes about the districts that are in play.Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, has drawn attention to the Jewish religion of his opponent, Josh Shapiro. Katie Glueck examines the alarm among Jewish voters.The idea of sending migrants to left-leaning areas of the U.S. circulated in conservative circles for years. Maggie Haberman and Michael C. Bender look back at the traction it gained under Donald Trump and the path to Republican governors’ putting it into practice.With less than a month until Election Day, candidates are meeting for debates. Alyce McFadden breaks down what has taken place so far and how to watch the debates to come.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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      For Zeldin, a Shooting Hits Close to Home and to His Campaign Theme

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      The shooting of two teenagers directly outside his Long Island home has given Mr. Zeldin an opportunity to push his tough-on-crime message within a personal frame.After two teenage boys were shot outside his home on Long Island last weekend, Representative Lee Zeldin wasted little time to amplify the tough-on-crime message he has relentlessly pressed in his bid for governor of New York.He quickly assembled a news conference in front of his moonlit house on Sunday night, followed up the next day with a Fox News interview, and used an appearance at the Columbus Day Parade to imbue his political messaging with a new personal, if frightening, outlook.“It doesn’t hit any closer to home than this,” Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, said while marching at the parade in Manhattan on Monday, describing the incident as “traumatic” for his twin 16-year-old daughters, who were doing their homework in the kitchen when the shooting happened. “This could be anyone across this entire state.”“Last night the girls wanted to sleep with us,” Mr. Zeldin also said during the parade. “I didn’t think that the next time I’d be standing in front of a crime scene, it would be crime scene tape in front of my own house.”The shooting unfolded on Sunday afternoon when the police said multiple gunshots were fired from a dark-colored vehicle at three teenage boys walking near Mr. Zeldin’s home in Suffolk County on Long Island. Two 17-year-old boys were forced to take cover by Mr. Zeldin’s porch, suffering injuries that were not life threatening, while a 15-year-old boy fled the shots unharmed.That the shooting unfolded near the home of a conservative congressman who has anchored his campaign for governor on the state of crime in New York, attracting outsize media attention, appears to have been pure happenstance.The police had not made any arrests as of Tuesday, but they were investigating whether the incident was connected to gang violence, according to a law enforcement official who asked to remain anonymous to discuss an ongoing investigation.But with less than four weeks until Election Day, the shooting offered Mr. Zeldin an opportunity to elevate the issue of public safety in the governor’s race, as the congressman seeks a breakout in his efforts to unseat Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who has so far enjoyed a comfortable lead in most public polls.Mr. Zeldin faces a steep climb to overcome Ms. Hochul’s significant fund-raising edge in a state where Democrats overwhelmingly outnumber Republicans. He has been quick to talk about the impact of the shooting in starkly personal terms, appealing to New Yorkers who have also been affected by gun violence. Mr. Zeldin was at a campaign event in the Bronx with his wife during the shooting.Mr. Zeldin, a staunch Trump supporter who has represented Suffolk County in Congress since 2015, has said he would make law and order his top priority if elected. He has consistently sought to blame the rise in violence on criminal justice policies enacted by progressive lawmakers as well as on left-leaning prosecutors, such as Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in Manhattan. He has promised to fire Mr. Bragg “on Day 1.”At the same time, he has opposed Democratic-led efforts to tighten gun control measures, cheering the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down New York’s concealed carry law as “a historic, proper, and necessary victory.”Ms. Hochul, who is seeking her first full term, has trumpeted her efforts to tighten the state’s bail laws and has emphasized initiatives to crack down on illegal gun trafficking, as well as a law she signed raising the age for the purchase of semiautomatic rifles, after a massacre at a Buffalo supermarket earlier this year.“We’re not running away from those issues,” Ms. Hochul said on Monday. “We’re leaning hard into them because we have a real record of accomplishment.”The shooting outside Mr. Zeldin’s home is the second time his safety has been threatened this election cycle.Three months ago, a man tried to physically attack Mr. Zeldin with a sharp key chain during a campaign event near Rochester. The attacker, a veteran of the Iraq War who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism, was quickly subdued and initially released without bail before being arrested on federal assault charges.Mr. Zeldin, who was not injured, used the confrontation to attack Democrats for the reforms they enacted to the state’s bail laws two years ago, even if the episode did little to shake up the state of the race.“It’s an extraordinary coincidence of events that gives Zeldin’s crime message added credibility, urgency, and national attention,” said William F. B. O’Reilly, a Republican political consultant who is not working on the Zeldin campaign. “This will almost certainly help him in the final weeks of the campaign.”Mr. Zeldin could certainly use a boost, having lagged behind Ms. Hochul in nearly every public poll commissioned this cycle. He has also found himself chasing her haul of campaign contributions — a tribute to a voracious fund-raising apparatus that raised $11.1 million from July to October of this year. The cash has allowed her to blanket airwaves and smartphones with campaign ads attacking Mr. Zeldin’s support of Mr. Trump and his opposition to abortion rights.Mr. Zeldins financial outlook is not exactly bleak, however. He brought in $6.4 million during the same period, thanks in part to fund-raisers with former president Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. He has also seen support from conservative super PACs which have spent nearly $4 million in the past weeks on ads calling Ms. Hochul soft on crime and criticizing her handling of the economy.On Tuesday, a police car was still stationed outside Mr. Zeldin’s home in Shirley, a working-class hamlet on the South Shore of Long Island, where residents on the typically sleepy street were still rattled by the burst of violence.Dan Haug was in his home when he heard the shots and ran to the window, spotting one of the boys lying in Mr. Zeldin’s bushes, screaming and bleeding from the gunshot wounds.“You know, there’s little isolated incidents in this neighborhood with like, fireworks and like dogs getting loose,” said Mr. Haug, who has lived in the neighborhood for seven years. “But nothing like that.”Mary Smith, the mother of the teenager who escaped unharmed, blamed the shooting on the proliferation of guns among young people, while stressing that she did not believe her son was in a gang, saying: “He’s just a normal kid.”While expressing sympathy for the Zeldin family ordeal, Ms. Smith lamented that she had heard nothing from the congressman himself, despite his many public comments.“I’m around the corner from you,” Ms. Smith said in an interview. “They took the story away from the victims and made it about running for government.”Chelsia Rose Marcius More

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      Hochul Outpaces Zeldin in Cash Race, but Super PACs Help His Cause

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul has used her fund-raising edge to spend more than $1.5 million a week since Labor Day on an aggressive television ad campaign.Since she took office last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s voracious fund-raising apparatus has been a source of curiosity and concern among various factions of New York’s political and business elite.But with just a month left in one of the nation’s marquee governor’s races, it has given Ms. Hochul an increasingly clear payoff: a financial advantage over her Republican opponent, Representative Lee Zeldin, as she seeks to become the first woman to be elected governor of New York.Ms. Hochul raised $11.1 million, or about $133,000 a day on average, from mid-July to early October, according to campaign filings made public late Friday that showed numerous high-dollar events in the Hamptons and Manhattan. She will enter the homestretch of the race with nearly $10.9 million in cash at her disposal — two and a half times as much money as Mr. Zeldin.As independent polls show Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo Democrat, with a fluctuating lead, she has poured most of the cash into an unrelenting ad campaign to try to highlight Mr. Zeldin’s opposition to abortion rights and support for former President Donald J. Trump. It is not cheap: Records show Ms. Hochul has spent more than $1.5 million a week since Labor Day to blanket New Yorkers’ televisions and smartphones.Mr. Zeldin’s fund-raising total represents a fraction of the kinds of campaign hauls being put together by other Republicans running for governor in big states this fall as the party tries to make major gains nationwide.But unlike other recent Republican nominees in New York, Mr. Zeldin has seemed to put together enough money to remain competitive in the race’s final weeks. His campaign reported raising $6.4 million during the three-month period, including large hauls at events featuring Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. Zeldin has roughly $4.5 million in cash, a figure that surprised some Democrats.“Lee Zeldin is raising enough money to run a more competitive race than the last few Republican gubernatorial nominees,” said Evan Stavisky, a leading New York Democratic strategist. “However, and this is a big however, money isn’t the only reason Republicans haven’t won a statewide election in 20 years, and Zeldin is still going to be vastly outspent by Kathy Hochul.”There are more than twice as many registered Democrats than Republicans in the state — a margin that underscores Mr. Zeldin’s challenge.Notably, a pair of Republican super PACs, largely funded by a single conservative billionaire cosmetics heir, have stepped in to help narrow the financial gap: The two groups, Safe Together NY and Save our State NY, have collectively spent close to $4 million in recent weeks on ads echoing Mr. Zeldin’s attacks on Ms. Hochul, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. The ads accuse the governor of being soft on crime and weak on the economy.Unlike campaign committees, the groups can accept unlimited donations, allowing wealthy individuals to exercise huge amounts of influence on the race. In the case of the governor’s race, Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, has already committed close to $4.5 million to the two PACs, a number that is expected to grow in the coming weeks.Ms. Hochul, who took office last year after the resignation of Andrew M. Cuomo, does not have a similar super PAC aiding her campaign. But she has raised millions of dollars from wealthy donors with business interests before the state, an arrangement that, while common among her predecessors, has nonetheless drawn scrutiny from good governance watchdogs who worry that it is creating conflicts of interest.Though Ms. Hochul’s campaign touted that 60 percent of its contributions were for less than $200, the vast majority of her funds came in far larger increments, including more than 100 contributions of $25,000 or more, the filings showed.More than $2 million came directly from corporations, unions and political action committees, including Eli Lilly, Lyft, Charter Communications and Pfizer. The personal injury law firm Gair, Gair, Conason and the medical malpractice firm Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore each funneled $100,000 to the campaign.Ms. Hochul also received large contributions from members of prominent New York families who have supported Mr. Zeldin. Ronald Lauder’s nephew, William P. Lauder, for example, gave Ms. Hochul $40,000. Haim Chera, a real estate executive whose family hosted the Zeldin fund-raiser attended by Mr. Trump, gave her $47,100. Mr. Chera is an executive at Vornado Realty Trust, a colossal firm that stands to benefit from Ms. Hochul’s plan to redevelop the area around Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.Mr. Zeldin’s campaign took in about a third as many large checks, but it is benefiting from special interests, too. Two PACs associated with the Rent Stabilization Association, a pro-landlord trade group, gave a combined $89,000. Arnold Gumowitz, a real estate developer who has given to Ms. Hochul but is fighting the Penn Station project, contributed $47,100. Altogether, close to $500,000 came in from corporations, PACs and other special interests groups.Despite lending his presence to a fund-raiser, Mr. Trump has not cut a check to Mr. Zeldin, a longtime ally, nor has any group the former president controls.Other Republicans seeking to challenge statewide Democratic officeholders in New York are more clearly struggling to assemble the resources they need to compete.While Letitia James, the Democratic attorney general, reported $2.75 million in cash on hand, her opponent, Michael Henry, had just $146,000. Thomas P. DiNapoli, the Democratic comptroller, reported having $1,998,366 on hand, roughly 630 times as much as the $3,173.14 in the bank account of his opponent, Paul Rodriguez.Despite the millions being spent, the race for governor of New York is actually shaping up to be relatively cheap compared to other, more competitive contests in big states like Texas, Georgia and Wisconsin, which could cost well over $100 million each. In Georgia, the candidates for governor announced raising a total of nearly $65 million during the last three months. More

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      In Illinois Governor’s Debate, Bailey Tries to Put Pritzker on Defensive.

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      It is no secret that Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois has presidential ambitions. This year he has traveled to New Hampshire, used his billions to finance fellow Democratic candidates in critical states and made himself a national figure in the fight for abortion rights and gun control.So when Mr. Pritzker’s Republican opponent, State Senator Darren Bailey, pulled from his suit jacket pocket a pledge to serve all four years of the term on the ballot in November, Mr. Pritzker responded with what was a not-quite-air-tight assertion.“I intend to serve four years more if re-elected,” Mr. Pritzker said. “I intend to support the president, he’s running for re-election.”President Biden has not formally made that declaration himself, but all indications are that he intends to run, just as Mr. Pritzker intends to serve out a second term. But neither man has made his pledge official.Mr. Bailey’s pledge presentation was just one moment in an hourlong debate in which he sought to put Mr. Pritzker on the defensive, regularly interrupting the governor or muttering asides while Mr. Pritzker was speaking.But Mr. Bailey, a far-right legislator, found himself having to explain his past statements comparing abortion to the Holocaust.“The attempted extermination of the Jews in World War II, it doesn’t even compare to a shadow of the life that has been lost to abortion since its legalization,” Mr. Bailey said in a Facebook Live video clip the moderators played during the debate.Mr. Bailey was then asked: “You said Jewish leaders told you, you were right. Can you name the Jewish leaders who agree with you?”The state senator responded by saying “the liberal press” had taken his past remarks, which he said were from 2017, out of context.“The atrocity of the Holocaust is beyond parallel,” he said.Asked again to name the Jewish leaders who agreed with him, Mr. Bailey demurred.“No, I’m not going to put anybody on record,” he said. More

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      Jan. 6 Defendant Coordinated Volunteers to Help Glenn Youngkin

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      In the election last fall that sent Glenn Youngkin to the Virginia governor’s office and propelled him to G.O.P. stardom, the state and local Republican Party tasked Joseph Brody with coordinating volunteers to knock on doors of potential Youngkin voters in the state’s strategically crucial northern suburbs.But eight months earlier, Mr. Brody had been immersed in the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, according to the F.B.I., which said that he assaulted a police officer with a metal barricade and breached several restricted areas, including the Senate floor and the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Now, Mr. Brody, 23, who the F.B.I. said was associated with the white nationalist group America First, is facing felony and misdemeanor charges for his role. The candidate he would go on to help, Mr. Youngkin, tried during his campaign to keep himself at arm’s length from former President Donald J. Trump, and he called the Jan. 6 riot a “blight on our democracy.”Shortly after Mr. Brody’s arrest last month, an image scraped from the internet by online sleuths who call themselves “Sedition Hunters” showed a man in a MAGA hat holding a high-powered rifle in front of a Nazi flag, with a bandanna concealing his face. The group, which has provided information that has helped law enforcement officials make hundreds of arrests related to Jan. 6, said the man in the photo was Mr. Brody.A public defender listed for Mr. Brody did not respond to several requests for comment. Messages sent to an email account for Mr. Brody went unanswered. There was no answer at a phone number listed for him.Mr. Youngkin’s office referred questions about Mr. Brody to Kristin Davison, a political consultant for the governor, who said in an email on Friday that Mr. Brody “did not work for or with the Youngkin campaign.”The Fairfax County Republican Committee twice listed Mr. Brody, who is from Springfield, Va., in Fairfax, as helping to coordinate a volunteer effort to knock on doors for “Team Youngkin.” When asked about those online listings, Ms. Davison said, “Those are not posts from the Youngkin campaign.”.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.Mr. Youngkin’s campaign logo appeared on both pages, which included an official email address associated with the Republican Party of Virginia for Mr. Brody.“Mr. Brody was employed by the party as a door-knocker for one month last fall,” Ellie Sorensen, a state G.O.P. spokeswoman, said in an email on Monday. “He has not been employed by the Republican Party of Virginia for over a year.”Ms. Sorensen did not comment further about the charges against Mr. Brody or what had led to the end of his employment with the party.The Fairfax Republicans did not respond to multiple requests for comment.According to a criminal affidavit, Mr. Brody recorded and photographed senators’ desks during the Capitol attack, in which he wore a neck gaiter with an American flag pattern. Later, he “assisted another rioter in using a metal barricade against a Capitol Police officer, knocking the officer back as he attempted to secure the north door,” an F.B.I. agent said in the affidavit.Federal investigators said Mr. Brody had previously met four other men who were recently charged in the attack at an event held by America First, whose followers are known as Groypers. The movement’s leader, Nicholas J. Fuentes, a white supremacist who has been denounced by conservative organizations as a Holocaust denier and a racist, was issued a subpoena by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.In one photograph that a group of Sedition Hunters said it had obtained of Mr. Brody, a young political canvasser holds a campaign sign for Mr. Youngkin. The group contrasted that image with other postings it said were from Mr. Brody’s social media accounts, some of which showed Nazi symbols and diatribes against women.Luke Broadwater More