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      In Michigan, Tudor Dixon Tests Whether Trump Is Help or Hindrance

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      Tudor Dixon, the party’s nominee for governor, has ground to make up in her race against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She is hoping the former president can rally their party’s base.CLARKSTON, Mich. — As she runs to lead a narrowly divided swing state, Tudor Dixon is pursuing a hazardous strategy in the Michigan governor’s race: embracing Donald J. Trump, and at times emulating his no-holds-barred political style.She hit the campaign trail recently with the former president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and Kellyanne Conway, the onetime Trump White House adviser — and, in Trumpian fashion, made headlines for mocking her Democratic opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, over a 2020 kidnapping plot hatched against her by right-wing militia members.In other appearances, Ms. Dixon called for a ban on transgender girls playing in girl’s and women’s sports. And on a recent afternoon at an athletic club in an affluent suburb northwest of Detroit, where a life-size cutout of Mr. Trump stood by the doors, she promoted his so-called America First business policies.“‘America First’ — Michigan First — will bring Michigan back together,” she said.The governor’s race between Ms. Dixon and Ms. Whitmer carries high stakes for abortion rights, schools and the future of elections. It is historic — the first time two women have ever gone head-to-head for the position in the state.The contest also serves as a test of whether Ms. Dixon and other Republican candidates can win their general elections by harnessing the grass-roots energy of Trump supporters that propelled them to the top of crowded and chaotic primaries. That approach — which entails a close association with Mr. Trump’s election denialism and other political baggage — worries some Michigan Republicans who believe Ms. Dixon is failing to win over the kinds of suburban and independent voters who are crucial in tight races.But it might be the only option she has. Early voting began on Thursday, and with time running out, Ms. Dixon is short on cash, well behind in polls, still working to shore up support among her Republican base and being pummeled by Democrats on the television airwaves.“Uphill, on icy roads,” said Dennis Darnoi, a longtime Republican strategist in Michigan, describing her path to victory. “It is a challenge, with a month left, for her to make up the kind of ground that she is going to need.”Ms. Dixon has struggled to compete financially with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. Emily Elconin for The New York TimesMs. Dixon, who is set to appear alongside Mr. Trump at a rally on Saturday in Macomb County, has appeared unfazed, arguing that her recent fund-raising numbers have been high and that her message will ultimately resonate with voters more than Ms. Whitmer’s.Asked about the challenges ahead for the campaign and Democrats’ large spending numbers, Sara Broadwater, Ms. Dixon’s communications director, took shots at pollsters, saying they failed to predict Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Sensing a Shift: As November approaches, there are a few signs that the political winds may have begun to blow in a different direction — one that might help Republicans over the final stretch.Focusing on Crime: Across the country, Republicans are attacking Democrats as soft on crime to rally midterm voters. Pennsylvania’s Senate contest offers an especially pointed example of this strategy.Arizona Senate Race: Blake Masters, a Republican, appears to be struggling to win over independent voters, who make up about a third of the state’s electorate.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.“As Tudor said the other day in response to a similar question, ‘Isn’t it sad that the Democrats have to spend so much money?’” Ms. Broadwater said. “Gretchen Whitmer remains highly vulnerable as pro-Dixon forces begin to fire back and her campaign gains momentum.”Not all Republicans who closely aligned themselves with Mr. Trump have struggled to pivot from the primary election to the general. In Arizona, the Republican nominee for governor, Kari Lake, has taken a similar approach, and has narrowed her race to a dead heat — but unlike Ms. Dixon, she is not facing an incumbent governor like Ms. Whitmer.Other candidates backed by Mr. Trump, like Blake Masters in Arizona’s Senate race and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania’s contest for governor, have fallen behind their Democratic opponents as they have struggled to raise money. Another Republican Senate hopeful, J.D. Vance, is facing a closer-than-expected race in Ohio.Mr. Trump has maintained a keen interest in Michigan. He eked out a victory in the state in 2016 by fewer than 11,000 votes before losing to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 by more than 154,000 votes.Days before the Republican primary in early August, Mr. Trump endorsed Ms. Dixon, a conservative media personality backed by Michigan’s powerful DeVos family.Ms. Dixon, 45, a breast cancer survivor, worked as a steel industry executive until 2017, when she helped create Lumen Student News, a company that produces conservative TV news and history lessons for middle and high school students.In a December 2021 radio interview, she said she aimed to restore students’ faith in the country and combat what she described as “indoctrination” in schools. After helping found Lumen, Ms. Dixon went on to host a news show, “America’s Voice Live,” on weekday afternoons.Ms. Dixon, a former conservative media personality, is allied with Michigan’s powerful DeVos family. Emily Elconin for The New York TimesA cutout of Mr. Trump was on display at a town-hall event where Ms. Dixon spoke on Thursday in Clarkston, Mich. Emily Elconin for The New York TimesOn the stump, Ms. Dixon says she became a vocal critic of Ms. Whitmer’s coronavirus restrictions as she witnessed their negative impact on Michigan’s economy. The safety measures “took a deeply personal turn,” Ms. Dixon’s website states, after her grandmother died in a Norton Shores nursing home that prohibited visits during the pandemic.Ms. Dixon, who has the delivery of someone comfortable in front of an audience, has generated criticism for spreading unfounded claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and for some of her stances on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, including calling for “severe criminal penalties for adults who involve children in drag shows.”On her website, she calls for a ban to prevent school employees from talking to children in kindergarten through third grade “about sex and gender theory secretly behind their parents’ backs‍.” And she has said that abortion should be allowed only if it is necessary to save the life of a mother, not in cases of rape or incest.Ms. Dixon’s stance on abortion in particular — in a state where voters tend to favor abortion rights and in November will weigh a ballot measure to enshrine the right to abortion in the state Constitution — is a big reason that some Republicans are worried about her chances. They also fear that underperformance at the top of the ballot could cause the G.O.P. to lose control of the State Legislature.Michigan’s Republican Party has been in a state of turmoil for months.The party’s primary was defined by fierce infighting between its establishment and Trump factions. Its two front-runners for governor were disqualified for turning in petitions with thousands of forged signatures. Another candidate was charged with four misdemeanors related to the Capitol riot.Ms. Dixon managed to rally her fractious party behind her in the race’s final weeks. But even after winning the primary, she remained a relatively little-known political outsider. It did not help that at the G.O.P. state convention later in August, Republicans officially endorsed two preachers of 2020 election falsehoods for top state offices: Matthew DePerno for attorney general and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state.The bruising battles, as well as the lack of financial networks and campaign experience among leading Republican candidates, have made for what Richard Czuba, an independent pollster in Lansing, Mich., called “the worst ticket I have seen from any party in the last 40 years.”“It is great to run as an outsider, especially when you run against an incumbent,” Mr. Czuba said. “But there are two sides of that outsider coin. On the one hand, you can run as the outsider against the establishment. On the flip side, you don’t know how to do this — and that is what is showing.”Ms. Dixon and her running mate, former State Representative Shane Hernandez, after officially securing their nomination at the Republican convention in late August.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesAs the general election began, Democrats rushed to define Ms. Dixon before she had a chance to define herself. As Ms. Whitmer had kept $14 million in her war chest by late August, after accounting for debts and expenditures, Ms. Dixon’s end balance was $523,000, according to the state’s latest available campaign finance reports. Democratic groups have poured more than $41 million into television ads since the August primary, according to the firm AdImpact, which analyzes campaign ad spending. Republican groups, by contrast, have invested about $5.5 million.State party leaders and national Republicans this week pushed back against any notion that the race was out of reach and that Ms. Dixon had been left to fend for herself. This past week, the Michigan Republican Party began its largest ad push against Ms. Whitmer, seeking to paint her as “soft on crime.” Chris Gustafson, a spokesman for the Republican Governors Association, said it might also jump in with more ads soon.“In Michigan historically, we have seen candidates in big races be down in the polls only to come back to win,” Mr. Gustafson said. “We feel Tudor is a strong candidate with a good message. She is within striking distance.”At Ms. Dixon’s event at the athletic club in Oakland County, a panel including former Trump administration officials sat against the tall glass walls of a serene, sunlit indoor pool, as they blasted Mr. Biden’s economic policies and painted a harrowing picture of crime-filled American cities and unchecked immigration at the southwestern border.In a short speech, Ms. Dixon slammed what she characterized as a “radical sex and gender theory” permeating schools and denounced Ms. Whitmer for providing tax incentives to bring a Chinese company to Michigan, rather than an American one.But mostly, she displayed a rare dose of moderation, critiquing Mr. Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions and economic policies, rising crime in the state’s cities, and schools that Ms. Dixon argued had failed to adequately teach students to read and write. They were the kinds of remarks that some establishment and moderate Republicans might be hoping for — and they also seemed to appease the people in the room.Susan Savich, 64, and her 24-year-old son, Jonathan, asked to take photos with Ms. Dixon on her way out. They were opposed to schools teaching children anything but basic skills and traditional beliefs, they said, and Mr. Savich liked that Ms. Dixon was “education first.”They were also relieved to hear that Mr. Trump was coming to the state. “Ms. Dixon is going up against a lot,” Mr. Savich said. More

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      Beto O’Rourke and Greg Abbott Clash in Texas Debate Heavy on Attacks

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      HOUSTON — Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and his Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, faced off Friday evening in the first and only debate in the race for Texas governor, a confrontation filled with sharp disagreements and back-and-forth accusations of lying. Sitting at tables in a university performance hall with no audience, the two candidates staked out their vastly different positions on the biggest issues in the state, including gun violence, immigration, crime and abortion. But if the debate was the marquee event of a campaign for the Texas governor’s mansion that is likely to cost more than $100 million, it did not seem to deliver a key moment that would significantly propel or hobble either candidate. That outcome appeared likely to benefit Mr. Abbott, who has been leading in the polls and has commanded a larger campaign war chest going into the final stretch.The hectic pace of the exchanges — strictly limited by the moderators to 30 or 60 seconds — devolved at times into rhetorical finger-pointing between the two politicians over whose beliefs, diametrically opposed, were more outside the mainstream.“Beto’s position is the most extreme,” Mr. Abbott said, suggesting that his Democratic rival supported allowing abortions at any point in a pregnancy.“It’s completely a lie,” Mr. O’Rourke responded. “I never said that, and no one thinks that in the state of Texas.” He added: “He’s saying this because he signed the most extreme abortion ban in America. No exception for rape, no exception for incest.”For weeks, the two candidates have clashed repeatedly on the airwaves, but they had yet to spar in person. Mr. O’Rourke tried to confront Mr. Abbott during a news conference in Uvalde after the massacre at an elementary school there in May, accusing him of doing nothing to prevent such violence, before Mr. O’Rourke was escorted out. Mr. Abbott did not respond at the time.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Sensing a Shift: As November approaches, there are a few signs that the political winds may have begun to blow in a different direction — one that might help Republicans over the final stretch.Focusing on Crime: Across the country, Republicans are attacking Democrats as soft on crime to rally midterm voters. Pennsylvania’s Senate contest offers an especially pointed example of this strategy.Arizona Senate Race: Blake Masters, a Republican, appears to be struggling to win over independent voters, who make up about a third of the state’s electorate.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.On Friday, Mr. Abbott similarly tried to ignore Mr. O’Rourke’s attacks as much as possible, rarely looking at his opponent as he spoke or listened.Mr. O’Rourke went after Mr. Abbott from the start, blaming the governor’s “hateful rhetoric” for the killing of an undocumented migrant in West Texas this week and saying that the governor had “lost the right to serve this state” because of the police failures in the response to the Uvalde shooting.Mr. Abbott repeatedly accused his challenger of misrepresenting facts. “He just makes this stuff up,” he said.Mr. O’Rourke, a polished debater, appeared more at ease with the fast format of the debate. Mr. Abbott at times seemed to rush to make his points, and struggled with a question about whether he believed that emergency contraception was the “alternative” for someone who became pregnant from rape or incest in Texas, given that abortion is banned even in those cases.“An alternative, obviously, is to do what we can to assist and aid the victim,” Mr. Abbott said. “They’re going to know that the state, through our Alternatives to Abortion program, provides living assistance, baby supplies, all kinds of things that can help them.”It appeared clear that Mr. O’Rourke was the strongest challenger Mr. Abbott has had in his political career, stretching back into the 1990s. Mr. Abbott has never faced a primary opponent of note, and in his previous runs for governor, he easily swept aside Democratic opposition.The hourlong debate was held in the border city of Edinburg, far from the large population centers of this increasingly urbanizing state but deep in the heart of Hispanic South Texas, where Mr. Abbott and Republicans have increasingly made inroads. The location also put a spotlight on a topic that has been among the most effective issues for Mr. Abbott: the record numbers of unauthorized migrants continuing to arrive at the southern border.The candidates, both in red ties, debated from a sitting position; Mr. Abbott has used a wheelchair since he was 26, when an oak tree fell on him while he was jogging, paralyzing him below the waist.The candidates received no time for introductory comments and gave 30-second closing remarks, a format that played to Mr. Abbott’s strengths as a direct, often terse speaker, and limited Mr. O’Rourke’s tendency to build long rhetorical flourishes. And the timing, on a Friday evening when many Texans are more consumed with high school football, appeared likely to reduce the number of people watching live.Chris Evans, a spokesman for Mr. O’Rourke, said before the debate that the Abbott campaign had proposed the terms and would not accept any changes. “They declined to have voters in the audience,” he said. An Abbott spokesman, Mark Miner, said that Mr. O’Rourke was in “no position to run the state if he can’t even comprehend simple debate rules.” Democrats in Texas have pinned their hopes on Mr. O’Rourke before, but so far he has managed only to be victorious in defeat. In his name-making 2018 run for Senate, he came within three percentage points of unseating Senator Ted Cruz, a strong showing in Republican-dominated Texas, but still a losing one. Friday’s debate, just a few weeks before early voting begins in Texas, came at a crucial moment for both campaigns, especially Mr. O’Rourke’s. Over the summer, some polls had suggested a tightening race after the Uvalde killings and the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. But more recent surveys show Mr. Abbott more firmly in control, with a lead of about seven percentage points.For Mr. O’Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso and a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, the debate was a chance to recapture momentum and his most direct opportunity to prosecute his case against Mr. Abbott, a two-term incumbent who has led the state for eight years under unified Republican control of state government.For Mr. Abbott, it was a night to make it through unscathed. His campaign had prepared for weeks for the encounter, seeing Mr. O’Rourke as a skilled debater with significant experience from his run for president in 2020. The governor navigated tough questions, including one that in many ways launched Mr. O’Rourke into this race: the failure of the energy grid last February. Mr. Abbott stuck to his talking points — “the grid is more resilient and reliable than it’s ever been,” he said — and Mr. O’Rourke did not appear able to capitalize on the exchange.“It seemed pretty even, and a bit of a tie probably benefits Governor Abbott in this case,” said Álvaro J. Corral, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. “I didn’t see a moment that indicated a change in that underlying dynamic.”As the campaign entered its final months, Mr. Abbott has pressed his fund-raising advantage — $45 million on hand as of the last filing in mid-July, versus $23 million for Mr. O’Rourke — and went statewide with television ads at least two weeks before Mr. O’Rourke did so. Now both campaigns are bombarding Texans with messages, often negative, on television and online.Before the debate, Mr. O’Rourke held a news conference in a playground in Edinburg with several parents and relatives from Uvalde whose children were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School. The families rode a bus together from Uvalde that morning to press for action on gun control; Mr. O’Rourke criticized Mr. Abbott for setting rules that would not allow the parents to watch from inside the hall.The massacre took up significant time early in the debate. Mr. O’Rourke, who during the 2019 campaign urged taking away AR-15-style rifles after a deadly mass shooting in El Paso, emphasized his moderated position, calling to raise the age to buy an AR-15 to 21 from 18.Mr. Abbott said that was unrealistic, citing recent court decisions striking down gun restrictions.“We want to end school shootings,” he said. “But we cannot do that by making false promises.”Reid J. Epstein More

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      Gov. Hochul Solidifies Lead Over Lee Zeldin in Latest Poll

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul has expanded her commanding lead over Representative Lee Zeldin, her Republican challenger in the New York race for governor, according to a Siena College poll released on Wednesday that showed her leading by 17 percentage points.The poll suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo vying for her first full term, has improved her standing among voters since a Siena College survey in August that had her up by 14 points.With six weeks until Election Day, Ms. Hochul has held a comfortable lead in most public polls, buoyed by a seemingly insurmountable fund-raising edge that has allowed her to spend freely on television ads attacking Mr. Zeldin over the past few weeks.The poll was but the latest indication of the uphill battle that Mr. Zeldin faces to capture the governor’s office in New York, where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans two to one. The state hasn’t elected a Republican governor since George E. Pataki, who left office in 2006.Notably, Ms. Hochul made significant gains in the New York City suburbs: She was beating Mr. Zeldin by five percentage points in the poll, which was conducted last week, compared with the August poll, which had her trailing Mr. Zeldin by three points in the suburbs.Ms. Hochul also modestly improved her favorability rating among Republicans, while Mr. Zeldin lost some support among his party’s voters, with 77 percent of Republicans saying they would vote for him, down from 84 percent in August. Even so, Mr. Zeldin continued to hold a slim lead among independent voters and is virtually tied with Ms. Hochul in upstate New York, according to the poll, which surveyed 655 likely voters.The poll found Ms. Hochul holds a commanding lead in vote-rich New York City, with Mr. Zeldin well short of the 30 percent of votes he has said he will need to win.Mr. Zeldin, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump who has represented Suffolk County in Congress since 2015, would have to make significant inroads among independent and suburban voters in the final weeks of the campaign to overcome Ms. Hochul’s strong support in New York City and among women, Latino and Black voters.Ms. Hochul began spending heavily on television and digital advertisements in early September, many of them trying to define Mr. Zeldin as “extreme and dangerous” based on his view on abortion and his votes on Jan. 6 to overturn election results in key states. By the end of the week, her campaign will have spent roughly $7 million on the ads, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Mr. Zeldin, who has struggled to replenish his campaign reserves after a costly primary, had spent just under $1 million during the same period, the firm has found. Ronald S. Lauder, the conservative cosmetics heir, has funneled more than $3 million into a pair of pro-Zeldin super PACs to try to narrow the gap, but the bulk of the groups’ ad buys attacking the governor as being soft on crime only began airing in recent days.While Mr. Zeldin has sought to amplify a handful of Republican-friendly polls showing the race as far tighter, the high-dollar donors who could reverse his financial fortunes could conclude that victory is simply slipping out of reach and put away their checkbooks, leaving him unable to defend himself from Ms. Hochul’s onslaught.The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points, found that other top Democrats running statewide — Senator Chuck Schumer; Thomas DiNapoli, the state comptroller; and Letitia James, the state attorney general — were also dominating their Republican opponents in their races. More

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      Youngkin Stumps With Kemp in Georgia, Urging Conservatives to Vote

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      ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia appeared at a campaign event on Tuesday afternoon for his counterpart in Georgia, Brian Kemp, helping to bolster Governor Kemp’s re-election pitch to voters.The event, in Alpharetta’s idyllic town center, brought out more than 200 conservative voters from around Georgia, several with hats, T-shirts and signs bearing Mr. Kemp’s campaign logo. In his speech, Mr. Youngkin pressed for conservative voters to turn out en masse on Election Day and pointed out the competitive politics of the two Republican governors’ states.Mr. Youngkin also focused on the issues that helped him get elected. Education and the economy, he said, represent “the failed policy of the progressive liberals.”“We all know that it has failed,” Mr. Youngkin said. “This is not a Republican view. This is an American view.”Mr. Kemp, too, underlined the parties’ differences in policy, championing his decision to defy public health guidance during the earliest waves of the Covid-19 pandemic to keep businesses open in Georgia. In addition, he laid out a policy plan for a second term that would include using surplus funds from the state budget to cut property and income taxes.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.Georgia has played host to a parade of Republicans who have kept former President Donald J. Trump at arm’s length. Mr. Kemp in 2020 resisted Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the election in Georgia, and this year he easily fended off a Trump-backed challenger in the primary, former Senator David Perdue.In early September, Mr. Kemp campaigned with former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina. And before Mr. Kemp’s primary, former Vice President Mike Pence headlined a Kemp campaign event..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, a former private equity executive who defeated Terry McAuliffe, a former governor, in the November 2021 election for Virginia governor, has traveled across the country in recent weeks on behalf of Republican candidates for state office. In late August he campaigned with Tudor Dixon, the Republican running to unseat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. In early September, Mr. Youngkin appeared alongside Joe Lombardo, the Republican candidate for governor in Nevada.Mr. Youngkin’s tours have only fueled speculation that he is angling for a spot in a future Republican presidential primary. However, in a news conference after the rally on Tuesday, Mr. Youngkin downplayed such talk.“I don’t really think about it,” he said. “I’m focused on 2022, being the best governor I can possibly be in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”Mr. Kemp leads his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, by more than five percentage points in a majority of polls of the race. Even so, Mr. Kemp has implored his supporters to consider the network of Democratic organizers and party leaders who had worked to turn out the vote and powered the party’s gains in the 2020 presidential election and 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs.When asked by The New York Times during a news conference if he still had concerns about Republicans’ ability to match Democrats’ grass-roots turnout efforts, Mr. Kemp replied, “Damn right.”“I would tell all those people out there: Don’t believe any of these polls,” he said, turning his attention to his Democratic rivals. “You cannot underestimate their ground game.”He then underlined the millions of dollars that Democrats and their allies have poured on to the airwaves in recent weeks. “We’re never going to outspend them,” he said. “But I do believe we’re going to outwork them.” More

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      Doug Mastriano Said in 2019 That His Pennsylvania Bill Would Treat Abortions as Murder

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      Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, indicated in 2019 that women should be charged with murder if they violated a proposed abortion ban, a comment that Democrats on Tuesday highlighted as another example of Mr. Mastriano’s embrace of policies that are well outside the political mainstream.As a state senator in October 2019, he co-sponsored a bill to ban abortion after the detection of electrical cardiac activity in the fetus, usually around six weeks.On the radio show Smart Talk, the host, Scott LaMar, asked Mr. Mastriano if a woman would be charged with murder if she were 10 weeks pregnant and knowingly had what would be an illegal abortion under the bill. Mr. Mastriano answered, “Is that a human being? Is that a little boy or girl? If it is, it deserves equal protection under the law.”“So you’re saying yes?” the host asked.“Yes, I am,” Mr. Mastriano responded.NBC News first brought attention to the interview on Tuesday. Mr. Mastriano’s team did not respond to a request for comment.The issue of abortion rights has been a central theme of the Pennsylvania governor’s race.In a state with a Republican-led Legislature, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee, has positioned himself as a bulwark against any effort to enact the kind of abortion bans that have taken hold in other states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Mr. Mastriano, who is behind in polling and advertising time, more recently suggested that “the people of Pennsylvania” will “decide what abortion looks like” in the state, not the governor — but there is no question that he has long maintained hard-right views on the issue.Asked whether he believed in exceptions for rape or incest or to save the life of the mother, he replied during a primary debate, “I don’t give a way for exceptions.” Although his state bill had sought to ban abortion after a few weeks, he said in the debate that he wanted to end it completely: “I’m at conception. We’re going to have to work our way towards that.”A Monmouth University poll over the summer found that only 10 percent of Americans surveyed thought abortion should always be illegal, and 65 percent of those surveyed said they would be bothered “a lot” if “states treated illegal abortions as a felony where the woman or her doctor could be charged with murder.”“Doug Mastriano has said his No. 1 priority is banning abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother — and now, it’s clear he also wants to prosecute women for murder for making personal health care decisions,” said Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for Mr. Shapiro. “Mastriano has the most extreme anti-choice position in the country.” More

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      Hochul and Zeldin Turn Potential Debates Into a Game of Chicken

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      There have been accusations of cowardice, name-calling and, of course, liberal use of a chicken suit motif.With six weeks until Election Day, the candidates in the New York race for governor have fully embraced a now-familiar rite of passage to the governor’s mansion in Albany: the debate over the debate.Republican Lee Zeldin, a Republican from Long Island, had for weeks challenged Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic incumbent vying for her first full term, to as many as five debates ahead of the general election on Nov. 8.The taunting played out in typical New York fashion: Mr. Zeldin incessantly accused Ms. Hochul of “chickening out” on Twitter and in emails to supporters, while The New York Post ran a front page of Ms. Hochul — whom they called “scaredy Kat” — in a bright yellow chicken suit.Despite the goading, Ms. Hochul remained noncommittal until last week, when she said she would apparently participate in only one debate: an event hosted by Spectrum News NY1 on Oct. 25.Mr. Zeldin decried her decision as “cowardly” and insisted that the candidates should have several debates. Mr. Zeldin has accepted invitations to two other debates that Ms. Hochul has not agreed to. But he has not, as of now, accepted the invitation to the Oct. 25 debate, in an apparent sign of protest, posturing or bargaining — or all three.The impasse, however long it lasts, has only escalated the one-upmanship between the campaigns. On Thursday, Ms. Hochul’s press secretary posted an image on Twitter of Mr. Zeldin in a chicken suit; Mr. Zeldin shot back with a statement challenging Ms. Hochul to “come out, come out wherever you are!”So, as matters stand, it remains unclear when, or even if, New Yorkers will get an opportunity to watch Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin face off as they contend for the state’s highest office, in a race largely defined by competing visions around issues of public safety, affordability and reproductive rights.As is typical for challengers seeking to unseat incumbents, Mr. Zeldin would stand to benefit the most from the free airtime associated with debates. It is plausible that he will eventually capitulate to Ms. Hochul’s offer of a lone debate.Some recent public polls show Mr. Zeldin trailing Ms. Hochul, who enjoys wider name recognition, by roughly 15 percentage points, though other surveys suggest that the race may be tighter. Ms. Hochul, who took office last year after former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo abruptly resigned over sexual harassment allegations, has also amassed a considerably larger campaign war chest that she has deployed to flood the airwaves with a barrage of TV ads attacking Mr. Zeldin.Ms. Hochul’s stance is not unusual for incumbent governors in New York.Mr. Cuomo, who was often reluctant to debate his rivals, held out until about two weeks before Election Day in 2018 before committing to a single debate with his Republican opponent, Marcus J. Molinaro, who had repeatedly accused him of making “a mockery of democracy” and “hiding from public scrutiny.” (Tabloids and chicken suits were also involved in that process).Mr. Cuomo came under similar monthslong pressure from the actress Cynthia Nixon, who unsuccessfully challenged him during the Democratic primary earlier that year, until he finally agreed to one debate.Years before, in 1994, George E. Pataki was not given the chance to debate former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, a three-term Democrat. Mr. Pataki, a Republican, prevailed nonetheless in an upset victory, but he did not debate his opponents in the following election in 1998.In announcing Ms. Hochul’s participation in the Oct. 25 debate, which will take place at 7 p.m. at Pace University, her campaign said that she had participated in two debates during the Democratic primary earlier this year. It added that she would announce “additional public forums and speaking engagements” ahead of November.“Governor Hochul looks forward to highlighting the clear contrast between her strong record of delivering results and Lee Zeldin’s extreme agenda,” Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for the Hochul campaign, said in a statement.Mr. Zeldin’s campaign said that Mr. Zeldin had already accepted two debate requests — from WCBS-TV and WPIX-TV — and urged the local networks to proceed with the debates “without her and with an empty podium.” The debate on Spectrum News NY1, the campaign said, could also be limited to cable viewers, potentially leaving out television viewers who mostly rely on broadcast channels or are subscribed to another cable provider.The Zeldin campaign also noted that the Oct. 25 debate would take place over a month after election officials began mailing absentee ballots to voters.“Voters should have the opportunity to hear where the candidates stand before they vote, not after,” Mr. Zeldin said in a statement. “Scaredy cat Hochul can run but she can’t hide from her absolutely abysmal record on the issues most important to New Yorkers, including rising crime, skyrocketing cost of living and an eroding quality of education.” More

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      Republicans Intensify Attacks on Crime as Democrats Push Back

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      In Pennsylvania, Republicans are attacking John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate, as “dangerously liberal on crime.”Outside Portland, Ore., where years of clashes between left-wing protesters and the police have captured national attention, a Republican campaign ad juxtaposes video of Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a Democratic congressional candidate, protesting with footage of rioters and looters. Ms. McLeod-Skinner, an ominous-sounding narrator warns, is “one of them.”And in New Mexico, the wife of Mark Ronchetti, the Republican nominee for governor, tells in a campaign ad of how she had once hid in a closet with her two young daughters and her gun pointed at the door because she feared an intruder was breaking in. Though the incident happened a decade ago, the ad accuses Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Mr. Ronchetti’s Democratic opponent, of making it “easier to be a criminal than a cop.”In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are intensifying their focus on crime and public safety, hoping to shift the debate onto political terrain that many of the party’s strategists and candidates view as favorable. The strategy seeks to capitalize on some voters’ fears about safety — after a pandemic-fueled crime surge that in some cities has yet to fully recede. But it has swiftly drawn criticism as a return to sometimes deceptive or racially divisive messaging.Crime-heavy campaigns have been part of the Republican brand for decades, gaining new steam in 2020 when President Donald J. Trump tried to leverage a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement to vilify Democrats. But two years later, left-wing calls to defund the police have given way to an effort to pump money back into departments in many Democratic-led cities, raising questions about whether Republicans’ tactics will be as effective as they were in 2020, when the party made gains in the House.Republicans are running the ads most aggressively in the suburbs of cities where worries about public safety are omnipresent, places that were upended by the 2020 protests over racial injustice or are near the country’s southwestern border. In some of the country’s most competitive Senate races — in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Republican candidates have pivoted to a message heavily aimed at crime.“This is something that crosses party lines and everyone says, ‘Wait a minute, why isn’t this something that is dealt with?’” said Mr. Ronchetti, whose state has experienced an increase in violent crime this year. “You look at New Mexico: People used to always know someone with a crime story. Now, everyone has their own.”Polling shows that voters tend to see Republicans as stronger on public safety. By a margin of 10 percentage points, voters nationwide said they agreed more with Republicans on crime and policing, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this month.National Republican strategists say they always planned to use crime as a so-called kitchen-table issue, along with inflation and the economy. Now, after a summer when Democrats gained traction in races across the country, in part because of the upending of abortion rights, Republican campaigns are blanketing television and computer screens with violent imagery.Some of the advertising contains thinly disguised appeals to racist fears, like grainy footage of Black Lives Matter protesters, that sharply contrast with Republican efforts at the beginning of Mr. Trump’s term to highlight the party’s work on criminal justice overhauls, sentencing reductions and the pardoning of some petty crimes.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.The full picture on crime rates is nuanced. Homicides soared in 2020 and 2021 before decreasing slightly this year. An analysis of crime trends in the first half of 2022 by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan policy and research group, found that murders and gun assaults in major American cities fell slightly during the first half of 2022, but remained nearly 40 percent higher than before the pandemic. Robberies and some property offenses posted double-digit increases.Candidates on the right have tended to be vague on specific policy details: A new agenda released by House Republicans proposes offering recruiting bonuses to hire 200,000 more police officers, cracking down on district attorneys who “refuse to prosecute crimes” and opposing “all efforts to defund the police.”Still, Republicans see the issue as one that can motivate their conservative base as well as moderate, suburban independents who have shifted toward Democrats in recent weeks.Mark Ronchetti, the Republican nominee for governor of New Mexico, released an ad in which his wife recounted a possible break-in at their home years ago. Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesIn the past two weeks alone, Republican candidates and groups have spent more than $21 million on ads about crime — more than on any other policy issue — targeting areas from exurban Raleigh, N.C., to Grand Rapids, Mich., according to data collected by AdImpact, a media tracking firm.But those attacks are not going unanswered: Over the past two weeks, Democrats have spent a considerable amount — nearly $17 million — on ads on the issue, though the amount is less than half of what Democrats spent on ads about abortion rights over the same period.The political arm of the center-left think tank Third Way, Shield PAC, is starting to spend about $5 million targeting swing voters to defend at least seven Democrats who are vulnerable on the issue of crime..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.In 2020, some Democrats feared alienating liberal activists who were pushing to drastically overhaul policing. A series of defeats by progressive candidates in New York and California since the 2020 election delivered evidence of the depths of voter frustration about quality-of-life issues, prompting more in the party to embrace a moderate message. Some in the party see an opening to flip the script — or at least neutralize some of the attacks.A private memo circulated by the House Democratic campaign arm over the summer urged candidates in competitive races to rebut Republican criticisms by promoting endorsements from law enforcement and clearly articulating to voters that “Democrats stand for funding police to keep communities safe.”Many candidates have adopted that approach. “Mandela Barnes doesn’t want to defund the police,” a retired officer identified as “Rick” says in a recent ad for the Democratic nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, pushing back on a weekslong onslaught. “He’s very supportive of law enforcement.”After months of calls for legislative action from Democratic lawmakers facing difficult re-election races in conservative-leaning districts, House Democrats overcame divisions within their caucus to pass a package of legislation on Thursday awarding $60,000,000 annually for five years to local police departments. The centerpiece bill attracted support from a broad bipartisan majority but faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Still, Democrats say the House passage helps their case on crime and policing.“We proved pretty clearly that we are very strong supporters of law enforcement funding — investing, not defunding — which is key to protecting our families and our communities,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and the sponsor of the legislation.Many Republicans were critical of the F.B.I. after it searched former President Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida.Marco Bello/ReutersFor its part, the White House has tried to turn the tables on Republicans, joining Democratic campaign committees in wielding Republican denunciations of the police after the Capitol siege and of the F.B.I. after the Mar-a-Lago search to argue that the G.O.P. is anti-law enforcement.“You can’t be pro-law enforcement and pro-insurrection,” Mr. Biden said late last month in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. “You can’t be a party of law and order and call the people who attacked the police on Jan. 6 ‘patriots.’”And an ad from the House Majority PAC, which is aligned with House Democratic leadership, accuses the Republican candidate in Arizona’s Fourth Congressional District of favoring “defunding the F.B.I.” and disrespecting federal law enforcement.Republicans say that attacks based on a candidate’s record will resonate most. Greg Landsman, the Democrat running against Representative Steve Chabot, a Republican, in a Cincinnati district that was redrawn to lean Democratic, has faced criticism for writing legislation as a Cincinnati councilman to redirect $200,000 from the city’s Police Department to an independent board responsible for fielding complaints against police officers.Some of the advertising has racial overtones. An ad against Mr. Barnes from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which highlights the 2021 attack at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis., ends with a picture of Mr. Barnes alongside three members of the progressive “Squad” — all women of color — and the words “different” and “dangerous.” His supporters called the ad racist.Other ads are slightly misleading: In New York, the first general-election ad from the Republican candidate for governor, Representative Lee Zeldin, is a compilation of grainy footage of shootings, looting and fistfights. “Vote like your life depends on it,” a narrator urges. “It just might.”Mr. Zeldin recently confirmed that half of the video in the ad was shot before Gov. Kathy Hochul took office, and that one clip was from Oakland, Calif.And a Republican ad campaign against Wiley Nickel, a Democratic defense lawyer running in an exurban House district near Raleigh, N.C., accuses him of representing rapists, “cop killers” and distributors of child pornography.Mr. Nickel’s campaign says he has never defended people accused of those kinds of charges; his campaign manager called the ad’s claims “patently false.” Mr. Nickel says his practice focuses on low-level offenses and misdemeanors. He has countered by proclaiming in his own ad that he would increase police funding.As for the ad in New Mexico describing a break-in at Mr. Ronchetti’s home, the incident took place in 2012 — seven years before his opponent took office.“Our point wasn’t that the governor was responsible for my particular home invasion,” Mr. Ronchetti said in an interview. “To me, this is purely an issue of, we are headed in the wrong direction.”At least a few voters say they relate to the sentiment — if not the specifics — of that Republican message.“I wouldn’t even let my kids play with guns,” said Alanna Gonzalez, a retiree in Issaquah, a Seattle suburb. “And now we’ve talked about getting one. We’ve had break-ins in our condo. There’s been shootings on the street. Never did we ever have anything like that before.”Ms. Gonzalez, a lifelong Democrat, said that crime had changed her political views, and that she and her husband, Robert, were considering voting for Republicans this year.Mr. Gonzalez said the Democratic Party had become “a hug-me, squeeze-me bunch, and we just don’t like it.”Alanna Gonzalez said that she and her husband, Robert Gonzalez, were considering voting for Republicans this year because of their worries about crime.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesKirk Johnson More

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      Jim Florio, New Jersey Governor Undone by Tax Hike, Dies at 85

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      A Democrat, he had successes on gun control, the environment and property-tax relief, but after raising income and sales taxes, he lost a bid for re-election.Jim Florio, who was elected governor of New Jersey in 1989 by persuading voters that he would not raise state taxes but who then pushed through a record increase shortly after taking office, incurring public wrath that led to his defeat in his bid for a second term, died on Sunday. He was 85.His law partner Douglas Steinhardt announced the death on Twitter on Monday but did not specify the cause or place of death.The nation was facing a worsening economy and New Jersey the prospect of a yawning budget deficit when Mr. Florio, then an eight-term Democratic congressman, insisted during his campaign that he would balance the budget only by cutting waste in state spending.But two months after taking office in January 1990 he proposed a budget that called for sharp increases in income and sales taxes totaling more than $2.5 billion, in addition to deep cuts in most state services.He had no choice, he said. On taking a close look at the state’s books after he took office, he said, it was plain that just cutting spending would not be enough to balance the budget. Mr. Florio said tax-revenue projections by the previous Republican administration of Gov. Thomas H. Kean Sr. had been grossly overstated, even “phony,” and made even the deep spending cuts he proposed insufficient by themselves.Public reaction was harsh. Many New Jerseyans felt betrayed, asserting that Mr. Florio had broken a firm pledge not to increase taxes. Many fellow Democratic politicians expressed shock at the extent of the proposed increases, and some budget experts said that Mr. Florio had ignored evidence during the campaign that tax increases would be unavoidable.Ultimately, however, the Democratic-controlled State Senate and Assembly approved his plan by slim margins.More popular were his successes in enacting auto-insurance reform aimed at lowering the steep premiums that the state’s residents had been paying; pushing for property-tax relief for many middle-income homeowners, a measure approved by the State Legislature; and appointing an environmental prosecutor to crack down on the state’s notoriously polluting industries.Mr. Florio also won legislation to ban semiautomatic assault weapons, then prevailed over intense efforts led by the National Rifle Association to have the law repealed. And he successfully pushed a bill that shifted a substantial amount of state aid from affluent public school districts to lower and moderate-income ones — a measure that proved widely divisive.But the tax increases were his undoing. Feeding off voters’ anger, Republicans for the first time in two decades gained control of both houses of the legislature in 1991, and in a close election two years later, Mr. Florio was denied a second term by Christine Todd Whitman, a former Somerset County freeholder and scion of a prominent New Jersey family who became the state’s first woman governor.To his supporters, Mr. Florio — who preferred to be called Jim, and the news media obliged — was a tough-minded liberal with an independent streak. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation gave him its Profile in Courage Award in 1993. Mr. Florio, the foundation said, had shown “courageous political leadership in gun control, education and economic reform,” including having “risked political and public criticism when he swiftly and boldly restructured the state’s income tax system.”Detractors called Mr. Florio stiff-necked. He shrugged off that assessment in his speech accepting the Profile in Courage Award, saying: “The first thing I learned as governor is that you can’t please everybody. The second thing I learned is some days you can’t please anybody. So be it.”Mr. Florio had won the governorship after two previously unsuccessful races for the office during the 15 years he served in Congress, where he made a name nationally as an environmental protection advocate. Most prominently, he helped spearhead the 1980 Superfund legislation to clean up dangerous toxic waste dumps and chemical spills across the country.In Congress, representing the Camden area, he gained a reputation as a hard worker and a frugal one.“My philosophy has always been, I have one pair of shoes because I have one pair of feet,” he said at the time. “My father always worked, always worked very hard. It is just beyond comprehension that anyone would not.”James Joseph Florio was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 29, 1937. His father was a shipyard painter.Mr. Florio dropped out of high school to serve in the Navy, where he earned a high school equivalency diploma. He was also an amateur boxer, an avocation that left him with a permanently sunken left cheekbone. He later served in the Navy Reserve for 17 years, rising to lieutenant commander.Mr. Florio graduated from Trenton State College (today the College of New Jersey) in 1962 and from Rutgers Law School in 1967. While in college he married Maryanne Spaeth. The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1988 he married Lucinda Coleman.Information about Mr. Florio’s survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Florio began practicing law in Camden, became active in local politics and served in the State Assembly in the 1970s. He lost a race for Congress in 1972 to the Republican incumbent, John E. Hunt. But in a return match two years later he defeated Mr. Hunt and served in the House until he was elected governor in 1989.He first ran for governor in 1977 as one of nine Democrats seeking to unseat a fellow Democrat, Gov. Brendan T. Byrne. Mr. Byrne defeated them in the primary and then prevailed in the general election.Mr. Florio ran again in 1981, winning the Democratic nomination but losing the general election to Mr. Kean, a moderate Republican, by a hair — fewer than 2,000 votes out of 2.3 million cast.In 1989, Mr. Florio easily won the Democratic nomination and then handily defeated his Republican opponent, Rep. James A. Courter. As the highly conservative Mr. Courter took a hard line against big government and taxes, Mr. Florio called himself part of “the sensible center” who would pursue policies like fighting pollution and steep auto insurance rates while holding the line on taxes.In seeking re-election in 1993, Mr. Florio had no Democratic primary opponent, even as polls had long suggested that he was unlikely to win in the general election. But as the race with Ms. Whitman heated up, polls showed it had tightened in the weeks before Election Day.Mr. Florio charged that Ms. Whitman, who had not held an elected post above the county level, was too inexperienced to run the state and that, coming from one of its wealthiest families, was out of touch with the needs of most residents. “There are no blue bloods” where he grew up in Brooklyn, Mr. Florio said time and again.Ms. Whitman hammered away at the Florio tax increases, pledged to cut income taxes by 30 percent over three years and accused the incumbent of waging a campaign based on class warfare.In the end, she narrowly won, with 49 percent of the vote to his 48 percent, while more than a dozen independent candidates shared the rest.It was not Mr. Florio’s last hurrah. In 2000 he ran for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat being vacated by a fellow Democrat, Frank R. Lautenberg.Mr. Florio faced a Wall Street multimillionaire and novice politician, Jon S. Corzine, who maintained that Mr. Florio, with his sharp tax increases as the economy sank into a recession in 1990, “took a problem and made it a crisis.” Mr. Florio questioned his opponent’s qualifications for the office and accused him of sounding like a Republican.Mr. Corzine, who outspent Mr. Florio by 14 to 1 — $35 million to $2.5 million — won easily, and then won the general election. Mr. Corzine left the Senate in 2006 after being elected governor and served one term, defeated for re-election in 2009 by the Republican Chris Christie, a prosecutor at the time.After losing his bid for a second term as governor, Mr. Florio returned to private law practice. But he remained active in environmental matters. From 2002 to 2005 he served as chairman of the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, which works to preserve the state’s Pine Barrens, the 1.1 million acres of semi-wilderness spanning parts of seven counties. While in Congress, Mr. Florio had pressed for federal support of such efforts.Alex Traub More