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      The Fetterman-Oz Race Is No Piece of Cake

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      OK, people. Time for some real political drama. Pennsylvania! Pennsylvania! Pennsylvania!Surprised you, didn’t I? But really, the Senate race there has it all. Swing state that could very well decide who holds the majority in the Senate and whether the rest of President Biden’s agenda has any real chance of getting passed.And the main candidates — the Republican, Mehmet Oz, and the Democrat, John Fetterman — are a stupendous diversion. You have the big, heavy issues, naturally, but they’ve also been fighting about stuff like where Oz actually lives and the right word to use for vegetables in the supermarket.Remember that last one? In an ongoing attempt to prove he’s just a regular guy and not a superrich TV personality with multiple expensive homes, Oz released a video of himself shopping for groceries and blaming Biden for the high cost of “crudité.”Imagine the euphoria in the Fetterman camp after that one. “In PA, we call this a veggie tray,” the candidate tweeted happily.Fetterman also released a video of three women wearing broccoli costumes. I know this doesn’t tell you a whole lot about what the candidates would do with, say, military spending. But you have to admit it’s a conversation maker.Oz is an accomplished heart surgeon and a TV personality who became famous for giving out health tips on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Most of his advice is perfectly reasonable. Really, that time he warned women that carrying a cellphone in their bras might cause breast cancer was long, long ago.Fetterman is Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, running as a regular guy who’ll wear a sweatshirt and shorts for pretty much anything from a picnic to a news conference to guiding the president on a tour of a bridge collapse. One of the duties of his job is to head the state Pardons Board, and you will not be surprised to hear that Oz is constantly reminding voters that he recommended pardons for people who were, um, convicts.One of the big talking points in the Senate race is residency. It’s certainly an issue that works for Fetterman, who has a tattoo on his arm advertising the ZIP code of the town where he once served as mayor. Oz made his home in a pretty fabulous New Jersey mansion during his precampaign days. Now, of course, he’s acquired a place in Pennsylvania. But Fetterman cannot remind the state too often that this is a rather recent development. (Democrats have a highway billboard near the state border telling motorists they’re “now leaving” New Jersey for Pennsylvania, “JUST LIKE DR. OZ.”)Issue-wise, Oz and Fetterman certainly diverge, although there has been a bit of squirming around. Particularly on the part of Oz, who used to be for gun control but became a Second Amendment fiend during the Republican Senate primary campaign. His abortion position is evolving. He emerged from that primary as “strongly pro-life” but now reminds voters he isn’t keen to punish anybody involved in terminating a pregnancy.Lately, Fetterman’s health has loomed large. He suffered a stroke in May, and while he’s certainly been getting better, there’s no question he still suffers from the effects, including what he calls “auditory processing” issues.Oz, in one of his very least charming tweets, sent out a picture of Fetterman in what looks like boxer shorts, his rather expansive stomach bare, calling him “Basement Bum.” Oz’s communications adviser claimed that if Fetterman had “ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke.”Given what a very, very big deal the outcome of the Pennsylvania race might be, it’s natural that things would go a little crazy. We can actually cheer the fact that it isn’t truly worse — that there’s been little focus on the fact that Oz, who describes himself as a “secular Muslim,” has maintained dual citizenship with Turkey.(Well, there’s been little focus from the Fetterman folk. In the primary, some of the other Republican candidates did try to make it a big deal.)Since Fetterman’s stroke restricted his campaigning, the race has focused more and more on the candidate debate. It looks as though there’s going to be only one, on Oct. 25.People, does this seem worrisome to you? Fetterman has been pulling farther and farther ahead in the polls, and there’s a definite feeling around that the debate is all that’s standing between him and the Senate seat.In normal circumstances, that’s unnerving; political history is full of stories about candidates who lost their lead when they blurted out one stupid thing. And let me admit that when Gov. Rick Perry forgot the name of one of the federal agencies he would eliminate if elected president, I reminded you of his “oops” moment constantly until his candidacy went down the drain.But that was Rick Perry, a terrible candidate running to be leader of the free world. Sort of a different situation. And Fetterman should be fine, right? Right?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Which Midterm Polls Should We Be Taking With a Grain of Salt?

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, to discuss the state of polling and of Democratic anxiety about polls ahead of the midterms.Frank Bruni: Amy, Patrick, as if the people over at Politico knew that the three of us would be huddling to discuss polling, it just published a long article about the midterms with the gloomy, spooky headline “Pollsters Fear They’re Blowing It Again in 2022.”Do you two fear that pollsters are blowing it again in 2022?Patrick Ruffini: It’s certainly possible that they could. The best evidence we have so far that something might be afoot comes from The Times’s own Nate Cohn, who finds that some of the Democratic overperformances seem to be coming in states that saw large polling errors in 2016 and 2020.Amy Walter: I do worry that we are asking more from polling than it is able to provide. Many competitive Senate races are in states — like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that Joe Biden won by supernarrow margins in 2020. The reality is that they are going to be very close again. And so an error of just three to four points is the difference between Democratic and Republican control of the Senate.Ruffini: This also doesn’t mean we can predict that polls will miss in any given direction. But it does suggest taking polls in states like Ohio, which Donald Trump won comfortably but where the Republican J.D. Vance is tied or slightly behind, with a grain of salt.Bruni: So what would you say specifically to Democrats? Are they getting their hopes up — again — in a reckless fashion?Walter: Democrats are definitely suffering from political PTSD. After 2016 and 2020, I don’t think Democrats are getting their hopes up. In fact, the ones I talk with are hoping for the best but not expecting such.Ruffini: In any election, you have the polls themselves, and then you have the polls as filtered through the partisan media environment. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing. On Twitter, there’s a huge incentive to hype individual polling results that are good for your side while ignoring the average. I don’t expect this to let up, because maintaining this hype is important for low-dollar fund-raising. But I do think this has led to a perhaps exaggerated sense of Democratic optimism.Bruni: Great point, Patrick — in these fractured and hyperpartisan times of information curation, polls aren’t so much sets of numbers as they are Rorschachs.But I want to pick up on something else that you said — “polls will miss in any given direction” — to ask why the worry seems only to be about overstatement of Democratic support and prospects. Is it possible that the error could be in the other direction and we are understating Republican problems and worries?Ruffini: In politics, we always tend to fight the last war. Historically, polling misses have been pretty random, happening about equally on both sides. But the last big example of them missing in a pro-Republican direction was 2012. The more recent examples stick in our minds, 2020 specifically, which was actually worse in percentage terms than 2016.Walter: Patrick’s point about the last war is so important. This is especially true when we are living in a time when we have little overlap with people from different political tribes. The two sides have very little appreciation for what motivates, interests or worries the other side, so the two sides over- or underestimate each other a lot.As our politics continue to break along educational attainment — those who have a college degree are increasingly more Democratic-leaning, those with less education increasingly more Republican-leaning — polls are likely to overstate the Democratic advantage, since we know that there’s a really clear connection between civic voting behavior and education levels.Ruffini: And we may be missing a certain kind of Trump voter, who may not be answering polls out of a distrust for the media, polling and institutions generally.Bruni: Regarding 2016 and 2020, Trump was on the ballot both of those years. He’s not — um, technically — this time around. So is there a greater possibility of accuracy, of a repeat of 2018, when polling came closer to the mark?Ruffini: The frustrating thing about all of this is that we just don’t have a very good sample size to answer this. In polls, that’s called an n size, like n = 1,000 registered voters. There have been n = 2 elections where Trump has been on the ballot and n = 1 midterm election in the Trump era. That’s not a lot.Bruni: We’ve mentioned 2016 and 2020 versus 2018. Are there reasons to believe that none of those points of reference are all that illuminating — that 2022 is entirely its own cat, with its own inimitable wrinkles? There are cats that have wrinkles, right? I’m a dog guy, but I feel certain that I’ve seen shar-pei-style cats in pictures.Walter: First, let’s be clear. Dogs are the best. So let’s change this to “Is this an entirely different breed?”I’m a big believer in the aphorism that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.Ruffini: Right. Every election is different, and seeing each new election through the lens of the previous election is usually a bad analytical strategy.Walter: But there are important fundamentals that can’t be dismissed. Midterms are about the party in charge. It is hard to make a midterm election about the out-party — the party not in charge — especially when Democrats control not just the White House but the House and Senate as well.However, the combination of overturning Roe v. Wade plus the ubiquitous presence of Trump has indeed made the out-party — the G.O.P. — a key element of this election. To me, the question is whether that focus on the stuff the Republicans are doing and have done is enough to counter frustration with the Democrats.Ruffini: 2022 is unique in that it’s a midterm cycle where both sides have reasons to be energized — Republicans by running against an unpopular president in a time of high economic uncertainty and Democrats by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe. It’s really unique in the sweep of midterm elections historically. To the extent there is still an energized Republican base, polls could miss if they aren’t capturing this new kind of non-college, low-turnout voter that Trump brought into the process.Bruni: Patrick, this one’s for you, as you’re the one among us who’s actually in the polling business. In the context of Amy’s terrific observation about education levels and the Democratic Party and who’s more readily responsive to pollsters, what are you and what is your firm doing to make sure you reach and sample enough Republican and Trump-inclined voters?Ruffini: That’s a great question. Nearly all of our polls are off the voter file, which means we have a much larger set of variables — like voting history and partisan primary participation — to weight on than you might typically see in a media poll (with the exception of the Times/Siena polls, which do a great job in this regard). We’ve developed targets for the right number of college or non-college voters among likely voters in each congressional district. We’re also making sure that our samples have the right proportions of people who have registered with either party or have participated in a specific party’s primary before.But none of this is a silver bullet. After 2016, pollsters figured out we needed to weight on education. In 2020 we weighted on education — and we got a worse polling error. All the correct weighting decisions won’t matter if the non-college or low-turnout voter you’re getting to take surveys isn’t representative of those people who will actually show up to vote.Bruni: Does the taking of polls and the reporting on polls and the consciousness of polls inevitably queer what would have happened in their absence? I will go to my grave believing that if so many voters hadn’t thought that Hillary Clinton had victory in the bag, she would have won. Some 77,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — the margin of her Electoral College loss — are easily accounted for by overconfident, complacent Clinton supporters.Walter: In 2016, there were two key groups of people that determined the election. Those who never liked Clinton and those who disliked Trump and Clinton equally. At the end, those who disliked both equally broke overwhelmingly for Trump. And, those Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t like her at all were never fully convinced that she was a worthy candidate.Ruffini: I don’t worry about this too much since the people most likely to be paying attention to the daily movement of the polls are people who are 100 percent sure to vote. It can also work in the other direction. If the polls are showing a race in a red or blue state is close, that can motivate a majority of the party’s voters to get out and vote, and that might be why close races in those states usually resolve to the state fundamentals.Bruni: Evaluate the news media in all of this, and be brutal if you like. For as long as I’ve been a reporter, I’ve listened to news leaders say our political coverage should be less attentive to polls. It remains plenty attentive to polls. Should we reform? Is there any hope of that? Does it matter?Ruffini: I don’t think there’s any hope of this getting better, and that’s not the media’s fault. It’s the fault of readers (sorry, readers!) who have an insatiable appetite for staring at the scoreboard.Walter: We do pay too much attention to polls, but polls are the tool we have to capture the opinions of an incredibly diverse society. A reporter could go knock on 3,000 doors and miss a lot because they weren’t able to get the kind of cross-section of voters a poll does.Ruffini: Where I do hope the media gets better is in conducting more polls the way campaigns conduct them, which are not mostly about who is winning but showing a candidate how to win.In those polls, we test the impact of messages on the electorate and show how their standing moved as a result. It’s possible to do this in a balanced way, and it would be illuminating for readers to see, starting with “Here’s where the race stands today, but here’s the impact of this Democratic attack or this Republican response,” etc.Bruni: Let’s finish with a lightning round. Please answer these quickly and in a sentence or less, starting with this: Which issue will ultimately have greater effect, even if just by a bit, in the outcome of the midterms — abortion or gas prices?Walter: Abortion. Only because gas prices are linked to overall economic worries.Ruffini: Gas prices, because they’re a microcosm about concerns about inflation. When we asked voters a head-to-head about what’s more important to their vote, reducing inflation comes out ahead of protecting abortion rights by 67 to 29 percent.Bruni: Which of the competitive Senate races will have an outcome that’s most tightly tethered to — and thus most indicative of — the country’s mood and leanings right now?Walter: Arizona and Georgia were the two closest races for Senate and president in 2020. They should both be indicative. But Georgia is much closer because the G.O.P. candidate, Herschel Walker, while he’s still got some problems, has much less baggage and much better name recognition than the G.O.P. candidate in Arizona, Blake Masters.Ruffini: If Republicans are going to flip the Senate, Georgia is most likely to be the tipping-point state.Bruni: If there’s a Senate upset, which race is it? Who’s the unpredicted victor?Walter: For Republicans, it would be Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. They’ve argued that the incumbent, Senator Maggie Hassan, has low approval ratings and is very weak. It would be an upset because Bolduc is a flawed candidate with very little money or history of strong fund-raising.Ruffini: I’d agree about New Hampshire. The polling has shown a single-digit race. Republicans are also hoping they can execute a bit of a sneak attack in Colorado with Joe O’Dea, though the state fundamentals look more challenging.Bruni: You (hypothetically) have to place a bet with serious money on the line. Is the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or “other”?Walter: It’s always a safer bet to pick “other.” One of the most difficult things to do in politics is what DeSantis is trying to do: not just to upend someone like Trump but to remain a front-runner for another year-plus.Ruffini: I’d place some money on DeSantis and some on “other.” DeSantis is in a strong position right now, relative to the other non-Trumps, but he hasn’t taken many punches. And Trump’s position is soft for a former president who’s supposedly loved by the base and who has remained in the fray. Time has not been his friend. About as many Republicans in the ABC/Washington Post poll this weekend said they didn’t want him to run as did.Bruni: Same deal with the Democratic presidential nominee — but don’t be safe. Live large. To the daredevil go the spoils. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or “other”?Walter: History tells us that Biden will run. If he doesn’t, history tells us that it will be Harris. But I feel very uncomfortable with either answer right now.Ruffini: “Other.” Our own polling shows Biden in a weaker position for renomination than Trump and Democrats less sure about who the alternative would be if he doesn’t run. I also think we’re underestimating the possibility that he doesn’t run at the age of 81.Bruni: OK, final question. Name a politician, on either side of the aisle, who has not yet been mentioned in our conversation but whose future is much brighter than most people realize.Walter: If you talk to Republicans, Representative Patrick McHenry is someone they see as perhaps the next leader for the party. There’s a lot of focus on Kevin McCarthy now, but many people see McHenry as a speaker in waiting.Ruffini: He’s stayed out of the presidential conversation (probably wisely until Trump has passed from the scene), but I think Dan Crenshaw remains an enormously compelling future leader for the G.O.P. Also in Texas, should we see Republicans capitalize on their gains with Hispanic voters and take at least one seat in the Rio Grande Valley, one of those candidates — Mayra Flores, Monica De La Cruz or Cassy Garcia — will easily be in the conversation for statewide office.Bruni: Thank you, both. I just took a poll, and 90 percent of respondents said they’d want to read your thoughts at twice this length. Then again, the margin of error was plus or minus 50 percent, and I’m not sure I sampled enough rural voters in the West.Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy and journalism at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) is a co-founder of the Republican research firm Echelon Insights. Amy Walter (@amyewalter) is the publisher and editor in chief of The Cook Political Report.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Blake Masters Strains to Win Over Arizona’s Independent Voters

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      PHOENIX — Blake Masters, the Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, has brightened the music and tone of his television ads. He has erased from his website some of his most emphatically right-wing stances on immigration, abortion and the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.But on a recent afternoon in Scottsdale, an affluent Phoenix suburb, Kate Feo, a 40-year-old independent voter, was not buying the shift.“I just don’t think he has an opinion on much until he is pressed for it, and then he kind of just comes up with whatever is popular at the moment,” she said as she strolled through a park with her three young children. She called Mr. Masters “a flip-flopper.”Skepticism from voters in the political center is emerging as a stubborn problem for Mr. Masters as he tries to win what has become an underdog race against Senator Mark Kelly, a moderate Democrat who leads in the polls of one of the country’s most important midterm contests.Independents and voters unaffiliated with either major party matter more in Arizona than in nearly any other battleground state. After roughly tripling in number over the past three decades to 1.4 million, they have helped push the state from reliably red to tossup, and now make up about a third of the voting population. And with early voting beginning in two weeks, it is among this critical electoral bloc that Mr. Masters appears to be struggling the most.Polls show Mr. Kelly leading his rival comfortably among independents: In a survey released this week by The Arizona Republic and Suffolk University, he was ahead by 51 percent to 36 percent. Another September survey, by the Phoenix firm OH Predictive Insights, found that more than half of independents had a negative view of Mr. Masters, and that only 35 percent saw him favorably.In nearly a dozen interviews in Phoenix and Tucson, as well as in the purplish Phoenix suburbs of Arcadia, Chandler and Scottsdale, most independent voters expressed views of Mr. Masters as inauthentic, slippery on the issues and not truly dedicated to Arizona.“I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” said Thomas Budinger, 26, an assistant manager at a store in a Tucson mall. A few other independents scrunched their noses or rolled their eyes at the mention of the candidate’s name.Mr. Masters, 36, a venture capitalist and political newcomer once seen as a rising far-right figure, persuaded Republican voters in Arizona to nominate him with help from the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump and the hefty financial backing of Peter Thiel, his billionaire former boss. But now he must win over the kinds of ticket-splitters, moderates and independents who powered the 2018 victories of Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat.Kate Feo, 40, in Scottsdale, Ariz., said of Mr. Masters, “I just don’t think he has an opinion on much until he is pressed for it.”Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMr. Masters’s allies still see a path to victory in a state where Trump loyalists have taken over the Republican Party machinery and energized base voters in recent years, fueling prolonged efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.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.In another marquee Arizona race, Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, is trying the opposite strategy from Mr. Masters, relentlessly leaning into her far-right persona and Trump-aligned message. Ms. Lake, a former TV news anchor, is seen as more charismatic than Mr. Masters, and her Democratic opponent as weaker than Mr. Kelly, but Ms. Lake appears to have tapped into a powerful Republican strain.Stan Barnes, a Republican consultant and former Arizona state legislator, said that reawakened movement could be just enough to carry Mr. Masters over the finish line. The more relevant question, he said, might not be, “Where are independents?” but instead, “How big is the ‘America First’ phenomenon?”Mr. Masters’s campaign declined requests for comment. In interviews, he has downplayed or denied any change in his approach to win over moderate and independent voters.Asked by Laura Ingraham of Fox News this month whether he had tweaked his view on abortion, he replied: “More propaganda. I’ve been consistent throughout the whole primary.”.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. Masters entered Arizona politics after years of working with Silicon Valley start-ups, rising to become the president of Mr. Thiel’s foundation and the chief operating officer of Thiel Capital, the billionaire’s investment firm. He received $15 million from his former boss as he campaigned in the Republican primary, portraying himself as an internet-savvy insurgent and playing to xenophobic and racist fears among some base voters.In some of Mr. Masters’s earliest television and digital ads, he claimed without evidence that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election and called for a militarization of the United States’ border with Mexico. His immigration ads had a video game-like quality, featuring ominous music, stark desert backdrops and faceless masses of migrants.On his website, as in speeches and podcasts, he echoed a sanitized version of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, claiming that Democrats were trying to bring more immigrants into the country to change its demographics and give the party an edge.But since the Aug. 3 primary, Mr. Masters has tried to soften his tone, seeking to focus his bid on inflation, crime and illegal immigration. Before the primary, three of the four television ads that were paid for by his campaign captured him alone in the desert. Since then, two of his campaign’s three ads have featured his wife and children.His website has also undergone a cleanup: A line about Democrats purportedly importing immigrant voters has been removed, and he was one of several Republicans to take down false claims of a rigged 2020 election. His site deleted mentions of his support for some of the most stringent abortion restrictions, including “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”A person close to Mr. Masters told CNN last month that the candidate wanted his website to be seen as a “living document,” and he told the radio station KTAR News this month that any changes to it reflected “a new way that we’re talking about something, but it’s not a backtrack or anything like that.”Mr. Masters, who often appears with Ms. Lake, has not completely abandoned his combative instincts. He recently drew criticism for describing Vice President Kamala Harris as a beneficiary of an “affirmative action regime.” This month, he declined to commit to accepting this year’s election results.Mr. Masters’s supporters are unfazed by his attempts at moderation. They still see him as a potential bulwark against President Biden and what they describe as “radical” Democrats who want to regulate guns, open the border and take control away from parents in schools.At her home in Arcadia recently, Barbara Bandura, 42, said her support for Mr. Masters came down to her stances against abortion and new gun safety laws. “He’s not Mark Kelly,” she said, adding that she did not entirely believe news reports that Mr. Masters had deleted old positions from his website.Kirk Adams, a Republican former speaker of the Arizona House and a former chief of staff to Mr. Ducey, said that Mr. Masters was smartly trying to appeal to moderate Republicans in the image of former Senator John McCain, as well as the party’s Trump wing. “Blake, I think, is working hard to build a coalition, and time will tell if it is enough,” Mr. Adams said.Kirk Adams, a Republican former speaker of the Arizona House, said, “Blake, I think, is working hard to build a coalition, and time will tell if it is enough.” Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThere are signs Republicans see the race as less winnable than other key Senate matchups. Mr. Thiel has rebuffed requests from Republicans to spend any more on the contest, though he is hosting a campaign fund-raiser for Mr. Masters this month.In a letter, Arizona Republicans recently urged Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, to shore up his support for Mr. Masters. But the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Mr. McConnell, has canceled $17.6 million in television ads, backing out of eight weeks of reserved airtime from Sept. 6 until Election Day. Last week, it cut a further $308,000 in time reserved for radio ads. (Steven Law, the group’s chief executive, contended that money from other Republican groups would help Mr. Masters make up the difference.)The moves have left Mr. Masters short on cash. He ended the last campaign finance reporting period, in July, with only about $1.6 million in cash on hand, compared with $24.8 million for Mr. Kelly. Democrats have far outspent Republicans in television ads on the race. Mr. Kelly has combined with Senate Democrats’ super PAC and campaign arm to spend nearly $60 million alone.In interviews, some independents waved off concerns about Mr. Masters. Smoke Hinson, 53, a natural gas pipeline inspector in Phoenix, said he planned to vote for him, arguing that children should not be taught about gender identity or “how to pray in the Muslim religion” in schools, that illegal immigration was out of control and that the F.B.I. was headed in the wrong direction.“Blake Masters is about law enforcement, the border, parents’ rights, the Second and First Amendment,” Mr. Hinson said.But more common were perceptions of Mr. Masters like that of Hector Astacio, another independent who called him a “flip-flopper.” Mr. Astacio, 62, a manufacturing engineer in Chandler, said he did not like that Mr. Masters seemed to echo Mr. Trump’s bigotry in his immigration messaging.Originally from Puerto Rico, Mr. Astacio said he had been kicked out of bars in Georgia because of his skin color and had been racially profiled by the police in Arizona. “I see the racism — if you are Hispanic, if you are of a different color,” he said. “It does not sit well with me.” More

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      Fetterman-vs.-Oz Campaign Turns to a Focus on Criminal Justice

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      Lee and Dennis Horton maintained their innocence through 27 years behind bars. The brothers were convicted in a 1993 robbery and fatal shooting in Philadelphia that they say they did not commit.“We were forgotten men,” Lee Horton said. “Nobody was paying us any mind. John Fetterman reached out and pulled us up. He saved our lives because there’s no doubt we would have died in prison.”Mr. Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 in large part to rejuvenate the Board of Pardons as a last stop for justice. One of the lieutenant governor’s few duties is to be the chair of the board, which had grown moribund.Under his leadership, the number of inmates serving life sentences who were recommended for clemency and release, including the Hortons, has greatly increased.Now that record has become a top issue for Mr. Fetterman’s opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, with Republicans training intense fire on the Democrat on social media, in email blasts and in $4.6 million in TV ads accusing him of “trying to get as many criminals out of prison as he can.”After the Horton brothers were released in 2021, Mr. Fetterman gave them jobs as field organizers for his campaign.“If John Fetterman cared about Pennsylvania’s crime problem, he’d prove it by firing the convicted murderers he employs on his campaign,” Brittany Yanick, a spokeswoman for Dr. Oz, said this month.Mr. Fetterman, in an interview, accused Dr. Oz of fear-mongering and twisting the facts of the Hortons’ case and those of others he championed. “Of course, these ghouls are going to do that kind of thing and distort and lie about the truth,” he said.Across the country, Republicans have taken up the issue of crime to rally midterm voters, confronting a rise in violence in most major cities that began during the coronavirus pandemic. Among them is Philadelphia, which is on pace to equal last year’s record 562 homicides.While attacking Democrats as soft on crime may be standard for Republicans in most election years, Pennsylvania’s Senate contest offers an especially pointed contrast because Mr. Fetterman has turned the pardons board into a cause célèbre over four years.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.Rather than soft-pedaling his record, Mr. Fetterman expressed satisfaction in winning the release of inmates who served decades in prison, generally with model records.“There were some wrongs that needed to be put right, and there were a lot of people caught up in this system that were innocent or deserving” of release, he said.If Republicans “weaponize” his record and “destroy” his career over his advocacy for second chances, Mr. Fetterman added, including for the Hortons and other men he said were wrongly convicted, “then so be it.”Mr. Fetterman with the Horton brothers on Saturday at a rally in Philadelphia. Hannah Beier/ReutersIn a poll of Pennsylvania voters by The Morning Call/Muhlenberg College last week, only 3 percent named crime as the most important issue in the midterms, well behind the economy (22 percent) and abortion (20 percent). But the pollster, Chris Borick, suggested Mr. Fetterman’s 41 percent disapproval was driven by Republican portrayals of him as “too left-leaning,” which have included attacks on his pardons record. The lieutenant governor led Dr. Oz, a former heart surgeon and celebrity TV host, by 49 percent to 44 percent, within the margin of error.Barney Keller, a spokesman for Dr. Oz, said his campaign would continue to attack Mr. Fetterman on crime. “Dr. Oz has surged in the polls because John Fetterman is the most pro-murderer candidate in America,” Mr. Keller said.While individual pardon cases are complex, requiring voters to absorb details and nuance, the G.O.P. attacks on Mr. Fetterman are meant to deliver the opposite: a blunt, visceral punch.The Oz campaign created a website called Inmates for Fetterman, highlighting the crimes of convicted murderers whose release Mr. Fetterman sought, and asking for donations to Dr. Oz.The Oz campaign has singled out the Horton brothers, whose release Mr. Fetterman calls one of the pinnacles of his career in public office. The brothers share a name but are not related to the most infamous released inmate in a political attack ad, Willie Horton, whose crime spree while on a furlough program hurt the presidential candidacy of Michael Dukakis in 1988.Invoking that episode explicitly, Mr. Fetterman said he had anticipated that opponents would “Horton us” over his championing the brothers’ release.Like more than 1,100 lifers in Pennsylvania’s prisons, 70 percent of them Black, the Horton brothers were convicted of second-degree murder, a charge filed against suspects who participate in a felony — such as robbery, arson or rape — that leads to a death. It also includes accomplices not directly responsible for a fatality who drove a getaway car or acted as a lookout..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.Pennsylvania is an outlier in mandating life without parole for second-degree murder, and reformers argue that it violates constitutional protections against unduly cruel punishments.With no possibility of release through the normal parole process, these inmates have been encouraged by Mr. Fetterman to seek commutations before the pardons board. The board can recommend either pardons (for inmates already released) or commutations (for those still behind bars). The five-member board, which includes Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democrats’ nominee for governor, must unanimously approve commutations, and the governor must sign off. Mr. Fetterman said that in each commutation case he supported, he asked the prisoner’s warden if he would want that individual as a neighbor. “And they’re like, ‘Absolutely,’” he said.Commutations — typically, a reduction of a life sentence to time served — were once common, but in the tough-on-crime era beginning in the 1990s they all but ended. Mr. Fetterman argued that “those who didn’t take a life” and had clean records over decades in prison should be “living out their lives at home.”Under his chairmanship, the board has recommended 50 commutations of life sentences, compared with just 10 in the preceding two decades.In addition to commutations, Mr. Fetterman is under fire from Republicans for opposing certain life sentences for murder and for a statement he once made that he “agreed” with a corrections official that prison populations could be cut by a third with no harm to the public.“John Fetterman wants to release one-third of prisoners and eliminate life sentences for murderers,” claimed Dr. Oz’s first TV ad of the general election. The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has run five ads leveling similar attacks, including its latest, which calls Mr. Fetterman “dangerously liberal on crime.”For purposes of soft-on-crime attacks, it little matters that murders rose during the pandemic in blue states and in red states alike, and in cities, suburbs and rural areas. Studies show low recidivism rates for lifers released after their sentences were commuted: about 1 percent for inmates over age 50, in a Pennsylvania study from 2005.Mr. Fetterman said he did not support releasing a third of all prisoners — about 12,000 of Pennsylvania’s 36,000 inmates. He said the official who remarked that cutting prison populations by a third would not threaten public safety was a former secretary of corrections appointed by a Republican governor. And the life sentences he seeks to end are for second-degree murder.Last week, in a visit to Philadelphia to promote safe streets, Dr. Oz criticized Mr. Fetterman’s record on the pardons board and proposed his own anticrime measures, including support for the First Step Act. That law, passed in 2018 with bipartisan support, includes sentence reductions for federal inmates with good behavior — a version of the second chances that Mr. Fetterman espouses.At a campaign event last week in Philadelphia, Dr. Mehmet Oz spoke with Sheila Armstrong, who lost her brother to gun violence.Ryan Collerd/Associated PressMalcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative from Philadelphia, said that if Dr. Oz and Senate Republicans cared about high crime rates, they would support investments in poor communities such as raising the minimum wage, and gun safety measures that go beyond the limited bipartisan bill signed by President Biden in June. That law expanded background checks for gun buyers under age 21 and funds red-flag laws that let authorities take guns from people deemed dangerous.“Dr. Oz and Senate Republicans do not give a damn about people in Philadelphia and about the crime that folks are enduring,” Mr. Kenyatta said.Mr. Keller, the Oz spokesman, did not answer directly when asked whether Dr. Oz would have voted for the bipartisan gun law. “Doctor Oz is interested in how the implementation of this law will occur, and was particularly interested in the new funding for mental health,” Mr. Keller said.Mr. Fetterman was so convinced that the Horton brothers were wrongfully convicted that after the pardons board rejected their first clemency petition in 2019 — Mr. Shapiro, the attorney general, voted against it — he suggested he would run for governor if that’s what it took to get them out.“The trajectory of my career in public service will be determined by their freedom or lack thereof,” he once told The Philadelphia Inquirer.The deputy superintendent of the state corrections department endorsed the Hortons’ release. A brother of the man killed in the 1993 shooting, for which the Hortons and a third man were convicted, was opposed. “They took a human life, and they don’t deserve to be out in society,” the victim’s brother, Reinaldo Alamo, told The Inquirer. The third man in the case, who police records said was the actual gunman, was released in 2008.The brothers finally won clemency in their second try, in 2020. Mr. Fetterman set his sights on the Senate, and Mr. Shapiro ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination for governor.Since the brothers returned home to Philadelphia, the corrections department has invited them to speak monthly to cadets training to be prison guards, Lee Horton said.Their work for the Fetterman campaign includes attending ward meetings, telling their story at rallies and simply walking the streets.“On any given day we’re out talking to people about John Fetterman’s policies about minimum wage, how he would make average, everyday working people’s lives better,” Dennis Horton said.His brother added: “We’re not angry. We gave up the anger years ago but, you know, we want to be able to live our lives and to be able to feed our families. We want to be able to have jobs.”Lee Horton dropping campaign signs off at businesses in Philadelphia on Friday.Hannah Beier for The New York Times 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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      Don Bolduc Indicates He Has Not Entirely Turned His Back on Election Denial

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      All through his primary, Don Bolduc, a far-right Senate candidate in New Hampshire, said the 2020 election was stolen. A day after his victory was called, he reversed course. But eight days after that?He indicated on a podcast that he had not completely turned his back on the stolen-election movement, conveying that he found it unclear why his election-denial message had not been resonating with voters in the battleground state.“The narrative that the election was stolen, it does not fly up here in New Hampshire for whatever reason,” Mr. Bolduc said in a Sept. 23 appearance on The Mel K Show, a podcast aligned with the QAnon conspiracy movement.Then he renewed his false claim there had been fraud in the election.“What does fly” in New Hampshire, Mr. Bolduc said, “is that there was significant fraud and it needs to be fixed.”For about five minutes on the podcast, Mr. Bolduc attacked the expansion of mail-in voting during the pandemic and said voters in New Hampshire should be forced to present identification at the polls. He further stated his opposition to college students from out of state voting in New Hampshire.Shortly after winning his primary, Mr. Bolduc struck a far different tone in a Fox News interview, saying, “I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen.”“Elections have consequences, and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country,” he said in the interview.Mr. Bolduc’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.He is challenging Senator Maggie Hassan, whose underwhelming job approval ratings have emboldened Republicans in New England. The race could help determine whether Republicans gain control of the Senate in the November elections. More

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      G.O.P. Senate Candidates Race to Close Fund-Raising Gap With Democrats

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      Their fund-raising dwarfed by their Democratic rivals, Republican nominees including Blake Masters and Mehmet Oz have been in Washington gathering cash from lobbyists.WASHINGTON — Rushing to raise money and close yawning gaps with their Democratic rivals, every Senate Republican nominee in a competitive race is taking precious time from the campaign trail to come to Washington this week and next to gather money before Congress leaves for the fall.Fund-raising invitations obtained by The New York Times reveal days full of dinners, receptions and even some free meet-and-greets — schedule-fillers the candidates hope they can use to make a good impression and pick up a check on the spot.Two thousand miles from Phoenix, Blake Masters, the Republican challenging Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, made a campaign pitch on Wednesday evening alongside Senator Mitch McConnell in a conference room near the Capitol. Mr. Masters accused his Democratic rival of portraying himself as a moderate while voting like a liberal.“We don’t need as much money as Kelly, just enough to get the truth out,” Mr. Masters said, according to notes from a person who was in the room, which was filled with lobbyists who had paid $1,000 per political action committee to attend.As political fund-raising goes, Mr. Masters was making a modest ask, and he isn’t the only Republican to downgrade his financial goals. The Republican Senate hopefuls, many of them first-time candidates, have little choice but to race from lobby shop to steakhouse alongside the party leaders some of them castigated in their primaries but who now serve as lures for access-hungry lobbyists.The reasons are wide-ranging. Republican small-dollar fund-raising has dried up in the face of soaring inflation. Former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless appeals for his own committees have siphoned cash that would typically go to candidates or party committees. And the party’s novice Senate nominees lack the sort of wealthy donor networks that more experienced candidates have nurtured for years.“These are candidates that have never run for office before and never done the work necessary to develop relationships at the grass-roots or donor level in their own states or nationally,” said Jack Oliver, a longtime Republican fund-raiser. He then alluded to the way that many of them claimed their nominations: “If you can just go on Tucker or get Trump to endorse you, you don’t have to go meet with voters or donors.”For some major contributors, summer has just wrapped up, the temperature hasn’t much changed, and the election feels some time away. The advent of widespread early and mail voting, however, along with the need to reserve airtime on local television stations, means there’s little time left for the candidates to gather the cash they need.“To donors it’s early, to candidates it’s late,” as Lisa Spies, a Republican fund-raising consultant, put it.Of course, candidates of both parties have long jetted into the nation’s capital to raise money from the influence industry. And even as this year’s Republican class struggles for cash, the candidates have support from outside super PACs, most notably the one Mr. McConnell effectively controls, to ensure that they remain financially competitive. (Mr. McConnell’s group, the Senate Leadership Fund, accounted for 90 percent of the money spent on television this week in the Ohio Senate race, and an even greater percentage in North Carolina.)The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Mr. McConnell has asked his fellow Republican senators to contribute 20 percent of the money from their leadership PACs this election, an increase over past campaigns, according to a Republican official familiar with the request.“This is why God invented super PACs,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist.Yet the frenetic cash dash around Washington, shortly before early voting gets underway in many states, underscores the urgency Republicans are feeling to cut into Democrats’ fund-raising advantage. A major part of the motivation: Candidates receive substantially better television advertising rates than super PACs, so an individual campaign dollar goes further on the air.A spreadsheet of television advertising reservations shared by a top Republican strategist this week makes clear why many in the party are alarmed about their fund-raising deficit. Head-to-head, Democratic candidates have been sharply outspending their Republican rivals for weeks. In some states, like Arizona, New Hampshire and North Carolina, the G.O.P. nominees hadn’t aired even a single commercial in their own right through August and into September.Even in Georgia and Nevada, perhaps the two states where Republicans have the best chance to flip Democratic-held seats, the Democratic incumbents are overwhelming their G.O.P. challengers.From the week of Aug. 14 to the week of Nov. 6, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia had over $30 million in television reservations, while his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, had just over $7.8 million booked. In the same time period, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, had over $16 million in television reservations while her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, had just over $6 million reserved.Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, shaking hands with former President Donald J. Trump in Las Vegas in July. From the week of Aug. 14 to the week of Nov. 6, Mr. Laxalt had only $6 million in television reservations.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesIn key Senate races, top Democrats are raising millions of dollars online every month. In August alone, Mr. Warnock received nearly $6.8 million from more than 200,000 contributions, and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin raised nearly $6.3 million from more than 120,000 donations.In Arizona, Mr. Kelly raised $5.7 million from more than 170,000 donations on ActBlue in August. That sum is more than Mr. Masters had raised in total from when he began his campaign in 2021 through mid-July 2022, the last date that data is available..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.The Democratic advantage has been mitigated by outside Republican spending, including some hybrid advertising between the G.O.P. candidates and the Senate Republican campaign arm.But the disparity in candidate fund-raising explains why so many Republican Senate hopefuls have swapped public appearances at home for private events on more financially fertile terrain. It is Washington this week and next. Last week it was Florida, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, Rick Scott, squired eight candidates around his state and Sea Island, Ga., a resort community where his committee hosted a weekend donor retreat for many of the same contenders.What’s striking about the candidates’ schedules is how much work they’re putting in for relatively little financial payoff at a moment when some of the top-raising Democrats have stockpiled tens of millions. Individuals are limited at giving $2,900 to candidates, and PACs can contribute only up to $5,000.This coming Tuesday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, has Washington fund-raising receptions lined up at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., each hosted by a different group of lobbyists.It will be Dr. Oz’s second trek to the Beltway in a week: This past Tuesday, he was at the Northern Virginia home of Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, Republican operatives and Trump enthusiasts, where $5,800 granted a couple admission to an event and a photo with the television doctor turned Senate candidate.Mr. Laxalt, too, put in long hours far from Nevada. After attending the events in Florida and Georgia last week, he spent Tuesday at a $2,900-per-person dinner in Virginia’s well-heeled hunt country. Mr. Laxalt then came back to Washington to attend a series of events on Wednesday with lobbyists and Republican senators, concluding with an “Evening Cigar With Adam Laxalt Hosted by Premium Cigar Association” that cost $250 per person or $500 per PAC to attend (no word on if the cigar was extra).“The math is really simple: You can’t get there at $2,900 a pop,” said Mr. Reed, the Republican strategist.That’s not stopping the hopefuls from trying, however.Mr. Masters, who’s facing a Grand Canyon-size fund-raising gap with Mr. Kelly, charged only $500 per person to attend the reception with Mr. McConnell on Wednesday.The next day, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors hosted Mr. Masters for an afternoon gathering that was even more modestly priced.“This is a meet-and-greet, not a fund-raiser, so an opportunity for anyone who would like to meet the candidate to do so without having to make a financial commitment — though they would obviously welcome contributions!” Jade West, the wholesalers lobbyist, wrote in an email to potential attendees.J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, had just $628,000 in the bank at the start of this month.Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesOf all the Senate G.O.P. nominees, Mr. Masters may have criticized Mr. McConnell the most fiercely in the past. But that didn’t stop Mr. McConnell and his deputy, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, from hosting events for Mr. Masters and J.D. Vance, the party’s Senate nominee in Ohio and another candidate who took aim at the Senate leadership during the primary season.Mr. Vance had a paltry $628,000 in the bank at the start of this month.Mr. Oliver said that while it was probably too late to do now, Republicans should have lifted their Senate candidates’ fund-raising by creating a competition among the party’s would-be 2024 presidential candidates to see who could have raised the most for each of the top contenders.But, Mr. Oliver lamented, Mr. Trump and Fox News shape the G.O.P.’s wholesale politics today, all but determining primaries and therefore consuming the attention of candidates and their campaigns.“Relationship politics don’t exist anymore,” he said. “But that means it’s hard for J.D. Vance to go to Toledo and raise money because when you need a $500 check there, they don’t know you.”Shane Goldmacher More

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      Election Deniers in Senate Races Shift to Appeal to Voters in Middle

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      As post-primary pivots go, Don Bolduc’s overnight transformation from “Stop the Steal” evangelist to ratify-the-results convert could land him in a political hall of fame. It was an about-face so sudden and jarring that it undermined the tell-it-like-it-is authenticity with which he’d earned the Republican nomination for Senate from New Hampshire.But Mr. Bolduc was hardly the only Republican candidate to edge away from his public insistence, despite a lack of evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, or that 2020 had undermined the integrity of American elections.Blake Masters in Arizona, Tiffany Smiley in Washington State and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania have all made pivots — some artfully, some not — as the ardent, Trump-loyal voters who decided the Republican primaries shrink in the rearview mirror, and a more cautious, broader November electorate comes into view. These three Senate candidates haven’t quite renounced their questioning of the 2020 election — to right-wing audiences of podcasts, radio shows and Fox News, they still signal their skepticism — but they have shifted their appeals to the swing voters they need to win on Nov. 8.The real question now is: Can they get away with it?“I can tell you generally that candidates who do a 180-degree reversal in the middle of a campaign have to have a thought-out, strategic reason for doing so,” said Dave Carney, a New Hampshire Republican consultant who backed Mr. Bolduc’s primary opponent, Chuck Morse, but now supports Mr. Bolduc. “The pain has to be worth it,” he added.In some sense, the contortions are about having it both ways: signaling to undecided swing voters that a candidate is willing to move toward the middle, while winking at the right-wing base.After his primary victory in the Arizona Senate race, Mr. Masters, who was Mr. Trump’s pick to take on Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, removed language from his campaign website that falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen. “If we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today,” the website had unambiguously proclaimed.Blake Masters removed language from his campaign website that falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesOnce that erasure came to light, however, the Masters campaign let it be known that while the website may have changed, the candidate’s views had not. “I still believe the election was not free and not fair,” Mr. Masters told an Arizona radio station early this month. “I think if everybody followed the rules and the law as written, President Trump would be in the Oval Office.”Similarly, Dr. Oz has obscured his views more than changed them. After saying in April that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, Dr. Oz told reporters this month that he “would not have objected to” affirming President Biden’s election had he been in the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021.“By the time the delegates and those reports are sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it. That’s what I would have done,” he said.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Later that day, however, on the Fox News Channel, Dr. Oz answered a viewer’s question about whether the election was stolen by saying, “There’s lots more information we have to gather in order to determine that, and I’d be very desirous of gathering some.”Ms. Smiley, the Republican Senate nominee in Washington, dropped “election integrity” from a remade website after her primary victory, and with it, the statement that “the 2020 elections raised serious questions about the integrity of our elections.”Still, in a recent appearance on CNN, Ms. Smiley used a coded “he is our president” answer repeatedly when she was asked if Mr. Biden had been legitimately elected — language other Republicans have used to obscure whether they believe the outcome of the 2020 voting was accurate, while still affirming that Mr. Biden is indeed the president.“The campaign’s position has not changed on this issue,” said a Smiley campaign spokeswoman, Elisa Carlson. “Tiffany has long said that it should be easy to vote and hard to cheat — a position that is still reflected on our website.”Tiffany Smiley dropped “election integrity” from a remade website after her primary victory.Ted S. Warren/Associated PressMr. Bolduc’s problem has been his complete lack of subtlety or coded messaging, said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee who is now a city councilor in Dover.At a Republican debate just before the Sept. 13 primary, Mr. Bolduc, a retired brigadier general in the Army, declared unequivocally, “I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying that Trump won the election, and, damn it, I stand by my letter.” He added for good measure, “I’m not switching horses, baby. This is it.”.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.His nomination clinched, Mr. Bolduc on Sept. 15 left that horse in a ditch. “I’ve done a lot of research on this,” he said on Fox News after being shown a clip of his promise to stay the course on election denial, “and I’ve spent the past couple weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from every party, and I have come to the conclusion — and I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen.”When a flabbergasted Fox host, Dana Perino, pointed to Mr. Bolduc’s adamant statements before the primary, he shrugged: “You know, live and learn, right?”General-election turns to the center are nothing new, but few would say Mr. Bolduc, a political newcomer whose authenticity was his calling card, executed his smoothly.“Don spent the last three years hanging with primary voters, a third to a half who bought into the whole stolen-election thing, or at least thought something was fishy,” Mr. Cullen said. “When you spend that much time around people who feel that way, it’s easy to think everybody felt that way.”Then he won the primary and realized that it just wasn’t so, Mr. Cullen added.Mr. Bolduc’s post-primary switcheroo created a new problem: Even as he sought to court a general-election electorate, he now also needed to mend fences with his base. Supporters posted a Facebook message that they said Mr. Bolduc had sent them in which he explained his shift. Yes, he wrote with no evidence, election fraud in 2020 was rife — in mail-in ballots, voting machines and drop-box stuffing. But, he added: “Was Biden put into the presidency through a constitutional process … yes.”Mr. Bolduc’s Democratic opponent, Senator Maggie Hassan, has stuck largely to a campaign centered on abortion rights, and recently hit Mr. Bolduc on comments he made in August seemingly backing the privatization of Medicare. But she has used his flip-flop on election denial to say Mr. Bolduc “is trying to mislead Granite Staters and really hide his extreme record.”Dr. Mehmet Oz told reporters this month that he “would not have objected to” affirming President Biden’s election had he been in the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesDr. Oz had an easier task, said G. Terry Madonna, a longtime Pennsylvania political analyst and pollster, now at Millersville University. Though Dr. Oz was endorsed by Mr. Trump and stood by the former president as he spouted lies about the 2020 election, Dr. Oz’s own statements on election fraud were vague. Now, he may be making headway with swing voters to close the gap with his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.Moreover, Mr. Fetterman has so far shied away from attacking Dr. Oz on his affiliation with Mr. Trump, said Berwood A. Yost, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, because Mr. Fetterman believes he can win over Trump voters in the state’s small towns and rural stretches. Attacks on the man they still love may not help Mr. Fetterman make that sale.“Trump attacks are not part of Fetterman’s campaign,” Mr. Yost said. “He’s trying to appeal to Trump supporters with ‘I look like you, I sound like you, and I’m running against Washington, too.’”That has allowed Dr. Oz to tack to the center to try to win over voters in the “collar counties” around Philadelphia. But Mr. Fetterman’s aides note that Dr. Oz has not locked up the core Republican vote the way the Trump-aligned State Senator Doug Mastriano has in the Pennsylvania governor’s race.What Dr. Oz is showing in appealing to moderate voters in the general election, they contend, is not so much a pivot as a forked tongue.“Oz is a total fraud who says one thing when he’s in the suburbs and one thing when he’s rallying with Trump and Mastriano,” said Emilia Winter Rowland, a Fetterman campaign spokeswoman. More