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      Woman Who Said Herschel Walker Paid for Abortion Is Also Mother of His Child, Report Says

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      ATLANTA — The woman who told The Daily Beast on Monday that Herschel Walker had paid for her abortion in 2009 told the outlet on Wednesday that she was the mother of one of his children, undercutting his defense that he did not know her identity.Mr. Walker, the Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia, had swiftly denounced the original Daily Beast article, denying its veracity and pledging to sue the outlet for defamation. So far, the campaign has not pursued any legal action.When asked earlier Wednesday by Brian Kilmeade of Fox News whether he knew the woman’s identity, Mr. Walker said “not at all.”“It’s sort of like everyone is anonymous, everyone is leaking. They want you to confess to something you have no clue about,” he said of Democrats and reporters. “But it just shows how desperate they are right now.”The woman, who told The Daily Beast she wished to remain anonymous to preserve her privacy and that of her child with Mr. Walker, provided the outlet with a copy of the receipt from the abortion clinic, a $700 check and a “get well soon” card signed by Mr. Walker. The article includes a photo of the card with what it said was Mr. Walker’s signature.The woman told The Daily Beast she was moved to say more about her relationship with Mr. Walker and the child they had together after he said he did not know her identity. The New York Times has not been able to independently confirm The Daily Beast’s reporting.Representatives for Mr. Walker’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Since beginning his campaign in 2021, Mr. Walker has contended with a flurry of reports scrutinizing his personal and professional life. Mr. Walker, a former University of Georgia football star, has lied about and exaggerated his business dealings, and he failed to disclose three children from previous relationships that he did not mention publicly.More recently, Democrats have put Mr. Walker’s history of domestic violence at the center of their campaign message. One television advertisement from a Democratic-aligned group, Georgia Honor, shows footage of Mr. Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, detailing a moment when he held a gun to her temple and threatened to kill her, calling the episode “not an isolated incident.” The spot has been running in Georgia’s largest media markets for a week. More

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      Whoops! Behold the Republican Trove of Truly Terrible Candidates.

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      Down to the finish line, people. Elections just about a month away. A ton of races to keep track of, but if you’re looking for diversion, you’ll find some of the Senate campaigns really … unusual.In a normal year — OK, let’s just admit there hasn’t been any such thing for ages. But if normal years existed in American politics and this was one of them, we could reasonably assume the Republicans were going to be big winners. You know, two years after one party takes control in Washington, voters have a tendency to rise up in remorse and throw out whoever’s been in.Except — whoops — the Republicans have assembled a trove of truly terrible candidates. You’d almost think the party honchos met in secret and decided that running the Senate was too much of a pain, and that they needed to gather some nominees who would guarantee they could keep lazing around in the minority.I know you know that we have to begin this discussion with Herschel Walker.A few days ago, Georgia looked like a prime possibility for a turnover. It tilts strongly toward the G.O.P., and Walker seemed like your normal Republican candidate by 2022 standards — terrible, yeah, but with some political pluses. His autobiography vividly described a spectacular rise to sports, school and business success after a childhood in which “I was an outcast, a stuttering-stumpy-fat-poor-other-side-of-the-railroad-tracks-living-stupid-country boy.”On the minus side, Walker was a tad, well, fictional on points ranging from his academic and business achievements to the number of his children.Walker also has a very angry and social media-skilled son who describes him as a terrible father to four kids by four different women, who “wasn’t in the house raising one of them.”Plus, Walker seems totally out to lunch when it comes to … issue stuff. He attacked Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act with its emphasis on halting global warming, as did many, many conservatives. But I’m pretty sure Walker was the only one who argued that “we have enough trees.”So maybe not a perfect pick for a candidate to run against incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock, a longtime public speaker, community activist and pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s old church. But hey, Walker was a really good football player! And a Donald Trump fave!As the whole world now knows, The Daily Beast reported that one of Walker’s ex-girlfriends says that he’d paid for her to have an abortion, producing the check for $700 along with … a get-well card.Rather problematic for a candidate who calls for a “no exceptions” abortion ban. Walker denied the whole thing, except the hard-to-ignore check. “I send money to a lot of people,” he told Fox News. As only he can.Walker isn’t the only awful candidate the Republicans are fielding in critical races. In New Hampshire, a Democratic senator, Maggie Hassan, is running for re-election to a seat she won by only about 1,000 votes last time around.The Republicans had it made. All the party had to do was avoid nominating somebody off the wall, like Don Bolduc, a retired general who the Republican governor, Chris Sununu, called a “conspiracy-theory extremist.”Surprise! Bolduc won the primary. And the way he’s handling his victory makes you think he was as shocked as the party leaders. From the beginning of his campaign, he’d told voters that he was positive Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election. In August, he was assuring them, “I’m not switching horses, baby.” Then, after he got the nomination in September, he, um, wavered. (“What I can say is that we have irregularity.”)This is the same guy who vowed to “always fight” for the life-begins-at-conception principle. But we live now in a political world where Republicans are discovering, to their shock, that people don’t want to be told what to do about their reproduction choices. Bolduc is now rejecting Lindsey Graham’s proposal for a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. (“Doesn’t make sense.”)In the Republican search for terrible candidates for winnable races, we can’t overlook Arizona. It’s a very tough state for Democrats. The incumbent, Mark Kelly, won the seat after John McCain’s death with the power of his story — an astronaut who took his wife’s place as family politician after she was shot in the head while meeting with constituents. Many of his supporters feared he’d be doomed to defeat in a year like 2022.Enter Blake Masters, the Trump-backed Republican nominee who appeared in one early campaign ad toting a short-barreled rifle that he kinda boasted was designed not for hunting but “to kill people.”Masters, a venture capitalist, rose into political prominence with the enthusiastic backing of Peter Thiel, billionaire megadonor. You certainly cannot dismiss a candidate with that kind of money, even if he does have a history of blaming gun violence on “Black people, frankly” and making a video while dressed in war paint in which he makes fun of people who worry about “cultural insensitivity.”Lots to look out for, particularly if you’re not interested in baseball playoffs or another “Halloween” movie in which Jamie Lee Curtis does battle with Michael Myers. Hey, you don’t need to go to a movie theater to be horrified. Just think what the Senate would be like if these guys win.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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      The ‘Core Four’ Senate Races, and Beyond

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      While Democrats are optimistic about holding the Senate, and Republican campaigns have faced a huge financial disadvantage, races are tightening across the country as the November election approaches.Nearly a month out from Election Day, Democrats are growing more confident about holding the Senate — but are sweating a coming flood of advertising spending from Republican groups aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the would-be majority leader.The picture looks dire for the G.O.P. across what Democrats call their “Core Four” races. McConnell’s public fretting during the primaries about “candidate quality” appears apt in a year that otherwise might be Republicans’ to lose.The G.O.P. candidate in Georgia, Herschel Walker, is facing a new allegation that he paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion despite his opposition to the procedure. Public polls since mid-September have shown Senator Raphael Warnock inching away from Walker as Democratic groups ramp up their negative advertising. Warnock is raking in money; his campaign raised $26 million over the last three months. But if neither candidate can reach 50 percent, Georgia will be headed for another runoff election.In New Hampshire, McConnell’s allies spent heavily to stop Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who limped into the Republican primary with just $84,000 in his campaign account and had raised less than $600,000 since the start of 2021. Gov. Chris Sununu, the big dog in New Hampshire politics, warned in August that Bolduc could not defeat Senator Maggie Hassan, who has bet heavily that Republicans’ support for banning abortion will be the decisive factor in a blue-tinged state whose motto is “Live Free or Die.”Senator Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat in Arizona, has raised such an astronomical sum — $54 million since the start of the cycle, according to his latest report to the Federal Election Commission — that Republican outside groups have all but written off his opponent, the venture capital executive Blake Masters.A major bright spot for Republicans is Nevada, where Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, unique among the Core Four, is polling behind Adam Laxalt, the attorney general. As my colleagues Jennifer Medina and Jonathan Weisman wrote this week, “Democrats in Nevada are facing potential losses up and down the ballot in November and bracing for a seismic shift that could help Republicans win control of both houses of Congress.”Republicans also argue that national trends — and the laws of midterm political gravity — are working in their favor.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Trouble for Nevada Democrats: The state has long been vital to the party’s hold on the West. Now, Democrats are facing potential losses up and down the ballot.As Election Day approaches and as voters begin to concentrate on the choices in front of them, Republican operatives expect the races to center more on inflation, the slowing economy, crime and President Biden’s unpopularity than they have thus far. To focus on anything else, the Republican consultant Jeff Roe said recently, would amount to “political malpractice.” Roe’s firm, Axiom Strategies, represents Laxalt in Nevada.“You only need to look at the past 24 hours to see why candidate quality matters and why Republicans have been so concerned about the flaws that their roster of recruits bring to these Senate races,” said David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.A CBS News poll published on Wednesday, which showed Kelly up just three percentage points over Masters in Arizona among likely voters, seemed to underscore Republicans’ argument about where the midterms might be headed: When the network pushed undecided voters to make a choice, the result was a closer race than other polls. The CBS survey also found that while Kelly is popular, 61 percent of likely voters disapproved of the job Biden is doing as president — a pretty gnarly number for Democrats to overcome.The money pictureAcross all of the big races, Democratic candidates enjoy a significant edge in campaign cash.According to a New York Times analysis of campaign finance reports, Republican candidates in the seven big battleground Senate races had raised less than a third of what their opponents had brought in by the end of June, the most recent federal deadline for campaigns to report their fund-raising totals.It’s fallen to McConnell and groups such as the Senate Leadership Fund, run by a top former deputy, to close the gap. In New Hampshire, for instance, the super PAC announced $23 million in TV ads aimed at defeating Hassan. And in Pennsylvania, the leadership fund has already spent nearly $34 million, primarily on TV ads.Money is only one part of the picture. Political operatives closely track “gross ratings points,” a measure of the reach of an advertising campaign. Democrats say they have been able to match or exceed Republicans on the airwaves in most weeks since the general election began, thanks in large part to their candidates’ cash advantages. A dollar spent by a candidate on TV ads typically goes further than a dollar spent by a super PAC because stations are required by law to sell them time at discounted rates.And while TV isn’t everything — digital ads and old-fashioned retail campaigns still matter — it’s one factor that campaigns and outside groups monitor obsessively, and it’s where they typically devote a bulk of their money. For that reason, it’s probably the best single measure we have of the relative balance of power between the two parties.AdImpact, which tracks ad spending, reckons that 2022 is on pace to smash previous records. The firm estimates that campaigns will spend $9.7 billion on political ads this year, which it calls “a historic sum.”The wild cardsHere’s the thing: Republicans need to pick up only one seat to regain control of the Senate.But in this year’s other competitive Senate races — North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Democrats have opportunities to cancel out any gains Republicans make elsewhere.In that second group of contests, the polls have tightened in recent weeks. It’s hard to know exactly why, but operatives in both parties noted that Republicans have been dogging their Democratic rivals by linking them to rising incidents of violent crime. Others said they always expected wayward Republicans to come home after Labor Day, which is when ad spending ramped up and most voters began tuning in.Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a progressive who knocked off two more centrist rivals in the Wisconsin Democratic primary, has struggled to parry those attacks. Wisconsin Democrats have gone after Senator Ron Johnson not by highlighting his penchant for foot-in-mouth comments on the coronavirus and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, but by accusing him of doing little to help the people of his state.They have linked him tightly to a plan by Senator Rick Scott of Florida that they say would cut Social Security and Medicare. But Johnson has opened up a narrow lead in the polls, aided by heavy spending from a super PAC bankrolled by Richard Uihlein, a Republican construction magnate.To the surprise of some Democrats, Cheri Beasley, a retired state Supreme Court judge running in North Carolina, has fared better than Barnes. Polls show her staying close to even with Representative Ted Budd, the Republican nominee. Beasley has relied heavily on “air cover” from groups like Emily’s List, an abortion-rights group that almost exclusively backs Democrats, and Senate Majority PAC, an outside group close to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader.Polls show Cheri Beasley staying close to even with Representative Ted Budd in North Carolina.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesAnd in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz has been closing the gap with Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, thanks in part to a $7 million loan from his personal bank account. Fetterman had a serious stroke on the eve of the Democratic primary and has slowly been ramping up his campaign activities as he recovers.Fetterman remains ahead, for now, but mainstream Republicans like Tom Ridge and Senator Pat Toomey have endorsed Oz — a signal that, despite concerns about his high negative ratings from voters and accusations about his medical practices, they see him as very much in the game.The hunt for a Red OctoberThere could be surprises, though — especially if the election turns out to be a red wave.Several Democratic incumbents look wobbly. An Emerson College poll out Wednesday found that Senator Patty Murray of Washington State was up by nine percentage points over her Republican challenger, Tiffany Smiley. But the poll, Republicans said, may have overestimated the percentage of Democrats likely to turn out in the fall. And in Colorado, Senator Michael Bennet raised just over $5 million in the most recent fund-raising quarter — hardly a juggernaut.In both states, the G.O.P. candidates have sought to defuse the abortion issue. Joe O’Dea, a blue-collar businessman running in Colorado as a political outsider, favors abortion rights and has been critical of Donald Trump, while Smiley has aired ads distancing herself from other Republicans on the abortion issue. George W. Bush, the former president, recently endorsed O’Dea and agreed to raise money on his behalf, while McConnell called him “the perfect candidate” for Colorado.If Republicans start throwing real money at long-shot candidates like O’Dea and Smiley, pay attention. It would suggest that despite many of McConnell’s nightmares about poor-quality candidates, this could be the G.O.P.’s year after all.What to readMore than a century and a half after the actual Civil War, references to a new “civil war” are flaring up in right-wing online circles, Ken Bensinger and Sheera Frenkel report.Elon Musk might be buying Twitter after all. It would be a wild ride, according to our tech columnist, Kevin Roose.When Biden met DeSantis. Katie Rogers was on the scene as the Florida governor met the president to tour hurricane-ravaged areas of the state, with the specter of 2024 hanging over their encounter.J. David Goodman writes about Patriot Mobile, a Christian cellphone company that has become a rising force in Texas politics.Annie Karni explores the toxic relationship between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy, her chief antagonist and a possible successor.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Poll Update: Republicans Gain in the Senate

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      A closer look at Pennsylvania and Nevada, and some Democratic leads that seem vulnerable.John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, has seen his lead in the polls dwindle, perhaps because Republican voters are coming home to their party. Hannah Beier/ReutersTwo weeks ago, we noted early signs that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate.Now it’s clear the race has shifted toward Republicans in important ways. Democrats might still lead enough races to hold the chamber, but their position is starting to look quite vulnerable.On average, Republicans have gained three points across 19 post-Labor Day polls of the key Senate battleground states, compared with pre-Labor Day polls of the same states by the same pollsters.The shift is similar to what we observed a few weeks ago. What’s changed with more data: We can be sure that the polling shift is real, and we have more clarity about where Republicans are making their biggest gains — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.We focused on Wisconsin last time we talked about Republican gains, so today we’ll focus on Pennsylvania.PennsylvaniaIf you’re a Democrat, there’s still one very important thing you can cling to in Pennsylvania: the lead.John Fetterman still leads Dr. Mehmet Oz in the polls taken since Labor Day. In fact, he basically leads in every one of them, by an average of around four percentage points.But Dr. Oz has nonetheless made significant gains. On average, he has closed by a net of six percentage points in post-Labor Day polling, compared with surveys by the same pollsters taken before Labor Day.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Trouble for Nevada Democrats: The state has long been vital to the party’s hold on the West. Now, Democrats are facing potential losses up and down the ballot.Democrats’ House Chances: Democrats are not favored to win the House, but the notion of retaining the chamber is not as far-fetched as it once was, ​​writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Latino Voters: A recent Times/Siena poll found Democrats faring far worse than they have in the past with Hispanic voters. “The Daily” looks at what the poll reveals about this key voting bloc.Michigan Governor’s Race: Tudor Dixon, the G.O.P. nominee who has ground to make up in her contest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is pursuing a hazardous strategy in the narrowly divided swing state: embracing former President Donald J. Trump.Why has Dr. Oz surged back into the race? There are two ways to tell the story — one might leave Democrats feeling OK; the other might leave Republicans giddy. This is one of those cases where the best interpretation draws on both cases.If you’re a Democrat, the optimistic interpretation is that Dr. Oz is merely and belatedly consolidating Republican support after a damaging primary. In this view, Dr. Oz’s gains were inevitable and there’s not much for Democrats to worry about. With Mr. Fetterman still enjoying a lead, Democrats can tell themselves that Dr. Oz has mainly won over folks who were going to come around to him eventually.There’s truth to this interpretation: Dr. Oz came out of the primary with terrible favorability ratings. Many would-be Republican voters were not prepared to say they would support him. Back in a July poll from Fox News, Dr. Oz had just 73 percent support among Republicans. Now, it’s 83 percent. Realistically, many of those Republicans were going to rally behind Dr. Oz once the general election campaign got underway and once Republicans started judging him compared with a Democrat, rather than against Republicans.But there’s another interpretation that might be more encouraging for Republicans: Mr. Fetterman has endured forceful attacks related to his health — he had a stroke in May — as well as his views about crime and the economy. There’s reason to think those attacks are taking a toll.A Franklin and Marshall poll last week found Mr. Fetterman’s favorability ratings under water, with 46 percent saying they have an unfavorable view of him compared with 40 percent with a favorable view. Back in August, the numbers were nearly reversed: Just 36 percent had an unfavorable view of him, compared with 43 percent with a favorable view.Dr. Oz’s favorability ratings are still worse than Mr. Fetterman’s. And so far, most voters say they’re not concerned about Mr. Fetterman’s health. But there’s no doubt that Mr. Fetterman, rather than Dr. Oz, has become the focal point of the race over the last month. With Mr. Fetterman still struggling — by his own admission — to recover fully from the stroke, there’s no reason to assume that the spotlight will relent. As long as that’s true, Republicans can hope that Dr. Oz might continue to gain.Nevada?Wisconsin and Pennsylvania aren’t necessarily the only places where the G.O.P. is gaining in the polls.Republicans have picked up about 1.4 points in post-Labor Day Senate surveys in states other than Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The story isn’t always so clear in these other states — there are either fewer polls than in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, or the polls are a little less consistent about the size of Republican gains.Of the other states, it’s Nevada where the Republicans seem closest to assembling convincing evidence of a breakthrough. The recent polling there is fragmentary, but all of the recent polls show the Republican Adam Laxalt leading the Democratic Senate incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. In the (only two) post-Labor Day surveys with a pre-Labor Day counterpart, Mr. Laxalt has gained nearly three points.Although it’s still too soon to say whether Mr. Laxalt has inched into a lead, Nevada has loomed as an obvious weak point for the Democrats this cycle.President Biden won the state by only two percentage points in 2020, and it’s not a state where Democrats can draw on their demographic strengths. College-educated voters represent a smaller share of the electorate here than in any other battleground state.Instead, Democrats depend on the state’s large and heavily Democratic Hispanic population. But Hispanics may be trending toward Republicans, and they would also probably be expected to turn out at relatively low numbers in a midterm, even if Democrats retained their margin of victory with the group.The big picture is … murkyThe scope of Republican gains isn’t just murky in the Senate races outside Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It’s murkier beyond the Senate as well.Over the last few weeks, there haven’t been a lot of generic ballot polls, which ask voters whether they prefer Democrats or Republicans for Congress. But there are mounting signs of a rightward shift on this measure.On Monday, a new Monmouth poll added to the pile. Republicans led by two points among registered voters, a pretty sizable shift from its last poll, when Democrats led by three points. Looking back over the last two weeks, there are a lot more Republican leads on the generic ballot than there used to be.There are still a few dissenting data points, so it’s still too soon to be too confident about whether or to what extent Republicans have picked up ground nationwide, but it would be no surprise if Republicans were pulling back into the lead. With economic concerns on the rise and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade moving farther into the rearview mirror, the opportunity for Republicans to reclaim lost ground might be at hand. More

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      Herschel Walker Paid for an Abortion for Ex-Girlfriend, Report Says

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      ATLANTA — Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Georgia and an avowed abortion opponent, paid for his then-girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009, according to a report published Monday in The Daily Beast. Mr. Walker called the claim “a flat-out lie.”The woman, who The Daily Beast said asked to remain anonymous out of privacy concerns, said that she and Mr. Walker had conceived the child while the two were dating, and mutually agreed not to go ahead with the pregnancy. She said Mr. Walker, who was not married at the time, reimbursed her for the cost of the procedure, the outlet reported.As evidence, the woman provided a copy of a $700 check from Mr. Walker, a receipt from the abortion clinic and a “get well” card from Mr. Walker, The Daily Beast reported. The outlet published a photo of the card with what it said was Mr. Walker’s signature.Mr. Walker quickly posted a statement on Twitter and threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning. “I deny this in the strongest possible terms,” he said. “It’s disgusting, gutter politics.”The development is the latest in a series of potentially damaging reports about Mr. Walker’s personal life since he began his campaign for Senate in 2021. In June, The Daily Beast reported that Mr. Walker, who has criticized absentee fathers in Black households, had fathered a child out of wedlock. Later that week, the outlet reported on two more children he had not previously mentioned publicly or to his campaign aides.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Trouble for Nevada Democrats: The state has long been vital to the party’s hold on the West. Now, Democrats are facing potential losses up and down the ballot.Democrats’ House Chances: Democrats are not favored to win the House, but the notion of retaining the chamber is not as far-fetched as it once was, ​​writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Latino Voters: A recent Times/Siena poll found Democrats faring far worse than they have in the past with Hispanic voters. “The Daily” looks at what the poll reveals about this key voting bloc.Michigan Governor’s Race: Tudor Dixon, the G.O.P. nominee who has ground to make up in her contest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is pursuing a hazardous strategy in the narrowly divided swing state: embracing former President Donald J. Trump.Christian Walker, Mr. Walker’s son who has not endorsed his father’s campaign or appeared publicly on behalf of his father, weighed in on Monday evening, saying on Twitter that “every member” of Mr. Walker’s family urged him not to run for office.“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man,’” he continued. “You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives.”Mr. Walker responded with a single tweet: “I LOVE my son no matter what.”In an interview on Monday night with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Mr. Walker denied the account laid out in The Daily Beast article, saying he did not know the woman. When asked about the reported $700 payment for the abortion, he said, “I send money to a lot of people.”“I never asked anyone to get an abortion, I never paid for an abortion,” Mr. Walker continued. He said of Democrats, “They want this seat. But right now they’ve energized me even more.”Mr. Walker has also been found to have exaggerated or misrepresented other parts of his life story. He claimed to have worked in law enforcement when he did not. He exaggerated the origins of a chicken business he built. After starting a food distribution company, he claimed to donate a portion of his business earnings to charity but there is little proof that the organizations received the funds.Mr. Walker has made his opposition to abortion a cornerstone of his campaign message, saying repeatedly that he supports bans on the procedure with no exceptions for rape or incest. He has also endorsed legislation recently proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, that institutes a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mr. Graham’s bill does include exceptions for rape, incest or pregnancies that threaten the mother’s health.“There’s no exceptions in my mind,” Mr. Walker told reporters in Macon, Ga., in May, days before the state’s G.O.P. Senate primary. “You never know what a child is going to become.”The Georgia Senate race is one of the most closely watched in the country. Most polls show that the race between Mr. Walker and his Democratic opponent, Senator Raphael Warnock, is virtually tied. A spokeswoman for Mr. Warnock’s campaign declined to comment. More

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      Democrats’ Troubles in Nevada Are a Microcosm of Nationwide Headwinds

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      Inflation and a rocky economy are bolstering Republicans in their races against incumbent Democrats, motivating “an electorate that simply wants change,” as one G.O.P. consultant says.LAS VEGAS — The Culinary Workers Union members who are knocking on doors to get out the vote are on the cursed-at front lines of the Democratic Party’s midterm battle.Most voters do not open their doors. And when some do answer, the canvassers might wish they hadn’t.“You think I am going to vote for those Democrats after all they’ve done to ruin the economy?” a voter shouted one evening last week from her entryway in a working-class neighborhood of East Las Vegas.Miguel Gonzalez, a 55-year-old chef who described himself as a conservative Christian who has voted for Republicans for most of his life, was more polite but no more convinced. “I don’t agree with anything Democrats are doing at all,” he said after taking a fistful of fliers from the union canvassers.Those who know Nevada best have always viewed its blue-state status as something befitting a desert: a kind of mirage. Democrats are actually a minority among registered voters, and most of the party’s victories in the last decade were narrowly decided. But the state has long been a symbolic linchpin for the party — vital to its national coalition and its hold on the blue West.Now, Democrats in Nevada are facing potential losses up and down the ballot in November and bracing for a seismic shift that could help Republicans win control of both houses of Congress. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto remains one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the country. Gov. Steve Sisolak is fighting his most formidable challenger yet. And the state’s three House Democrats could all lose their seats.The Democratic juggernaut built by former Senator Harry M. Reid is on its heels, staring down the most significant spate of losses in more than a decade. More

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      The Latino Voters Who Could Decide the Midterms

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      Diana Nguyen and Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherLatino voters have never seemed more electorally important than in the coming midterm elections: the first real referendum on the Biden era of government.Latinos make up 20 percent of registered voters in two crucial Senate races — Arizona and Nevada — and as much or more in over a dozen competitive House races.In the past 10 years, the conventional wisdom about Latino voters has been uprooted. We explore a poll, conducted by The Times, to better understand how they view the parties vying for their vote.On today’s episodeJennifer Medina, a national politics reporter for The New York Times.Dani Bernal, born in Bolivia and raised in Miami, described herself as an independent who’s in line with Democrats on social issues but Republicans on the economy.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesBackground readingTwo years after former President Donald Trump made surprising gains with Hispanic voters, Republican dreams of a major realignment have failed to materialize, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Jennifer Medina More

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      It’s Time to Take Democrats’ Chances in the House Seriously

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      No, they are not favored. But the notion of retaining the chamber is not as far-fetched as it once was.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, before the memorial service last month for Queen Elizabeth II in Washington. Republicans are favored to retake the House. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressThere were more than a few Democrats who were a little miffed about my Friday newsletter on gerrymandering, which argued that Democrats aren’t at a terribly significant structural disadvantage in the race for the House.I understand why Democrats don’t love reading that the obstacles they face — especially unjust ones — aren’t so bad. But underneath what some might read as a dismissal of the seriousness of gerrymandering is a kernel of good news for Democratic readers: Republican control of the House is not a foregone conclusion.No, I’m not saying Democrats are favored. The likeliest scenario is still that Republicans will find the five seats they need to take control. And no one should be surprised if Republicans flip a lot more than that — especially with early signs that the political winds may be starting to shift in ways that might yield some Republican gains in key races (more on this tomorrow).But the idea that Democrats can hold the House is not as ridiculous, implausible or far-fetched as it seemed before the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade. It is a real possibility — not some abstraction in the sense that anything can happen.In fact, not much would need to happen at all.If the polls are “right” and Election Day were today, the fight for the House would be very close. It would be a district-by-district battle for control, one in which the race might come down to the strengths and weaknesses of individual candidates and campaigns. With a few lucky breaks, Democrats could come out ahead.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.Those are two huge “ifs,” of course. But with five weeks to go until the election, those “ifs” aren’t exactly a good enough reason to justify writing off the race for the House.How could this be? It’s more straightforward than you might think. Democrats hold a narrow lead on the generic congressional ballot, a poll question asking whether voters would prefer Democrats or Republicans for Congress. If Republicans don’t have a robust structural advantage, as I wrote last Friday, then why wouldn’t the Democrats at least be competitive in the race for Congress? On paper, the Democratic disadvantage is fairly comparable to their disadvantage in the Senate — which most everyone agrees Democrats have a decent chance to hold this cycle.Of course, the reason we think Democrats might overcome their obstacles in the Senate is because we have dozens of polls in critical Senate races. Thanks to those polls, we know Democrats lead in Pennsylvania and Arizona, which we might have assumed were tossups otherwise. In contrast, we have no idea whether Democrats are leading in equivalent races for the House: There are almost no nonpartisan House polls at all, and they’re spread out across many more races.But if Democrats can do what they appear to be doing in the Senate, there’s no reason to assume they couldn’t already be doing something similar in the House. If we had as many House polls as we do in the Senate, perhaps Democrats would appear to be ahead in the race for the House as well.On this point, it’s worth pausing on the decision by House Republicans to pull adds in Ohio’s Ninth District. This district voted for former President Donald J. Trump by three percentage points in 2020; it was redrawn to defeat the longtime Democratic incumbent, Marcy Kaptur. But Republicans nominated J.R. Majewski, a stop-the-steal candidate who misrepresented his military service for good measure. The Republicans canceled nearly $1 million in scheduled advertisements.Mr. Majewski may well win in the end, but this is exactly the sort of story we see playing out in the Senate — weak Republican candidates failing to capitalize on their underlying advantages, with well-funded Democratic incumbents positioned to pounce. The district is now characterized as “lean Democratic” by the Cook Political Report.I asked my friend Dave Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report, whether he thought Democrats would appear to lead in the race for the House today if there were robust polling averages in every district, as there are in the Senate. He said they would, with Democrats leading the polls “in maybe 220 to 225 seats,” more than the 218 needed for a majority.The fragmentary nonpartisan House polling we do have is intriguing. These polls don’t say much about any particular district (with the exception of Alaska’s At-Large, another race where the Republicans may be forfeiting what little remains of their structural advantage). But on average, Democrats are running a net 3.9 points behind President Biden — a number that’s essentially consistent with a tied national vote (Mr. Biden won by 4.5 points in 2020) — across the 29 districts where there have been polls since Aug. 1.In the end, most analysts — including me and Mr. Wasserman — still think Republicans are favored to win the House. In this national environment, it would be no surprise if the polls trended toward the Republicans over the next few weeks. If they don’t, we’ll be nervous that the polls are about to be off yet again. That’s not just because the polls have underestimated Republicans in recent cycles, but also because the long history of out-party success in midterm elections weighs heavily on our thinking.But until or unless the polls shift more clearly in the G.O.P.’s favor, there’s no reason to dismiss the prospect of a Democratic House. Not anymore. More