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      What You Need to Know About the Elections in Italy

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      The elections could produce the first government led by a woman and by a hard-right party with post-Fascist roots.ROME — Italians vote on Sunday for the first time in almost five years in national elections that will usher in a new, and polls predict, right-wing government that will face economic challenges, a deepening energy crisis, and questions about Italy’s hard line against Russia and its full-throated support for the European Union.The elections come after the national unity government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, a darling of the European establishment who is widely credited with increasing Italy’s credibility and influence, collapsed amid a revolt in his coalition.The elections had been scheduled for February, but the premature collapse raised familiar questions about Italy’s stability and the popularity of the country’s far-right opposition, which had grown outside the unity government, and rekindled doubts about Italy’s commitment to the European Union.International markets, wary of the country’s enormous debt, are already jittery. And Italy’s support for sending arms to Ukraine, which has been influential within Europe, has emerged as a campaign issue, raising the prospect of a possible change of course that could alter the balance of power in Europe.Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, at a rally this month in Cagliari, Sardinia. Her party has a clear edge in opinion polls. Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesWho is running?Despite the broad popularity of Mr. Draghi, a Eurocentric moderate, it is the populist-infused right, with a recent history of belligerence toward Europe, that has had a clear edge in the polls.Most popular of all has been the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, led by Giorgia Meloni, whose support skyrocketed as it was the only major party to remain in the opposition. If she does as well as expected, she is poised to be Italy’s first female prime minister.Ms. Meloni is aligned with the anti-immigrant and hard-right League party, led by Matteo Salvini, and Forza Italia, the center-right party founded and still led by the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.Italy’s election law favors parties that run in a coalition, and so the coalition on the right has an advantage over the fragmented left.The largest party on the left, the Democratic Party, is polling around 22 percent. But Ms. Meloni’s support has polled around 25 percent, and the right is expected to gain many more seats in Parliament, the basis upon which the government is composed.The once anti-establishment Five Star Movement cratered from its strong showing in 2018, when it had more than 30 percent of the vote. But after participating in three different governments spanning the political spectrum, it has lost its identity. Now headed by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, it has opted to run alone. In recent weeks, its poll numbers have climbed up, thanks to support in the south, which is rewarding the party for passing, and now defending, a broad unemployment benefit.A centrist party called Azione, led by a former minister, Carlo Calenda, and backed by another former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, would claim a moral victory even if it only hit 6 or 7 percent.At the Brothers of Italy rally in Cagliari. Voters’ main concerns are energy prices, inflation, the cost of living, and Italy’s policy toward Russia and Ukraine.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesWhat are the issues?While Ms. Meloni’s post-Fascist roots have attracted attention and prompted worries outside of Italy, few voters in Italy seem to care. The issues of the day are energy prices, inflation, the cost of living and Italy’s policy toward Russia and Ukraine.On the last issue, the conservative coalition is split. Ms. Meloni, in part to reassure an international audience that she is a credible and acceptable option, has been a consistent and outspoken supporter of Ukraine throughout the war. Even though she has been in the opposition, where she criticized coronavirus vaccine mandates, she has emerged as a key ally of Mr. Draghi on the question of arming Ukraine.Her coalition partners are less solid on the issue. Mr. Salvini, who has a long history of admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, even wearing shirts with the Russian’s face on them, has argued that the sanctions against Russia should be reconsidered.Mr. Berlusconi was once Mr. Putin’s best friend among leaders of Western Europe. He once named a bed after Mr. Putin and still argues that he could make peace.The conservative coalition has proposed cutting taxes on essential goods and energy, offering energy vouchers to workers, and renegotiating Italy’s European Union recovery funds to adjust for higher prices. It is also seeking to reinvest in nuclear energy, which Italy has not produced since the 1990s and banned in a 2011 referendum.Its leaders have proposed a deep flat tax and the elimination of unemployment benefits popular in the south — known here as the “citizens’ income.” The benefit, pushed through with much fanfare by the Five Star Movement in its first government, acts as a subsidy to the lowest-income earners.To drum up electoral support, hard-right parties have also tried to make illegal migration an issue, even though numbers are far below earlier years. They are also running to defend traditional parties from what Ms. Meloni has called gay “lobbies.”The right also wants to change the Constitution so that the president can be elected directly by voters — and not by Parliament, as is now the case.The center-left Democratic Party has argued to continue the hard line against Russia and has emphasized energy policies that focus on renewable sources, cutting costs for low and medium-income families, and installing regasification plants to increase natural gas supplies as Italy faces shortages from Russia. The party has advocated easing the path to citizenship for children of immigrants born in Italy, and wants to increase penalties for discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people. It also proposes introducing a minimum wage, cutting income taxes to raise net salaries, and paying teachers and health care workers better wages.The Five Star Movement is, like Mr. Salvini, dubious of a hard line against Russia and against the shipment of Italian weapons to help Ukraine. The Five Star Movement is proposing an energy recovery fund to tackle the price surge and investments in renewable energy. It is also calling for a ban on new drilling for fossil fuels.What happens after the vote?Exit polls should come out the night of the vote, but since voting places close at 11 p.m., no official results are expected to be declared until the next day, or even later. But even once the results are known, Italy will not have a new prime minister for weeks.The new members of Parliament will be confirmed and convened in Rome in the middle of October. They will then elect the speaker of the Senate and of the Lower House, and party leaders for each house.The president, Sergio Mattarella, will then begin consultations with the speakers of both houses and the parties’ representatives. The coalition that won the most votes will designate their candidate for premiership. If their candidate is able to win a majority in the newly elected Parliament, the president will appoint a potential prime minister to form a new government.Should Brothers of Italy win the most votes, as is expected, it would be difficult for its coalition parties to justify a prime minister other than Ms. Meloni. More

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      Herschel Walker’s Company Said It Donated Profits, but Evidence Is Scant

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      Back when he was a businessman running a food-distribution company, Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia, said his company offered its customers more than just burgers and hot wings.“You are not just serving delicious, appealing food … you’re teaming up with Herschel, in an effort to level life’s playing field for those in need,” his company website once read.Mr. Walker, a former football star, pledged that 15 percent of profits would go to charities, a promise the company said was “part of its corporate charter.” For years, Mr. Walker’s company named four specific charities as beneficiaries of those donations, including the Boy Scouts of America and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.But there is scant evidence that Mr. Walker’s giving matched those promises. When The New York Times contacted those four charities, one declined to comment and the other three said they had no record or recollection of any gifts from the company in the last decade.“Herschel has been supportive verbally. I don’t think he’s given us any money,” said Jim Baugh, the founder of a now-defunct charity called the PE4Life Foundation. As late as 2017, one of Mr. Walker’s companies cited that foundation as a recipient of corporate donations, but Mr. Baugh said his foundation ceased operations in 2014.Mr. Walker’s Senate campaign declined to say when, how or even if Mr. Walker’s company had made the donations it promised. A campaign spokesman, Will Kiley, said in a short written statement, “Herschel Walker has given millions of dollars to charities,” but he declined to provide details.The Times’s reporting did not conclusively prove that Mr. Walker’s company failed to donate profits. It is possible that his company donated to other charities without naming them in public. It is difficult to know for certain that any company or group did not donate to a charity, because these are more than a million charities in the United States, and many do not disclose their donors.Mr. Walker, who is facing Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in his first bid for public office, has been dogged by repeated instances in which he was found to have given misleading or outright false details about his life story.He falsely claimed to have graduated “in the top 1 percent” of his class at the University of Georgia, when in fact he had not graduated at all: He left the university after his junior year to play professional football. He also said he had “worked in law enforcement” when he had not.And Mr. Walker said in 2020 that his food-distribution company, Renaissance Man Food Services, employed about 800 people. Earlier that year, it had listed just eight employees when it applied for and received a $111,300 loan from a federal program to assist companies through the pandemic.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.Democrats have cast Mr. Walker as a fabulist. “At this point, it’s clear that pretty much everything Herschel Walker says bears no resemblance to the truth,” Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia, said in a written statement.Mr. Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Georgia in 1982, retired from football in 1997 and began a career in business. He now owns a holding company, H. Walker Enterprises, which owns Renaissance Man Food Services, according to court records and Mr. Walker’s Senate financial disclosures.According to its website, the company sells food through brands like “Herschel’s Famous 34,” whose website offers 10-pound cases of chicken wings to customers like hospitals and sports bars. The company also sells merchandise with corporate logos under the brand “34 Promotions,” named after Mr. Walker’s football jersey number.Beginning around 2007, Mr. Walker and his companies began to describe a corporate policy of donating profits.“Fifteen percent of all my company profits go to charity,” Mr. Walker said in a magazine interview in 2009. “As a person who was blessed, I think it’s my responsibility to share the blessing with others.”In some instances, Mr. Walker or his companies did not use the 15 percent figure and instead just said “a percentage” went to charity.Mr. Walker’s companies are private, so there is no public accounting of their profits. But, in financial disclosures required for his Senate run, Mr. Walker indicated that they produced a healthy income: He reported $3 million in “partnership distributions” from H. Walker Enterprises and $214,000 in salary from Renaissance Man Food Services.The Times was unable to reach Mr. Walker’s company directly. The phone number listed on its website has been disconnected, and the company did not respond to messages sent through the site.It was unclear what Mr. Walker’s company meant when it said a practice of making donations was written into its corporate charter. Public records from Delaware — where both H. Walker Enterprises and Renaissance Man Food Services were created in 2002 — show no sign of such a pledge. Instead, both companies were created with a one-page “certificate of formation” that listed their name and address but said nothing about charitable giving.From 2007 to 2017, Mr. Walker’s companies identified the same four charities — the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Special Olympics, PE4Life programs, the Boy Scouts of America — and others who were unnamed as among the recipients of charitable donations, according to archived versions of their websites.Mr. Walker signed an autograph at a PE4Life Foundation event in 2003. “Herschel has been supportive verbally. I don’t think he’s given us any money,” Jim Baugh, the founder, said.Tom Williams/Roll Call, via Getty ImagesIn response to queries from The Times, the Special Olympics declined to say if Mr. Walker or his companies had ever donated, citing internal rules about donor privacy.A spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America said there was no record of any donations from Mr. Walker or his companies to the Boy Scouts’ national chapters or the Boy Scouts of America Foundation.The spokesman said, however, that he could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Walker had given to one of the Boy Scouts’ 250 local councils. The Times also reached out to local Boy Scout chapters in two places with connections to Mr. Walker — a council in North Texas, where Mr. Walker lived for many years, and a council in Savannah, Ga., where H. Walker Enterprises is based.Both said they had not received any donations from Mr. Walker or his companies.At the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, officials said they had received gifts from Mr. Walker, but not in the last decade. The group’s records showed that Mr. Walker had donated $860 in 2005 and Renaissance Man Food Services gave another $1,000 in 2006. At the time, Mr. Walker was leading a bike team that raised money from a broader pool of donors — in all, the society said, Mr. Walker helped raise $39,525 in 2005 and 2006.But the group could find only one donation since then that might have come from Mr. Walker’s company: a gift of $25 from “RMFS” in 2009.Mr. Baugh, the founder of PE4Life, said that, while he could not recall any gifts from Mr. Walker or his companies, he credited him with playing a key role in the group’s lobbying efforts. Mr. Baugh said that Mr. Walker had visited Capitol Hill to support a grant program for physical education: “You can always count on Herschel being there, every year.”In addition to those promises, Mr. Walker made at least three other public promises to donate revenue.In 2014, he organized two talent shows in rural Georgia called “Herschel’s Raw Talent” — intended to bring “American Idol”-style glamour to rural Georgia communities like the one where he grew up. “A portion of the proceeds from each on-site competition will be donated to the local county,” Mr. Walker promised at the time. In some interviews, he said up to 80 percent would be donated.In the end, Mr. Walker staged “Herschel’s Raw Talent” events in just two counties. One of those, Stephens County, said it never received any donations from the talent show. The other, Laurens County, said its records did not go back that far.In 2010, during Mr. Walker’s time as a mixed martial-arts fighter, he said he would donate the purse of one fight to a charity providing mentors in schools, run by a Dallas-area church called Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. The church declined to say if Mr. Walker had made good on that specific promise, citing donor privacy, but confirmed that he had donated to the mentoring program in the past.Mr. Walker’s campaign did not respond to questions about donations resulting from the “Herschel’s Raw Talent” events or the fight.But Mr. Walker has filed financial disclosures that detail a financial flow in the opposite direction — from charities to him. Just since March, the disclosures show, three charities paid him a combined $115,000 to give speeches. One of the biggest paychecks came from a Pennsylvania retirement-home system, which paid Mr. Walker $35,000 to speak and presented him with an award honoring those who exhibit “benevolence, patriotism and service to others.” More

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      Herschel Walker Says He’s ‘Not That Smart.’ I Believe Him.

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      For months, Herschel Walker refused to agree to debate Senator Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate race. Walker had also not debated any of his Republican primary challengers. He was riding a Donald Trump endorsement and the widespread resentment aimed at Warnock. There was no need for debate.Also, based on his incoherent, often incomprehensible public statements, he was bound to be horrible at it.Now the two candidates have finally agreed to a debate — on Oct. 14, in Savannah — and Walker has already begun to do what Republicans unprepared for the roles they run for often do: lower expectations for himself and raise them for his opponent.Walker said last week about the debate:“I’m this country boy, you know. I’m not that smart. And he’s a preacher. He’s a smart man, wears these nice suits. So he is going to show up and embarrass me at the debate Oct. 14, and I’m just waiting to show up and I’m going to do my best.”Mr. Walker, I’m also a country boy. In fact, there were about 2,000 people in your hometown, Wrightsville, Ga., when you were born in 1962. My hometown, Gibsland, La., had about 1,400 people when I was born in 1970.What does this mean as it relates to wisdom and intellect? Absolutely nothing.Many American presidents were so-called country boys from small towns. Bill Clinton was from a small Arkansas town, Hope, which had a population of about 9,000 in 2020. Jimmy Carter’s hometown is Plains, Ga., with a 2020 population of about 760. And Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Ill., with a 2020 population of about 770.Mr. Walker, I believe you when you say that you’re not smart. But intelligence has nothing to do with the size of your hometown or the quality of your suit. You are the personification of a game being played by Georgia Republicans: a wager that any Black Republican — in your case, an empty intellectual vessel — can beat the Black Democrat, a man who is thoroughly qualified and utterly decent.Walker is Georgia Republicans’ attempt to undermine the image of Black competence, by making a mockery of Black people, by replacing a thinker with a toady.It seems clear to me that Walker will inflate or deflate his intellect to fit a function. The truth is irrelevant. This is at the heart of Trumpism.And this is all political strategy. Walker for years claimed to have graduated from the University of Georgia in the top 1 percent of his class, although he didn’t graduate from the school at all.But when he was there, The Times reported, he had “a B average in criminal justice.”Now he’s framing himself as not at all smart.It is all an attempt to lower the bar of the debate so low that anyone, even Walker, can clear it.This is the same approach that George W. Bush’s team used against Al Gore. As Karen Hughes, the Bush adviser overseeing his debate prep, told The New York Times in 2016: “Keeping quiet was a way to keep expectations low for Governor Bush. In debates, you run against expectations almost as much as you run against your opponent.”The debate was scored by many as a win by Bush, who came across as “relatable,” while the clearly more knowledgeable Gore was chastised for sighing during the debate and appearing exasperated with Bush, a dynamic that Politico magazine ranked as one of “the eight biggest unforced errors in debate history.”It is the same tactic Trump used against Hillary Clinton, clearly the most qualified of the two for the presidency. As The Atlantic wrote at the time:“Through a combination of months of campaigning, leaks about his debate prep, and aggressive working of the referees, Trump has set expectations so low that it’s hard to imagine how he finishes the debate without getting positive reviews from mainstream commentators.”And sure enough, that’s what happened. As a Times article put it the day after the debate:“By the standards Mr. Trump, his team and we in the news media seemed to have set for the Republican nominee, Mr. Trump cleared the bar. He stayed more or less in control, never directly insulted Mrs. Clinton and did not create new controversies over policy.”Now it’s time for Walker to take a swing, playing the same game, and the media is playing into it in predictable ways.As Georgia Public Broadcasting wrote last week: “Simply appearing on the debate stage is more than what many politics watchers expected of Walker, and even a tepid debate performance could assuage some fears about his campaign and could reiterate his message and celebrity status just two days before in-person early voting begins.”Enough of this foolishness. Enough giving the unqualified undue lenience. Enough of giving laurels for simply bare-minimum composure and demerits for knowledge and acumen.Whether Warnock embarrasses Walker or Walker embarrasses himself or there is no embarrassment to be had during the debate is not the point. The point is that Warnock is a serious, competent candidate, and Walker is clearly a tool of his party — a Black former athlete handpicked by Trump to take down a highly educated Black clergyman who was elected by a coalition led by an ascendant Black electorate in the state.No one on the night of debate — no matter how it unfolds, no matter how much the media sacrifices message to mannerism — can change these truths. When Herschel Walker tells you he’s not that smart, believe him.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Watchdog Group Accuses Republicans of Breaking Campaign-Finance Law

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      A campaign watchdog group has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, accusing the group of breaking federal law by using money that is supposed to be earmarked for legal expenses on campaign ads instead.The complaint was filed this week by the Campaign Legal Center after the unusual use of walled-off legal funds by the National Republican Senatorial Committee was first reported by The New York Times this month. End Citizens United, a group that advocates changes to campaign finance law, joined the complaint. In July, the Senate Republican campaign arm paid for $1 million in political advertising using money that, under campaign finance law, is meant to be for legal expenses. The spending, which appears to have been used for ads in the Senate races in Colorado and Washington State, is part of more than $3 million in media-related spending through the Republican committee’s legal fund, according to federal filings in 2021 and 2022.Senator Rick Scott of Florida oversaw an enormous wave of spending on digital ads at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn addition to the formal complaint by the watchdog group, the Senate Democratic campaign arm has asked the Federal Election Commission for a separate ruling on the legality of the practice, in an effort to spur the notoriously slow-moving agency into faster action.In its request to the F.E.C., the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked for legal guidance on whether money raised specifically into such a legal fund can be used to pay for television advertising — something the committee’s lawyer wrote is likely to be illegal.“It is beyond the imagination of the D.S.C.C. to understand why the N.R.S.C. believes that candidate attack ads are expenses incurred in connection with a legal proceeding,” Jacquelyn K. Lopez, a lawyer representing the Democratic committee, wrote to the F.E.C. in the request, which was filed Tuesday afternoon.Federal law stipulates that money raised for such an account, to which individual donors are allowed to give three times as much as they can to the main committee fund-raising vehicle, can be used only for “the preparation for and the conduct of election recounts and contests and other legal proceedings.”Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Republican committee, declined to comment on the request. Previously, he has said the committee will “always find the most effective, efficient and creative way to get our message out and stretch every dollar, in accordance with the law.”The Senate Democratic group is seeking an advisory opinion from the F.E.C. rather than filing a complaint about the Republican practice, in hopes of receiving a response before the midterm elections in November. The commission, divided evenly between Democratic and Republican members, is a slow-moving body that rarely scolds a political committee or candidate in the closing weeks of a campaign.The F.E.C. would typically have 60 days to respond to such an advisory opinion request, but because the general election is happening in less than seven weeks, the Democratic lawyers requested a response “within 20 days.”David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Senate Democratic committee, said it had not filed a complaint against the Republican practice because it hoped to receive an answer as soon as possible. The Federal Election Commission can take years to resolve formal grievances.But by seeking an advisory opinion instead of filing a complaint, the Democrats also leave open the possibility that in the future, they could engage in the same practice of using legal money to subsidize television advertising. More

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      Will Cheri Beasley’s North Carolina Senate Race Break Democratic Hearts Again?

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      Since a blue wave in the state in 2008, winning elections hasn’t been easy for Democrats. But polling is evenly divided as Cheri Beasley and Ted Budd compete.CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The pep rally at the Lenny Boy Brewing Company Friday night was a packed and raucous show of confidence as Democratic officials greeted the “next senator” from North Carolina, Cheri Beasley, and the Mecklenburg County faithful asked about her plans for after her inevitable triumph come Election Day.Then the Rev. Derinzer Johnson, a North Carolina native recently returned from New Jersey, grabbed a microphone, with a worried look, to plead with Ms. Beasley, a former state chief justice: Let him help her.“Being close is not good enough — you’ve got to win,” he said later. “They’re not organized,” he said of Ms. Beasley’s political team. “They’re campaigning, but they’re not organized.”The contest for the seat of Senator Richard M. Burr, a Republican who is retiring, may be 2022’s sleeper race, garnering far less attention than the colorful campaigns in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia. Even Ohio has captured more of the spotlight, though North Carolina is a more evenly divided state and public polling has shown Ms. Beasley knotted in a statistical tie with her Republican opponent, Representative Ted Budd.That may be because the sleeper is also the sleepiest.Representative Ted Budd campaigning at Boxcar Grille in Claremont, N.C. Mr. Budd, hoping to shed his association with former President Donald J. Trump, is trying to come off as a generic Republican.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesIf fire is what voters are seeking, they won’t find it here. Neither Ms. Beasley nor Mr. Budd could be called incendiary on the stump, and that appears to be the way they want it: Ms. Beasley is running as a judge above the fray, and Mr. Budd, hoping to shed his association with former President Donald J. Trump, is trying to come off as a generic Republican campaigning against an unpopular Democratic president when the national environment favors his party.For Ms. Beasley, what passes for an attack line is her oft-repeated “This Budd’s not for you,” harking back to a beer ad from 1979.“If things continue as it right now, it’s a coin toss,” said Michael Bitzer, chairman of the politics department at Catawba College in central North Carolina.North Carolina is a state that loves to break Democrats’ hearts, and they can be forgiven their skittishness. A near lock on the governor’s mansion is countered by a heavily gerrymandered State Legislature that has secured Republicans an impenetrable majority. Democrats thought they had a breakthrough in 2008, when Barack Obama won the state, Kay Hagan knocked off then-Senator Elizabeth Dole as an underdog candidate and Ms. Beasley, then a former public defender and district judge, cruised to a seat on the elected North Carolina Court of Appeals.Then Mr. Obama narrowly fell to Mitt Romney in 2012. Ms. Hagan lost her re-election race in 2014 after leading Thom Tillis for months in the polls. Mr. Trump didn’t crack 50 percent but still beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ambitions for the Tarheel State fell short by over a percentage point in 2020. That same year, a well-regarded Democratic Senate candidate, Cal Cunningham, stumbled on a sex scandal and dashed hopes again.The Beasley campaign is quick to note that she has won statewide — twice. But since she rode the 2008 wave, it hasn’t gotten easier. After an appointment to the state’s highest court, Ms. Beasley won a full term in 2014 by 5,400 votes after a recount. She lost her 2020 re-election by 401 votes, joining the ranks of the Democratic brokenhearted.Ms. Beasley spoke with a volunteer at Chosen City Church in Charlotte. She is betting that in her evenly divided state, she can win in November by turning out the Democratic vote in specific regions.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesMs. Beasley’s bet this time is that in her evenly divided state, she can win in November by turning out the Democratic vote. Her focuses are the booming counties around Charlotte; the Research Triangle of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill; and Greensboro. She also aims to cut into the overwhelming Republican advantage in more rural reaches, especially with Black voters who are less likely to come to the polls. Her calling card is her judicial temperament: She is, she says, not a politician but a judge, who has held people to account in North Carolina and would do the same in Washington.But in a state where Senator Jesse Helms once used openly racist advertising to crush a Democratic challenger, and as the super PAC aligned with the Republican Party leadership goes on the air attacking Ms. Beasley as a big-moneyed lawyer, some Democrats want a little less balance and a little more brimstone.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.Times/Siena Poll: Our second survey of the 2022 election cycle found Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress, while G.O.P. dreams of a major realignment among Latino voters have failed to materialize.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.Ohio Senate Race: The contest between Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, appears tighter than many once expected.State Senator DeAndrea Salvador explained the stakes for Democrats: Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, could lose his veto power if Republicans in the gerrymandered Legislature pick up just a few seats. “It’s time to stop worrying about being nice,” she said delicately, “and start thinking about being kind” — her diplomatic prescription for a little tough love.And the Rev. Walter L. Bowers, the pastor of Chosen City Church on the edge of Charlotte’s sprawl, said Ms. Beasley was “a wonderful person, but people need to see how tough she is.”“When you have strong leaders that are not flamboyant, people mistake that for weakness,” he said.Playing into those concerns is Mr. Budd, a backbench Republican with six quiet years in the House but the kind of bland look that his party hopes can slide him into the Senate with minimal effort.His record is not all that tame. A gun store owner from outside Winston-Salem, Mr. Budd secured the Senate nomination by winning the endorsement of Mr. Trump.He did so, in part, by questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election, voting against its certification and calling the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol “just patriots standing up.” Jonathan Felts, a campaign spokesman, is quick to note that Mr. Budd also said Jan. 6 “was a bad day for America.”“Ted has consistently criticized those who broke the law that day and encouraged full investigations and prosecutions of the rioters,” Mr. Felts said.Mr. Budd at his primary party in Bermuda Run in May. His campaign has declined to say if he will accept the result of the November election.Erin Siegal McIntyre/ReutersMr. Budd’s campaign has declined to say if he will accept the result of the November election and claimed without evidence that Ms. Beasley might try to disenfranchise voters. Mr. Budd also opposed the recent bipartisan infrastructure and gun-control bills that his state’s Republican senators supported.Though Mr. Felts cited “Budd Crew Chiefs” in all 100 of the state’s counties and some 113 events and fund-raisers, Republican whispers of worry about Mr. Budd’s campaign are growing louder as he spends the last weeks of the campaign raising money behind closed doors, attending to Congress and leaving the task of earning votes largely to his advertising.“He’s depending on ‘I’m not a liberal Democrat, I’m a generic Republican, vote for me,’” said Pope McCorkle, known as Mac, a longtime Democratic strategist now at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.No one could accuse Ms. Beasley of letting advertising do the work. On Friday, after two events in Greensboro, she dashed from a family pharmacy in Gastonia to a get-out-the-vote rally at the historically Black Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte to the packed pep rally. The next morning, she kicked off a round of canvassing outside Charlotte, stopped by the Fourth Ward Barber Shop, spoke at a labor rally and greeted canvassers in Matthews before heading, lunch in the car, to Rocky Mount for a full Sunday slate of appearances in the state’s rural northeast.Ms. Beasley at a campaign stop at Fourth Ward Barber just outside uptown Charlotte. In North Carolina, winning might be less about persuading swing voters than about bringing one’s team out in force.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesFor all the talk of “purple” North Carolina, many political scientists say the number of true swing voters is tiny. The state is more a patchwork of deep-blue and deep-red redoubts. Winning might be less about persuading swing voters than about bringing your team out in force.North Carolina lacks a metropolis like the one Atlanta has become in Georgia, southwest of here. Mr. McCorkle points to “countrypolitan” counties that ring North Carolina’s biggest cities, which have remained heavily white and Republican even as the far suburbs of Atlanta have become diverse and politically fluid.Mr. Trump beat Mr. Biden in those exurban Carolina counties by a bigger margin than he did in rural counties.But Mr. McCorkle does not count Ms. Beasley out. North Carolina has traditionally been more liberal on abortion than much of the South, and with the Legislature on the edge of a conservative supermajority, the issue will resonate. Last month, a federal judge allowed the reinstatement of a 20-week abortion ban. Mr. Budd has co-sponsored a 15-week abortion ban with no exceptions at the national level.And North Carolinians have recoiled against conservative extremism when there was a sense that it had gone too far, as when Mr. Helms used the images of white hands to say whites were losing their livelihoods to “racial quotas” and people of color.For all his effort to look bland, Mr. Budd will be appearing at a rally in Wilmington on Friday with Mr. Trump.“Budd could rest on the Trump laurels for the primary. I’m not sure that strategy is effective for a general campaign,” Mr. Bitzer said.To stay on her message, Ms. Beasley will need to resist those in her party who want more fire. At Akers Pharmacy in Gastonia, she listened to voters describe their struggles with diabetes, cancer, soaring pharmaceutical costs and fickle insurance companies.Ms. Beasley, second from right, during a discussion about drug cost that included DonnaMarie Woodson, right, in Gastonia.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesThen DonnaMarie Woodson, a two-time cancer survivor and party activist, looked at her plaintively.“I’m not trying to be too controversial,” Ms. Woodson told Ms. Beasley, before laying in. “Health insurance is a right, and I will go down fighting for that, and I know you will, too. I know you will, too.”Ms. Beasley smiled calmly, then expressed her gratitude to everyone there, never uttering the words “Republican” or “Budd” or taking up Ms. Woodson’s invitation. “You’re not pieces of paper or documents,” she said. “This truly is, for you and your children, about saving lives.”Afterward, Ms. Woodson acknowledged that she had been trying to bait Ms. Beasley into a stronger response. She said she backed off after catching the candidate’s gestures toward her.“I didn’t want to open a can that she would be responsible for,” Ms. Woodson said. More

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      These Trump-Backed Candidates Won’t Promise to Accept Election Results

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      Six Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in key midterm states, all backed by Donald Trump, would not commit to accepting the November outcome. Five others did not answer the question.WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after President Donald J. Trump refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 election, some of his most loyal Republican acolytes might follow in his footsteps.When asked, six Trump-backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in midterm battlegrounds would not commit to accepting this year’s election results, and another five Republicans ignored or declined to answer a question about embracing the November outcome. All of them, along with many other G.O.P. candidates, have pre-emptively cast doubt on how their states count votes.The New York Times contacted Republican and Democratic candidates or their aides in 20 key contests for governor and the Senate. All of the Democrats said, or have said publicly, that they would respect the November results — including Stacey Abrams of Georgia, who refused to concede her 2018 defeat to Brian Kemp in the state’s race for governor. Mr. Kemp, now running against her for another term, “will of course accept the outcome of the 2022 election,” said his press secretary, Tate Mitchell.But several Republicans endorsed by Mr. Trump are hesitant to say that they will not fight the results.Among the party’s Senate candidates, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska and J.D. Vance in Ohio all declined to commit to accepting the 2022 results. So did Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan, and Geoff Diehl, who won the G.O.P. primary for governor of Massachusetts this month.The candidates and their aides offered an array of explanations. Some blamed Democratic state election officials or made unsubstantiated claims that their opponents would cheat. In Alaska, a spokesman for Ms. Tshibaka pointed to a new ranked-choice voting system that has been criticized by Republicans and already helped deliver victory to a Democrat in a House special election this year.Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican candidate for Senate in Alaska, at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Anchorage. She has also declined to say whether she will respect this year’s election results.Ash Adams for The New York TimesAn aide to Ms. Dixon, Sara Broadwater, said “there’s no reason to believe” that Michigan election officials, including Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state, “are very serious about secure elections.”To some degree, the stances by these Republican candidates — which echo Mr. Trump’s comments before the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections — may amount to political posturing, in an effort to appeal to G.O.P. voters who do not believe the former president lost in 2020. An aide to one Republican nominee insisted that the candidate would accept this year’s results, but the aide declined to be publicly identified saying so.And unlike Mr. Trump two years ago, the candidates who suggest they might dispute the November results do not hold executive office, and lack control of the levers of government power. If any were to reject a fair defeat, they would be far less likely to ignite the kind of democratic crisis that Mr. Trump set off after his 2020 loss.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.But they do have loud megaphones in a highly polarized media environment, and any unwarranted challenges from the candidates and their allies could fuel anger, confusion and misinformation.“The danger of a Trumpist coup is far from over,” said Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University who in early 2020 convened a group to brainstorm ways Mr. Trump could disrupt that year’s election. “As long as we have a significant number of Americans who don’t accept principles of democracy and the rule of law, our democracy remains in jeopardy.”The positions of these Republican candidates also reflect how, over the last two years, some of those aligned with Mr. Trump increasingly reject the idea that it is possible for their side to lose a legitimate election.“You accept the results of the election if the election is fair and honest,” said John Fredericks, a syndicated talk radio host who was a chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaigns in Virginia in 2016 and 2020. “If it’s not fair and honest, you don’t.”Still, many Republican candidates, including several who have cast doubt on the 2020 outcome, said they would recognize this year’s results. Darren Bailey, the Republican nominee for governor of Illinois — who said in a June interview that he did not know if the 2020 election had been decided fairly — responded that “yes,” he would accept the 2022 result.In Nevada, the campaign of Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for Senate, said he would not challenge the final results — even though Mr. Laxalt, a former state attorney general, helped lead the effort to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat in the state, spoke last year about plans to file lawsuits to contest the 2022 election and called voter fraud the “biggest issue” in his campaign.Joe Lombardo, left, a Republican running for governor of Nevada, and Adam Laxalt, center, the party’s nominee for the Senate, said they would not challenge the state’s results.Roger Kisby for The New York Times“Of course he’ll accept Nevada’s certified election results, even if your failing publication won’t,” said Brian Freimuth, a spokesman for Mr. Laxalt..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.And Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who said during his successful Republican primary campaign for Senate that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, promised to uphold voters’ will.“Yes, Dr. Oz will accept the result of the PA Senate race in November,” Rachel Tripp, an Oz spokeswoman, wrote in a text message.Three other Republican Senate candidates — Herschel Walker in Georgia, Joe O’Dea in Colorado and Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska — committed to embracing their state’s election results. So did several Republicans running for governor, including Mr. Kemp, Joe Lombardo in Nevada and Christine Drazan of Oregon.Aides to several Republican nominees for governor who have questioned the 2020 election’s legitimacy did not respond to repeated requests for comment on their own races in November. Those candidates included Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, Kari Lake of Arizona, Tim Michels of Wisconsin and Dan Cox of Maryland.Ms. Lake was asked in a radio interview this month whether she would concede a defeat to Katie Hobbs, her Democratic rival and Arizona’s secretary of state. “I’m not losing to Katie Hobbs,” Ms. Lake replied.Ms. Hobbs’s spokeswoman, Sarah Robinson, said her candidate “will accept the results of the election in November.”Aides to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Don Bolduc, the Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire, declined to answer questions about acknowledging the results. Mr. Johnson has been a prolific spreader of misinformation about the 2020 election and the Capitol riot. Mr. Bolduc claimed that the 2020 contest was stolen from Mr. Trump until Thursday, when he announced two days after winning his primary that President Biden had won legitimately.During a Republican primary debate in Michigan in June, Ms. Dixon would not commit to honoring the results of the primary — which she went on to win — or the general election, pre-emptively accusing Ms. Benson, the secretary of state, of election fraud.“If we see the secretary of state running a fair election the way she should be, then that’s a different story,” Ms. Dixon said. “We have to see what she’s going to do to make sure it’s going to be a fair election.”In a statement, a representative for Ms. Benson said she and her staff “work tirelessly to ensure the state’s elections are secure and accurate, and expect every candidate and election official to respect the will of the people.”A crowd in Phoenix watched in September 2021 as the findings of a widely criticized Republican-led review of the state’s 2020 votes were presented to state lawmakers.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesIn Arizona — where Republicans spent months on a government-funded review of 2020 ballots that failed to show any evidence of fraud — Mr. Masters, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for Senate, baselessly predicted to supporters in July that even if he defeated Senator Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat, enough votes would somehow be produced to flip the result.“There’s always cheating, probably, in every election,” Mr. Masters said. “The question is, what’s the cheating capacity?”A Masters aide, Katie Miller, sent The Times an August article in The Arizona Republic in which Mr. Masters said there was “evidence of incompetence” but not of fraud in the state’s primary election. Ms. Miller declined to say if Mr. Masters would respect the November results.Mr. Kelly “has total trust in Arizona’s electoral process,” said a spokeswoman, Sarah Guggenheimer.An aide to Mr. Vance, Taylor Van Kirk, cited the candidate’s primary-season endorsement from Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose. At the time, Mr. Vance predicted “a successfully run primary election.” But Ms. Van Kirk would not say if Mr. Vance would recognize the November outcome. Mr. Vance did not respond to messages.Mr. Vance’s Democratic opponent, Representative Tim Ryan, “will accept the results of the election,” said his spokeswoman, Jordan Fuja.In Alaska, Republican hesitancy to accept election results centers on the new ranked-choice voting system. After losing an August special election for the House, Sarah Palin warned baselessly that the method was “very, very potentially fraught with fraud.”Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Ms. Tshibaka, who is challenging Ms. Murkowski, a fellow Republican, said his candidate would not commit to honoring the race’s outcome. Mr. Murtaugh said — not without merit — that the new voting system “was installed to protect Lisa Murkowski.”Ms. Murkowski’s spokesman, Shea Siegert, said that “the Alaskan people can trust” the state’s elections.Jonathan Felts, a spokesman for Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, the state’s Republican nominee for Senate — who in Congress voted against certifying the 2020 election — declined to say if Mr. Budd would uphold the state’s results and claimed without evidence that Cheri Beasley, the Democratic nominee and a former State Supreme Court justice, might try to disenfranchise voters.Ms. Beasley said, “I trust that our 2022 election will be administered fairly.”Officials on other Republican campaigns expressed worries that if voters heard too much skepticism about the validity of this year’s elections, it could lead to a replay of the Georgia Senate races in January 2021, when Democrats eked out two narrow victories after Mr. Trump spent weeks railing falsely about election fraud.“The most important thing is to not get depressed about the elections and say, ‘Oh, it’s going to be stolen, so what’s the point of doing this?’” Mr. Diehl, the Republican nominee for governor of Massachusetts, said in a recent radio interview. Mr. Diehl’s spokeswoman, Peggy Rose, replied “no comment” when asked if he would agree to the outcome of the November election.His Democratic opponent, Maura Healey, the state’s attorney general, said, “We will always accept the will of the people.” More

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      Rally With Trump? Some G.O.P. Candidates Aren’t Thrilled About It.

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      Whether he is invited or not, the former president keeps holding rallies in battleground states. It reflects an awkward dance as Republican candidates try to win over general-election voters.Former President Donald J. Trump is preparing to swoop into Ohio on Saturday to rally Republicans behind J.D. Vance in a key Senate race. Two weeks earlier, he did the same for Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.Neither candidate invited him.Instead, aides to the former president simply informed the Senate campaigns that he was coming. Never mind that Mr. Trump, while viewed heroically by many Republicans, remains widely disliked among crucial swing voters.The question of how to handle Mr. Trump has so bedeviled some Republican candidates for Senate that they have held private meetings about the best way to field the inevitable calls from his team, according to strategists familiar with the discussions.This awkward state of affairs reflects the contortions many Republican candidates are going through as they leave primary season behind and pivot to the general election, when Democrats are trying to bind them to the former president.In New Hampshire, Don Bolduc won the Republican Senate nomination on Tuesday after a primary campaign in which he unequivocally repeated Mr. Trump’s false claims of 2020 election fraud. Just two days later, he reversed himself, telling Fox News, “I want to be definitive on this: The election was not stolen.”Two days after Don Bolduc, left, won the Republican primary for Senate in New Hampshire, he reversed his position that the 2020 election was marred by fraud. John Tully for The New York TimesSome of Mr. Trump’s chosen candidates, after pasting his likeness across campaign literature and trumpeting his seal of approval in television ads during the primaries, are now distancing themselves, backtracking from his positions or scrubbing their websites of his name.The moves reflect a complicated political calculus for Republican campaigns, which want to exploit the energy Mr. Trump elicits among his supporters — some of whom rarely show up to the polls unless it is to vote for him — without riling up the independent voters needed to win elections in battleground states.In North Carolina, Bo Hines, a Republican House candidate who won his primary in May after proudly highlighting support from Mr. Trump, has deleted the former president’s name and image from his campaign site. A campaign official described the move as part of an overhaul of the website to prioritize issues that are important to general-election voters.But Mr. Trump’s endorsement remains prominent on Mr. Hines’s social media accounts. Reached by phone, the 27-year-old candidate said he planned to attend a Trump rally in the state next week and then cut short the call.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.In Wisconsin, Tim Michels, the Republican nominee for governor, erased from his campaign home page the fact that Mr. Trump had endorsed him — but then restored it after the change was reported, saying it had been a mistake.“The optimal scenario for Republicans is for Trump to remain at arm’s length — supportive, but not in ways that overshadow the candidate or the contrast,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and a former top aide at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Mr. Donovan, as well as consultants and staff members working for Trump-backed Senate candidates, said the former president could be most helpful, if he chose, by providing support from his powerful fund-raising machine.“A big part of the problem is that these nominees emerged from messy fields where the party has been slow to unify,” Mr. Donovan said. “But to fix what ails, what these G.O.P. candidates need isn’t a Trump rally, it’s a MAGA money bomb.”Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement that the former president’s “name and likeness was responsible for the unprecedented success of the G.O.P.’s small-dollar fund-raising programs,” and that he continued to “fuel and define the success of the Republican Party.”Mr. Budowich added, “His rallies, which serve as the most powerful political weapon in American politics, bring out new voters and invaluable media attention.”But linking arms with the former president could create problems for candidates in close races.Even though he has been out of office for nearly 20 months, Mr. Trump has remained a constant presence in news headlines because of mounting criminal and congressional investigations into his role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, his refusal to hand over sensitive government documents that he took to his Florida home, and whether he and his family fraudulently inflated the value of their business assets..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;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.On Thursday, when asked about the possibility of his being indicted in the document inquiry, Mr. Trump told a conservative radio host that there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.”Polls suggest these controversies could be taking a toll. Among independent voters, 60 percent said they had an unfavorable view of Mr. Trump, compared with 37 percent who had a favorable view, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this week. President Biden was also underwater among these key voters, but by a far smaller margin of eight percentage points.Asked whether Mr. Trump had “committed any serious federal crimes,” 62 percent of independent voters said they believed he had, and 53 percent said he had threatened American democracy with his actions after the 2020 election.Republican candidates appear to be aware of such sentiments, backing away from Mr. Trump’s fixation on the 2020 election. While he has said that election fraud is the most important issue in the midterms, polls show that voters are far more worried about economic issues and abortion rights.Three days after Mr. Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz, the Republican Senate nominee, told reporters that he would have defied the former president and voted to certify the 2020 presidential election.Dr. Oz, a former TV personality, leaned on Mr. Trump’s endorsement to win a bitter primary. Since then, he has removed prominent mentions of the endorsement from his campaign website and has swapped out Trump-themed branding from his social media.Republican campaigns said that they would not reject Mr. Trump’s help out of hand, but that accepting it created a whole set of other problems: Where, for instance, could a rally be held to energize the conservative base, while minimizing the damage among independents?When Mr. Trump’s team called to say that the former president wanted to come back to Pennsylvania for a rally this month, Mr. Oz’s campaign guided him to Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County. The county was one of three that voted twice for Barack Obama and flipped to Mr. Trump in 2016. It was also the only one of those three counties that backed Mr. Trump again in 2020. The other two — Erie and Northampton — supported Mr. Biden.Mr. Trump’s rally in Ohio on Saturday will be his third visit to the state since leaving office — more than any other state so far. He twice won Ohio, a longtime presidential battleground, by eight percentage points.This year, his endorsement of Mr. Vance’s Senate bid has been widely viewed as the clearest example of his enduring political influence. Mr. Vance, an author and venture capitalist, was trailing in the polls before Mr. Trump backed him with just over two weeks left in the race. Mr. Vance won the crowded primary by nearly 10 points.For the rally on Saturday, Mr. Vance’s team directed the former president to Youngstown, a blue-collar area that had been a Democratic stronghold until Mr. Trump ran for president. The rally, at the 6,000-seat Covelli Centre, is also squarely in the congressional district represented by Tim Ryan, the Democrat running against Mr. Vance.The event is scheduled to start at the same time as kickoff for an Ohio State University football game. Buckeyes games regularly draw huge statewide audiences, and the matchup on Saturday is against the University of Toledo, an in-state team.The timing was not viewed as ideal by either Mr. Vance’s campaign or Mr. Trump’s team, and Mr. Trump was ultimately consulted on the decision, according to people familiar with the discussions. In the end, the two sides determined that it was more important to hold the rally on a Saturday night, when Mr. Trump has the easiest chance of drawing a strong crowd.Representative Tim Ryan at a tailgate party before Ohio State’s first game of the season this month.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesOhio politicians have long tried to avoid competing for attention with Ohio State football games. In an interview, Mr. Ryan said holding a rally at the same time suggested that Mr. Vance — an Ohio State graduate — was out of touch with the “cultural things” important to Ohioans.“It just says a lot,” Mr. Ryan said. “These little things just sometimes reveal a lot more about a candidate than it appears.”In a statement, Mr. Vance called his rival “a radical liberal” and said, “The only person out of touch with Ohio is Tim Ryan.”Mr. Ryan is also involved in a similar dance around the leadership of his party, given that Mr. Biden is himself struggling with low approval ratings.Asked if he would campaign with the president this fall — even if it were not during a Buckeyes game — Mr. Ryan said: “No. Uh-uh.” More

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      The Vance-Ryan Senate Race In Ohio Appears Closer Than Once Expected

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      Less than two months before Election Day, the Ohio Senate race appears tighter than many once expected in a state that former President Donald J. Trump won by eight percentage points in 2020 — even as there are clear reminders of the limitations Democrats face there.From mid-May until the beginning of August, Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, the Democratic nominee, had the airwaves to himself, according to AdImpact, the media tracking firm. He has also had a significant cash advantage over his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, who won a brutal primary with assistance from Mr. Trump, who endorsed him and is set to campaign with him in Youngstown, Ohio, on Saturday.Mr. Ryan, who had an easier primary season, used those advantages in an effort to define himself early as an independent-minded “fighter” for Ohio, highlighting his differences with the national Democratic Party at every turn.He and other Democrats have also moved to brand Mr. Vance as an inauthentic San Francisco transplant.Mr. Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy” who once identified as a “Never Trump guy,” grew up in Middletown, Ohio, but later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.“J.D. was born and raised in Ohio,” Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for the Vance campaign, said in a statement as he sought to tie Mr. Ryan to Washington Democrats.For all of Mr. Vance’s structural challenges over the summer, much of the available polling suggests a very close race in a state that shifted to the right in the Trump era, and Democrats are bracing for a challenging fall in key races across the country.Mr. Vance is now on the airwaves, assisted by significant outside spending. He, like other Republican candidates, is seeking to go on offense by emphasizing the issue of crime.And while Democrats see openings to paint Mr. Vance as extreme on the issue of abortion, they continue to face a difficult national environment defined by concerns about inflation and by President Biden’s approval numbers, which have improved but are still underwater.“He claims to be an independent voice, but in D.C., he votes with Biden and Pelosi 100 percent of the time,” Mr. Schroeder said in a statement about Mr. Ryan — a reflection of how Republicans are seeking to nationalize the race..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. Ryan’s campaign argued that he had spent far more time campaigning in Ohio in recent months than Mr. Vance had.“This race is one of the most competitive in the country because Tim Ryan has outworked and outcampaigned” Mr. Vance, said Izzi Levy, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan. She accused Mr. Vance of spending “the four months since his primary hiding from Ohioans and traveling far from Ohio.”Some Republicans, too, have voiced concerns over what they saw as a limited campaigning effort from their nominee for much of the summer.J.D. Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” grew up in Ohio and later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.Emil Lippe for The New York Times“From that point as he won in May, he seemed to be running a stealth campaign, kind of like a former presidential candidate in 2020 was doing,” said David G. Arredondo, the executive committee chairman of the Lorain County Republican Party, referring to Mr. Biden’s limited in-person campaigning in the last presidential election at the height of the pandemic, which some mocked as a “basement strategy.” But Mr. Arredondo said he understood the approach.“Whether J.D. was in the basement or hanging out with his family, who knows, but I was not concerned,” he said, emphasizing that the campaign has accelerated in recent weeks, just as voters traditionally tune in — Mr. Vance is expected in Lorain County on Saturday. “And it was hard for me to convince my fellow Republicans, don’t worry, don’t worry, he’s going to be OK.”“Their sentiment is now changing,” he added.His campaign event on Saturday evening with Mr. Trump is at the same time as a football game between Ohio State and the University of Toledo, a point the Ohio Democratic Party has used to cast Mr. Vance as an out-of-stater: “Having a campaign event on a fall Saturday night is a cardinal sin in Ohio,” a statement from the party read. 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