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      What to Watch in Tuesday’s (Final!) Primary Night

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      Outside money has poured into New Hampshire heading into Tuesday’s primary as Republicans eye three opportunities to pick up Democratic-held seats, above all that of Senator Maggie Hassan, one of her party’s most vulnerable incumbents.But the leading G.O.P. candidate for Senate, Don Bolduc, is an election denier with a history of outlandish statements. His closest rival, Chuck Morse, the State Senate president, is playing on fears that nominating Mr. Bolduc could mean squandering a major opening.Ms. Hassan, a Democrat, narrowly won the seat in 2016. In a 50-50 U.S. Senate, every competitive race has the potential to tip the balance of power.New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware are all holding primaries on Tuesday. It’s not a big night, but it’s the last round of voting before the November midterm elections.Here are the races to watch.Don Bolduc, a retired Army general, center, during a campaign appearance at the American Legion in Laconia, N.H., on Saturday.John Tully for The New York TimesA competitive Senate primaryPresident Biden carried New Hampshire by seven percentage points in 2020, and successful statewide Republican politicians have tended to hew to the center, appealing to independents and conservative Democrats. But Mr. Bolduc, a retired Army general, has not only embraced Mr. Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 presidential election, he has also called Gov. Chris Sununu a “Chinese Communist sympathizer” and questioned whether the United States still needs the F.B.I. (Mr. Sununu has called Mr. Bolduc a conspiracy theorist.) Money from super PACs with ties to both Republican and Democratic Senate leadership has flowed in to try to tip the scales, with the Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic group, spending millions to attack Mr. Morse, the establishment-backed candidate — a gambit that could aid Mr. Bolduc. Mr. Morse, who has the backing of Mr. Sununu and establishment Republicans but is trailing Mr. Bolduc by double digits in polls, met with Mr. Trump at the former president’s New Jersey golf club on Sept. 2, but no endorsement has materialized.Then again, Mr. Trump hasn’t endorsed Mr. Bolduc, either.A scramble for House seats Republicans in New Hampshire are wrangling over the chance to square off against U.S. Representatives Chris Pappas and Ann McLane Kuster, two Democrats whom Republicans see as vulnerable. Matt Mowers, who worked in the State Department during the Trump administration, and Karoline Leavitt, who worked in the White House communications office, are the leading candidates in a 10-person field in Mr. Pappas’s First District, which zigzags across much of eastern and southern New Hampshire..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. Mowers, who lost to Mr. Pappas in 2020, earned the endorsements of the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and the minority whip, Steve Scalise. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the third-ranking House Republican, is supporting Ms. Leavitt, who once worked for her. Ms. Leavitt and other Republican contenders have portrayed Mr. Mowers as an establishment tool and criticized him for voting in 2016 in both the New Jersey and New Hampshire primaries. (He voted in New Jersey before moving to New Hampshire to work on Chris Christie’s presidential campaign.) Mr. Mowers has defended himself by channeling Mr. Trump, saying he was being attacked because he had planned to “shake up the status quo.”In New Hampshire’s Second District, encompassing the rest of the state, seven Republicans are competing to face Ms. Kuster, a longtime adoption lawyer who is seeking her sixth term.George Hansel, the two-term Republican mayor of the liberal town of Keene, has the endorsement of Mr. Sununu. Other contenders include Bob Burns, the former Hillsborough county treasurer, and Lily Tang Williams, who ran for the Senate in Colorado as a Libertarian in 2016. In Rhode Island, six contenders are vying in the Democratic primary for the seat held by Representative Jim Langevin, who is retiring after 11 terms. Seth Magaziner, the state’s general treasurer, held a sizable lead in early polling. On the Republican side, Allan Fung, the former mayor of Cranston, is running uncontested.Odds and endsThat’s about it for what constitutes the excitement in Tuesday’s voting.In the New Hampshire governor’s race, Mr. Sununu, who declined to run for the Senate, is considered virtually untouchable in his drive for a fourth term. He faces negligible opposition in his primary and is heavily favored in November against Tom Sherman, a state senator who is uncontested in the Democratic primary for governor.In Rhode Island, Gov. Daniel McKee, the state’s former lieutenant governor, is seeking his first full term after replacing former Gov. Gina Raimondo, who left to serve in the Biden administration as commerce secretary. He faces four challengers in the Democratic primary, including Nellie Gorbea, the Rhode Island secretary of state.Republican hopes of recapturing the governor’s office rest on Ashley Kalus, a first-time candidate who moved to Rhode Island in 2021, and Jonathan Riccitelli, the owner of a hotel and building maintenance company, whose criminal record — much of it under another name — was reported by The Boston Globe. A college freshman, Zachary Hurwitz, also collected enough signatures to run as an independent.In Delaware, which has neither a Senate nor a governor’s race this year, the biggest contest is for state auditor, after the incumbent Democrat, Kathleen K. McGuiness, was convicted of official misconduct, conflict of interest and structuring a contract to avoid a procurement policy, all misdemeanors. In response, the state Democratic Party threw its support behind a challenger, Lydia York, a lawyer and accountant. More

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      NH Primary: How to Vote and Who’s on the Ballot

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      Republicans in the Granite State are selecting their choices to challenge Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, and two Democratic members of Congress. Here’s what to know about voting in the state:How to voteIf you are not registered to vote in New Hampshire, it’s not too late to participate in Tuesday’s primary contests, thanks to the state’s same-day voter registration law.To register at your nearest polling location, don’t forget to bring a document to prove your citizenship, like a passport or a birth certificate, in addition to a document proving that you live in New Hampshire. That can be a New Hampshire driver’s license with your current address, a utility bill or many other forms of proof. More information about registering to vote can be found here.Not sure if you’re registered? You can check here.Polls in New Hampshire are open until at least 7 p.m. Some towns offer later hours. You can find out when your nearest polling location is open by entering your home address here.Don’t forget to bring photo identification to your polling location. You can find more information about which forms of identification count here.If you received an absentee ballot but have not mailed it back, you can deliver it in person to your town clerk before 5 p.m. You will be required to present photo identification. It is too late to mail your ballot.Where to voteFind your nearest polling location here.If you are returning a mail ballot rather than voting in person, you can look up the address of your town clerk here.Who’s on the ballotRepublican voters will pick their party’s nominee to challenge Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who is seeking her second term. Ten candidates are on the ballot, including Chuck Morse, president of the New Hampshire Senate, and Don Bolduc, a retired brigadier general of the U.S. Army.Republicans will make their picks for the state’s two House seats, which are currently occupied by Democrats. Two former members of the Trump administration have risen to the top of a long list of primary candidates for the First Congressional District: Matt Mowers, who served as an adviser in the State Department, and Karoline Leavitt, who worked in the press office. The winner will face Representative Chris Pappas.Seven candidates will compete in the Second Congressional District, where Representative Annie Kuster, a Democrat, hopes to claim her fifth term in November. Gov. Chris Sununu endorsed George Hansel, a mayor and businessman.You can see a complete sample ballot here. More

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      Chuck Schumer to Push $15 Million Into Democrats’ Fight to Hold Senate

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      WASHINGTON — Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, plans to transfer $15 million from his campaign account to the Democratic Senate campaign effort as well as to several of the party’s key candidates, according to a Democrat with knowledge of his plans.The infusion of cash comes as Mr. Schumer appears comfortable in his re-election bid in New York. Now he will redeploy his financial resources in the closing weeks of the midterm campaigns to help him hang on to his job as majority leader.“Keeping and growing the Democratic majority in the Senate is my top priority,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement.The Democrat with knowledge of the plans, who insisted on anonymity, said Mr. Schumer would send $5 million directly to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for its campaign operations. He will also provide $1 million each to Democrats in several races seen as most critical to the party’s chances of holding on to its majority.The incumbents receiving the money will be Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.Five other Democratic candidates trying to unseat Republican incumbents or win open seats — Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin, John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Cheri Beasley in North Carolina, Representative Tim Ryan in Ohio and Representative Val Demings in Florida — will also receive $1 million apiece.Mr. Schumer will contribute $500,000 each to Senators Michael Bennet of Colorado and Patty Murray of Washington, who face Republican challengers.The Republican Senate campaign organization has faced money challenges, and individual G.O.P. candidates have been outraised by Democrats mounting strong efforts in what was initially viewed as a difficult political environment likely to cost them the majority.But legislative successes and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade have put Democrats on the offensive in recent weeks, raising hopes in the party that it can retain Senate control.As of his last campaign finance report, at the end of June, Mr. Schumer had nearly $38 million in cash on hand for his re-election bid, providing him with a cushion to divert money from his own campaign.A political action committee tied to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has also invested heavily in Senate races, trying to make up for the financial shortcomings of some Republican campaigns. More

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      Introducing ‘The Tilt,’ a Newsletter About Elections and Polling

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      Ahead of the 2020 election, I wrote a daily article on the latest polls — internally, we called it my “polling diary.” To my surprise, tens of thousands of people signed up to be notified whenever we published a new diary entry. You might be one of them!This cycle, we’re taking email all the way. We’re launching The Tilt, a newsletter on elections and polling in the run-up to the November midterm elections — and beyond.You can sign up for it here.The subject matter will be no surprise to longtime followers: analysis of the latest surveys and electoral trends. This year’s fight for control of Congress will be our major focus, but longer-term electoral trends, partisan polarization, threats to American democracy, voting laws and — gulp — the 2024 presidential campaign will also be on our radar.We’ll also visit wonkier subjects, like polling methodology. Yes, it’s arcane, but after the last decade of high-profile polling misfires, it’s worth a deeper exploration of what pollsters are doing right or wrong. We hope to write accessibly enough to lure the uninitiated. If not, we’ll flag it as “wonky” — as Paul Krugman’s newsletter often does — and you can skip it whenever your eyes start to glaze over.We’ll also try to have some fun.There are a lot of newsletters nowadays, but I think electoral analysis is especially well suited to this format. We can cover a flashy new poll number that may not be worth a full article, but does deserve to be put into context. And we can be more informal in offering provisional and uncertain takes.This newsletter will also be a natural home for work that doesn’t always have a spot on the Times home screen, like announcements about our coming polls (we’re in the field now, by the way); musings about the big decisions that underlie our work; debates on where to conduct our next survey; or the findings of our autopsy into our 2020 polling. Over the years, many of you have expressed interest in the inner workings of our operation. Hopefully, we can pull back the curtain. On a personal note, I’m also hoping it’s a way to sustain a conversation with people who care deeply about elections — without the vitriol often found on Twitter. We’ll try to figure out a way to engage with serious criticism, alternative perspectives and your questions. If you already have a topic you’d like us to address, feel free to email us at dear.upshot@nytimes.com.And please sign up! With Democrats showing rare strength for the president’s party at the start of a midterm campaign, it’s bound to be a wild few months. More

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      The Wives of Republican Candidates Are Getting Personal

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      Ready or not, here come the political wives.It’s that time in the campaign cycle when many nominees, especially those running for statewide office, shift from stirring up their base to making themselves more palatable to the general electorate.This year, the Republican Party is under particular pressure to slap a friendly face on its nominees, with a special focus on wooing women. Abortion has exploded as the midterms’ X factor, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling that women do not have a right to bodily autonomy coupled with a push by many conservative lawmakers to slash abortion access.This has ticked off an awful lot of women and is threatening earlier expectations of a G.O.P. electoral romp. Republicans are “getting killed among women,” Chuck Coughlin, a party strategist based in Arizona, recently lamented to Politico. Shifting polling data and surging voter registration among women in some states has a growing number of campaigns racing to moderate their nominees’ positions and soften their images.Cue the emergence of gauzy campaign ads starring the wives of Republican Senate hopefuls getting personal about their hubbies, several recently spotlighted by Politico.Take Ohio, where J.D. Vance’s first ad of the general election season features his wife, Usha, sharing tender bits about his youth: “His mom struggled with addiction. And his dad wasn’t there. But J.D. was lucky. He was raised by his loving grandmother.” And now, Ms. Vance swoons, “He’s an incredible father, and he’s my best friend.”Similarly, in Nevada, the introductory general election ad for Adam Laxalt shows the nominee and his wife, Jaime, snuggling on a sofa and relating the challenges of his childhood: raised by a single mother without a college education, didn’t know who his father was … “Adam’s early life wasn’t easy,” says Ms. Laxalt, who assures us, “Everything he had to overcome helped to make him a good man.”In Colorado, Joe O’Dea has an ad out featuring his wife, Celeste, listing Mr. O’Dea’s underdog bona fides: “Adopted at birth. Union carpenter. Left college early. Started a construction company from our basement. Joe’s a fighter. Always has been.”And in Arizona, Blake Masters’s first general election ad shows his wife, Catherine, waxing rhapsodic about his desire to put an ailing America back on track. “He’s in it because he loves his country so much, and he loves his state so much,” she insists. “He would make Arizona so proud.”Gag.Political candidates using their wives — and it is still wives way more often than husbands — as campaign props is nothing new. Their kids too. Clips of the Vance and Masters wee ones frolicking with their respective dads appear in the aforementioned ads, and an earlier spot by Team O’Dea features the nominee’s adult daughter Tayler painting her dad as a moderate on social issues, including asserting that “he will defend a woman’s right to choose.” (Mr. O’Dea supports abortion access up to 20 weeks, and beyond that in certain circumstances.)American voters tend to fetishize “authenticity” in their political candidates. And who better to give voters a sense of the real person behind the political mask than his family — most especially his devoted life partner? “I know a different side of him, and I just wanted to share that with people,” Ms. Vance explained in a recent interview the couple did with Newsmax. On some deep, even subconscious, level we are expected to absorb the message: If the candidate’s wife — and the mother of his children — thinks he’s a good guy, then it must be so.Spare me. The notion that there is some meaningful insight about a candidate to be had from his spouse praising him in ads or defending him in interviews or simply appearing at his campaign events is weak at best. Gov. Ron DeSantis’s wife, Casey, may genuinely believe he’s the cat’s pajamas; that doesn’t change the guy’s disturbing authoritarian Trumpiness. Just because Heidi Cruz sticks with him does not make Senator Ted Cruz any less of a smirking, self-righteous, sedulously opportunistic jerk. Melania Trump’s willingness to put up with Donald’s vileness tells us far more about her than him. And the less said about Hillary and Bill Clinton’s tortured codependence, the better.Let us set aside for the moment the enduring, and enduringly tiresome, political impulse to reduce even the most accomplished women to cheerleaders for their husbands’ domestic gifts. In the current political moment, this gimmick is not only trite but also distracting — and insulting to female voters.Mr. Masters may well be the World’s Greatest Dad. That does not change the fact that until recently he was proudly declaring his extreme anti-abortion positions, including support for a federal personhood law. (Post-primary, of course, his website has been scrubbed of this info, and he is fast moderating his rhetoric to meet the moment.)Mr. Vance may take out the trash without fail and read bedtime stories with exceptional panache. Or not. Either way, he has likened abortion to slavery and has pooh-poohed the need for exceptions in cases of rape or incest. (“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he has glibly declared.)Even candidates like Celeste O’Dea’s husband, who have staked out a more nuanced stance on abortion, are still running with the backing of a party looking to strip away women’s reproductive rights.Of course, some Republican political wives aren’t as interested in softening their boos’ positions as in giving them a feminine spin. At a rally last month in Pittsburgh, Rebecca Mastriano, whose husband, Doug, is running hard to the right in his quest to become Pennsylvania’s governor, had much to say about the G.O.P. and women’s rights. She started with abortion — “First, we believe in protecting the woman’s right to be born” — before wending her way through issues including a woman’s right to control her child’s education, to live in a safe community and to own a gun.For her big finish, she took a jab at trans issues, insisting that “a woman has the right to compete in sports not dominated by a man. And as Republicans we actually know how to define a woman, right?” She urged fellow travelers to boldly share this list of rights in the coming months, because “we’re not ashamed of what we believe in.”Maybe. But more and more, Republican nominees certainly seem, if not ashamed, then at least afraid of how their party’s beliefs might damage their election prospects. They are eager to change the subject and to convince women that they are not scary extremists — and several are looking to their wives for a big assist.Women who value the ability to control their own bodies should make clear at the polls that they are too smart to fall for this lazy whitewashing.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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      Must We Discuss the Queen and the Donald in the Same Breath?

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I guess we should begin with the queen. Hey, that’s a change of pace, right?Bret Stephens: I’m trying to process the fact that I found myself tearing up while listening to the story of her life put together for the paper by Alan Cowell.Gail: Alan’s piece was perfect, but I have to admit I haven’t been tempted to break into tears over the queen’s passing. Possibly because my household has Irish roots. You can appreciate what she achieved without romanticizing the whole British Empire thing.Bret: At the risk of digital defenestration, I will say that I tend to think the British Empire wasn’t an entirely bad thing for the world.Gail: [Here Gail bops Bret on the head, hard, with a bottle of Jameson.]Bret: Ouch, Gail! OK, before I get into even deeper trouble with some of our readers, she did preside gracefully over said empire’s demise and, as Maureen Dowd pointed out in her lovely column over the weekend, won over quite a few Irish hearts.The queen also made you realize that there is nothing as compelling as something that is supposed to be anachronistic — because it endures against fashion, resistance, indifference, decay, contradiction and time. Just like Joe Biden, apparently.Gail: Heh. Let’s let domestic politics sit for a minute and stay on the queen. I love the way you put that compelling-anachronism line, but my response is that things tend to get anachronistic because they’re just out of date.Bret: Well, true.Gail: But as I said, it’s easy to appreciate the queen’s achievement in just chugging on and smiling at strangers for so very, very long. Guess one of the messages of the moment is that nobody lives forever.Bret: The Atlantic magazine sent its subscribers an email on the day she died with the accidentally funny headline, “Queen Elizabeth’s Unthinkable Death.”Gail: We’ll see what happens next with the royal family. Will tourists still be clustering around to get a glimpse of that golden coach if the person waving from inside is Charles? Who, by the way, has always seemed like a dork.Bret: I feel for him, and not just because he’s lost both his parents in less than two years. Christopher Hitchens once had a memorable take on the royals, saying the love the British have for them “takes the macabre form of demanding a regular human sacrifice whereby unexceptional people are condemned to lead wholly artificial and strained existences, and then punished or humiliated when they crack up.”Gail: Do the unexceptional people include their actual elected officials?Bret: Many of them are exceptional, although some are just exceptionally bad.Gail: I always did think the queen could have retired early so Charles would have had a chance to be the sovereign before he hit his 70s. But so it goes.On the home front, I’m getting sort of fascinated by the big Senate races coming into the homestretch. Any favorites for you?Bret: I’m trying to wrap my head around the possibility of Senator Herschel Walker, who would be to Georgia what, er, Marjorie Taylor Greene is to Georgia.The Arizona Senate race between Mark Kelly and Blake Masters is a little too close for comfort, given that every week seems to bring a new disclosure about Masters’ deep unsuitability for high office — most recently his “9/11 Truther-curious” stand in college. I try not to hold people accountable for whatever they believed in college, but I’d make an exception in this case.How about you? What races are you looking at?Gail: Well, as an Ohio native I have to be riveted by the battle between Tim Ryan, a perfectly rational Democratic congressman, and the Republican candidate, J.D. Vance, who sorta peaked when he wrote “Hillbilly Elegy.”Bret: And when he was a fervent Never-Trumper.Gail: And then there’s Wisconsin, where Mandela Barnes, the Democratic lieutenant governor, is running a very strong race against Senator Ron Johnson. A campaign high point came when Johnson told conservatives he’d only taken a moderate position on same-sex marriage to get the media “off my back.”Bret: That’s the worst of both worlds, isn’t it? His principles are lousy, and he’s not a man of principle.Gail: I have to commend you on rising above partisanship and refusing to support truly terrible Republican candidates in places like Georgia and Arizona. Would you hold firm to that even if it meant a difference in which party controlled the Senate?Bret: In some pre-2016 universe, I’d be rooting for a Republican sweep. And I’d be rooting for Republicans to take at least one chamber in this election, except that so many of the Republicans on the ballot are so unmitigatedly awful that, as the kids say, “I can’t even.”Gail: Yippee!Bret: On the other hand, I think it’s pretty hypocritical that pro-Democratic groups are spending tens of millions of dollars helping MAGA types win Republican nominations, on the theory that they’ll be easier to beat in the general election. That’s what’s happening with the G.O.P. Senate primary in New Hampshire, where the Democrats are none too subtly helping a conspiracy theorist named Don Bolduc against his more mainstream rival, Chuck Morse.I guess I’d find it a lot less loathsome if it were just a cynical electoral strategy. But it’s pretty rich coming from a party that is otherwise attacking “MAGA Republicans” as an existential threat to democracy.Gail: Totally agree about those political action committees that were plotting to get the worst possible Republicans nominated just to increase Democratic chances.But there’s a difference between that kind of scheme and simply criticizing the most likely Republican nominee just to get a start on the final campaign.Bret: In some of these cases, they aren’t the likeliest nominees. And the lesson of 2016 is: Sometimes the bad guy wins.Gail: Speaking of MAGA Republicans, you wrote a very powerful piece attacking Joe Biden for his anti-MAGA address in Philadelphia. Let’s revisit.Bret: Well, here is where I trot out that old French quote about something being “worse than a crime, a mistake.” If Biden had wanted to denounce “election-denying Republicans” or “Jan. 6 Republicans” that would have been fine by me. But calling out “MAGA Republicans” is painting with way too broad a brush, especially when he suggested that anyone who was anti-abortion or opposed to gay marriage automatically belonged in that group. The whole speech reminded me of Hillary Clinton’s deadly “basket of deplorables” remark, which might have cost her the 2016 election: It did more to alienate a lot of voters than it did to persuade them.What’s your take?Gail: We’re talking about a Joe Biden speech, and I suspect that some of the responsible citizens who tuned in because they want to keep up on current events nodded off or switched to a “Simpsons” rerun before he wandered off into the Democratic agenda.Bret: One day I’ll give you my theory on why “The Simpsons,” “South Park” and “Family Guy” represent the last best hope of mankind. Sorry …Gail: But the Democratic agenda is a winner, even when Biden’s selling it. Middle-of-the-road voters are eager to hear about ways they might get more help with medical bills, especially for drugs.And abortion! Don’t know if I’m amused or angry about all the Republican candidates who’ve suddenly scrubbed all mention of the subject off their websites.Both, I guess.Bret: It’s good to see voters energized to defend abortion rights at the state level. Not sure how winning the Democratic agenda is, except among Democrats themselves or their media allies who seem to think that inflation has been bested and the student-loan forgiveness plan is universally popular.I know Democrats are now feeling confident about the midterms, at least when it comes to holding the Senate. But if I were on your team I’d curb the enthusiasm.Gail: I do love the way you sneak references to TV shows into your comments. Tell me — just to stop talking about politics for a minute — what are your all-time favorite shows?Bret: I probably should say “Seinfeld” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but I really do love my cartoons. My all-time favorite South Park episode is the one about the underpants gnomes, who go around stealing people’s underwear in the middle of the night in order to bring it to their underground lair. They have a three-phased approach to making money: Phase One, collect underpants. Phase Two, ? Phase Three, Profit.That pretty much explains most government policies, plus a big part of the start-up economy. And you?Gail: Hey, haven’t watched “South Park” for years. You’re inspiring me.My all-time favorite is “The Sopranos,” the greatest series ever made. We’ve been watching it every night lately. When it’s over I’m ready for a comedy, and my No. 1 pick is “30 Rock.” Tina Fey is a genius. And despite not being a sports enthusiast, I have a strong attachment to “Friday Night Lights.”I so hope our politics evolves again into something people want to gab about. Definitely worrisome that even at the most liberal dinner parties in town, people always wind up back at Donald Trump.Except us, of course, Bret.Bret: Us? Trump? Who?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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      Oz Sharpens Attacks on Fetterman as Pennsylvania Senate Race Tightens

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      SPRINGFIELD, Pa. — Dr. Mehmet Oz, trailing in the polls and still contending with an image as an out-of-touch, carpetbagging elitist, is seeking to reboot his Senate campaign in Pennsylvania in the final sprint to November. In recent weeks, Dr. Oz has sharpened his attacks against his Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, blasting him for his initial refusal to debate and claiming that Mr. Fetterman was trying to conceal the extent of the damage done by a stroke in May. He has enlisted help from prominent Republicans, campaigning with Senator Patrick J. Toomey and, on Thursday, bringing in Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, for a town-hall-style event. On Tuesday, he even appeared to distance himself from his political benefactor, former President Donald J. Trump, by suggesting that he would have rejected Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.The Senate race in Pennsylvania is one of the most closely watched in the country. Its outcome could not only determine which party controls the chamber after the fall elections but illustrate just how firm of a grasp Mr. Trump has on his voters in 2022. Mr. Trump endorsed Dr. Oz and has held two rallies for him in recent months, but how deep Dr. Oz’s support runs among working-class Trump supporters in the state remains a question mark. In addition to mocking Mr. Fetterman’s stroke recovery last week by listing bogus “concessions” he would make in a potential debate, Dr. Oz has been attacking his opponent as soft on crime, hitting him in particular over his support for “second chances” for felons as the head of the state’s Board of Pardons.Dr. Oz has enlisted help from prominent Republicans like Nikki Haley, whose blood pressure he checked at their town-hall-style event in Springfield, Pa., on Thursday.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesOn Thursday afternoon, at the event with Ms. Haley, Dr. Oz enacted a “mock debate” in which he interrogated an absent Mr. Fetterman, asking, “Why do you believe that life sentences aren’t right even in cases of murder?” Speaking in the suburban Philadelphia community of Springfield, he recalled his years as a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania as he continued to criticize Mr. Fetterman on crime. “I lived in West Philly,” Dr. Oz said. “I could walk to school. It wasn’t a problem. I can’t make that walk today. You can’t either.” Dr. Oz has sought to put his campaign on a more aggressive footing as polls show a tightening race. Mr. Fetterman’s double-digit lead in the polls at midsummer has shrunk to single digits in two surveys late last month. One reason may be that some independent voters are breaking for Dr. Oz. He led in late August with those voters in the two surveys — by 10 percentage points in a Susquehanna Polling and Research survey and by 12 points in an Emerson College Poll.Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in the state, said there was a model of how a Republican candidate wins a statewide race in purple Pennsylvania.“You run to the right of Democrats on social issues, especially in the western part of the state, which helps you get conservative Democrats,” Mr. Nicholas said. “You hold your Republican base, and you get close to 60 percent of the independents.”The challenge for Dr. Oz is coalescing that Republican base.Both recent polls showed him winning only 77 to 78 percent of Republican voters, compared with Mr. Fetterman winning close to nine out of 10 Democrats. Some in the crowd at a Trump rally in May booed Dr. Oz, reflecting the views of certain Republicans that he is not conservative enough.While the response to Dr. Oz at the former president’s rally on Saturday was largely more receptive, some jeers of “RINO,” a conservative insult meaning Republican in Name Only, could be heard.Barney Keller, a spokesman for Dr. Oz, said the latest public polling predated the campaign’s messaging “about Fetterman dodging debates.” Mr. Keller added that internal polling showed Dr. Oz “fully consolidating Republicans and making excellent progress” with independents and some Democrats.The Fetterman campaign has found itself in the unusual position of playing defense after seeming to get the better of Dr. Oz for months with social-media attacks about his New Jersey mansion and penchant for “crudités.”At an event that Dr. Oz held in Philadelphia on Tuesday with Senator Patrick J. Toomey, aides set up posters of Dr. Oz’s opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Mr. Fetterman, who acknowledges ongoing “auditory” and language issues since his stroke, agreed to debate Dr. Oz after weeks of needling criticism by Dr. Oz and his allies. Mr. Fetterman said he would debate Dr. Oz in mid- to late October, with details to be worked out. He said there was no recent precedent in Pennsylvania for debates in September, dismissing an Oz attack that he had ducked a debate this week proposed by a Pittsburgh TV station.“But let’s be clear, this has never really been about debates for Dr. Oz,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement. “This whole thing has been about Dr. Oz and his team mocking me for having a stroke because they’ve got nothing else.”Since returning to the campaign trail on Aug. 12, Mr. Fetterman has kept a light schedule of appearances, greeting supporters on rope lines after short speeches but avoiding open questions from attendees or from the news media. He and his campaign have attributed his verbal stumbles in speeches and one-on-one interviews to “auditory processing” issues in his brain, which are common in stroke survivors. He has said that he may use a closed-caption monitor in the debate to make sure he does not miss any words. During the Republican primary, Dr. Oz seemed to contort himself, downplaying or disavowing some liberal views from earlier in his life — on abortion, guns — to curry favor with conservative voters. He scraped out a primary victory by fewer than 1,000 votes, aided by the Trump endorsement.Now, with the general election in full stride after Labor Day, Dr. Oz may be trying to resume his earlier ideological shape as he seeks out independents and conservative Democrats.The votes of suburban women in particular will be crucial in an election in which Democrats have gained fresh energy since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The Emerson College survey found that abortion access ranked five points higher as an issue for Pennsylvania voters than it did nationwide.Recently, Dr. Oz struck a mainstream conservative position on abortion, describing himself as “pro-life with the three usual exceptions, especially the health of the mother, but incest and rape as well.”But his effort to distance himself from the fringe on the issue has been complicated. A recording surfaced recently from a primary event in which Dr. Oz suggested that life began at conception and any attempt to end a pregnancy was the same as murder. “It’s, you know, it’s still murder if you were to terminate a child, whether their heart’s beating or not,” he said in the recording.Andy Reilly is a Pennsylvania member of the National Republican Committee whose home is in Delaware County, where Dr. Oz’s Thursday event took place. Mr. Reilly said it was crucial — and within reach — for Dr. Oz to improve on Mr. Trump’s low share of suburban voters in 2020, which cost him victory in the state.“For Republicans to win in Pennsylvania, they don’t need to win the suburbs, but they need to compete,” Mr. Reilly said.The Oz campaign’s attacks on Mr. Fetterman and crime have been another attempt to appeal to suburban and female voters. As lieutenant governor, Mr. Fetterman leads the Board of Pardons, where his advocacy has helped increase the number of felons leaving prison with commutations or pardons.Mr. Fetterman, right, headed to the stage to speak at a Labor Day event that President Biden attended.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Oz campaign and its allies have called Mr. Fetterman “dangerously liberal on crime,” as one television ad puts it, and have criticized him for statements he has made in the past, including that “we could release a third of our inmates and not make anyone less safe.”Mr. Fetterman has said that he was repeating a statement that a former Republican-appointed state corrections secretary made to him.A spokesman for Mr. Fetterman said that the candidate proved his dedication to fighting violent crime while mayor of Braddock, Pa., where he began his political rise.“Dr. Oz lives in a mansion on a hill. What does he know about confronting crime?” said the spokesman, Joe Calvello. “John Fetterman has actually done it, and done it successfully. So he’s not going to be taking pointers from a guy who just moved here and has absolutely no understanding of the problems facing Pennsylvania.” More

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      Do You Think Your Newfound Popularity Has Something to Do With Politics?

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      We’re getting Senate serious, people. And it’s all about you. The candidates need you, even if your home state doesn’t have a real nail-biter. (Chuck Schumer is going to be re-elected in New York. You heard it here first.)No matter where you’ve been over the summer, I bet you spent some of your time plowing through emails from Senate hopefuls asking you for money.It can get a tad … dispiriting. You wake up and take a look at your inbox. When you see there are over 50 new messages waiting, you have to assume that a few are actually from people you know.Nah. The one titled “Dinner Plans” isn’t about date night. Catherine Cortez Masto, the senator from Nevada, wants you to know that she and her husband just finished eating, and that while he’s doing the dishes, she’s got time to share a quick fund-raising request.(Let’s at least rejoice that no male Democratic senator will dare write you saying he’s reaching out while his wife cleans up the kitchen.)Last weekend, John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, was so engrossed in the meaning of Labor Day that he announced he’d decided to celebrate by not emailing anybody on Monday. (“… and that means we need today’s fund-raising to make up the difference.”)And when Labor Day did arrive, Fetterman …A. Took the day off and spent it watching “Sopranos” reruns.B. Challenged his staff to a Wordle competition.C. Wrote “I know I said I wasn’t going to email you today, but I want to share some thoughts.”Yeah, I know you know it’s “I know….”Val Demings, who’s running for Senate in Florida, sent me way more letters in August than anyone in my family did, all about her desperate need for funds to win what sounded like a very, very, very hard-fought primary — which, it turned out, she won with 84 percent of the vote. Demings piled up more than $47 million, some of which she still has on hand for her race against Marco Rubio.This is not a bad thing. I’ll bet her primary donors won’t mind having their money used to knock off Senator Rubio, a raving foe of abortion rights who recently called the Mar-a-Lago document scandal a “storage” issue.Of course, despite her big haul, Demings is right back blowing the emergency whistle. “I’m sorry to crowd your inbox, friend,” she wrote on Wednesday, warning that her campaign was “still short of our upcoming midnight fund-raising goal.”Cynics might presume that no candidate has ever, in history, actually reached a fund-raising goal. Really, do you ever remember getting a note saying: “Thanks, guys! We’ve got all the money we need now! Give to your pet shelter.”You do have to feel some sympathy — Senate campaigns are wicked expensive. The question is whether you should respond to this barrage of email requests for donations. The downside, as you probably suspect, is that it will make you an even more popular target.But do you want to tell all these candidates that if they need money, they’d better go to the PACs and corporate sponsors? Come on.“This is right now a kind of necessary evil,” Daniel Weiner of the Brennan Center said.“It’s the choice between a couple of wealthy donors or grass-roots fund-raising.”So if you’re reading all the stories about the critical Senate races in places like Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, it’s hard to tell yourself they’re none of your business. We’re talking about who controls the Senate — not to mention whether the nation will be spending another two years obsessing over the mind and mood of Joe Manchin.But it’s also hard to make a donation and keep your name from being given to — or purchased by — other campaigns. As it stands, this information is just another commodity. Sure, the Federal Election Commission could limit the sale of email lists. “But that’s going to be a bit of an uphill battle,” said Weiner, who spends a large part of his parental visits cleaning out his mother’s backed-up inbox.You can get yourself off any individual candidate’s list — there should be an “unsubscribe” option somewhere at the bottom of every plea. Or, if you’re not obsessive about keeping your inbox tidy, you can just ignore the emails and let them stack up — my husband is closing in on 85,000.I’m a deleter but also a kind of collector. Some of these campaigns do have particular … personalities.For instance, Tim Ryan, the Democrats’ Senate candidate in Ohio, is a mega-mailer who appears to be in a serious funk. “This is BAD,” began one of his recent missives, along with another announcing “A HUGE setback.” And, perhaps most distressing from the readers’ side, one that promised, “This is the longest email I’ll ever send you.”Don’t over-worry, Ryan fans — he’s doing better than expected in a state that’s become very tough for his party. And remember, this is the season when candidates try to sound as desperate as possible.Anyhow, it’s a good week for getting involved. We’re coming to the big finale. Look around and see who you’d like to help. Doesn’t have to be the Senate. Although, unless you have a deep personal connection, it’s probably OK to ignore all those requests from candidates for lieutenant governor.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