Fetterman, John (1969- )

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      Obama Urges Voters Not to Overlook Threats to Democracy

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      PHILADELPHIA — Former President Barack Obama on Saturday issued a stark warning about threats to American democracy, even as he acknowledged that many voters were consumed by a range of other urgent issues in the final stretch of the midterm campaign.“I understand that democracy might not seem like a top priority right now, especially when you’re worried about paying the bills,” Mr. Obama said at a get-out-the-vote rally in Philadelphia, not far from the Liberty Bell. “But when true democracy goes away, we’ve seen throughout history, we’ve seen around the world, when true democracy goes away, people get hurt. It has real consequences.”Mr. Obama’s comments came as he and President Biden rallied with Democratic candidates for governor and senator in the evenly divided state of Pennsylvania, stressing the high stakes of the elections to a crowd gathered at Temple University and lacing into the Republicans on the ballot.They appeared together to support Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the nominee for Senate, and Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general and nominee for governor.Mr. Fetterman is in a highly competitive race against Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician and Republican nominee. Mr. Shapiro has strongly outpolled his rival, Doug Mastriano, the far-right state senator.Mr. Mastriano chartered buses to the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that led to the attack on the Capitol, and Mr. Obama noted associations between the Oz campaign and Jan. 6.“This is not an abstraction,” Mr. Obama warned. “Governments start telling you what books you can read and which ones you can’t. Dissidents start getting locked up. Reporters start getting locked up if they’re not toeing the party line. Corruption reigns because there’s no accountability.”Invoking the generations of Americans who “fought and died for our democracy,” and the suffragists, civil rights activists and labor advocates, Mr. Obama said: “They understood that when democracy withers, it’s hard to restore. You can’t take it for granted. You have to work for it. You have to nurture it. You have to fight for it.”The good news, he told the audience, is “you get to make a difference, as long as you turn out to vote.”Over the growing roar of the crowd, he continued: “You can fight for it as long as you turn out to vote. You can bolster and strengthen our democracy as long as you get out there and do what needs to be done.” More

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      Biden Emphasizes the Threat to Social Security and Medicare at Rally

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      PHILADELPHIA — President Biden doubled down on Saturday on his warning that Republicans will try to roll back Social Security and Medicare benefits if they win control of Congress next week, making the election a referendum on America’s safety net programs.“These guys will never cease to amaze me, man,” Mr. Biden said at a campaign rally in Philadelphia. “They’re literally coming after Social Security and Medicare.”The president criticized two Republican senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida, as major threats to the programs and pointed to a Republican proposal that would require approvals for funding every five years.Mr. Biden referred to Mr. Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, as “that guy that’s pushing Oz,” a reference to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate candidate who is running against Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman.Mr. Biden also highlighted his work to expand health benefits for veterans, pointing to his late son Beau’s battle with brain cancer after returning from Iraq.Mr. Biden said that it is not just Social Security, the right to vote and abortion rights that are on the ballot. Lacing into the Republican candidates and his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, he said: “Character is on the ballot.” More

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      At Fetterman Rally, Obama Mocks Oz and Tells Crowd to Vote for Democracy

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      PITTSBURGH — Former President Barack Obama, campaigning for the first time with Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, urged Democratic supporters on Saturday to vote to save democracy and abortion rights. Mr. Obama also mocked Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican in the Senate race, as a television pitchman with no interest in helping working people.Dr. Oz had “answers,” Mr. Obama said, referencing the candidate’s years as host of a TV show that sometimes promoted dubious health advice. But, he added, those answers were the wrong ones.“You want to lose weight? Take raspberry ketones,’’ Mr. Obama said. “If somebody is willing to peddle snake oil to make a buck, then he’s probably willing to sell snake oil to get elected.”The rally was held in a park in the shadow of the University of Pittsburgh’s 42-story Cathedral of Learning, a popular last stop on the campaign trail for Democrats seeking to rally young voters before Election Day. The crowd, numbering more than 1,000, seemed to pulse with affection for the former president, who spoke for about 35 minutes.Mr. Fetterman spoke for about 10 minutes, his speech still halting since a stroke in May, and noted that Dr. Oz would appear later in the day with former President Donald J. Trump in the Pittsburgh exurbs. Mr. Fetterman said he was proud to share a stage with a former president who was “sedition-free.”Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesRuth Fremson/The New York TimesIn his speech, Mr. Obama outlined the differences between electing Democrats or Republicans on Tuesday. It was a choice, he said, “between politicians who seem willing to say and do anything to get power, and people who see you and know you and care about you and share your values.”Mr. Obama laced his speech with examples of how civility, adherence to truth and respect for the political opposition had eroded since he ran for office. He attributed that deterioration to Republicans during Mr. Trump’s presidency.Mr. Obama blamed social media that “amped up” conspiracy theories and hatred, warning of the potential for political violence. Mentioning the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Obama decried people “in leadership positions” who, after such an attack, “make light of it, they joke about it.”“More people are going to get hurt,” he said.He also called out “big celebrities” who have reposted “vile antisemitic conspiracy theories online,” an apparent reference to the basketball star Kyrie Irving and the rapper Kanye West.“You don’t have to be a student of history to understand how dangerous that is,’’ Mr. Obama said.Later on Saturday, Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Obama and President Biden are scheduled to rally in Philadelphia, capping a day in which they could reach nearly a quarter of Pennsylvania’s active Democratic voters. More

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      Democrats Promote Tough-on-Crime Credentials as Party Plays Defense

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      With sheriffs vouching for them and a flood of ads proclaiming their support for the police, Democrats are shoring up their public safety bona fides. Still, some worry it’s too late.In the final stretch of the midterm campaigns, Democrats are straining to defend themselves against a barrage of crime-focused attacks from Republicans, forcefully highlighting their public safety credentials amid signs that G.O.P. messaging on the issue may be more potent than usual in some critical races this year.Democrats have enlisted sheriffs to vouch for them, have outspent Republicans on ads that use the word “police” in the month of October, and have been using the kind of tough-on-crime language that many on the left seemed to reject not long ago — even as some Democrats worry that efforts to inoculate the party on a complex and emotional issue are falling short.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who is being criticized over a 2018 video in which he called ending cash bail a “top priority,” aired an ad in which an officer declared him a “tough-on-crime” lawmaker who confronted those “who wanted to defund the police.”Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada has long highlighted her pro-law enforcement credentials, including with an ad featuring a police chief praising her record of being “tough on crime.”And Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, whose history on criminal justice issues is being denounced by Republicans, sounded pro-law enforcement notes at a senior center on Friday as he discussed his tenure as the mayor of Braddock, Pa., saying he “was proud to work with our police departments, and funding the police.”Nationwide, Democrats spent more money last month on ads that used the word “police” than Republicans did, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. But heavy Republican spending on crime ads earlier this year has helped define the final weeks of the campaign in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Cheri Beasley, the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina, has highlighted supporters with law enforcement backgrounds in her campaign.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesNational crime trends are mixed and complex, and Republicans have often reached for arguments about crime or border security, with varying results. Some party strategists doubt the issue will be decisive this year, with many Americans far more focused on economic matters.But a Gallup survey released late last month found that “Americans are more likely now than at any time over the past five decades to say there is more crime in their local area than there was a year ago.”The issue, fanned and sometimes distorted by conservative news outlets, has been especially pronounced in liberal-leaning states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Wisconsin, where big cities have struggled with concerns about violence and quality of life over the last few years. But the topic is at play in many tight Senate, House and governors’ races.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster, said the most effective responses had come from candidates who formulated a message on crime early.“Too many Democrats waited until the attacks on crime happened,” she said. “We’re never going to win on crime. We just have to answer it strongly enough to be able to pivot back to other issues to show we’re in touch.”Some Democrats fear that their party has fallen short. In an article on Thursday for The American Prospect, a liberal magazine, Stanley B. Greenberg, a longtime Democratic pollster, warned that the party was still struggling with a branding problem, even though many Democrats distanced themselves long ago from the “defund the police” movement that gained traction after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.Billboards in Philadelphia attacked Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, over his record on crime.Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesMr. Fetterman said that during his tenure as the mayor of Braddock, Pa., he had been “proud to work with our police departments, and funding the police.”Ruth Fremson/The New York Times“‘Defund’ is a very small segment” of the party, Mr. Greenberg said in an interview. “But the whole party owns it.”Steven Law, the chief executive of the Senate Leadership Fund, the leading super PAC for Senate Republicans, said concerns about public safety contributed to the idea that the country is going in the wrong direction — a problem for the party in power.“Crime has an outsized ability to define Democrats as being liberal instead of moderates, more than any other issue,” he added.Democratic officials have tried to address the issue head-on. The party’s Senate campaign arm encouraged candidates to challenge Republicans over opposing measures that would combat gun violence, a committee aide said, and to use law enforcement officials in their advertising.“It’s not just trying to be more Republican than the Republicans,” said Aimee Allison, the founder of She the People, a political advocacy group focused on women of color. “People are interested in how to make communities safer.”And a memo this spring from the Democratic House campaign arm laid out a guide, advising candidates to reject the notion of defunding the police, to highlight law enforcement funding they had secured and to rely on members of law enforcement to endorse their records. It also urged Democrats to “stand up for racial justice.”“In 2020, the Republican lies were so outrageous, some candidates thought they could ignore them,” Mr. Maloney, the chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm, said. “In 2022, we know better.”It is evident that many Democrats are following aspects of that playbook, while also slamming Republicans over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — another issue the memo noted.Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, who is facing a difficult Senate race, has claimed credit for helping to obtain federal funding for state law enforcement. He has also criticized his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, over sympathetic statements he made toward rioters at the Capitol, where about 140 police officers were injured.Over the summer, Mr. Ryan ran an ad in which a sheriff called the claim that Democrats want to defund the police “ridiculous” and said he “trusts Tim Ryan to keep our community safe.”Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat in Virginia, made national headlines two years ago for her critique of her party on a leaked post-election call, which included concerns about the “defund the police” movement.This year, Ms. Spanberger said in an interview, Democrats could point to votes serving as “proof points” that they are serious about crime.“We’re appropriating significant money to local police departments,” she said.Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, who is facing a difficult Senate race, has claimed credit for helping to obtain federal funding for state law enforcement. Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesJ.D. Vance, Mr. Ryan’s Republican opponent, has made sympathetic statements toward rioters who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIn one of Ms. Spanberger’s television ads, a Republican police chief endorsed her while criticizing her opponent, Yesli Vega, for “defending” rioters who attacked the Capitol. Ms. Vega, an auxiliary deputy with the Prince William County Sheriff’s Office, called the rioters “a group of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.”In Pennsylvania, the Fetterman campaign said it had put out 16 ads mentioning crime or public safety, including at least one featuring the sheriff of suburban Montgomery County, who vouched for Mr. Fetterman.This week, a Monmouth University poll showed that voters trusted both Mr. Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, his Republican rival, equally when it came to handling crime. The poll also noted that Mr. Fetterman’s edge on the issue had evaporated. Mr. Fetterman has defended himself primarily by pointing to his tenure as the mayor of Braddock, outside Pittsburgh, where for five years a scourge of murders came to a stop.The issue has also played a prominent role in other Senate races, including in Wisconsin and, to some degree, North Carolina.Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin and Cheri Beasley in North Carolina, the first Black woman to serve as chief justice of the State Supreme Court, have also showcased supporters with law enforcement backgrounds in their campaigns.In Wisconsin, mail advertising from Republicans has darkened Mr. Barnes’s skin, one stark example of the ways attacks on crime can propel issues of race to the forefront.Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, said: “Clearly, the message was not just one of crime. It was one of racism.” And, like other Democrats, he alluded to the Capitol riot.“They claim to back the blue, and in reality, they’re backing the coup,” he said. “You can’t pretend to support law enforcement, but then selectively decide which law enforcement that you’re going to protect.”Jon Hurdle contributed reporting from Harrisburg, Pa. More

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      Times/Siena Polls Show Democrats Slightly Ahead in Key Senate Races

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      Respondents said they preferred Republicans to control the Senate, but individual matchups showed a different story.John Fetterman, left, holds a lead in our poll of the Pennsylvania Senate race, although most of the survey was held before his debate with Dr. Mehmet Oz./EPA, via ShutterstockEight days before the election, we have our final* midterm surveys: polls of the four states likeliest to determine control of the Senate.New York Times/Siena College pollsPennsylvania: John Fetterman (D) 49, Mehmet Oz (R) 44.Arizona: Mark Kelly (D) 51, Blake Masters (R) 45.Nevada: Adam Laxalt (R) 47, Catherine Cortez Masto (D) 47.Georgia: Raphael Warnock (D) 49, Herschel Walker (R) 46.All considered, this is a pretty good set of numbers for Democrats. If they win three of the four Senate seats, they hold the Senate if everywhere else goes as expected. Here, they lead in the magic three of four while remaining highly competitive in the fourth — though it’s very important to caution that most of this poll was taken before the Pennsylvania Senate debate.There’s also a bit of good news for Republicans: Respondents said they preferred Republicans to control the Senate. Democrats led anyway, presumably because of their distaste for some of the Republican nominees or their affection for Democratic incumbents. As we head down the stretch, Republicans can hope to lure some of these voters to their side.How the polls compareIf you compare our polls with the polling averages, they look even better for Democrats. Consider the current FiveThirtyEight averages:In Pennsylvania, Mr. Fetterman leads in the FiveThirtyEight average by one point, compared with our six-point lead (after rounding).In Arizona, Mr. Kelly leads in the average by 3.6 points, compared with our six-point lead.In Georgia, Mr. Warnock leads by 1.2 points, compared with our three-point edge.In Nevada, Ms. Cortez Masto leads by 0.4 points, compared with our tied race.There is a twist: Although our polls may look better for Democrats than the average, they look about the same as the other traditional polls that used to be considered the gold standard in survey research, like ABC/Washington Post, CNN/SSRS, Fox News, NBC, the university survey houses, and so on.In many of these states, our surveys are the first such poll in weeks. Consider the last such polls in the four states, and how much better they look for Democrats than the average — and how similar they look to our survey:Arizona: CNN/SSRS showed Mr. Kelly +6 about a month ago, in a poll conducted from Sept. 26 to Oct. 2.Nevada: USA Today/Suffolk showed Ms. Cortez Masto +2 in a poll taken from Oct. 4 to Oct. 7.Georgia: Quinnipiac showed Mr. Warnock up seven, in a poll taken from Oct. 7 to Oct. 10.Pennsylvania: Franklin and Marshall showed Mr. Fetterman +4 in a poll conducted from Oct. 14 to Oct. 23. In a survey fielded over a partly overlapping period, CNN/SSRS showed Mr. Fetterman up six from Oct. 13 to 17.The absence of surveys from reputable pollsters is remarkable. The drought is partly because of rising costs — our October national survey was eight times as expensive as our final polls in 2016, on a per-interview basis. But it’s also because of a crisis of confidence among the traditional pollsters — Times/Siena included — who don’t have a great explanation for the poor results in 2020 and are understandably treading a little lightly.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.The flip side: Most of the polling over the last few weeks is coming from partisan outfits — usually Republican — or auto-dial firms. These polls are cheap enough to flood the zone, and many of them were emboldened by the 2020 election, when their final results came close to the election results even as other pollsters struggled.A couple of the nontraditional firms are worth taking seriously — CBS/YouGov in particular — but a lot of the polls that are filling up the averages just aren’t underpinned by credible survey methods.They may have come close to the results in 2020 — and could easily come close yet again 2022 — but it’s not because they have a representative sample of the population. Imagine, for instance, a poll that is subject to the same pro-Democratic bias as the higher-quality surveys, but simply doesn’t call cellphones and misses people under 35.In that case, the headline results could be “right,” but it’s not because the pollster has some special sauce or has uncovered the secret to reaching Trump voters.To be clear: The point isn’t that our polls are right and the others are wrong. There’s plenty of reason to think Trump-era challenges still plague the survey industry. If so, the pollsters once considered gold standard may struggle yet again. And if so, the dearth of gold standard polls and the surge of partisan polling might just leave the polling averages closer to the results than the last election, even if it’s just as tough for pollsters as it was two years.Right or wrong, there’s not much question that Democrats would hold a more comfortable lead in the Senate if the pollsters who dominated the averages in the past were a bigger part of the averages this year.Note: *We will have one last set of findings for you: the results of a multi-survey study of Wisconsin. This study began in September, so it won’t exactly count as a final poll. But hopefully it will shed some light on the challenges facing pollsters and maybe even offer a path forward. I started to dig into this data only yesterday — and progress has been slow — but my goal is to report a few preliminary findings before the election. More

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      Senate Control Hinges on Neck-and-Neck Races, Times/Siena Poll Finds

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      The contests are close in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Many voters want Republicans to flip the Senate, but prefer the Democrat in their state.Control of the Senate rests on a knife’s edge, according to new polls by The New York Times and Siena College, with Republican challengers in Nevada and Georgia neck-and-neck with Democratic incumbents, and the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania clinging to what appears to be a tenuous advantage.The bright spot for Democrats in the four key states polled was in Arizona, where Senator Mark Kelly is holding a small but steady lead over his Republican challenger, Blake Masters.The results indicate a deeply volatile and unpredictable Senate contest: More people across three of the states surveyed said they wanted Republicans to gain control of the Senate, but they preferred the individual Democratic candidates in their states — a sign that Republicans may be hampered by the shortcomings of their nominees.Midterm elections are typically referendums on the party in power, and Democrats must defy decades of that political history to win control of the Senate, an outcome that has not completely slipped out of the party’s grasp according to the findings of the Times/Siena surveys. Democrats control the 50-50 Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaking vote. To gain the majority, Republicans need to gain just one seat.Senate Races in Four StatesIf this November’s election for U.S. Senate were held today, which candidate would you be more likely to vote for? More

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      The Battle for Blue-Collar White Voters Raging in Biden’s Birthplace

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      SCRANTON, Pa. — The fate of the Democratic Party in northeastern Pennsylvania lies in the hands of people like Steve Papp.A 30-year veteran carpenter, he describes his job almost poetically as “hanging out with your brothers, building America.” But there has been a harder labor in his life of late: selling his fellow carpenters, iron workers and masons on a Democratic Party that he sees as the protector of a “union way of life” but that they see as being increasingly out of step with their cultural values.“The guys aren’t hearing the message,” Mr. Papp said.Perhaps no place in the nation offers a more symbolic and consequential test of whether Democrats can win back some of the white working-class vote than Pennsylvania — and particularly the state’s northeastern corner, the birthplace of President Biden, where years of economic decline have scarred the coal-rich landscape. This region is where a pivotal Senate race could be decided, where two seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs and where a crucial governorship hangs in the balance.No single constituency, of course, will determine the outcome of these races in a state as big as Pennsylvania, let alone the 2022 midterms. Turning out Black voters in cities is critical for Democrats. Gaining ground in the swingy suburbs is a must for Republicans. But it is among white working-class voters in rural areas and smaller towns — places like Sugarloaf Township, where Mr. Papp lives — where the Democratic Party has, in some ways, both the furthest to fall and the most to gain.A highway sign outside Scranton, Pa.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesSitting in the Scranton carpenters’ union hall, where Democratic lawn signs leaned up against the walls, Mr. Papp said that he often brought stickers to the job site for those he converted, but that he had recently been giving away fewer than he would like. He ticked through what he feels he has been up against. Talk radio. Social media. The Fox News megaphone. “Misinformation and lies,” as he put it, about the Black Lives Matter movement and the L.G.B.T.Q. community.“It’s about cultural issues and social issues,” Mr. Papp lamented. “People don’t even care about their economics. They want to hate.”Republicans counter that Democratic elites are the ones alienating the working class by advocating a “woke” cultural agenda and by treating them as deplorables. And they also argue that the current economy overseen by Democrats has been the issue pushing voters toward the right.The stakes are far higher than one corner of one state in one election.White blue-collar voters are a large and crucial constituency in a number of top Senate battlegrounds this year, including in Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio. And the need for Democrats to lose by less is already an urgent concern for party strategists heading into 2024, when Donald J. Trump, who accelerated the movement of blue-collar voters of all races away from Democrats, has signaled he plans to run again.Lt. Gov. John Fetterman boarding Air Force One after a meeting with President Biden.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesOne study from Pew Research Center showed that as recently as 2007, white voters without a college degree were about evenly divided in their party affiliations. But by 2020, Republicans had opened up an advantage of 59 percent over Democrats’ 35 percent.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.“You can’t get destroyed,” Christopher Borick, the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania, said of the task in front of Democrats. “Cutting into Republican gains in the Trump era among white working-class voters is essential.”There are, quite simply, a lot of white voters without college degrees in America. Another Pew study found that such voters accounted for 42 percent of all voters in the 2020 presidential election. And, by some estimates, they could make up nearly half the vote in Pennsylvania this year.Luzerne County, just south of Scranton, had been reliably Democratic for years and years. Then, suddenly, in 2016, Mr. Trump won Luzerne in a nearly 20-point landslide. He won it again in 2020, but by 5 points fewer. There are Obama-Trump voters here, and Obama-Trump-Biden voters, too. The region may have tacked to the right politically in recent years, but it is still a place where the phrase “Irish Catholic Democrat” was long treated as almost a single word, and where it might be more possible to nudge at least some ancestral Democrats back toward the party.The Roosevelt Beer Hall in Dunmore, Pa.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesScranton, a former coal town nestled in the scenic Wyoming Valley, has become synonymous with this voting bloc. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who hopes to become the next House speaker, visited the region this fall to unveil the Republican agenda, and both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump traveled to the area for events kicking off the fall campaign.This year, the Pennsylvania Senate race looms especially large.The Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, was seemingly engineered for the task of appealing to the working class. A bald and burly man with a political persona that revolves around Carhartt sweatshirts and tattoos, Mr. Fetterman has vowed from the start to compete in even the reddest corners of Pennsylvania. He is running against Mehmet Oz, a wealthy, out-of-state television celebrity who, according to polls, has been viewed skeptically from the start by the Republican base, and who talked of buying crudités at the grocery in a widely ridiculed video.Yet local Democrats said Mr. Fetterman was still facing an uphill climb among white working-class voters in the region, even before his halting debate performance as he recovers from a stroke. For those Democrats concerned about competing for the state’s biggest voting bloc, the success or failure of Mr. Fetterman’s candidacy has become an almost existential question: If not him and here, then who and where?Mr. Fetterman’s strategy to cut into Republican margins in red counties is displayed on his lawn signs: “Every county. Every vote.” But Republicans have worked relentlessly to undercut the blue-collar image Mr. Fetterman honed as the former mayor of Braddock, a downtrodden former steel town just outside Pittsburgh.Chris Tigue, a self-employed painter.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times“It’s a costume,” Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, said in one segment last month. Republicans have highlighted Mr. Fetterman’s Harvard degree, his middle-class suburban upbringing, the financial support he received from his parents into his 40s and, most recently, a barrage of advertising that has cast him as a soft-on-crime liberal.Both sides are targeting voters like Chris Tigue, a 39-year-old who runs a one-man painting company and lives in Dunmore, a town bordering Scranton known for its enormous landfill. Mr. Tigue, a registered Republican, has gone on a political journey that may seem uncommon in most of the country but is more familiar here.He voted twice for Barack Obama. Then he voted twice for Donald Trump.As Mr. Tigue sat outside Roosevelt Beer Garden, a watering hole where the portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the wall was a reminder of the area’s Democratic heritage, he explained that Mr. Fetterman had won him back, not just because of his working class “curb appeal,” but because of his stances on abortion and medical cannabis.Mr. Tigue said he was voting for Mr. Fetterman knowing that Mr. Fetterman would probably support the president’s economic agenda in the Senate, a prospect he called “a little scary.” But he said he was looking past that fact. “I’m focusing on the person,” he said.Justin Taylor, the mayor of nearby Carbondale, is another Obama-Trump voter. Elected as a 25-year-old Democrat almost two decades ago, he endorsed Mr. Trump in 2020 and grew increasingly more Republican, just like the city he serves.Mayor Justin Taylor of Carbondale, Pa., at the Anthracite Center, a former bank he converted into an event space.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesToday, he is adamantly opposed to Mr. Fetterman, calling him a liberal caricature and the kind of candidate the left thinks will appeal to the people of Carbondale, a shrinking town of under 10,000 people that was founded on anthracite coal. “I think, quite honestly, he is an empty Carhartt sweatshirt and the people who are working class in Pennsylvania see that,” Mr. Taylor said.Mr. Taylor is still technically a registered Democrat, he said, but he feels judged by his own party. “The Democratic Party forces it down your throat,” he said, “and they make you a bigot, they make you a racist, they make you a homophobe if you don’t understand a concept, or you don’t 100 percent agree.”Still, Mr. Taylor said he might not vote in the Senate race at all. Of his fellow Fetterman doubters, and of Oz skeptics, he asked, “Do they stay home? That becomes the big question.”Northeastern Pennsylvania is also home to two bellwether House races with embattled Democratic incumbents.One race features Representative Matt Cartwright, who is the rarest of political survivors — the only House Democrat nationwide running this year who held a district that Mr. Trump carried in both 2016 and 2020. The other includes Representative Susan Wild, who is defending a swing district that contains one of only two Pennsylvania counties that Mr. Biden flipped in 2020.Representative Matt Cartwright, left. Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe union hall of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners Local 445. Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesTo emphasize his cross-partisan appeal, Mr. Cartwright has run an ad this year featuring endorsements from one man in a Trump hat and another in a Biden shirt. In an interview, he said the area’s long-term economic downturn, which he traced to the free-trade deals of the 1990s, had caused many people to work multiple jobs, sapping morale and even affecting the region’s psyche.“When something like that happens, who do you vote for?” Mr. Cartwright said. “You vote for the change candidate. And that’s what we saw a lot of. They voted for Obama twice. They voted for Trump twice. And my own view of it is when they vote that way, it’s a cry for help.”Demographic shifts in politics happen in both directions. As Democrats have hemorrhaged white working-class voters, they have made large gains with college-educated white voters who were once the financial and electoral base of Republicans. In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia suburbs have become strongly Democratic, while the state’s less populated areas have become more Republican.Alexis McFarland Kelly, a 59-year-old former owner of a gourmet market near Scranton, is the kind of voter Democrats are newly winning over. Raised as a Republican, she was often warned by her father, a business owner, and her grandfather, a corporate vice president, of the excesses of labor and the left. But now, she is planning to vote for Mr. Fetterman.Her biggest misgiving is the hoodie-wearing persona that might appeal to the working class. “I just wish he’d put a suit on once in a while,” she said.Last year, she went to the local Department of Motor Vehicles and declared that she wanted to change her party registration to become a Democrat. The clerk was shocked. “She basically dropped her pen and said, ‘What?! A Democrat!’” Ms. Kelly recalled. “‘Everyone is going the other way.’”Nina Feldman More

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      How the Races for Governor Could Determine Who Controls the Senate

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      Major midterm battlegrounds have both contests on the ticket, and how voters divvy up their picks could have significant consequences.WASHINGTON — John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, wants voters to think of his G.O.P. rival and the Republican running for governor in the Keystone State as one and the same.“They are MOZtriano,” Mr. Fetterman says in a You Tube campaign video, melding the names of Mehmet Oz, his opponent, and Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican candidate for governor whose campaign is sputtering, anointing them the state’s newest “power couple.”Supporters of Mr. Oz, on the other hand, are working to emphasize differences between Mr. Fetterman, the current progressive lieutenant governor with whom he is in a tight race, and Josh Shapiro, the more centrist Democratic attorney general and the heavy favorite to win the governorship.“Fetterman is way more radical than Shapiro,” says a woman in a new ad from American Crossroads, a Republican political action committee, which compares Mr. Fetterman’s record on the treatment of criminals unfavorably with that of Mr. Shapiro. The names of their Republican opponents don’t even come up.The dueling approaches in one of the nation’s marquee Senate races illustrate how, as midterm congressional races have tightened, contests at the top of the ticket are looming as a potentially decisive factor in the outcomes. Republicans and Democrats alike are trying to game out the crosscurrents, working to position their candidates either to ride the wave of a favored gubernatorial candidate or to distance themselves to avoid being pulled under by the drag of a fellow party member.In some of the chief battlegrounds this year — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire, among others — voters will choose both a governor and a senator. How they divide their votes between those two could determine control of the Senate and show whether ticket splitting, which has been on the decline for decades in polarized America, has new life.“There is considerable overlap between the governor’s races and the Senate battlegrounds,” said Nathan Gonzales, the editor and publisher of the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.But how the races intersect varies.In some states, including Pennsylvania, the candidate for governor of one party is comfortably ahead of their opponent, while the Senate race is much closer. In others, the polling shows the contests for both offices is very close.Georgia is a third category altogether. The Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, is running ahead of Democrat Stacey Abrams. But Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, has consistently but narrowly led his Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Ms. Abrams’s difficulties could weigh down Mr. Warnock’s chances in that race, unless voters split their ballots, choosing the Republican for governor and the Democrat for Senate.Then there are spots like New Hampshire, where voters appear to be regarding the two races as entirely separate. Gov. Chris Sununu, a popular Republican, is far ahead in the polls and expected to romp to victory over state Senator Tom Sherman, the Democrat. Yet Senator Maggie Hassan, the Democratic incumbent, is also favored over Republican Donald Bolduc, a far-right candidate who prevailed in the primary after Mr. Sununu declined to jump into the contest, where he would likely have been favored.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire is far ahead in his re-election bid. He declined to run for the Senate. Jon Cherry/Getty Images For ConcordiaCampaign officials say the potential New Hampshire outcome is not all that confounding given the state’s voting traditions and the effort candidates in both parties have put into showing that they are not tied down by party.“It is extremely common here,” said Kevin Donohoe, a spokesman for Ms. Hassan, of voters splitting their ticket between the two parties. “If you want to win here, you have to have an independent record and you have to have an independent profile, and that is what voters expect.”.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-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent, holds a double-digit lead in his race against former Dayton mayor Nan Whaley. But Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate contender, is running neck-and-neck with J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate and author endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.A recent poll by the Siena College Research Institute found that 20 percent of Ohio voters who said they were pulling the lever for Mr. DeWine said they also intended to vote for Mr. Ryan, a showing that could give him a shot in a state that was expected to choose another Republican to replace retiring Senator Rob Portman.The poll provided an opening for Mr. Ryan and his allies. NBC News reported that WelcomePAC, a Democratic group backing Mr. Ryan, took out newspaper ads asking voters, “Why are 1 in 5 Republican voters saying no to J.D. Vance?” and hitting Mr. Vance for his ties to Mr. Trump.But it is one thing to express an intent to split a ticket and another to do it. Voters can change their minds on Election Day based on myriad factors, including a desire to show party loyalty, the importance placed on each individual race and even the format of the ballot.“Are these tickets really going to split?” asked Don Levy, the director of the Siena College poll. “It is one thing in a poll to say, ‘Yeah, Tim Ryan, I like him and I’m not so sure about this J.D. Vance guy.’ But when you cast your ballot, then some people are going to pause and vote the team.”Given Mr. DeWine’s strength, a failure of potential ticket splitters to follow through could be very damaging to Mr. Ryan’s chances of winning.That has been the case in recent presidential election cycles, as American politics has become more tribal and voters have grown more likely to stay in their partisan lanes. In 2016, for the first time, every state with a Senate election backed both a senator and a president of the same party. It was not much different in 2020, with only Maine deviating.But research by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia found that midterm elections still produce more ticket-splitting when the White House is not up for grabs. In 2018, six states split their results between governor and senator, with five of them of backing a Republican governor and a Democratic senator. The report by J. Miles Coleman, an editor at the center, found that six states also delivered mixed results in 2014 and five in 2010.“If 2022 falls in line with the three most recent midterms, we can still expect five or six split-ticket cases,” Mr. Coleman wrote.Democrats hope Pennsylvania, which is crucial to determining control of the Senate, is not one of them, though Republicans say they are finding evidence of Shapiro-Oz voters who could decide the outcome.“Republican polling shows a substantial number of Shapiro voters actually favor Dr. Oz for the Senate based on the hot button issues of crime and the economy,” said John Ashbrook, a Republican strategist working on Senate campaigns and a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.Other analysts say a blowout win by Mr. Shapiro would seem to accrue to the benefit of Mr. Fetterman. The Fetterman campaign sees a healthy synergy between the two candidates and the two are expected to appear together as the campaign season draws to a close.“Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman are very different types of candidates,” said Rebecca Katz, senior adviser to Mr. Fetterman. “But together they appeal to a broad swath of Pennsylvania voters and offer a very strong contrast to extreme, Trump-backed candidates like Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano.” More