Masters, Blake (1986- )

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      We Don’t Know What Will Happen on Election Day, but We Do Know How We’ll Feel About It

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      Gail Collins: OK, Bret — it’s elections week! Tell me the one outcome you’re most hoping to see and the one you’re most dreading.Bret Stephens: The idea of Herschel Walker being elected a United States senator is the political equivalent of E.L. James, the author of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature: the preposterous elevation of the former equals the total debasement of the latter.On the other hand, and despite my reservations about him, I’m rooting for Lee Zeldin for New York governor. Our state is overtaxed, underpoliced and chronically misgoverned, and I’d like to see it the other way around. And a Republican victory in New York might finally jolt the Democratic Party into getting serious about crime and urban decay.You?Gail: Zeldin is awful. There are New York Republicans you could imagine running the state well, and there are New York Republicans who will inevitably create a mess of political polarization and stalled services. Mr. Z is definitely in that category.Bret: I would be more inclined to agree with you about the overly Trumpy Zeldin — until I consider his opponent, the uninspired, ethically challenged and insipid Kathy Hochul.Gail: In my rooting-for category, I’m going to bring up Senator Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire — just so I can mention her dreadful opponent, Don Bolduc. He’s long been known as an opponent of legal protections for transgender people. Last week, he claimed schools were giving out litter boxes to support kids who identify as cats. Which is, um … not true.Who’s your most-to-be-avoided?Bret: I’m with you on Hassan, a conscientious and bipartisan legislator. Who — I am amazed to say — might lose on Tuesday. As for my most-to-be-avoided? I’d have to go with Arizona’s Blake Masters. He gives me the sense of being the love child of Ayn Rand and Hans Gruber, the Alan Rickman character in “Die Hard.”Gail: I adore it when you get mean about people like ol’ Blake.Bret: Actually, that’s probably unfair to Gruber, who had a twinkle-in-the-eye panache that made his villainy interesting and often funny. Masters is neither interesting nor funny, and his only talent seems to consist in sucking up to rich guys.Gail: You would be referring to Peter Thiel, billionaire co-founder of PayPal and backer of rancid Republicans.Bret: And Donald Trump — assuming he’s actually rich. Let me ask you a different question: Is there any Republican in this whole election cycle you might see yourself supporting?Gail: This goes back to the question I’ve been wrestling with since the world watched that Fetterman-Oz debate.There are plenty of decent Republicans running for Senate, and some who are smarter than their Democratic opponents. And at least one Republican who can out-debate a Democrat who’s recovering from a stroke. But they all share one thing — they’d immediately vote to put their party in power.Bret: They do tend to do that.Gail: And that’s the crucial question this season — which party will be in charge? Right now the partisan rift is so deep you really have to decide which side you want to run the show and let that be your guide.Does that make sense to you?Bret: Yes and no. I powerfully sympathize with the impulse to oppose everyone who belongs to the party of Trump. But the idea of voting for your own side, no matter how lousy the candidate, also explains how Republicans talk themselves into voting for Trump, Walker, Bolduc, Masters and the rest of the evil clown parade. Parties should not be rewarded by voters when they sink to the lowest common denominator.But … predictions! Any upsets you see coming?Gail: When I worry about election results my thoughts almost always turn to Arizona, land of the you-never-can-tell voter. You’ve got Senator Mark Kelly neck-and-neck with Blake Masters. The only positive thing I can think of to say about Masters is that he hasn’t yet expressed any deep concern about litter boxes in public schools.But the most terrifying Arizona race is for governor, where Kari Lake, a former TV anchor and current election denier, appears to be leading Katie Hobbs, the responsible but sorta boring secretary of state. Do not want to imagine the vote-counting crisis there in 2024 if Lake wins.Bret: I’m going to venture that Lake is going to win handily and that Masters will win by a hair.Gail: Aaauuughhh.Bret: Part of my overall prediction that Democrats will wake up on Wednesday morning with a powerful impulse to move to Canada or Belgium to take advantage of their permissive assisted-suicide programs.Gail: And what would your own reaction be, pray tell? I know you theoretically support the Republican Senate agenda, but I’ve noticed you find a lot of the Republican senators kinda … repulsive.Bret: Again, very mixed feelings. Seeing the Republican Party go from bad to worse is depressing and scary. But as long as Joe Biden is president they won’t be able to do much except embarrass themselves.If there’s one saving grace for me here, it’s the faint hope that a Republican majority in at least one house of Congress will pump the brakes on spending. Our gross national debt is $31 trillion and rising. And it’s going to cost more to service as interest rates rise.Gail: I’m touched to hear you express such confidence that the Republicans we’ve seen on the hustings this year are going to be able to come up with a smart plan to completely redo government spending.Bret: Fair point.Gail: My first response to the idea of sane Republican spending policy is sad giggles.But I do feel obliged to offer at least one suggestion. The best way to tackle debt issues is not to cancel Covid relief or stop fixing the nation’s infrastructure. Tax the folks who can afford it, like those pharmaceutical billionaires who’ve done so very well off the pandemic.Bret: Not sure these billionaires could pay off so many trillions in debt, even if we confiscated every penny they have.Gail: It would be a start, and I suspect that even under a very serious new tax plan they’d be left with enough coins in their pockets to allow them to soldier on.But speaking of good/bad government spending plans, what do you think about recent Republican calls to cut back on Social Security and Medicare entitlements?Bret: The devil is in the details. Regarding Social Security, it was designed in the 1930s, when the typical life expectancy was around 60. It’s now around 76. The program is predicted to be insolvent in about 13 years if we do nothing to change it. My basic view is that we should honor our promises to those now benefiting from Social Security, pare back the promises to younger workers and eliminate them completely for those who haven’t yet spent decades paying into them.How about you?Gail: I say leave Social Security alone. It was meant to help protect Americans who reach retirement age, give them a reliable cushion to make their old age comfortable or at least bearable. Can’t do much better than that.The fact that it’s seen as a plan for everybody — not just a program to aid the poor — gives it a special survivability. And on the fairness end, wealthy folk who don’t need it will give a good chunk back when it’s taxed as part of their income.Bret: True, but it’s still going broke.Gail: Of course I’m not crazy enough to say the government can never touch Social Security if its finances get truly shaky. I just want to be sure whoever’s doing the fixing is dedicated to protecting the basic concept.And Medicare — oh gosh, Bret, let’s save Medicare for next week. It can be our postelection calming mechanism.Bret: Gail, I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but any thoughts on the news that Trump is very likely to declare his candidacy for president later this month?Gail: Now that was the immediate postelection conversation I was yearning to avoid. Of course we knew it was going to happen, but, gee, don’t you think he could have let us have the holidays off?Bret: I know very little about what goes on in Trump’s mind, but I think we can safely say that giving either of us a break isn’t high on his list of priorities.The silver lining here is that if Democrats take the kind of electoral drubbing I suspect they will on Tuesday, it should help concentrate their minds. Time for President Biden to give up on the idea — or fantasy, really — that he’s going to run for re-election and devote his time to saving Ukrainians, Iranians and Taiwanese from tyranny as the centerpiece of his presidential legacy.Gail: I’m with you in the Joe-Don’t-Run camp.Bret: Time also for party strategists to start thinking a whole lot harder about how they lost the working-class vote and how they can recapture it. Time, finally, for Democratic politicians to focus on middle-class fears about crime, education and inflation, not progressive obsessions with social justice and language policing.Who knows? Maybe that’s just the wake-up call we all need if we’re going to keep Trump in Mar-a-Lago.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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      Libertarian Candidate Drops Out of Arizona Senate Race and Endorses Masters

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      The Libertarian candidate running for Senate in Arizona — who had threatened to play spoiler in the closely watched race — is dropping out and endorsing Blake Masters, the Republican nominee.The decision, announced on Tuesday, gives Mr. Masters a lift heading into the final week as he seeks to unseat Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, who has generally held a narrow lead in the polls.“This is another major boost of momentum as we consolidate our support,” Mr. Masters said in a statement to The New York Times.Marc Victor, the Libertarian candidate, and Mr. Masters spoke on Monday for a 20-minute recorded conversation that Mr. Victor is expected to publish, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Mr. Victor had made such a conversation a precondition to quitting, technically offering such an opportunity both to Mr. Masters and to Mr. Kelly.“I found Blake to be generally supportive of the Live and Let Live Global Peace Movement,” Mr. Victor said in a statement. “After that discussion, I believe it is in the best interests of freedom and peace to withdraw my candidacy and enthusiastically support Blake Masters for United States Senate.”Mr. Victor’s underfunded campaign had a chance to make more of an impact than some other third-party candidates this year, in part because he was onstage for the race’s lone debate. (He made waves in the appearance by suggesting the “age of consent” is something “that reasonable minds disagree on” and “should be up for a vote.”)Mr. Masters appears to have gone to some lengths to court libertarian-minded voters and assuage any concerns from Mr. Victor. Last Thursday, he posted a picture from 2010 of himself with Ron Paul, the former congressman and libertarian folk hero, saying he was “honored” to have Mr. Paul’s endorsement. Mr. Masters also made recent appearances on Mr. Paul’s podcast and another libertarian podcast.Mr. Victor had previously been funded at least in part by Democrats, presumably hoping to redirect some votes away from the Republican nominee.Donations included $5,000 from the Save Democracy PAC, which says on its website that it is pursuing “a nationwide effort to confront and defeat Republican extremism” and another $5,000 from Defeat Republicans PAC. In May, Ron Conway, the California-based Democratic investor, gave Mr. Victor part of more than $45,000 in donations from various people who share the family name in California; those funds account for about one-third of everything Mr. Victor raised in total.A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday showed Mr. Kelly ahead, 51 percent to 45 percent, with Mr. Victor garnering 1 percent support. Mr. Victor has been shown as earning a larger share of the vote in other polls, including one in mid-October from the progressive group Data for Progress that had Mr. Victor pulling in 3 percent with Mr. Kelly and Mr. Masters tied.Voting has already begun in Arizona, with roughly 895,000 votes already cast, according to a tally made public by a Democratic group — equivalent to more than a third of the nearly 2.4 million votes cast in the last midterm election, in 2018. 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 Midterms Look Very Different if You’re Not a Democrat or a Republican

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      Ross Douthat, a Times Opinion columnist, hosted an online conversation with Liel Leibovitz, an editor at large for Tablet magazine, and Stephanie Slade, a senior editor at Reason magazine, to discuss how they and other “politically homeless” Americans are thinking about the midterm elections.Ross Douthat: Thanks to you both for serving as representatives of the important part of America that feels legitimately torn between the political parties. Liel, in December of 2021 you wrote an essay about what you called “the Turn,” meaning the feeling of no longer being at home on the political left, of being alienated from the Democratic Party by everything from Covid-era school closures to doctrinaire progressivism.Where does “the Turn” carry you when it comes to electoral politics, facing the (arguably) binary choices of the midterm elections?Liel Leibovitz: Nowhere good, I’m afraid. I’m an immigrant, so I have no real tribal or longstanding loyalties. I came to this country, like so many other immigrants, because I care deeply about two things — freedom of religion and individual liberties. And both parties are messing up when it comes to these two fundamental pillars of American life, from cheering on law enforcement spying on Muslim Americans in the wake of 9/11 to cheering on social media networks for curbing free speech. “The Turn” leads me away from both Democrats and Republicans.Douthat: Stephanie, you’re a libertarian, part of a faction that’s always been somewhat alienated from both parties, despite (usually) having a somewhat stronger connection to the right. This is not, I think it’s fair to say, a particularly libertarian moment in either coalition. What kind of Election Day outcomes are you actually rooting for?Stephanie Slade: This is tough. As someone motivated by a desire for much less government than we currently have, I’m always going to be nervous about the prospect of a Congress that’s willing to rubber-stamp the whims of a president (or vice versa). So I’m an instinctive fan of divided power. But that preference is running smack up against the almost unimaginable abhorrence I feel toward some of the Republicans who would have to win in order for the G.O.P. to retake the Senate.Douthat: Liel, as someone whose relationship to the left and the Democrats has become much more complicated in recent years, what do you see when you look at the Republican alternative?Leibovitz: Sadly, the same thing I see when I look at the Democrats. I see a party too enmeshed in very bad ideas and too interested in power rather than principle. I see a party only too happy to cheer on big government to curtail individual liberties and to let tech oligopolies govern many corners of our lives. The only point of light is how many outliers both these parties seem to be producing these days, which tells me that the left-right dichotomy is truly turning meaningless.Douthat: But political parties are always more interested in power rather than principle, right? And a lot of people look at the current landscape and say, “Sure, there are problems in both parties, but the stakes are just too high not to choose a side.” Especially among liberals, there’s a strong current of frustration with cross-pressured voters. How do you respond to people who can’t understand why you aren’t fully on their side?Slade: Those seeking power certainly want people to feel like the stakes are too high not to go along with their demands. Yes, there are militant partisans on both sides who consider it traitorous of me not to be with them 100 percent. At the same time, there’s a distinction worth keeping in mind between where party activists are and where the average Republican or Democratic voter is. Most Americans are not so wedded to their red-blue identities.Leibovitz: The most corrosive and dispiriting thing is how zero-sum our political conversation has gotten. I look at the Democratic Party and see a lot of energy I love — particularly the old Bernie Sanders spirit, before it was consumed by the apparatus. I look at the Republican Party and see people like Ted Cruz, who are very good at kicking up against some of the party’s worst ideas. There’s hope here and energy, just not if you keep on seeing this game as red versus blue.Douthat: Let me pause there, Liel. What bad ideas do you think Cruz is kicking against?Leibovitz: He represents a kind of energy that doesn’t necessarily gravitate toward the orthodoxies of giving huge corporations the freedom to do as they please. He’s rooted in an understanding of America that balks at the notion that we now have a blob of government-corporate interests dictating every aspect of our lives and that everything — from our medical system to our entertainment — is uniform.Douthat: This is a good example of the gap between how political professionals see things and how individuals see things. There’s no place for the Bernie-Cruz sympathizer in normal political typologies! But you see in polls right now not just Georgians who might back Brian Kemp for governor in Georgia and Raphael Warnock for senator but also Arizonans who might vote for Mark Kelly and Kari Lake — a stranger combination.Stephanie, what do you think about this ticket-splitting impulse?Slade: Some of this isn’t new. Political scientists and pollsters have long observed that people don’t love the idea of any one side having too much power at once. In that, I can’t blame them.Leibovitz: I agree. But it’s still so interesting to me that some of these splits seem just so outlandish, like the number of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and then in 2016 for Donald Trump. That’s telling us that something truly interesting, namely that these tired labels — Democrat, Republican — don’t really mean anything anymore.Slade: We insiders always want to believe that voters are operating from a sort of consistent philosophical blueprint. But we’re seeing a lot more frustration-based voting, backlash voting. This can be fine, in the sense that there’s plenty in our world to be frustrated about, but my fear is that it can tip over into a politics thoroughly motivated by hatreds. And that is scary.Douthat: Right. For instance, in the realm of pundits, there’s an assumption that Republican candidates should be assessed based on how all-in they are for election conspiracy theories and that swing voters should recoil from the conspiracists. That seems to be happening in Pennsylvania, where the more conspiratorial Republican, Doug Mastriano, seems to be doing worse in his governor’s race than Dr. Oz is in the Senate campaign. But in Arizona, Lake is the more conspiratorial candidate, and she appears to be a stronger candidate than Blake Masters is in the Senate race.Which suggests that swing voters are often using a different compass than the political class.Leibovitz: Let me inject a very big dose of — dare I say it? — hope here. Yes, there’s a lot of hate and a lot of fear going on. But if you look at these volatile patterns you’re describing, you’re seeing something else, which is a yearning for a real vision. Voters are gravitating toward candidates who are telling them coherent stories that make sense. To the political classes, these stories sometimes sound conspiratorial or crazy or way removed from the Beltway reality. But to normal Americans, they resonate.Douthat: Or, Stephanie, are they just swinging back and forth based on the price of gas, and all larger narratives are pundit impositions on more basic pocketbook impulses?Slade: Yeah, I’m a little more split on this. Economic fundamentals matter a lot, as do structural factors (like that the president’s party usually does poorly in midterms, irrespective of everything else).Douthat: But then do you, as an unusually well-informed, cross-pressured American, feel electing Republicans in the House or Senate will help with the economic situation, with inflation?Slade: It’s a debate among libertarians whether divided government is actually a good thing. Or is the one thing the two parties can agree on that they should spend ever more money? I don’t have a ton of hope that a Republican-controlled House or Senate will do much good. On the other hand, the sheer economic insanity of the Biden years — amounting to approving more than $4 trillion of new borrowing, to say nothing of the unconstitutional eviction moratorium and student loan forgiveness — is mind-boggling to me, so almost anything that could put the brakes on some of this stuff seems worth trying.Douthat: Spoken like a swing voter. Liel, you aren’t a libertarian, but your particular profile — Jewish immigrant writer put off by progressive extremism — does resemble an earlier cross-pressured group, the original 1970s neoconservatives. Over time, a lot of neoconservatives ended up comfortably on the right (at least until recently) because they felt welcomed by the optimism of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.Do you think that the toxic side of the G.O.P. is a permanent obstacle to completing a similar move rightward for people alienated by progressivism?Leibovitz: Not to get too biblical, but I view Trump less as a person and more as a plague, a reminder from above to mend our ways, or else. And many voters mortified by the sharp left turn of the Democratic Party are feeling, like me, politically homeless right now.But politically homeless is not politically hopeless. The way out for us isn’t by focusing on which of these two broken homes is better but on which ideas we still hold dear. And here I agree with Stephanie. Stopping the economic insanity — from rampant spending to stopping oil production and driving up gas prices to giving giant corporations a free pass — is key. So is curbing the notion that it’s OK to believe that the government can decide that some categories, like race or gender or sexual orientation, make a person a member of a protected class and that it’s OK for the government to adjudicate which of these classes is more worthy of protection.Douthat: Let’s end by getting specific. Irrespective of party, is there a candidate on the ballot this fall who you are especially eager to see win and one that you are especially eager to see lose?Leibovitz: I’m a New Yorker, so anyone who helped turn this state — and my beloved hometown — into the teetering mess it is right now deserves to go. Lee Zeldin seems like the sort of out-of-left-field candidate who can be transformative, especially considering the tremendous damage done by the progressives in the state.Douthat: OK, you’ve given me a Republican candidate you want to see win, is there one you’d like to see fail?Leibovitz: I know Pennsylvania is a very important battleground state, and the Democrats have put forth a person who appears ill equipped for this responsibility, but it’s very, very hard to take a Dr. Oz candidacy seriously.Slade: I spend a lot of my time following the rising illiberal conservative movement, variously known as national conservatives, postliberals, the New Right and so on. What distinguishes them is their desire not just to acquire government power but to wield it to destroy their enemies. That goes against everything I believe and everything I believe America stands for. The person running for office right now who seems most representative of that view is J.D. Vance, who once told a reporter that “our people hate the right people.” I would like to see that sentiment lose soundly in November, wherever it’s on the ballot. (Not that I’m saying I think it actually will lose in Ohio.)Douthat: No predictions here, just preferences. Is there someone you really want to win?Slade: Like a good libertarian, can I say I wish they could all lose?Douthat: Not really, because my last question bestows on both of you a very unlibertarian power. You are each the only swing voter in America, and you get to choose the world of 2023: a Democratic-controlled Congress, a Republican-controlled Congress or the wild card, Republicans taking one house but not the other. How do you use this power?Leibovitz: Mets fan here, so wild card is an apt metaphor: Take the split, watch them both lose in comical and heartbreaking ways and pray for a better team next election.Slade: If forced to decide, I’d split the baby, then split the baby again: Republicans take the House, Democrats hold the Senate.Douthat: A Solomonic conclusion, indeed. Thanks so much to you both.Ross Douthat is a Times columnist. Liel Leibovitz is an editor at large for Tablet magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast, “Unorthodox,” and daily Talmud podcast, “Take One.” Stephanie Slade (@sladesr) is a senior editor at Reason magazine.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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      Peter Thiel, Major U.S. Political Donor, Is Said to Pursue Maltese Citizenship

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      Obtaining citizenship in Malta would provide another passport for Mr. Thiel, who is one of the largest individual donors for the U.S. midterm elections.VALLETTA, Malta — At the end of a narrow road, past crushed beer cans and the remnants of a chain-link fence, a weathered sandstone building overlooks the Mediterranean coast. The British tourist who answered the door of a third-floor apartment had no idea she was staying at the residence of one of the world’s richest men.Peter Thiel, the billionaire and Republican political patron, has declared the two-bedroom apartment that he rents himself as his address while he works toward a goal he has pursued for about a year: becoming a citizen of the tiny island nation of Malta, according to documents viewed by The New York Times and three people with knowledge of the matter.Mr. Thiel, 55, is in the process of acquiring at least his third passport even as he expands his financial influence over American politics. Since backing Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the technology investor has become one of the largest individual donors in the midterm elections next month, spending more than $30 million on more than a dozen right-wing Congressional candidates who have decried globalization and pledged to put America first.The Malta apartment building that Mr. Thiel has listed as his residential address on the island.Ryan Mac/The New York TimesMr. Thiel has long expressed deep dissatisfaction with what he perceives as America’s decline, railing against bureaucracy and “a completely deranged government” ruled by elites. To address that, he has funded fellowships to push people to drop out of school and start businesses and supported political candidates who would push the country in his preferred direction.All along, Mr. Thiel has also hedged his bets. That includes obtaining foreign passports — Mr. Thiel was born in Germany and holds American and New Zealand passports — that would let him live abroad. He has sought to build a remote compound in a glacier-carved valley in New Zealand, and supported a “seasteading” group that aims to build a city on floating platforms in international waters, outside the jurisdiction of national governments.Through a spokesman, Mr. Thiel, who co-founded the digital payments company PayPal and was Facebook’s first professional investor, declined to comment. His net worth stands at $4.2 billion, according to Forbes.There is no obvious tax benefit to Mr. Thiel to gaining Maltese citizenship, lawyers and immigration experts said, though wealthy Saudi, Russian and Chinese citizens sometimes seek a passport from the island nation for European Union access and to hedge against social or political turmoil at home.It is unclear why Mr. Thiel’s nominal residence in Malta is listed as a 185 euro-a-night vacation rental on Airbnb. Maltese naturalization laws are straightforward for those who can pay more than €500,000 for a passport, but they prohibit would-be citizens from renting out their official residences while their passport application is pending.What is clear is that a Maltese passport would give Mr. Thiel an escape hatch from the United States if his spending doesn’t change the country to his liking. He has started developing business connections in Malta, and is a major shareholder in at least one company registered there in which his husband, Matt Danzeisen, is a director.Mr. Thiel has backed his friend J.D. Vance, who is running for the Senate in Ohio. Mr. Thiel previously employed Mr. Vance.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIn the United States, the bulk of Mr. Thiel’s political donations have gone to support two friends who previously worked for him: J.D. Vance, a Republican running for Ohio’s open Senate seat, and Blake Masters, the Republican challenger in Arizona to Senator Mark Kelly. Mr. Vance worked at Mithril Capital, one of Mr. Thiel’s investment funds. Mr. Masters was chief operating officer of Thiel Capital, the billionaire’s family office.Both candidates have espoused a form of nationalism that, in part, blames globalization and leaders’ involvement in international affairs for American stagnation. Mr. Thiel has endorsed that worldview with his money and in speeches, including one at the National Conservatism Conference last year where he called nationalism “a corrective” to the “brain-dead, one-world state” of globalism.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.“In order for there to be any chance of reversing the wrong direction in which the country has been heading, in Arizona this year it’s Blake or bust,” he wrote in an endorsement on Mr. Masters’s website. Mr. Thiel has supported Mr. Masters’s run by hosting fund-raising dinners and spending $15 million.Mr. Masters was Thiel Capital’s chief operating officer when Mr. Thiel began his Maltese citizenship application. A spokeswoman for Mr. Masters, who left Thiel Capital in March, didn’t respond to questions for comment.Mr. Thiel has also supported the campaign of Blake Masters, who is challenging for one of Arizona’s Senate seats. Mr. Masters previously served as chief operating officer of Thiel Capital, Mr. Thiel’s family office.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMalta, located in the Mediterranean between Europe and North Africa, has been a destination for traders and crusaders for centuries. Outside powers controlled it until 1964; since it gained independence from Britain, it has struggled to build a sustainable economy. The island, which has little industry and few natural resources, joined the European Union in 2004.Malta has found a lucrative economic lever in selling passports. Since 2013, the country’s investor citizenship programs have granted around 2,000 applicants and their families passports, generating millions of euros in revenue.Those offered citizenship on a fast-track route must pay €750,000 into a government fund and maintain a rental or purchased property throughout the 12-month application period and for at least five years after receiving a passport. After that, citizens are no longer required to maintain a residence or live in Malta, which has a population of just over 500,000.Joseph Muscat, Malta’s prime minister who resigned in 2019 amid protests about corruption and the murder of a journalist who was critical of his government, called the passport program “an insurance policy” for wealthy individuals “where they feel there is a great deal of volatility.”“It’s straightforward,” he said. “You pay into a national fund, and the national fund uses that money for infrastructure and for social housing.”The Auberge de Castille, the office of Malta’s prime minister.Darrin Zammit Lupi/ReutersMalta’s fast track for citizenship by investment, or what’s more commonly known as “golden passports,” can take from 12 to 16 months, according to Henley & Partners, a consultancy that developed the Maltese program and helps clients obtain passports around the globe.“We traditionally have had many Americans looking at that, and of those, quite a lot are from the tech sector,” said Christian Kaelin, Henley’s chairman. European Union officials have criticized Malta’s golden passport program. Last month, the European Commission referred Malta to the union’s Court of Justice over the program, noting that citizenship in return for payments “is not compatible with the principle of sincere cooperation” within the bloc. Maltese officials have signaled they will contest any legal challenge.Joseph Mizzi, the head of Community Malta, the agency responsible for selling passports, declined to comment on Mr. Thiel’s application.Mr. Thiel has laid the groundwork for life outside the United States for years. In 2011, he obtained a New Zealand passport after donating 1 million New Zealand dollars to an earthquake relief fund in the country.There is “no other country that aligns more with my view of the future than New Zealand,” he wrote in his passport application, which the local government released in 2017 after reporting from The New Zealand Herald. The news provoked outrage that lawmakers were selling citizenship.Mr. Thiel donated money to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Mr. Thiel met with Mr. Trump and Mike Pence at Trump Tower that year.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesMr. Thiel is going through a similar process in Malta, where he has started laying down business roots. He is an investor in a Malta-based venture fund, Elevat3 Capital, run by Christian Angermayer, a German investor, according to the firm.A spokesman for Mr. Angermayer, who has based his family office and other business ventures in Malta, did not respond to requests for comment.In early 2021, Thiel Capital also became a shareholder in a Malta entity through a byzantine series of developments. The deal involved Coru, a Mexican online financial advice start-up, which has a parent company incorporated in London.Entities controlled by Mr. Thiel and Mr. Danzeisen, his husband, were among Coru’s biggest owners, corporate filings show. The start-up needed additional funding in late 2020, but its investors could not reach an agreement to put more cash in, said two former investors. The company went into administration, the equivalent of bankruptcy.Around that time, Mr. Thiel, Mr. Danzeisen and several other Coru investors established a company in Malta called EUM Holdings Melite Ltd., Maltese records show. That company bought Coru’s shares out of administration for about $100,000, according to British records. The records do not detail EUM’s business activities.Now Coru is owned by EUM. Its shareholders include Mr. Thiel, Mr. Danzeisen, Richard Li — a son of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing — and a group with a former Nicaraguan government official and a scion of the Spanish family that made a fortune selling Lladró porcelain figurines.Mr. Thiel began exploring Maltese citizenship around that time, said people familiar with the process. By late 2021, documents show, he was far along in the application process and retained an agency that fielded questions from the Maltese government about his businesses and political activities.The questions included Mr. Thiel’s role with Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company he founded that works with governments and corporations, and his political activity supporting Mr. Trump.As he applies for Maltese citizenship, Mr. Thiel has cited a two-bedroom apartment in Valletta, Malta’s capital, as a residential address. The apartment is also listed on Airbnb as a short-term vacation rental.Maltese government documents seen by The Times show Mr. Thiel and Mr. Danzeisen listing the apartment in Valletta, the capital, as their address on the island.On a recent visit to the apartment by a Times reporter, a tourist opened the door and said a family member had booked the flat via a short-term rental service. The Times identified a listing for a “2BR Seafront Executive Penthouse” on Airbnb that used Mr. Thiel’s address.Maltese property records show the apartment is owned by Andrew Zammit, a Malta-based lawyer whose firm works on citizenship applications. Mr. Zammit’s wife was named as the host of the Airbnb listing.Mr. Zammit declined to say if he had rented the flat to Mr. Thiel or if the billionaire was applying for a Maltese passport. He also declined to say why the apartment was listed on Airbnb. Within days after The Times inquired about the Airbnb listing, it was made unavailable for future rentals. More

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      In Midterm TV Ad Wars, Sticker Shock Costs Republicans

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      Football fans in Las Vegas tuning into the Raiders game on Oct. 2 had to sit through multiple political ads, including one from Nevada’s endangered Democratic senator and another from a Republican super PAC trying to defeat her.The ads were each 30 seconds — but the costs were wildly different.The Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, paid $21,000. The Republican super PAC paid $150,000.That $129,000 disparity for a single ad — an extra $4,300 per second — is one sizable example of how Republican super PACs are paying a steep premium to compete on the airwaves with Democratic candidates, a trend that is playing out nationwide with cascading financial consequences for the House and Senate battlefield. Hour after hour in state after state, Republicans are paying double, triple, quadruple and sometimes even 10 times more than Democrats for ads on the exact same programs.One reason is legal and beyond Republicans’ control. But the other is linked to the weak fund-raising of Republican candidates this year and the party’s heavy dependence on billionaire-funded super PACs.Political candidates are protected under a federal law that allows them to pay the lowest price available for broadcast ads. Super PACs have no such protections, and Republicans have been more reliant on super PACs this year because their candidates have had trouble fund-raising. So Democrats have been the ones chiefly benefiting from the mandated low pricing, and Republicans in many top races have been at the mercy of the exorbitant rates charged by television stations as the election nears.The issue may seem arcane. But strategists in both parties say it has become hugely consequential in midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.From Labor Day through early this week, Senate Republican super PACs and campaigns spent more than their opponents on the airwaves in key races in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Hampshire, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact. But when measured in rating points — a metric of how many people saw the ads — the Democratic ads were seen more times in each of those states, according to two Democratic officials tracking media purchases.In other words, Democrats got more for less.“One of the challenges we face in taking back the House is the eye-popping differences between what Democrat incumbents and Republican challengers are raising — and what that affords them in terms of different advertising rates,” said Dan Conston, who heads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership that has raised $220 million and is one of the nation’s biggest television spenders.The price differences can be jarring.In Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate, paid $650 for a recent ad on the 6 a.m. newscast of the local Fox affiliate. The leading Republican super PAC paid $2,400.In Nevada, Ms. Cortez Masto paid $720 for an ad on CBS’s Sunday news show. Another Republican super PAC, the Club for Growth, paid $12,000.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.And in Arizona, Senator Mark Kelly has been paying $2,000 per spot on the evening news on the ABC affiliate. A Republican super PAC is paying $5,000.An analysis by The New York Times of Federal Communications Commission records, along with interviews with media buyers in both parties, shows just how much the different prices that candidates and super PACs pay is influencing the 2022 midterm landscape.“What matters at the end of the day is what number of people see an ad, which isn’t measured in dollars,” said Tim Cameron, a Republican strategist and media buyer, referring to the rating-points metric.The partisan split between advertising purchased by candidates versus super PACs is vast.In Senate races, Democratic candidates have reserved or spent nearly $170 million more than Republican candidates in the general election on television, radio and digital ads, according to AdImpact.The price that super PACs pay is driven by supply and demand, and television stations charge Republicans and Democrats the same prices when they book at the same time. So Democrats have super PACs that pay higher rates, too. But the party is less reliant on them. Republicans have a nearly $95 million spending edge over Democrats among super PACs and other outside groups involved in Senate races, according to AdImpact. That money just doesn’t go nearly as far.Several candidates who were weak at raising funds won Republican nominations in key Senate races, including in New Hampshire, Arizona and Ohio, and that has hobbled the party.“We’re working hard to make up the gap where we can,” said Steven Law, the head of the leading Senate Republican super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.But Democrats — buoyed by robust donations through ActBlue, the Democratic online donation-processing platform — are announcing eye-popping money hauls ahead of Saturday’s third-quarter filing deadline that are helping them press their advantage. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia raised $26.3 million. In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Senate nominee, raised $22 million. Mr. Ryan raised $17.2 million. Ms. Cortez Masto raised $15 million.“It’s a simple fact that candidates pay lower rates than outside groups, which means Democrats’ ActBlue cash tsunami could wipe out an underfunded Republican,” Mr. Law said.Republicans are hardly cash-poor. The Senate Leadership Fund alone has reserved more than $170 million in ads since Labor Day and raised more than $1 million per day in the third quarter. But the ad rates are eroding that money’s buying power.In the top nine Senate battlegrounds that drew significant outside spending, Republicans spent about 6.66 percent more on ads than Democrats from Labor Day through earlier this week, according to one of the Democratic officials tracking the media buys. But the Democratic money had gone further when measured by rating points, outpacing Republican ad viewership by 8 percent.In Nevada, for instance, the super PAC that paid $150,000 for the single commercial on Oct. 2, Our American Century, has been funded chiefly by a $10 million contribution by Steve Wynn, the casino magnate. Yet for a comparable price of $161,205, Ms. Cortez Masto was able to air 79 ads that week on the same station: daily spots each on the local news, daytime soap operas, “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” as well as in prime time — plus the Oct. 2 football ad, Federal Communications Commission records show.Las Vegas is perhaps the most congested market for political ads in the nation, with multiple contested House races, a swing Senate contest and a tight governor’s election, and some ballot measures. Both Democratic and Republican media-buying sources said the rates for super PACs had been up to 10 times that of candidates in some recent weeks.In a recent one-week period, Ms. Cortez Masto spent $197,225 on 152 spots on the local Fox station, an average price of $1,300 per 30 seconds. The Club for Growth Action, a Republican super PAC, spent $473,000 for only 52 spots — an average price of nearly $9,100 per 30 seconds.Republicans feel they have no choice but to pony up.“Republicans are facing a hard-money deficit, and it’s up to groups like Club for Growth Action to help make up the difference in these key races,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth.Some strategists have privately pressed super PACs to invest more heavily in digital advertising, where candidate rates are not protected. Super PACs pay similar amounts and sometimes can even negotiate discounts because of their volume of ads. But old habits, and the continued influence of television on voters, means much of the funds are still going to broadcast.“Super PACs have one charter: to win races. And so they spend there because they have to,” said Evan Tracey, a Republican media buyer. “They’re not running a business in the sense that shareholders are going to be outraged that they have to spend more for the same asset. It’s a cost of doing business.”The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has faced financial problems this year, cut millions of its reserved television “independent expenditures,” which are booked at the same rate as super PACs. Instead, in a creative and penny-pinching move, the committee rebooked some of that money in concert with Senate campaigns, splitting costs through a complex mechanism that limits what the ads can say — candidates can be mentioned during only half the airtime — but receives the better, candidate ad rates.Still, in Arizona, some of the canceled reservations from top Republican groups have further exacerbated the ad-rate disparity in the Senate race. That is because the party gave back early reservations only to have other super PACs step in — and pay even more.For instance, the Senate committee originally had reserved two ads for that Oct. 2 football game for $30,000 each and the Senate Leadership Fund had reserved another for $30,000. All three were canceled.Instead, a new Republican super PAC, the Sentinel Action Fund, booked two ads during the same game but had to pay $100,000 because rates had risen — forking over $10,000 more for one fewer ad.Data from one Republican media-buying firm showed that in Arizona, ads supporting Mr. Kelly, the Democrat, amounted to 84 percent of what viewers saw even though the pro-Kelly side accounted for only 74 percent of the dollars spent.The Sentinel Action Fund was paying $1,775 per rating point — a measurement of viewership — while Mr. Kelly’s campaign was spending around $300 per point, according to the Republican data. Blake Masters, Mr. Kelly’s Republican opponent, was receiving a price close to Mr. Kelly’s but could afford only a tiny fraction of the ad budget (around $411,000, compared with Mr. Kelly’s $3.3 million for a recent two-week period).“The disparity between Democratic campaigns’ strong fund-raising and Republican campaigns’ weak fund-raising is forcing the G.O.P. super PACs to make difficult decisions even though there continues to be a deluge of outside money on their side,” said David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.In Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund announced in August that it was making a $28 million television and radio reservation to prop up J.D. Vance, the best-selling author and first-time Republican candidate who emerged from the primary with a limited fund-raising apparatus.But despite outspending the Democratic candidate in dollars — the super PAC paid $3 million last week for ads, compared with Mr. Ryan’s nearly $1.5 million — Republicans were still at a disadvantage: Mr. Ryan’s campaign was sometimes getting more airtime, according to media buyers and F.C.C. records.The Republican super PAC was paying four or five times more than Mr. Ryan for ads on the same shows. And the sticker shock on big sports events is the most intense: On WJW, the Fox affiliate in Cleveland, last week’s Big Ten college football game cost Mr. Ryan $3,000 — and $30,000 for the Senate Leadership Fund. More

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      Five Takeaways From the Arizona Senate Debate

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      PHOENIX — It was a battle over whether Arizona is still the conservative-leaning state of Barry Goldwater and John McCain.Senator Mark Kelly faced his Republican challenger, Blake Masters, on Thursday in the first and only debate of the race that will help decide whether Democrats maintain control of the Senate, which they hold by the barest of margins. Mr. Kelly repeatedly emphasized his independent image, referring frequently to his disagreements with members of his own party, including President Biden.The two men, who have spent months attacking each other on issues including abortion, border security, inflation and election integrity, were also joined by Marc Victor, the Libertarian candidate, who has not reached double digits in polls.The debate did little to cover new ground on the most contentious issues, but the moderator asked pointed, direct questions in a bid to force the candidates to clarify their sometimes murky positions. Mr. Masters tried to straddle the line between his previous hard-line stances and his more recently adopted softer tone — but continued to largely play to his base, even if it required some winks and a nod or two.Abortion becomes a flash point.Abortion has vaulted to the front of many voters’ minds in Arizona, not just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this June, but because a state judge revived a total ban on abortions from 1864 that had sat dormant for decades. Abortions in the state, already on shaky ground, halted abruptly.So on Thursday, each candidate tried to paint the other as an abortion extremist. Mr. Kelly pointed to statements where Mr. Masters had called abortion “demonic,” and said Mr. Masters wanted to punish doctors and ban abortions in cases of rape.Mr. Masters said he was proud to call himself one of the most pro-life candidates running for Senate, and quickly leveled a misleading accusation that Mr. Kelly supported late-term abortions up until the moment of birth. In reality, abortions late in pregnancy are rare and often occur because of a devastating health problem in an otherwise wanted pregnancy.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.It’s always 2020 in Arizona.Faced with a direct question about whether Mr. Masters believed the 2020 vote was stolen, he seemed to blink. He talked of collusion between tech companies, the news media and F.B.I. to suppress negative news about President Biden’s son Hunter.“But not vote-counting, not election results?” asked the moderator, Ted Simons, a host on the Arizona PBS station.“Yeah, I haven’t seen evidence of that,” Mr. Masters replied.During the Republican primary, Mr. Masters won an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump and earned legions of conservative followers by fanning the falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen and Mr. Trump was its rightful winner.But some of that language has been scrubbed from his campaign website since Mr. Masters entered the general election, where such conspiracy theories don’t play as well with independent voters, who either trust Arizona’s popular mail-in voting systems or simply want to move on.Mr. Kelly said Mr. Masters’s peddling of “conspiracy theories” was undermining American democracy.“I’m worried about what’s going to happen here in this election and 2024,” he said. “We could wind up in a situation where the wheels come off of our democracy.”Both see a crisis at the southern border.Political veterans in Arizona believe that inflation and the southern border are Republicans’ two strongest issues, and Mr. Masters hammered both early and often. He painted a Dante-esque picture of the border — beset with cartels, overflowing with fentanyl and wide-open for millions of “illegals” to sweep through.“Joe Biden and Mark Kelly, they laid out the welcome mat,” Mr. Masters said. “They surrendered our southern border. They’ve given it up to the Mexican drug cartels.”Crossings at the southern border have surged to their highest levels in decades as migrants flee gangs and political and economic turmoil in Venezuela, Central America and elsewhere. Many of those migrants are turning themselves directly over to American authorities to plead their cases in immigration courts.Mr. Kelly called the border “a mess” of chaos and crisis, but said he had worked to get money for more Border Patrol agents and technology to screen for drugs at ports of entry.Don’t California my Arizona.Like other Republicans in the Southwest, Mr. Masters frequently uses California as a kind of foil, making the state a stand-in for liberalism gone wild. And one reliable way to rile residents in other parts of the West? Bring up the notion that the nation’s most populous state — which is in a near constant drought — is taking too much water from the Colorado River.“I’m tired of Senator Kelly acting like the third senator from California,” Mr. Masters said onstage Thursday, echoing a refrain he has made throughout the campaign. “We need someone in there with sharp elbows who’s going to fight for our water.”“Why is California even putting its straw into the Colorado River?” he added, arguing that the state should instead rely on desalination and the Pacific Ocean.Left unsaid was the more basic implied attack: Mr. Masters is the protector of the state; Mr. Kelly is merely a liberal in disguise.A third-party candidate for a third of voters?The vast majority of voters would have trouble naming Mr. Victor — he has struggled to raise money or capture media attention. But he held his ground Thursday night, insisting that the moderator allow him to answer all the same questions as Mr. Kelly and Mr. Masters.For the most part, Mr. Victor took a predictable Libertarian pox-on-both-their-houses approach, and portrayed himself as the outsider who would not be beholden to either President Biden or Mr. Trump. And there could be a receptive audience for that message: Roughly a third of Arizona’s voters are not registered as Republicans or Democrats, and many view themselves as moderates or describe themselves as leaning libertarian.Mr. Victor could easily attract enough voters to act as a kind of spoiler for Mr. Masters, denying him just enough votes to push Mr. Kelly over the edge. Indeed, at several points during the debate, Mr. Victor attacked Mr. Masters for waffling on his stances and leaped to the defense of Mr. Kelly. More

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      How to Watch Arizona Senate Debate With Kelly and Masters Tonight

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      With Election Day fast approaching, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a Democrat, will face his Republican challenger, Blake Masters, as well as Marc Victor, the Libertarian candidate, in their first and (likely only) debate.Mr. Masters, a political newcomer who received the enthusiastic backing of the tech mogul Peter Thiel, has struggled to attract independent voters, who make up roughly a third of the state’s registered voters.Much of Mr. Masters’s campaign has focused on anti-immigration messaging. He has shifted his stance on abortion since the primary and has deleted his false claim that President Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election from his website. He is likely to face questions from the moderators and Mr. Kelly on his shifting positions.Mr. Kelly, a former astronaut and the husband of Gabby Giffords, the former congresswoman who was shot in the head in 2011, has run a carefully choreographed campaign. He has relied on his reputation as a moderate incumbent, drawing consistent support from some Republicans. Mr. Kelly also has one of the most well-funded Senate campaigns, raising over $52 million.The debate, hosted by the Arizona Clean Elections Commission, is at 6 p.m. local time (and 9 p.m. Eastern time). It will be aired by C-SPAN and we will be covering it here with live updates and analysis from our reporters. More