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      Ohio’s partisan supreme court election could decide abortion’s future in state

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      AnalysisOhio’s partisan supreme court election could decide abortion’s future in statePoppy NoorThe midterms include key elections to the state’s highest court as the judicial system becomes increasingly politicized In Ohio, a highly partisan fight over three state supreme court seats could determine the political direction of the court on a slew of important issues – particularly abortion.With the US supreme court increasingly handing issues such as voting rights, abortion, gun rights and gerrymandering back to the states, state supreme court races are becoming more important than ever.Abortion on the ballot: here are the US states voting on a woman’s right to chooseRead moreFew states illustrate how political these courts are becoming better than Ohio, where justices’ party affiliation will be listed on the ballot for the first time in the 8 November election, and where the justices on that court will soon determine the fate of the state’s six-week abortion ban that has been blocked and unblocked by lower courts since Roe v Wade was overturned early in the summer. Abortion is currently legal in the state up to 22 weeks, as the ban is being litigated.As a result of the stakes, more cash is also pouring into state supreme court races around the country from political action committees associated with the national parties. Fair Courts America, a Pac associated with the Republican party, has pledged $22.5m for state supreme court races this election cycle, to support conservative judicial candidates in Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.In Kentucky, that same Pac has donated $1.6m to three conservative judges vying for election. One of those judges, Joe Fischer, is a former Republican congressman who was the key sponsor of the state’s trigger ban on abortion that went into effect when Roe was overturned, as well as an anti-abortion referendum that’s being put to Kentucky voters next week.“People used to spend all their time looking at the federal constitution for protections, particularly when it came to individual rights. But now the US supreme court is basically saying these matters are better left resolved in the state courts and their state constitutions,” explains Bill Weisenberg, a former assistant executive director of the Ohio State Bar Association.In Ohio, after Roe fell, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion, the state implemented a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. That ban is currently being blocked by a lower state court, but ultimately, it will land with the state supreme court. And the election of certain justices will be pivotal in determining the future of the ban.The seven-justice Ohio supreme court currently has four Republican justices and three Democratic justices. The current chief justice, Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, is not seeking re-election this year because of age limits, so two other sitting justices, Republican Sharon Kennedy and Democrat Jennifer Brunner, will battle it out to replace her in the top spot. Two incumbent Republican justices, Pat DeWine and Pat Fischer will face Democratic challengers Marilyn Zayas and Terri Jamison, for seats on the court.O’Connor, the chief justice who is standing down, was a Republican-affiliated judge who was happy to break with the party line on issues such as gerrymandering. She has never openly indicated where she stands on abortion.But all three Republican justices up for election on Tuesday have stated on candidate surveys that they believe there is no constitutional right to abortion, according to local news, meaning their elections could strike a fatal blow to abortion rights in Ohio.They also came under fire in September for attending a Trump rally where the former president repeated baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen, and for subsequently refusing to confirm that the results of the 2020 election were valid. One of those justices – Pat DeWine – is also under scrutiny for having liked a tweet promoting a conspiracy theory about the violent attack on the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, asking “what are they hiding?” He has since said he clicked “like” inadvertently.Meanwhile, Zayas, Jamison and Brunner have publicly stated that they believe the Ohio constitution protects the right to abortion.Weisenberg cautions that neither political affiliation, nor what a justice indicates of their views before their election, are watertight indicators for how they will rule once they are on the supreme court. “People are surprised sometimes when they read the opinion and it’s not in keeping with where they thought the justice would lean, or what they had said on a prior occasion,” he said.Indeed, the US supreme court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito indicated they believed the constitutional right to abortion was settled precedent before being confirmed to the court.TopicsOhioAbortionReproductive rightsRoe v WadeUS justice systemUS midterm elections 2022US politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      The fight for blue collar voters in Ohio: Politics Weekly America midterms special

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      In the second episode of our special series, Jonathan Freedland travels to Youngstown, Ohio, to see who voters are more excited by in the state’s crucial Senate race – the Trump-backed Republican, JD Vance, or the Democrat Tim Ryan, who analysts say is running one of the best campaigns in the country.
      He heads to Cleveland to talk to a union leader about who workers want to win, and then to a Vance event with other prominent Republicans.

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      Archive: CSPAN, CBS, Fox News Subscribe to the Guardian’s new pop culture podcast, which launches on Thursday 3 November Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More

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      FBI arrests two alleged far-right Boogaloo Boys group members

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      FBI arrests two alleged far-right Boogaloo Boys group members The arrests come amid concerns about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm elections The FBI has arrested two alleged members of the far-right anti-government group the Boogaloo Boys, as authorities express increasing concern about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm elections.Timothy Teagan was expected to appear on Wednesday in federal court in Detroit, where charges against him would be unsealed, an FBI spokesperson said.In a criminal complaint filed on Monday, the FBI said there was enough evidence to charge Aron McKillips, of Sandusky, Ohio, with illegal possession of a machine gun and the interstate communication of threats. The complaint said McKillips was a member of the Boogaloo Boys and was believed to be in a militia group called the Sons of Liberty.Penn State students outraged over invitation to far-right Proud Boys founderRead moreMcKillips’s lawyer, Neil McElroy, said he had asked for McKillips to be released pending a 9 November detention hearing in Toledo.Teagan’s arrest on Tuesday came a week before election day. Election workers have been targeted by threats and harassment since the 2020 election, which Donald Trump has refused to admit he lost.Federal authorities have charged at least five people already this year. Election officials are concerned about conspiracy theorists signing up to work as poll watchers. Some groups that have trafficked in lies about the 2020 election are recruiting and training watchers.In Phoenix on Tuesday, a federal judge agreed to put limits on a group monitoring outdoor ballot drop boxes in Arizona.The US district court judge, Michael Liburdi, said he would issue a temporary restraining order against Clean Elections USA and also the Lions of Liberty and the Yavapai County Preparedness team, which are associated with the far-right anti-government Oath Keepers group.Those groups or anyone working with them will be barred from filming or following anyone within 75ft (23 metres) of a ballot drop box or the entrance to a building that houses one. They cannot speak to or yell at individuals within that perimeter unless spoken to first. It is the standard distance maintained around polling sites under Arizona law, but it has typically never applied to drop boxes.The order also prohibited members of the groups or agents working on their behalf from carrying firearms or wearing body armor within 250ft (76 metres) of a drop box.In Michigan, Teagan was among a dozen or so people who openly carried guns while demonstrating in January 2021 outside the state capitol in Lansing. Some promoted the “boogaloo” movement, a slang term that refers to a second US civil war.Teagan told reporters the purpose of the demonstration was “to urge a message of peace and unity to the left and right, to the members of [Black Lives Matter], to Trump supporters to Three Percenter militias to antifa”.Some boogaloo promoters insist they aren’t genuinely advocating for violence. But the movement has been linked to domestic terrorism plots.In the criminal complaint against McKillips, the FBI alleges that he made online threats including one to kill a police officer and another to kill anyone he determined to be a federal informant. The FBI also contends that McKillips provided equipment to convert rifles into machine guns.“I literally handed out machine guns in Michigan,” McKillips said in a recording, the complaint states.In September 2021, he said in a private chat group: “Ain’t got a federal badge off a corpse yet, so my time here ain’t near done yet lol.”In May this year, McKillips and another user in the Signal messaging system threatened to kill a different user in the belief the person was an informant for the FBI or Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the complaint says.In July, McKillips threatened in a Signal group to “smoke a hog”, meaning kill a police officer, if conditions worsened following a fatal police shooting in Akron, it says.McKillips frequently advocated violence against police officers, federal agents, government buildings and stores like Walmart and Target, and even threatened to blow up Facebook headquarters, the complaint says.TopicsFBIThe far rightDetroitMichiganOhioUS elections 2020US midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      As Stakes Rise, State Supreme Courts Become Crucial Election Battlegrounds

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      Pivotal issues like abortion, gerrymandering and voting have been tossed into state justices’ laps. Politicians, ideological PACs and big money are following.WASHINGTON — State supreme court races, traditionally Election Day afterthoughts, have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy, attracting a torrent of last-minute money and partisan advertising.In Ohio, an arm of the national Democratic Party funneled a half-million dollars last month into a super PAC backing three Democratic candidates for the high court. In North Carolina, a state political action committee with ties to national Republicans gave $850,000 last week to a group running attack ads against Democratic state supreme court candidates.On another level entirely, Fair Courts America, a political action committee largely bankrolled by the Schlitz brewing heir and shipping supplies billionaire Richard E. Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, has pledged to spend $22 million supporting deeply conservative judicial candidates in seven states.The motivation behind the money is no mystery: In states like Ohio, North Carolina and Michigan, partisan control of supreme courts is up for grabs, offering a chance for progressives to seize the majority in Ohio and for conservatives to take power in North Carolina and Michigan. In Illinois, competing billionaires are fueling court races that offer Republicans their first chance at a Supreme Court majority in 53 years.The implications of victory are profound. As the U.S. Supreme Court continues to offload crucial legal questions to the states, state courts have abruptly become final arbiters of some of America’s most divisive issues — gun rights, gerrymandering, voting rights, abortion. In heavily gerrymandered states, justices have the potential to be the only brake on one-party rule.And as Republican politicians continue to embrace election denialism, high courts could end up playing decisive roles in settling election disputes in 2024.Undertones of politics are hardly new in state court campaigns. But the rise of big money and hyperpartisan rhetoric worries some experts.Once, it was businesses that sought to elect judges whose rulings would fatten their bottom lines, said Michael J. Klarman, a constitutional scholar at Harvard University.“The contest now is over democracy,” he said, “over gerrymandering, over easing restrictions on the ballot, over efforts to re-enfranchise felons.” “It’s not a stretch to say the results affect the status of our democracy as much as what the Supreme Court does,” he said.An abortion rights demonstrator in Detroit in June after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a constitutional right to abortion.Emily Elconin/Getty ImagesMany judicial candidates shy away from being perceived as politicians. Even candidates in hotly fought races tend to follow legal ethics guidelines limiting statements on issues they might have to decide.But others can be increasingly nonchalant about such perceptions.State Representative Joe Fischer is openly running for the nonpartisan Kentucky Supreme Court as an anti-abortion Republican, with $375,000 in backing from a national G.O.P. committee whose ads cast him as a firewall against the “socialist agenda” of President Biden. Fair Courts America is pouring $1.6 million into backing him and two others seeking judicial seats.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 three Republicans on the Ohio Supreme Court ballot — all sitting justices — raised eyebrows by appearing at a rally in Youngstown on Sept. 17 for former President Donald J. Trump, who repeated the lie that the 2020 election “was rigged and stolen and now our country is being destroyed.”Mr. Trump singled out the three for praise, saying, “Get out and vote for them, right? Vote. Great job you’re doing.” Later, two of the three declined to confirm to The Columbus Dispatch that the 2020 election results were legitimate, saying judicial ethics forbade them from commenting on issues under litigation. (The state ethics code indeed bars comments on pending legal issues in any state, though its scope is unclear. A spokesman for the candidates said a challenge to the election had recently been filed in Michigan.)Three weeks later, Cleveland television station WEWS reported that the three had stated on candidate surveys compiled by Cincinnati Right to Life that there is no constitutional right to abortion — an issue under review, or sure to be reviewed, in state courts nationwide.“People are starting to feel like judges are nothing more than politicians in robes,” said William K. Weisenberg, a former assistant executive director of the Ohio State Bar Association. “What we see evolving now — and it’s very, very dangerous for our society — is a loss of public trust and confidence in our justice system and our courts.”The battles reflect the rising stakes in rulings over voting and electoral maps that conceivably could determine control of Congress in close elections.The Ohio Supreme Court voted 4-3 this year — several times — to invalidate Republican gerrymanders of state legislative and congressional districts. Those maps remain in effect, under federal court order, but the court chosen this month will decide whether new maps that must be drawn for the 2024 election are valid.In North Carolina, another 4-3 vote struck down Republican-drawn gerrymanders in January, changing a map that guaranteed Republicans as many as 11 of 14 congressional seats into one that split the seats roughly equally.Michigan’s court ordered an abortion-rights referendum onto the November ballot after a canvassing board deadlocked along party lines on Aug. 31 over whether to do so. The next Supreme Court in Illinois is likely to decide disputes over abortion and gun rights.The courts’ role has also been amplified as political norms have lost sway and some legislatures have moved to expand their power.In Wisconsin, the Republican-gerrymandered State Senate has given itself broad authority over the composition of state boards and commissions simply by refusing to confirm new board members nominated by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. The state court upheld the tactic by a 4-3 vote along ideological lines in June, allowing Republican board members to keep their seats even though Governor Evers has statutory power to nominate replacements.Not all states elect members of their highest courts. Governors fill most of the 344 posts, usually with help from nominating commissions, though that hardly takes politics out of the selection.In the 22 states that elect judges — some others require periodic voter approval of judges in retention elections — most races are fairly free of mudslinging and big-ticket intervention by outside groups.But rising politicization nevertheless has had a measurable and growing impact.Since in the late 1980s, voters’ choices in state supreme court races have aligned ever more consistently with their political preferences in county elections, the University of Minnesota political scientist and legal scholar Herbert M. Kritzer found in a 2021 study.“At this stage,” he said, “identification with the parties has become so strong in terms of what it means for people that I don’t know if you’ve got to say another thing other than ‘I’m a Republican’ or ‘I’m a Democrat.’”An analysis of social science studies by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University also suggested that campaign pressures influence how judges rule. The analysis found that judges facing re-election or retention campaigns tended to issue harsher rulings in criminal cases.One telling statistic: Over a 15-year span, appointed judges reversed roughly one in four death sentences, while judges facing competitive elections — which frequently are clotted with ads accusing them of being soft on crime — reversed roughly one in 10.If past elections are any guide, the final days of midterm campaigning will see a deluge of spending on advertising aimed at drawing voters’ attention to contests they frequently overlook.Many ads will be negative. Indeed, ads financed by outside groups — virtually all focused on abortion rights or crime — markedly resemble ones for congressional or statewide offices.Ohio is typical. In one commercial run by a PAC representing the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, a young girl with a backpack strolls down a neighborhood street. An announcer warns: “There’s danger among us. Jennifer Brunner made it easier for accused murderers, rapists, child molesters to return to our streets.”Ohio Supreme Court justice Pat Fischer speaks during the Fairfield County Lincoln Republican Club banquet in March.Paul Vernon/Associated PressAnother ad, by the progressive PAC Forward Justice, reprises the recent story of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had to leave the state to obtain an abortion after being raped. An announcer adds: “Pat DeWine said women have no constitutional right to abortion. Pat Fischer even compared abortion to slavery and segregation.”Ms. Brunner, a Democrat and an associate justice of the Supreme Court, is running to be chief justice. Mr. Fischer and Mr. DeWine, both Republican associate justices, are seeking re-election.Candidates and interest groups spent at least $97 million on state supreme court races in the 2020 election cycle, according to the Brennan Center. Spending records are all but certain to be set this year in some states, said Douglas Keith, the Brennan Center’s counsel for democracy programs.Conservatives have long outspent liberals on state court races. Besides Fair Courts America’s $22 million commitment, the Republican State Leadership Committee, an arm of the national party long involved in state court races, plans to spend a record $5 million or more on the contests.Supreme Court races in Illinois are legendary for being matches of billionaire contributors — on the left, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and on the right, Kenneth C. Griffin, a hedge-fund manager.But outsiders are rivaling their contributions. An Illinois group backed by trial lawyers and labor unions, All for Justice, said it will spend at least $8 million to back Democratic candidates.Outside spending has been exceedingly rare in states like Kentucky and Montana, but even there, things are becoming more politicized. In Montana, where a 1999 State Supreme Court ruling recognized abortion as a constitutional right, conservative groups are seeking to unseat a justice appointed by a Democratic governor in 2017. The state’s trial attorneys and Planned Parenthood have rallied to her defense.In northern Kentucky, the Republican anti-abortion candidate, Joseph Fischer, is opposing Justice Michelle M. Keller, a registered independent.Mr. Fischer did not respond to a telephone call seeking an interview. Ms. Keller said the partisan attacks from independent groups swirling around her race were “new ground.”“This will have a chilling effect on the quality of judges if we’re not careful,” she said. “Good lawyers, the kind of people you want to aspire to the bench, won’t do it. You can make much more money in private practice.” More

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      J.D. Vance Says He Will Accept Election Results, While Questioning 2020’s

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      J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, said Tuesday evening that he would accept the results of his election — while also saying he stood by his false claims that the 2020 election had been “stolen.”“I expect to win,” Mr. Vance said in a town-hall-style event hosted by Fox News, before adding: “But, of course, if things don’t go the way that I expect, I’ll support the guy who wins and I’ll try to be as supportive as I possibly can, even accepting that we’re going to disagree on some big issues.”But when one of the hosts, Martha MacCallum, noted that he had previously said the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump, whose endorsement propelled him to the nomination, Mr. Vance replied, “Yeah, look, I have said that, and I won’t run away from it.” He referred to state court rulings concerning elements of the way Pennsylvania had conducted its election, but none of those rulings called the results into question.The town hall event was split between Mr. Vance and his Democratic rival in the Senate race, Representative Tim Ryan, with each candidate appearing separately and fielding questions from the moderators and the audience.Mr. Ryan distanced himself from the left wing of the Democratic Party on inflation and abortion, something he has done often as he tries to win a Senate seat in a state that has shifted significantly to the right in recent years.While denouncing Republican abortion bans as extreme and inhumane, he said he believed third-trimester abortions should be allowed only in medical emergencies. That distinguishes him from many other Democrats, who have said that abortion should always be a decision between women and their doctors and that the government should play no role in regulating it. (Third-trimester procedures are very rare, accounting for less than 1 percent of abortions in the United States.)In promoting the ability of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act to live up to its name, Mr. Ryan highlighted its natural gas provisions, saying they would bring construction jobs to Ohio, while calling for tax cuts like an expanded child tax credit in the short term. He explicitly aligned himself with Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, whose objections limited the size of the legislation and ensured that natural gas provisions accompanied its clean energy measures.Mr. Vance, in his own discussion of inflation, called for Congress to “stop the borrowing and spending” — without specifying the spending cuts he wanted — and alluded to more oil and gas production.On abortion, he said he believed that “90 percent of abortion policy” should be set by state governments, while also indicating that he supported the 15-week federal ban proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. 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

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      Don’t Buy the Republican Appeal to Workers

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      J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican Senate candidate, states on his campaign website that he “fiercely defended working-class Americans.” In Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate hopeful, sports a plaid shirt and jeans in a campaign ad, as he shoots guns of varying sizes. Guitar twangs in the background complete the scene.Mr. Vance, a venture capitalist and best-selling author, and Dr. Oz, the heart surgeon and TV personality, aren’t alone in their self-presentation as ordinary Joes. As November’s midterm elections near, many Republican candidates are all about pickup trucks, bluejeans and guns, as they perform the role of champions for the working stiff. Scratch the surface, though, and it’s a different story.This Republican working-class veneer is playacting. Their positions on workers’ rights make that crystal clear. Nationwide, most Republicans rail against liberal elites and then block a $15 an hour minimum wage, paid leave laws and workplace safety protections. They stymie bills to help workers unionize, and top it off by starving the National Labor Relations Board of funding, even as it faces a surge of union election requests. Several Republican attorneys general have sued to stop wage hikes for nearly 400,000 people working for federal contractors. Republicans also opposed extending the popular monthly child tax credit that helped so many working families afford basic necessities. The “issues” section on the campaign websites of Mr. Vance and Dr. Oz contain virtually no labor policy. Howling about China, as they do, isn’t a comprehensive labor plan.In other instances, what superficially seemed to be examples of Republican support for worker rights were really Trojan horse incursions to advance their culture war.For example, legislators or policymakers in at least six conservative states last year swiftly expanded eligibility for unemployment insurance to workers who quit or were fired for refusing to comply with employer Covid-19 vaccination mandates. The sudden largess was at odds with these states’ generally miserly approach to such benefits: They’d previously done most everything possible to limit the lifeline of unemployment insurance, including prematurely cutting off federally funded benefits in the summer of 2021.Only a sliver of the national work force dug in and refused to be vaccinated, including a small number of New York City employees recently granted reinstatement to their jobs by a Staten Island trial court judge. But anti-vax‌ workers were stark outliers in relation to the vast majority of their peers, from United Airlines employees to Massachusetts state employees, who overwhelmingly complied with mandates.Why did ‌these conservative Republicans suddenly want a safety net for unvaccinated workers? Because it served a culture war narrative, one that frames everything in divisive us-versus-them terms and in the case of vaccines, sees them as a nefarious liberal plot and vaccine-or-test mandates as one more example of government overreach.To that point, consider two legal cases, one brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when its enforcement arm was led by a Trump appointee, and another heard by the Supreme Court, where six of the nine justices are Republican appointees. Both cases involved workers — but neither touched on pocketbook or dignity issues central to most workers’ concerns.The E.E.O.C. case involved two Kroger workers who claimed religious discrimination after being fired for refusing to wear company-issued aprons bearing a heart-shaped logo they saw as promoting gay rights. (In pretrial depositions, both workers were shown a range of corporate logos, and the workers said several of them also represented gay rights and were incompatible with their religion; they included the logos of NBC, Google, Southwest and Apple, as well as the Olympic rings.) A Trump-appointed federal judge in Arkansas rejected Krogers’ motion to end the case, ordering the case to trial, and earlier this month, the company and commission said they had reached a deal to resolve the dispute.In a Supreme Court case that became a national right-wing cause célèbre, the six conservative justices ruled that a Washington State school district violated the free speech and religious rights of a public school football coach who insisted on praying very publicly after games with students at midfield, rejecting more private locations that were offered.In light of genuine worker struggles in our country, these are the workers conservatives go to bat for? It seems the trickle-down crowd finds their inner Norma Rae only if it helps them “own the libs.” These aren’t workers’ rights issues. They’re divisive culture war battles that happen to occur in the employment arena. For ordinary workers, living paycheck to paycheck, who just want a safe place to work, decent pay, and some dignity, conservatives are AWOL.The praying coach and Kroger worker cases involved First Amendment and religious rights. But the most common example of silenced expression occurs when workers get fired for reporting labor law violations or supporting a union. How many Republicans have spoken up to support the expressive rights of unionizing Starbucks or Amazon workers?Similarly, Republicans may prioritize benefits for their favored workers (such as people who are unvaccinated), but all workers need a functioning safety net, including an adequately funded and functional unemployment insurance system. What’s also essential are robust and broadly available programs for paid family and medical leave, paid sick leave and universal health care, measures most Republicans have repeatedly opposed. In this context, the rush to ensure unemployment benefits to people refusing a lifesaving vaccine is cynical, indeed.Workers need safe conditions, good wages, fair treatment and a collective voice on the job. The culture war labor incursions are divorced from what matters most to our country’s working people.As the midterms approach, Republican candidates may play dress-up in plaids and work boots, as they vie for the votes of our nation’s workers. But even a pickup truck laden with bluejeans and hard hats can’t camouflage the callous facts. The absurdity of the worker causes Republicans champion should drive home the truth to wavering voters: these candidates don’t care about the real needs of working people.Terri Gerstein is a fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and the Economic Policy Institute. She spent more than 17 years enforcing labor laws in New York State, working in the state attorney general’s office and as a deputy labor commissioner.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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      in Elections

      In Ohio, G.O.P. Sees a Clean Victory as Democrats Predict an Upset

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      Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, in the high-profile Ohio Senate race.CLEVELAND — When Tim Ryan speaks to Democratic crowds in the closing days of the Ohio Senate race, his biggest applause line is about the other team.A Republican official in a “deep-red county,” he recounts, his voice dropping to a stage whisper, told him, “You have no idea how many Republicans are going to quietly vote for you.”The hoots and hollers that break out represent the high hopes of a party that has lost much of its appeal to working-class voters and that sees in Mr. Ryan — a congressman from the Mahoning Valley who has an anti-China, pro-manufacturing message and whose own father is a Republican — a chance to claw back blue-collar credibility.Polls show Mr. Ryan competing within the margin of error against his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan is polling higher than President Biden’s job approval rating in Ohio surveys, and he is outperforming the Democratic candidate for governor, Nan Whaley. That suggests a potentially sizable pool of voters who intend to split their tickets between a Republican for governor and a Democrat for Senate.“This is going to be the upset of the night,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview on his campaign bus on Thursday, as he plied the pro-Democrat shoreline of Lake Erie from Toledo to Cleveland.“There’s a lot of Republicans who would never tell a pollster that they’re voting for me,” he said. “They don’t want to put a yard sign up. They don’t want to get in a fight with the neighbor who’s got the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ flag.”He said his internal polling showed 12 percent or more of Republicans “coming our way.”But there is also the cold reality of a midterm environment tilting against Democrats almost everywhere, with inflation the top voter concern. Polling in Ohio in recent elections has undercounted the backing for Republican candidates. And there has been a political realignment of Ohio voters in the past decade, which has largely pushed the state off the battleground map.J.D. Vance listening to local elected officials at the annual Darke County Republican Party Hog Roast.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesWhite Ohioans without college degrees have shifted toward Republicans up and down the ballot, while suburban, college-educated voters have moved to favor Democrats, though less consistently.“Ohio is a much more Republican state than Texas is,” said Mike Hartley, a Republican strategist with 25 years of experience in Ohio. “Democrats talk about things that for a lot of Ohioans offends their core principles and sensibilities, and they run away from the pocketbook issues.”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.Former President Donald J. Trump twice won Ohio with ease by appealing to the economic and cultural anxieties of working-class white voters. In 2020, he grew his support in the state’s industrial northeast — Mr. Ryan’s base — and became the first Republican presidential candidate in 50 years to win Mahoning County, which is home to Youngstown.Bob Paduchik, chairman of the Republican Party of Ohio, brushed off the notion of quiet Republican support for Mr. Ryan. He said county-level absentee voting data and an analysis using Republican National Committee modeling predicted a clean Vance victory.“I don’t know what he thinks he’s looking at,” he said of Mr. Ryan’s assertion of hidden support. “But I’ll take our data, which is based on the R.N.C. modeling, which has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in it.”Despite Mr. Trump’s success in Ohio, Democrats point to the example of Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat and gruff-voiced champion of organized labor who won re-election in 2018 by appealing to working-class voters who might not have liked his progressive social priorities, but believed he would fight for their jobs.Mr. Ryan touring a job training facility at McKinley United Methodist Church in Dayton, Ohio. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Ryan, casting himself partly in the Brown mold, is the grandson of a steelworker and a longtime opponent of trade deals that hurt American factories. He has said that President Biden should not seek re-election and he opposed Nancy Pelosi for House speaker. A former college quarterback, he appears in his ads throwing darts in a bar or footballs at TV sets. “You want culture wars? I’m not your guy,” he says.Mr. Ryan pitches himself to voters weary of the divisiveness and anger broiling in America. “I have this conversation with my dad all the time,” he said in the interview, adding that his father “probably” voted for Mr. Trump, twice.“People are tired of the insanity,” Mr. Ryan told a gathering of Democratic activists on the shore of Lake Erie in Sandusky on Thursday. “We’re Ohio. Ohio doesn’t do crazy.”It was a sideswipe at Mr. Vance, who has campaigned with the far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has flirted with the conspiracy theory that Democrats want to “replace” existing voters with immigrants and has defended Alex Jones as “more reputable” than an MSNBC host.On Friday, speaking to supporters at the county Republican headquarters in Canton, Mr. Vance portrayed his opponent as disingenuous in claiming to be a new-model Democrat. Mr. Vance joked that “maybe we should have invited Tim Ryan” because of the Democrat’s efforts to distance himself from his own party.“This guy is not the moderate that he pretends to be,” Mr. Vance continued. “He’s a guy who bends the knee to Nancy Pelosi and does what he’s told.”One sign that Mr. Ryan remains a long shot is the lack of TV advertising from big-spending groups tied to the Democratic Senate leadership, which have poured tens of millions of dollars into races elsewhere.Mr. Ryan has compensated by raising a staggering $48 million on his own. The money flowed from small donors around the country, many annoyed by Mr. Vance’s political evolution, from the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who denounced Mr. Trump in 2016 as “cultural heroin” to a stalwart Trump supporter. At a rally in Ohio last month, the former president joked that Mr. Vance “is kissing my ass” to win his support.Mr. Vance’s supporters in Cincinnati reacting to the news that he won the Republican primary in May.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Trump is scheduled to return to the state the day before the election for a rally with Mr. Vance in Dayton. Asked at a brief news conference on Friday whether he needed a boost from the former president, Mr. Vance said: “I like the president. I thought his policies deliver prosperity for the state of Ohio, and he wants to come to Ohio, and we’d love to have him in Ohio. It’s really that simple.”Unlike Mr. Ryan, who has shunned campaigning with national Democratic figures, Mr. Vance has embraced national G.O.P. leaders, appearing in Canton with the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, and Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Republican Senate campaign arm.Mr. Vance has largely relied on the Republican cavalry from out of state, most significantly for $28 million in TV ads from a super PAC aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.Mr. Vance on his own has raised $12.7 million, after his campaign was supported almost exclusively by a super PAC funded by $15 million from the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who once employed Mr. Vance. After Mr. Vance won his primary, Mr. Thiel moved on to other races.On Friday, Ms. McDaniel reminded reporters that polls in Ohio historically have widely missed support for Republicans.“J.D. is actually polling higher than President Trump was heading into the election in 2020,” she said. Mr. Trump went on to win the state by eight percentage points.“What people were seeing in the polling is not new in this state,” Mr. Vance told reporters. “It always overstates things to the benefit of the Democrats.”With a little more than one week before the election on Nov. 8, Mr. Ryan has been making an appeal to unity in these fractured times.“I know you feel the same way as I do,” he told activists in an autoworkers union hall in Cleveland on Thursday night. “I don’t want any more hate. I don’t want any more anger.” He added: “I want people who care about each other. I want some forgiveness. I want some grace.” More