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      JD Vance playing defense in unexpectedly close Ohio Senate race

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      JD Vance playing defense in unexpectedly close Ohio Senate race If Republicans cannot drag Vance across the finish line, it could spell doom for the party’s hopes of flipping the Senate JD Vance had some explaining to do. After winning a brutal, costly primary to secure the Republican nomination in Ohio’s Senate race, Vance had spent the summer making few appearances on the campaign trail and allowing his Democratic opponent, congressman Tim Ryan, to dominate the airwaves.Now polls showed Vance, a first-time candidate and author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, running neck and neck with Ryan in a race that many Republicans had hoped would be an easy win.“We have a tough campaign,” Vance said at an event with supporters in Avon, Ohio, last weekend. “I know that a lot of people are frustrated you didn’t see a whole lot of my TV commercials over the summer. Hopefully that’s started to pick up in the last couple of weeks.”Vance’s struggle to establish a clear lead in Ohio mirrors Republican Senate candidates’ missteps in other battleground states that could determine control of the vital upper chamber. Like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia, Vance was able to win the Republican nomination after receiving Donald Trump’s endorsement, but he has stumbled in his pivot to the general election.Republicans are now racing to avoid a Democratic victory in Ohio, often at the expense of investing in other close races. If Republicans cannot drag Vance across the finish line in Ohio, it could spell doom for the party’s hopes of flipping the Senate in the midterm elections this November.Although Trump won Ohio by eight points in 2020, recent polls show Vance and Ryan essentially tied. National Republican groups have picked up on the trouble in Ohio and have started devoting more resources to the race.The Senate Leadership Fund, a Super Pac aligned with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, announced last month that it would reserve $28m in TV and radio ads to boost Vance. As the SLF increased its financial support for Vance, the group also slashed roughly $8m of its ad reservations in Arizona, a shift that the Super Pac’s president partially attributed to “an unexpected expense in Ohio”. (The SLF announced Tuesday that it was pulling out of the Arizona Senate race entirely.)The SLF’s significant investment to support Vance underscores how Republicans are playing defense in an unexpectedly close race. Even if the SLF’s funding helps Vance hold on in Ohio, the victory would not bring his party closer to a Senate majority, as the seat is now held by a retiring Republican, Rob Portman.The reality is that Vance needs all the financial help he can get. At the end of the second quarter of 2022, Vance’s campaign reported having just $628,000 cash on hand, compared to $3.6m in Ryan’s bank account. Between April and June, Vance raised and spent $1m as he fought in the fiercely competitive Republican primary, while Ryan raised $8.6m and easily captured his party’s nomination.Ryan has used his cash advantage to launch a massive advertising blitz, running commercials that frame him as an independent-minded centrist and attack Vance as an out of touch elite with extreme views.In one of Ryan’s ads, an Ohio mother who lost her son, Joe, to opioid addiction criticizes Vance’s now defunct non-profit for enlisting the help of a doctor with ties to the pharmaceutical industry. “I don’t have words for how betrayed I felt,” the woman says in the ad. “JD Vance has chosen to help the drug companies rather than the people who are struggling like Joe.”In another memorable video, Ryan throws footballs at television screens showing the Republican ads attacking him. “They say you can know a person by their enemies,” Ryan says in the ad. “Well, here comes their bullshit ads.”Over the summer, Ryan’s ad campaign went largely unanswered by Vance’s team, allowing the Democrat to chip away at his opponent’s advantage in the Republican-leaning state.“He won the primary thanks to Trump’s help, and it just felt like he went into the witness protection program,” Jessica Taylor, the Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report, said of Vance’s summer campaign schedule. “Vance took a hit in that really brutal primary, and you need to try to rehabilitate your image.”The Ohio Democratic party reveled in Vance’s absence from the campaign trail and the airwaves, sending out mocking statements each time he left the state to fundraise.“You have to kind of be here to rally people together, and he’s not been here. He’s literally been almost everywhere but here,” Elizabeth Walters, chair of the Ohio Democratic party, said earlier this month. “This has to be a tough moment for the party where your standard-bearer and your top candidate can’t be bothered to show up. I think that they’re going have a hard time in the fall of keeping their coalition together.”Even some of Vance’s supporters acknowledge that he has a lot of ground to make up in the race, with less than 50 days to go until election day. “What he has to get across is the record of his opponent, not what his opponent’s saying,” Tom Patton, a voter from Avon Lake, said as he left Vance’s event last weekend. “He has to do more.”Nicolette Allsop, a voter from South Amherst who attended the Vance event with her two sisters, begrudgingly agreed that Ryan has run “effective” ads in the race. Allsop’s sister, MaryJo Moluse of Avon, added that Ohio feels more competitive this year than it did in 2020. “I think it’s going to be a tough fight. I really do,” Maluse said.Vance and his allies appear to have woken up to that reality, as the candidate has ratcheted up his campaign appearances and his television ads in recent weeks. In one ad, Vance walks down a street in his home town and laments the country’s recent rise in violent crime, accusing Ryan of insufficiently supporting law enforcement officers.Mike Hartley, who previously served as a senior adviser to former Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, pointed to the ad as an example of how Vance is successfully rebooting his campaign in the crucial, final stretch of the race.“That’s what he’s going to run on, and that’s what he should run on, and I think that’s just going to solidify his advantage,” Hartley said. “I think he’s done a good job of hitting his stride at the right time.”Vance has also kept up a busy schedule of campaign events this month, including an appearance at a rally with Trump last Saturday in Youngstown, which lies in Ryan’s congressional district. The region was once a Democratic stronghold, but it has moved to the right as white working-class voters have drifted toward the Republican party. Vance will need those voters to turn out in November to defeat Ryan, and he used the rally as an opportunity to criticize his opponent for allegedly misrepresenting his record.“There are two Tims out there,” Vance told thousands of rally goers. “There’s a DC Tim, who votes 100% of the time with Joe Biden, and then there’s campaign Tim, who pretends he’s a moderate … We need to kick DC Tim to the curb.”In his long and often meandering speech, Trump echoed that message, praising Vance as “an America First warrior” while attacking Ryan as a “far-left Democrat phony”. Trump also took a moment to dismiss a report that Republican Senate candidates are attempting to distance themselves from him, saying, “JD is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad.”“[Ryan] is lying to your faces, acting as though he’s my friend on policy, pretending to be a moderate so he can get elected and betray everything that you believe in,” Trump told the cheering crowd. “He is not a moderate. He is radical left.”That attack strategy appears to be resonating with some of Trump’s most loyal fans in Ohio, who helped Vance clinch the Republican nomination in May and could now prove instrumental in carrying him across the finish line in November.“I don’t really care for [Ryan],” Lori Ferguson, a voter from Cortland, said as she waited to enter the venue for Trump’s rally. “I think the way he’s talking now is simply trying to maybe make Republicans think that he’s on their side.”William Fair, a voter from Navarre who was ahead of Ferguson in line, admitted that he did not know much about Vance, but he said Trump’s endorsement was enough to secure his vote. “If Trump wants him, we’ll get him,” Fair said.Fair’s comments underscore the hefty challenge facing Ryan, despite his campaign’s effective ads and savvy messaging. For many voters, the “R” or “D” next to a politician’s name takes priority over any specific concerns about the individual candidate. That could put Ryan at a disadvantage, given that only one Democrat, Senator Sherrod Brown, has managed to win a non-juridical statewide office in Ohio since 2008.“We have increasingly seen, really over the past decade and a little more, that even Senate races have become almost parliamentary in nature – where you’re voting for the party and not necessarily the person,” Taylor said.Like all other Democrats, Ryan is also facing the national headwinds of record-high inflation and Biden’s underwater approval rating. Ryan recently told the New York Times that he would not campaign with Biden, reflecting the president’s unpopularity in Ohio.“[Ryan is] doing what he believes he needs to do to win, and I think they’re executing what I consider a good campaign,” Hartley said. “But I just don’t think it’s going to be enough … In my eyes, I think Tim Ryan has clearly peaked, and now JD Vance is going to seal the deal.”Even as national Republicans have swooped in to prop up Vance, Ryan has remained steadfast in his determination to snap Ohio Democrats’ losing streak.“He’s looking for a rescue squad,” Ryan said of Vance last Monday. “It’s not going to be enough to save him in Ohio because Ohio wants a fighter.”TopicsUS SenateOhioUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ohio G.O.P. Candidate Says He Served in Afghanistan, but Air Force Has No Record of It

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      J.R. Majewski, a Republican House candidate in northern Ohio, has frequently promoted himself as a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but the U.S. Air Force has no record that he served there, unraveling a central narrative of his political ascension that has been heralded by former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Majewski, 42, was deployed for six months in 2002 to Qatar, the Persian Gulf nation that is now home to the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East, according to Air Force records obtained by The New York Times.The Associated Press reported earlier about Mr. Majewski’s misrepresentations of his military service, noting that he worked as a “passenger operations specialist” while he was in Qatar, helping to load and unload planes. In addition to Air Force records, it used information that it had obtained through a public records request from the National Archives but that was not immediately available on Thursday.J.R. Majewski, a House candidate, at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Youngstown, Ohio. He says he served in Afghanistan, but military records do not support the claim.Gaelen Morse/ReutersMelissa Pelletier, a campaign spokeswoman for Mr. Majewski, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In a statement to The A.P., Mr. Majewski did not directly address the inconsistencies, saying that his accomplishments were under attack.“I am proud to have served my country,” Mr. Majewski said in the statement.The inconsistencies in Mr. Majewski’s public accounts of his military service brought renewed scrutiny to a candidate who had already been facing questions about his presence at the U.S. Capitol on the day of the Jan. 6 siege and sympathies for the QAnon conspiracy movement.The fallout from the revelations appeared to be swift and significant, with the National Republican Congressional Committee on Thursday canceling television ads it had booked for the final six weeks of the campaign in support of Mr. Majewski, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks campaign advertising. The decision was also reported by Medium Buying, a political advertising news site.A spokesman for the N.R.C.C. did not immediately respond to several requests for comment on Thursday.In response to questions from The Times, Rose M. Riley, an Air Force spokeswoman, said on Thursday that there was no way for the military branch to verify whether Mr. Majewski served in Afghanistan during his time in Qatar. Air Force records showed that Mr. Majewski received no commendations or medals that would typically have been associated with combat service in Afghanistan, though she acknowledged that the list “may be incomplete or not up to date because some require action on the member’s part to submit or validate.”The role detailed in Mr. Majewski’s military records contrasted sharply with his repeated claims on social media and right-wing podcasts that he was deployed to Afghanistan.More on U.S. Armed ForcesA Culture of Brutality: The Navy SEALs’ punishing selection course has come under new scrutiny after a sailor’s death exposed illicit drug use and other problems.Sexual Abuse: Pentagon officials acknowledged that they had failed to adequately supervise the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, after dozens of military veterans who taught in U.S. high schools were accused of sexually abusing their students.Civilian Harm: Following reports of civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes, the Pentagon announced changes aimed at reducing risks to noncombatants in its military operations.Space Force: The fledgling military branch, which has frequently been the butt of jokes, dropped an official song extolling the force’s celestial mission. Some public reactions were scathing.In the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year, Mr. Majewski chided President Biden over the chaotic exit of forces there, saying in a tweet, “I’d gladly suit up and go back to Afghanistan tonight and give my best to save those Americans who were abandoned.”He also mentioned Afghanistan during a February 2021 appearance on a podcast platform that has drawn scrutiny for promoting conspiracy theories and misinformation.“I lost my grandmother when I was in Afghanistan, and I didn’t get to see her funeral,” he said. More revelations were detailed by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The head of a prominent veterans’ advocacy group criticized Mr. Majewski in an interview on Wednesday, saying that his embellishment of his military record dishonored veterans who did experience combat.“To me, that’s stolen valor,” said Don Christensen, a retired Air Force colonel and president of Protect Our Defenders. “I have so much respect for the people who were actually getting shot at, suffering from I.E.D.s, being wounded and killed. I just think you owe them that you’re going to be honest in what you say and that you’re not going to try to equate your service to their service.”Mr. Christensen, 61, served for 23 years in the Air Force in a noncombat role. He said there was a clear distinction between Qatar and Afghanistan or Iraq.“Qatar, for most of people who were in Iraq and Afghanistan, is where you went for R&R,” he said, noting that the military kept a “morale tent” in Qatar for service members to call family members.“They were saying, oh, my God, this is so incredible — the internet, someplace to eat,” Mr. Christensen said of service members returning from combat to Qatar.In May, Mr. Majewski emerged as the surprise winner of a Republican House primary election in northern Ohio, where redistricting has emboldened the party as it tries to flip the seat held by longtime Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat, in November.Ms. Kaptur, a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Majewski had misled voters.“The truth matters,” Ms. Kaptur said. “The idea that anyone, much less a candidate for the United States Congress, would mislead voters about their service in combat is an affront to every man and woman who has proudly worn the uniform of our great country.”Mr. Majewski first gained attention in Ohio in 2020 by turning his lawn into a 19,000-square-foot “Trump 2020” sign.During his primary campaign earlier this year, he ran an ad showing himself carrying an assault-style rifle and saying: “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to return this country back to its former glory. And if I’ve got to kick down doors, well, that’s just what patriots do.”Days after Mr. Majewski defeated two other Republicans in the primary, Mr. Trump praised him during a rally in Pennsylvania.A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about Mr. Majewski’s military record.Mr. Trump has zeroed in on military records to attack a sitting member of Congress: Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. He frequently highlights Mr. Blumenthal’s first campaign for the Senate in 2010, when he was accused of misrepresenting his military service during the Vietnam War.Mr. Blumenthal was a Marine Corps reservist but did not enter combat. He said at the time that he never meant to create the impression that he was a combat veteran and apologized.Alyce McFadden More

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      Trump embraces QAnon at rally by playing music similar to its anthem

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      Trump embraces QAnon at rally by playing music similar to its anthemEx-president’s team insists it is a royalty-free tune but to many it is nearly identical to the extremist conspiracy group’s adopted song Donald Trump made one of his highest-profile embraces to date of the extremist conspiracy group QAnon at a political rally in Ohio on Saturday, making the apparently deliberate choice to play music that is virtually indistinguishable from the cult organization’s adopted anthem.Dozens of the former president’s supporters in Youngstown engaged in raised-arm salutes as Trump delivered a fiery address to the background of a song his team insisted was a royalty-free tune from the internet, but to many ears it was nearly identical to the 2020 instrumental track Wwg1wga.Wwg1wga’s title reflects the QAnon slogan “where we go one, we go all”, adopted by members of the antisemitic group who have convinced themselves that Trump is a messianic figure who is single-handedly battling the dark, pedophilic forces of satanism and who will return to the White House in glory having vanquished his enemies.It was arguably the most visible display to date of Trump’s growing alignment to the far-right group, whose principles were championed by many in the violent mob of his supporters who overran the Capitol during the 6 January insurrection.A joint report by the FBI and the homeland security department last year warned that QAnon members posed a significant threat of more violence, particularly because of growing disillusionment in unfulfilled predictions that Joe Biden would be removed from office.Political observers were quick to react. The liberal commentator Keith Olbermann posted a tweet with side-by-side photographs of Trump’s supporters saluting him in Ohio and followers of Adolf Hitler at a Nazi rally in the 1930s.“We must face the reality. We must use the real words. After Saturday’s rally, the modified Sieg Heil, the music, the QAnon madness … Trump IS America’s Hitler,” he wrote in another post.University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that the development was “extremely disturbing”.“What it means is that the former president is willing to court not just supporters of his, but those who support violence for his goals, number one of which is being restored to the White House,” he said.“If it’s just a political threat, well, then we can have elections. But once it’s not just denying an election, but using violence as the response to an election denial, now we’re in a new game.”QAnon adherents believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children.Trump has previously embraced the group and its baseless theories, having frequently retweeted posts that related to or supported QAnon while he was president, and before he was permanently removed from the social media platform Twitter.The trend has continued since he left office in January 2021 and set up his own failing network Truth Social.He posted an image of himself last week wearing a Q pin on his lapel, according to the New York Times, under the phrase, “The storm is coming.” Followers believe the storm is a maelstrom that will culminate in Trump’s restoration to the presidency after his political enemies have been conquered and then executed on live television.The Guardian’s 2020 explainer on QAnon also details the antisemitic pillars on which the cult is built. The idea of the all-powerful, world-ruling cabal comes straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fake document purporting to expose a Jewish plot to control the world that was used throughout the 20th century to justify antisemitism.In Youngstown, Ohio, at a rally ostensibly supporting the Republican Senate candidate JD Vance, but which looked more like a campaign event for the White House run in 2024 that Trump has repeatedly teased, supporters saluted the former president as they appeared to recognize the track being played.They raised their arms and pointed a finger into the air, signifying the “one” denoted in the Wwg1wga title.Trump had used the music last month in a post to Truth Social as a background to clips of him decrying the state of the nation under the Biden administration.Media Matters, a left-leaning online platform, said at the time it analyzed the video using Google Assistant and Apple’s Shazam, with both indicating the song featured was Wwg1wga by the artist Richard Feelgood on Spotify.According to the Times, after the Ohio rally, Trump’s spokesperson, Taylor Budowich, was incredulous that anybody could think it was QAnon’s adopted anthem being broadcast and insisted the music was a song called Mirrors by the American composer Will Van De Crommert.“The fake news, in a pathetic attempt to create controversy and divide America, is brewing up another conspiracy about a royalty-free song from a popular audio library platform,” he said.Two separate linguistic studies have determined that Paul Furber, a South African software developer, was behind Q’s early posts, before Ron Watkins took over the account in 2018.Watkins’s father, Jim Watkins, owns the 8kun site – previously called 8chan – where Q posted, and Ron Watkins is a former administrator of the platform.Ron Watkins ran for a congressional seat in Arizona earlier this year but finished last in a seven-candidate Republican primary, drawing fewer than 3,000 of the nearly 80,000 votes cast.TopicsDonald TrumpQAnonUS politicsOhionewsReuse this content More

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

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      Whether he is invited or not, the former president keeps holding rallies in battleground states. It reflects an awkward dance as Republican candidates try to win over general-election voters.Former President Donald J. Trump is preparing to swoop into Ohio on Saturday to rally Republicans behind J.D. Vance in a key Senate race. Two weeks earlier, he did the same for Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.Neither candidate invited him.Instead, aides to the former president simply informed the Senate campaigns that he was coming. Never mind that Mr. Trump, while viewed heroically by many Republicans, remains widely disliked among crucial swing voters.The question of how to handle Mr. Trump has so bedeviled some Republican candidates for Senate that they have held private meetings about the best way to field the inevitable calls from his team, according to strategists familiar with the discussions.This awkward state of affairs reflects the contortions many Republican candidates are going through as they leave primary season behind and pivot to the general election, when Democrats are trying to bind them to the former president.In New Hampshire, Don Bolduc won the Republican Senate nomination on Tuesday after a primary campaign in which he unequivocally repeated Mr. Trump’s false claims of 2020 election fraud. Just two days later, he reversed himself, telling Fox News, “I want to be definitive on this: The election was not stolen.”Two days after Don Bolduc, left, won the Republican primary for Senate in New Hampshire, he reversed his position that the 2020 election was marred by fraud. John Tully for The New York TimesSome of Mr. Trump’s chosen candidates, after pasting his likeness across campaign literature and trumpeting his seal of approval in television ads during the primaries, are now distancing themselves, backtracking from his positions or scrubbing their websites of his name.The moves reflect a complicated political calculus for Republican campaigns, which want to exploit the energy Mr. Trump elicits among his supporters — some of whom rarely show up to the polls unless it is to vote for him — without riling up the independent voters needed to win elections in battleground states.In North Carolina, Bo Hines, a Republican House candidate who won his primary in May after proudly highlighting support from Mr. Trump, has deleted the former president’s name and image from his campaign site. A campaign official described the move as part of an overhaul of the website to prioritize issues that are important to general-election voters.But Mr. Trump’s endorsement remains prominent on Mr. Hines’s social media accounts. Reached by phone, the 27-year-old candidate said he planned to attend a Trump rally in the state next week and then cut short the call.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.In Wisconsin, Tim Michels, the Republican nominee for governor, erased from his campaign home page the fact that Mr. Trump had endorsed him — but then restored it after the change was reported, saying it had been a mistake.“The optimal scenario for Republicans is for Trump to remain at arm’s length — supportive, but not in ways that overshadow the candidate or the contrast,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and a former top aide at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Mr. Donovan, as well as consultants and staff members working for Trump-backed Senate candidates, said the former president could be most helpful, if he chose, by providing support from his powerful fund-raising machine.“A big part of the problem is that these nominees emerged from messy fields where the party has been slow to unify,” Mr. Donovan said. “But to fix what ails, what these G.O.P. candidates need isn’t a Trump rally, it’s a MAGA money bomb.”Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in a statement that the former president’s “name and likeness was responsible for the unprecedented success of the G.O.P.’s small-dollar fund-raising programs,” and that he continued to “fuel and define the success of the Republican Party.”Mr. Budowich added, “His rallies, which serve as the most powerful political weapon in American politics, bring out new voters and invaluable media attention.”But linking arms with the former president could create problems for candidates in close races.Even though he has been out of office for nearly 20 months, Mr. Trump has remained a constant presence in news headlines because of mounting criminal and congressional investigations into his role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, his refusal to hand over sensitive government documents that he took to his Florida home, and whether he and his family fraudulently inflated the value of their business assets..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.On Thursday, when asked about the possibility of his being indicted in the document inquiry, Mr. Trump told a conservative radio host that there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.”Polls suggest these controversies could be taking a toll. Among independent voters, 60 percent said they had an unfavorable view of Mr. Trump, compared with 37 percent who had a favorable view, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this week. President Biden was also underwater among these key voters, but by a far smaller margin of eight percentage points.Asked whether Mr. Trump had “committed any serious federal crimes,” 62 percent of independent voters said they believed he had, and 53 percent said he had threatened American democracy with his actions after the 2020 election.Republican candidates appear to be aware of such sentiments, backing away from Mr. Trump’s fixation on the 2020 election. While he has said that election fraud is the most important issue in the midterms, polls show that voters are far more worried about economic issues and abortion rights.Three days after Mr. Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz, the Republican Senate nominee, told reporters that he would have defied the former president and voted to certify the 2020 presidential election.Dr. Oz, a former TV personality, leaned on Mr. Trump’s endorsement to win a bitter primary. Since then, he has removed prominent mentions of the endorsement from his campaign website and has swapped out Trump-themed branding from his social media.Republican campaigns said that they would not reject Mr. Trump’s help out of hand, but that accepting it created a whole set of other problems: Where, for instance, could a rally be held to energize the conservative base, while minimizing the damage among independents?When Mr. Trump’s team called to say that the former president wanted to come back to Pennsylvania for a rally this month, Mr. Oz’s campaign guided him to Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County. The county was one of three that voted twice for Barack Obama and flipped to Mr. Trump in 2016. It was also the only one of those three counties that backed Mr. Trump again in 2020. The other two — Erie and Northampton — supported Mr. Biden.Mr. Trump’s rally in Ohio on Saturday will be his third visit to the state since leaving office — more than any other state so far. He twice won Ohio, a longtime presidential battleground, by eight percentage points.This year, his endorsement of Mr. Vance’s Senate bid has been widely viewed as the clearest example of his enduring political influence. Mr. Vance, an author and venture capitalist, was trailing in the polls before Mr. Trump backed him with just over two weeks left in the race. Mr. Vance won the crowded primary by nearly 10 points.For the rally on Saturday, Mr. Vance’s team directed the former president to Youngstown, a blue-collar area that had been a Democratic stronghold until Mr. Trump ran for president. The rally, at the 6,000-seat Covelli Centre, is also squarely in the congressional district represented by Tim Ryan, the Democrat running against Mr. Vance.The event is scheduled to start at the same time as kickoff for an Ohio State University football game. Buckeyes games regularly draw huge statewide audiences, and the matchup on Saturday is against the University of Toledo, an in-state team.The timing was not viewed as ideal by either Mr. Vance’s campaign or Mr. Trump’s team, and Mr. Trump was ultimately consulted on the decision, according to people familiar with the discussions. In the end, the two sides determined that it was more important to hold the rally on a Saturday night, when Mr. Trump has the easiest chance of drawing a strong crowd.Representative Tim Ryan at a tailgate party before Ohio State’s first game of the season this month.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesOhio politicians have long tried to avoid competing for attention with Ohio State football games. In an interview, Mr. Ryan said holding a rally at the same time suggested that Mr. Vance — an Ohio State graduate — was out of touch with the “cultural things” important to Ohioans.“It just says a lot,” Mr. Ryan said. “These little things just sometimes reveal a lot more about a candidate than it appears.”In a statement, Mr. Vance called his rival “a radical liberal” and said, “The only person out of touch with Ohio is Tim Ryan.”Mr. Ryan is also involved in a similar dance around the leadership of his party, given that Mr. Biden is himself struggling with low approval ratings.Asked if he would campaign with the president this fall — even if it were not during a Buckeyes game — Mr. Ryan said: “No. Uh-uh.” More

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

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      Less than two months before Election Day, the Ohio Senate race appears tighter than many once expected in a state that former President Donald J. Trump won by eight percentage points in 2020 — even as there are clear reminders of the limitations Democrats face there.From mid-May until the beginning of August, Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, the Democratic nominee, had the airwaves to himself, according to AdImpact, the media tracking firm. He has also had a significant cash advantage over his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, who won a brutal primary with assistance from Mr. Trump, who endorsed him and is set to campaign with him in Youngstown, Ohio, on Saturday.Mr. Ryan, who had an easier primary season, used those advantages in an effort to define himself early as an independent-minded “fighter” for Ohio, highlighting his differences with the national Democratic Party at every turn.He and other Democrats have also moved to brand Mr. Vance as an inauthentic San Francisco transplant.Mr. Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy” who once identified as a “Never Trump guy,” grew up in Middletown, Ohio, but later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.“J.D. was born and raised in Ohio,” Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for the Vance campaign, said in a statement as he sought to tie Mr. Ryan to Washington Democrats.For all of Mr. Vance’s structural challenges over the summer, much of the available polling suggests a very close race in a state that shifted to the right in the Trump era, and Democrats are bracing for a challenging fall in key races across the country.Mr. Vance is now on the airwaves, assisted by significant outside spending. He, like other Republican candidates, is seeking to go on offense by emphasizing the issue of crime.And while Democrats see openings to paint Mr. Vance as extreme on the issue of abortion, they continue to face a difficult national environment defined by concerns about inflation and by President Biden’s approval numbers, which have improved but are still underwater.“He claims to be an independent voice, but in D.C., he votes with Biden and Pelosi 100 percent of the time,” Mr. Schroeder said in a statement about Mr. Ryan — a reflection of how Republicans are seeking to nationalize the race..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Ryan’s campaign argued that he had spent far more time campaigning in Ohio in recent months than Mr. Vance had.“This race is one of the most competitive in the country because Tim Ryan has outworked and outcampaigned” Mr. Vance, said Izzi Levy, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan. She accused Mr. Vance of spending “the four months since his primary hiding from Ohioans and traveling far from Ohio.”Some Republicans, too, have voiced concerns over what they saw as a limited campaigning effort from their nominee for much of the summer.J.D. Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” grew up in Ohio and later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.Emil Lippe for The New York Times“From that point as he won in May, he seemed to be running a stealth campaign, kind of like a former presidential candidate in 2020 was doing,” said David G. Arredondo, the executive committee chairman of the Lorain County Republican Party, referring to Mr. Biden’s limited in-person campaigning in the last presidential election at the height of the pandemic, which some mocked as a “basement strategy.” But Mr. Arredondo said he understood the approach.“Whether J.D. was in the basement or hanging out with his family, who knows, but I was not concerned,” he said, emphasizing that the campaign has accelerated in recent weeks, just as voters traditionally tune in — Mr. Vance is expected in Lorain County on Saturday. “And it was hard for me to convince my fellow Republicans, don’t worry, don’t worry, he’s going to be OK.”“Their sentiment is now changing,” he added.His campaign event on Saturday evening with Mr. Trump is at the same time as a football game between Ohio State and the University of Toledo, a point the Ohio Democratic Party has used to cast Mr. Vance as an out-of-stater: “Having a campaign event on a fall Saturday night is a cardinal sin in Ohio,” a statement from the party read. 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      Democrats’ Midterm Dilemma: How to Back Biden, Yet Shun Him, Too

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      When President Biden appeared in central Ohio on Friday for the groundbreaking of a semiconductor manufacturing facility, he was joined by Tim Ryan, the Democrat running for Senate. The party’s candidate for governor, however, did not attend, saying from afar that she appreciated Mr. Biden’s visit to her state.Five days earlier, in Wisconsin, another crucial midterm battleground, the situation was reversed: Gov. Tony Evers shared a stage with the president at a Labor Day speech, while the state’s Democratic candidate for the Senate stayed away, marching in a parade beforehand but skipping Mr. Biden’s address.As they move into the final stretch of the midterm campaigns, Democratic candidates find themselves performing a complicated dance with an unpopular president, whose approval rating is rising but still remains stubbornly underwater. In ways big and small, Democrats have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, without alienating their base or distancing themselves from key parts of Mr. Biden’s agenda.It’s a dynamic that presidents often confront in midterm cycles. What has been especially striking this year is the degree to which Democrats have outperformed the president. Even those who say they somewhat disapprove of Mr. Biden were more inclined to vote for Democrats than Republicans in a Pew Research Center survey last month. Private polling conducted for the House Democratic campaign committee found that the net job approval of their most vulnerable incumbents, on average, was more than 20 points ahead of Mr. Biden’s, a dynamic that emerged as early as April and remained consistent at least through late August, according to a committee official.The distance between Mr. Biden and his party has forced Democrats to chart a particularly treacherous course in these midterms, in which success means defying nearly a half century of political history. The last time a party maintained control of Congress with a relatively unpopular president was in 1978. That November, Jimmy Carter’s approval rating hovered around 50 percent and Mr. Biden won re-election to a second Senate term.Those races are ancient history now to most in his party, who must navigate an intricate set of political decisions about how to deploy their leader in the midterms as the president accelerates his fall campaign schedule. The tensions are most acute in Senate races, where Democrats see a stronger opportunity to retain control than in the House. Candidates in both House and Senate contests have said pointedly, when asked about the president, that they are focused on their own races.“We’ve been very clear that I disagree with the president on things,” said Mr. Ryan, the Ohio congressman and Senate candidate whose contest in recent weeks has become more competitive than originally expected in a fairly Republican state. “People recognize that I am going to be for Ohio.”Tim Ryan, holding his son Brady, met voters at an Ohio State football game earlier in September.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Biden has joked that he will campaign for or against a candidate, “whichever will help the most” — a lighthearted acknowledgment from a political veteran that each candidate must make their own political calculations about their ties to the White House. Party leaders, candidates and the president have sought to recast the election as a choice between two radically different visions for the country, rather than the traditional midterm referendum on the president and his agenda.But the president’s advisers say they believe that Mr. Biden — who was a highly sought-after surrogate in 2018 — remains one of his party’s strongest messengers.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.Intraparty G.O.P. Fight: Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, mainstream Republicans have been vying to stop a Trump-style 2020 election denier running for Senate.Abortion Ballot Measures: First came Kansas. Now, Michigan voters will decide whether abortion will remain legal in their state. Democrats are hoping referendums like these will drive voter turnout.Oz Sharpens Attacks: As the Pennsylvania Senate race tightens, Dr. Mehmet Oz is trying to reboot his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, with a pair of pointed attack lines.In recent weeks, he has traveled to Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for events, appearing with a number of Democrats in challenging races. This week, he plans to appear with Maura Healey, the Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts, and is expected to headline a fund-raiser for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Biden adviser said.At a summer gathering of the Democratic National Committee in Maryland, where Mr. Biden spoke on Thursday, a number of party officials argued that the president should be embraced across the country, emphasizing the burst of legislative achievements enacted under his watch in recent weeks. His allies argue that, unlike in 2010 and 2014, when vulnerable Democrats ran away from signature accomplishments of the Obama administration like the Affordable Care Act, many candidates are running on Mr. Biden’s agenda this year.“He has so many bold and broad accomplishments that he can go a bunch of places and talk to people about what he was able to accomplish,” said Cedric Richmond, a close Biden adviser who was dispatched to the D.N.C. ahead of the midterm campaigns.That balancing act between supporting Mr. Biden’s agenda and keeping the president at arm’s length will only become more difficult this fall, as Republicans plan to unleash tens of millions of dollars of advertising tying Mr. Biden to candidates.Mr. Biden’s recent visits to key swing states have prompted grumbling from strategists who fear the visits distract from their efforts to localize their races and keep the focus on missteps by their Republican opponents.Some candidates, like Mandela Barnes, the Senate nominee in Wisconsin, have skipped stops with the president. Former Representative Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina Democrat now running for governor in that largely conservative state, has gone further than many in his party by openly calling on Mr. Biden to forgo re-election to make way for a younger generation.“I’m not running against him, and I’m not running with him — I’m running against McMaster,” Mr. Cunningham said, referring to his Republican opponent, Gov. Henry McMaster.Another group of candidates has highlighted policy disagreements on issues like Mr. Biden’s student loan proposal and his plans to lift Covid-era border restrictions, in an effort to appeal to the independent voters who helped power Mr. Biden’s victory.Many try to reference the president only in passing, if at all. Just three Democrats have run ads that even mention Mr. Biden in their general election campaigns, all of which stress their independence from the president, according to AdImpact, the media tracking firm.Representative Kim Schrier, Democrat of Washington, has aired an ad highlighting her political independence, featuring both a Republican and a Democratic mayor and emphasizing her work on bills passed under both Mr. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Earlier this summer, she aired an ad that highlighted “taking on the Biden administration to suspend the gas tax.”“I will work with anybody for the benefit of the district,” she said in an interview. “I will also hold either president accountable” when it comes to constituent interests, she said.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm, said that, overall, candidates in tight races are “making some version of the same argument, which is, ‘I know you have doubts about my party, but I’m getting the job done.’”A number of candidates have appeared with Mr. Biden in their capacities as government officials when he has visited their states to tout legislative achievements. It has been a way to suggest that they are fighting at the highest levels for local priorities, without necessarily rallying with him.When the president appeared in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in late August to discuss public safety, touting the federal money going to bolster community policing in the area, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee running for governor, was in attendance — in his government role as state attorney general, his office indicated.Mr. Biden in West Mifflin, Pa., at a Labor Day event attended by the Senate candidate John Fetterman, right.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhether voters draw such distinctions is another matter, especially because Mr. Biden has discussed the midterm elections at some of these events. In Pennsylvania, he praised Mr. Shapiro as well as John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate. Mr. Fetterman did not attend that event but later appeared with Mr. Biden in Pittsburgh on Labor Day. At one point in Wilkes-Barre, Mr. Biden reversed the offices for which they were running, saying of the roughly 6-foot-8 Mr. Fetterman, “Elect that big ol’ boy to be governor.”Mr. Biden, too, has a lot at stake in these elections. Midterm victories could provide a powerful counterpoint to those in the party arguing that he should not run for re-election in 2024. The president has already positioned the midterm races as a proxy war with his former rival, Mr. Trump, who harbors his own ambitions for a second presidential term.Representative Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat running in a highly competitive seat, said he felt “​​much better about things than I did three or four months ago.” He said the political landscape seemed to be changing because of the spurt of legislative achievements Democrats had landed and concern over abortion rights, while Republicans “seem increasingly stuck in the mud of Mar-a-Lago.”Asked if it would be helpful for the president to campaign with him, Mr. Malinowski replied, “I’d be happy for Biden or any president to come to my district to help me deliver for my constituents as he has.”“Donald Trump,” he added, “came to my district to play golf.” More

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      The Wives of Republican Candidates Are Getting Personal

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

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      In Ohio, Biden Says Democrats Have Started a Manufacturing Revival

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      President Biden attended the groundbreaking for an Intel computer chip factory in a heavily Republican part of Ohio, an effort to focus voter attention on parts of the economy that are improving.President Biden said Intel had decided to build a $20 billion factory in Ohio because of the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides the company with subsidies to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities in America.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — President Biden attended the groundbreaking for a $20 billion computer chip factory on Friday in a heavily Republican part of Ohio, testing the power of his election-year message that Democrats have helped start a manufacturing revival with record amounts of government spending.Mr. Biden traveled to Licking County, Ohio, outside Columbus, where Intel plans to build a semiconductor manufacturing factory. In remarks at the event, the president said the company’s decision to build the plant was the result of legislation he had signed authorizing his administration to spend up to $52 billion to support the chip industry.“This new law makes historic investment for companies to build advanced manufacturing facilities here in America,” Mr. Biden said, standing in front of an open field where the sprawling facility, the length of 10 football fields, is planned to be built. “Since I signed the CHIPS and Science Act, it’s already started happening.”Intel, one of the world’s leading chip makers, announced construction of the Ohio facility in January, months before passage of the legislation in the summer, saying it was building the plant to meet surging global demand. In its news release announcing the investment, the company did not specifically mention the possibility of federal legislation to help finance it.But Pat Gelsinger, the company’s chief executive, hailed the legislation, known as the CHIPS and Science Act, and said the spending by the federal government could spur even more manufacturing construction in the years ahead. In his introduction of the president, Mr. Gelsinger praised Mr. Biden and other Washington officials.“It was a bipartisan bill,” he said at Friday’s event. “How often do you hear that today?”For Mr. Biden, commending Intel’s construction plans is part of a strategy to focus voter attention on parts of the economy that are improving — and away from the record-high inflation that has frustrated many Americans and dragged down his approval ratings.White House officials note that the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has increased by 680,000 since the president took office, the fastest pace in the last 50 years. In his remarks, Mr. Biden said that three other high-technology companies — Micron, Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries — had recently announced plans to expand manufacturing in the United States.Administration officials have promised that the investments in chip manufacturing will not be a giveaway to companies already making big profits. The law forbids companies from using the federal investments to buy back stock or invest in construction in China. And it includes rules to encourage the use of union labor.Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, told reporters this week that her department would be “vigilant and aggressive” in making sure the money was not misused.“We’re going to be pushing companies to go bigger and be bolder,” she said. “So if a company already has funding now for a $10 billion project, we want them to think bigger and convince us how they go from $10 billion to $50 billion with use of the taxpayer financing.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Abrams’s Struggles: Stacey Abrams has been trailing her Republican rival, Gov. Brian Kemp, alarming those who celebrated her as the master strategist behind Georgia’s Democratic shift.Battleground Pennsylvania: Few states feature as many high-stakes, competitive races as Pennsylvania, which has emerged as the nation’s center of political gravity.The Dobbs Decision’s Effect: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of women signing up to vote has surged in some states and the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage are hard to see.How a G.O.P. Haul Vanished: Last year, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans was smashing fund-raising records. Now, most of the money is gone.She promised that the government would “claw back” investments if companies failed to abide by the government’s rules.The visit to Ohio on Friday is the latest example of Mr. Biden and his advisers’ efforts to rewrite the nation’s economic narrative ahead of the midterm elections, leaning into legislative successes and some bright spots in economic data in hopes of soothing consumers who have been rocked by soaring prices following the pandemic recession.Polls show that the economy — and, in particular, inflation that remains high — remains a liability for the president. Mr. Biden’s economic team has grown increasingly emboldened by the state of the recovery in recent weeks, as job growth has stayed solid and gasoline prices have continued to fall nationwide.On Friday, Mr. Biden’s economic team released a 58-page “economic blueprint” that seeks to claim credit for the strong labor market and factory sector, while reiterating the president’s still-unfinished plans for additional tax and spending changes meant to help the economy.The document divides Mr. Biden’s economic strategy into five pieces: empowering workers, improving American manufacturing, aiding families, strengthening industrial competitiveness and leveling the tax code to help middle-class workers.Will it work, politically, to help Democrats avoid deep losses in the midterm elections this fall?White House officials are betting that messages like the one Mr. Biden delivered on Friday will appeal to a broad swath of voters, including middle-class workers, independents, those with college degrees and those without.Places like Ohio will be a test of that theory.The state is home to one of the most fiercely contested Senate races in the country. J.D. Vance, an author who has embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s style and ideology, is running as a Republican against Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, to replace Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring.Mr. Ryan has distanced himself from Mr. Biden, declining to campaign with the president and saying that the country needs “new leadership” when asked whether the president should run for a second term. Mr. Ryan, who also attended the Intel event on Friday, noted that Mr. Biden had hinted during the 2020 campaign that he might serve only one term.“The president said from the very beginning he was going to be a bridge to the next generation,” Mr. Ryan told reporters, “which is basically what I was saying.”Mr. Biden’s approval rating has somewhat recovered from lows earlier this year, though a majority of Americans continue to disapprove of his leadership in most polls. Still, the president’s appearance in one of the most conservative parts of Ohio suggests that his political advisers believe talking about manufacturing can be a winning strategy.In 2016, Mr. Trump won Licking County, where the Intel plant will be built, 61 percent to 33 percent over Hillary Clinton. Four years later, he won again, this time over Mr. Biden, 63 percent to 35 percent.Before Mr. Biden’s remarks, the White House announced that the administration had distributed $17.7 million to colleges and universities in Ohio to help support programs that focus on developing a work force capable of taking jobs in next-generation semiconductor factories like the one Intel plans to build.Officials said the National Science Foundation was planning to spend $100 million to invest in similar programs around the nation, all designed to help train people to take new, high-paying jobs in the industry, no matter where they live.In his speech, the president made clear the message he hoped voters would take from those announcements.“Jobs now,” he said. “Jobs for the future. Jobs in every part of the country.”Jim Tankersley More