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      Poll Update: Republicans Gain in the Senate

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      A closer look at Pennsylvania and Nevada, and some Democratic leads that seem vulnerable.John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, has seen his lead in the polls dwindle, perhaps because Republican voters are coming home to their party. Hannah Beier/ReutersTwo weeks ago, we noted early signs that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate.Now it’s clear the race has shifted toward Republicans in important ways. Democrats might still lead enough races to hold the chamber, but their position is starting to look quite vulnerable.On average, Republicans have gained three points across 19 post-Labor Day polls of the key Senate battleground states, compared with pre-Labor Day polls of the same states by the same pollsters.The shift is similar to what we observed a few weeks ago. What’s changed with more data: We can be sure that the polling shift is real, and we have more clarity about where Republicans are making their biggest gains — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.We focused on Wisconsin last time we talked about Republican gains, so today we’ll focus on Pennsylvania.PennsylvaniaIf you’re a Democrat, there’s still one very important thing you can cling to in Pennsylvania: the lead.John Fetterman still leads Dr. Mehmet Oz in the polls taken since Labor Day. In fact, he basically leads in every one of them, by an average of around four percentage points.But Dr. Oz has nonetheless made significant gains. On average, he has closed by a net of six percentage points in post-Labor Day polling, compared with surveys by the same pollsters taken before Labor Day.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Trouble for Nevada Democrats: The state has long been vital to the party’s hold on the West. Now, Democrats are facing potential losses up and down the ballot.Democrats’ House Chances: Democrats are not favored to win the House, but the notion of retaining the chamber is not as far-fetched as it once was, ​​writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Latino Voters: A recent Times/Siena poll found Democrats faring far worse than they have in the past with Hispanic voters. “The Daily” looks at what the poll reveals about this key voting bloc.Michigan Governor’s Race: Tudor Dixon, the G.O.P. nominee who has ground to make up in her contest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is pursuing a hazardous strategy in the narrowly divided swing state: embracing former President Donald J. Trump.Why has Dr. Oz surged back into the race? There are two ways to tell the story — one might leave Democrats feeling OK; the other might leave Republicans giddy. This is one of those cases where the best interpretation draws on both cases.If you’re a Democrat, the optimistic interpretation is that Dr. Oz is merely and belatedly consolidating Republican support after a damaging primary. In this view, Dr. Oz’s gains were inevitable and there’s not much for Democrats to worry about. With Mr. Fetterman still enjoying a lead, Democrats can tell themselves that Dr. Oz has mainly won over folks who were going to come around to him eventually.There’s truth to this interpretation: Dr. Oz came out of the primary with terrible favorability ratings. Many would-be Republican voters were not prepared to say they would support him. Back in a July poll from Fox News, Dr. Oz had just 73 percent support among Republicans. Now, it’s 83 percent. Realistically, many of those Republicans were going to rally behind Dr. Oz once the general election campaign got underway and once Republicans started judging him compared with a Democrat, rather than against Republicans.But there’s another interpretation that might be more encouraging for Republicans: Mr. Fetterman has endured forceful attacks related to his health — he had a stroke in May — as well as his views about crime and the economy. There’s reason to think those attacks are taking a toll.A Franklin and Marshall poll last week found Mr. Fetterman’s favorability ratings under water, with 46 percent saying they have an unfavorable view of him compared with 40 percent with a favorable view. Back in August, the numbers were nearly reversed: Just 36 percent had an unfavorable view of him, compared with 43 percent with a favorable view.Dr. Oz’s favorability ratings are still worse than Mr. Fetterman’s. And so far, most voters say they’re not concerned about Mr. Fetterman’s health. But there’s no doubt that Mr. Fetterman, rather than Dr. Oz, has become the focal point of the race over the last month. With Mr. Fetterman still struggling — by his own admission — to recover fully from the stroke, there’s no reason to assume that the spotlight will relent. As long as that’s true, Republicans can hope that Dr. Oz might continue to gain.Nevada?Wisconsin and Pennsylvania aren’t necessarily the only places where the G.O.P. is gaining in the polls.Republicans have picked up about 1.4 points in post-Labor Day Senate surveys in states other than Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The story isn’t always so clear in these other states — there are either fewer polls than in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, or the polls are a little less consistent about the size of Republican gains.Of the other states, it’s Nevada where the Republicans seem closest to assembling convincing evidence of a breakthrough. The recent polling there is fragmentary, but all of the recent polls show the Republican Adam Laxalt leading the Democratic Senate incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. In the (only two) post-Labor Day surveys with a pre-Labor Day counterpart, Mr. Laxalt has gained nearly three points.Although it’s still too soon to say whether Mr. Laxalt has inched into a lead, Nevada has loomed as an obvious weak point for the Democrats this cycle.President Biden won the state by only two percentage points in 2020, and it’s not a state where Democrats can draw on their demographic strengths. College-educated voters represent a smaller share of the electorate here than in any other battleground state.Instead, Democrats depend on the state’s large and heavily Democratic Hispanic population. But Hispanics may be trending toward Republicans, and they would also probably be expected to turn out at relatively low numbers in a midterm, even if Democrats retained their margin of victory with the group.The big picture is … murkyThe scope of Republican gains isn’t just murky in the Senate races outside Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It’s murkier beyond the Senate as well.Over the last few weeks, there haven’t been a lot of generic ballot polls, which ask voters whether they prefer Democrats or Republicans for Congress. But there are mounting signs of a rightward shift on this measure.On Monday, a new Monmouth poll added to the pile. Republicans led by two points among registered voters, a pretty sizable shift from its last poll, when Democrats led by three points. Looking back over the last two weeks, there are a lot more Republican leads on the generic ballot than there used to be.There are still a few dissenting data points, so it’s still too soon to be too confident about whether or to what extent Republicans have picked up ground nationwide, but it would be no surprise if Republicans were pulling back into the lead. With economic concerns on the rise and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade moving farther into the rearview mirror, the opportunity for Republicans to reclaim lost ground might be at hand. More

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      The Fetterman-Oz Race Is No Piece of Cake

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      OK, people. Time for some real political drama. Pennsylvania! Pennsylvania! Pennsylvania!Surprised you, didn’t I? But really, the Senate race there has it all. Swing state that could very well decide who holds the majority in the Senate and whether the rest of President Biden’s agenda has any real chance of getting passed.And the main candidates — the Republican, Mehmet Oz, and the Democrat, John Fetterman — are a stupendous diversion. You have the big, heavy issues, naturally, but they’ve also been fighting about stuff like where Oz actually lives and the right word to use for vegetables in the supermarket.Remember that last one? In an ongoing attempt to prove he’s just a regular guy and not a superrich TV personality with multiple expensive homes, Oz released a video of himself shopping for groceries and blaming Biden for the high cost of “crudité.”Imagine the euphoria in the Fetterman camp after that one. “In PA, we call this a veggie tray,” the candidate tweeted happily.Fetterman also released a video of three women wearing broccoli costumes. I know this doesn’t tell you a whole lot about what the candidates would do with, say, military spending. But you have to admit it’s a conversation maker.Oz is an accomplished heart surgeon and a TV personality who became famous for giving out health tips on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Most of his advice is perfectly reasonable. Really, that time he warned women that carrying a cellphone in their bras might cause breast cancer was long, long ago.Fetterman is Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, running as a regular guy who’ll wear a sweatshirt and shorts for pretty much anything from a picnic to a news conference to guiding the president on a tour of a bridge collapse. One of the duties of his job is to head the state Pardons Board, and you will not be surprised to hear that Oz is constantly reminding voters that he recommended pardons for people who were, um, convicts.One of the big talking points in the Senate race is residency. It’s certainly an issue that works for Fetterman, who has a tattoo on his arm advertising the ZIP code of the town where he once served as mayor. Oz made his home in a pretty fabulous New Jersey mansion during his precampaign days. Now, of course, he’s acquired a place in Pennsylvania. But Fetterman cannot remind the state too often that this is a rather recent development. (Democrats have a highway billboard near the state border telling motorists they’re “now leaving” New Jersey for Pennsylvania, “JUST LIKE DR. OZ.”)Issue-wise, Oz and Fetterman certainly diverge, although there has been a bit of squirming around. Particularly on the part of Oz, who used to be for gun control but became a Second Amendment fiend during the Republican Senate primary campaign. His abortion position is evolving. He emerged from that primary as “strongly pro-life” but now reminds voters he isn’t keen to punish anybody involved in terminating a pregnancy.Lately, Fetterman’s health has loomed large. He suffered a stroke in May, and while he’s certainly been getting better, there’s no question he still suffers from the effects, including what he calls “auditory processing” issues.Oz, in one of his very least charming tweets, sent out a picture of Fetterman in what looks like boxer shorts, his rather expansive stomach bare, calling him “Basement Bum.” Oz’s communications adviser claimed that if Fetterman had “ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke.”Given what a very, very big deal the outcome of the Pennsylvania race might be, it’s natural that things would go a little crazy. We can actually cheer the fact that it isn’t truly worse — that there’s been little focus on the fact that Oz, who describes himself as a “secular Muslim,” has maintained dual citizenship with Turkey.(Well, there’s been little focus from the Fetterman folk. In the primary, some of the other Republican candidates did try to make it a big deal.)Since Fetterman’s stroke restricted his campaigning, the race has focused more and more on the candidate debate. It looks as though there’s going to be only one, on Oct. 25.People, does this seem worrisome to you? Fetterman has been pulling farther and farther ahead in the polls, and there’s a definite feeling around that the debate is all that’s standing between him and the Senate seat.In normal circumstances, that’s unnerving; political history is full of stories about candidates who lost their lead when they blurted out one stupid thing. And let me admit that when Gov. Rick Perry forgot the name of one of the federal agencies he would eliminate if elected president, I reminded you of his “oops” moment constantly until his candidacy went down the drain.But that was Rick Perry, a terrible candidate running to be leader of the free world. Sort of a different situation. And Fetterman should be fine, right? Right?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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      Fetterman-vs.-Oz Campaign Turns to a Focus on Criminal Justice

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      Lee and Dennis Horton maintained their innocence through 27 years behind bars. The brothers were convicted in a 1993 robbery and fatal shooting in Philadelphia that they say they did not commit.“We were forgotten men,” Lee Horton said. “Nobody was paying us any mind. John Fetterman reached out and pulled us up. He saved our lives because there’s no doubt we would have died in prison.”Mr. Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 in large part to rejuvenate the Board of Pardons as a last stop for justice. One of the lieutenant governor’s few duties is to be the chair of the board, which had grown moribund.Under his leadership, the number of inmates serving life sentences who were recommended for clemency and release, including the Hortons, has greatly increased.Now that record has become a top issue for Mr. Fetterman’s opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, with Republicans training intense fire on the Democrat on social media, in email blasts and in $4.6 million in TV ads accusing him of “trying to get as many criminals out of prison as he can.”After the Horton brothers were released in 2021, Mr. Fetterman gave them jobs as field organizers for his campaign.“If John Fetterman cared about Pennsylvania’s crime problem, he’d prove it by firing the convicted murderers he employs on his campaign,” Brittany Yanick, a spokeswoman for Dr. Oz, said this month.Mr. Fetterman, in an interview, accused Dr. Oz of fear-mongering and twisting the facts of the Hortons’ case and those of others he championed. “Of course, these ghouls are going to do that kind of thing and distort and lie about the truth,” he said.Across the country, Republicans have taken up the issue of crime to rally midterm voters, confronting a rise in violence in most major cities that began during the coronavirus pandemic. Among them is Philadelphia, which is on pace to equal last year’s record 562 homicides.While attacking Democrats as soft on crime may be standard for Republicans in most election years, Pennsylvania’s Senate contest offers an especially pointed contrast because Mr. Fetterman has turned the pardons board into a cause célèbre over four years.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.Rather than soft-pedaling his record, Mr. Fetterman expressed satisfaction in winning the release of inmates who served decades in prison, generally with model records.“There were some wrongs that needed to be put right, and there were a lot of people caught up in this system that were innocent or deserving” of release, he said.If Republicans “weaponize” his record and “destroy” his career over his advocacy for second chances, Mr. Fetterman added, including for the Hortons and other men he said were wrongly convicted, “then so be it.”Mr. Fetterman with the Horton brothers on Saturday at a rally in Philadelphia. Hannah Beier/ReutersIn a poll of Pennsylvania voters by The Morning Call/Muhlenberg College last week, only 3 percent named crime as the most important issue in the midterms, well behind the economy (22 percent) and abortion (20 percent). But the pollster, Chris Borick, suggested Mr. Fetterman’s 41 percent disapproval was driven by Republican portrayals of him as “too left-leaning,” which have included attacks on his pardons record. The lieutenant governor led Dr. Oz, a former heart surgeon and celebrity TV host, by 49 percent to 44 percent, within the margin of error.Barney Keller, a spokesman for Dr. Oz, said his campaign would continue to attack Mr. Fetterman on crime. “Dr. Oz has surged in the polls because John Fetterman is the most pro-murderer candidate in America,” Mr. Keller said.While individual pardon cases are complex, requiring voters to absorb details and nuance, the G.O.P. attacks on Mr. Fetterman are meant to deliver the opposite: a blunt, visceral punch.The Oz campaign created a website called Inmates for Fetterman, highlighting the crimes of convicted murderers whose release Mr. Fetterman sought, and asking for donations to Dr. Oz.The Oz campaign has singled out the Horton brothers, whose release Mr. Fetterman calls one of the pinnacles of his career in public office. The brothers share a name but are not related to the most infamous released inmate in a political attack ad, Willie Horton, whose crime spree while on a furlough program hurt the presidential candidacy of Michael Dukakis in 1988.Invoking that episode explicitly, Mr. Fetterman said he had anticipated that opponents would “Horton us” over his championing the brothers’ release.Like more than 1,100 lifers in Pennsylvania’s prisons, 70 percent of them Black, the Horton brothers were convicted of second-degree murder, a charge filed against suspects who participate in a felony — such as robbery, arson or rape — that leads to a death. It also includes accomplices not directly responsible for a fatality who drove a getaway car or acted as a lookout..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.Pennsylvania is an outlier in mandating life without parole for second-degree murder, and reformers argue that it violates constitutional protections against unduly cruel punishments.With no possibility of release through the normal parole process, these inmates have been encouraged by Mr. Fetterman to seek commutations before the pardons board. The board can recommend either pardons (for inmates already released) or commutations (for those still behind bars). The five-member board, which includes Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democrats’ nominee for governor, must unanimously approve commutations, and the governor must sign off. Mr. Fetterman said that in each commutation case he supported, he asked the prisoner’s warden if he would want that individual as a neighbor. “And they’re like, ‘Absolutely,’” he said.Commutations — typically, a reduction of a life sentence to time served — were once common, but in the tough-on-crime era beginning in the 1990s they all but ended. Mr. Fetterman argued that “those who didn’t take a life” and had clean records over decades in prison should be “living out their lives at home.”Under his chairmanship, the board has recommended 50 commutations of life sentences, compared with just 10 in the preceding two decades.In addition to commutations, Mr. Fetterman is under fire from Republicans for opposing certain life sentences for murder and for a statement he once made that he “agreed” with a corrections official that prison populations could be cut by a third with no harm to the public.“John Fetterman wants to release one-third of prisoners and eliminate life sentences for murderers,” claimed Dr. Oz’s first TV ad of the general election. The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has run five ads leveling similar attacks, including its latest, which calls Mr. Fetterman “dangerously liberal on crime.”For purposes of soft-on-crime attacks, it little matters that murders rose during the pandemic in blue states and in red states alike, and in cities, suburbs and rural areas. Studies show low recidivism rates for lifers released after their sentences were commuted: about 1 percent for inmates over age 50, in a Pennsylvania study from 2005.Mr. Fetterman said he did not support releasing a third of all prisoners — about 12,000 of Pennsylvania’s 36,000 inmates. He said the official who remarked that cutting prison populations by a third would not threaten public safety was a former secretary of corrections appointed by a Republican governor. And the life sentences he seeks to end are for second-degree murder.Last week, in a visit to Philadelphia to promote safe streets, Dr. Oz criticized Mr. Fetterman’s record on the pardons board and proposed his own anticrime measures, including support for the First Step Act. That law, passed in 2018 with bipartisan support, includes sentence reductions for federal inmates with good behavior — a version of the second chances that Mr. Fetterman espouses.At a campaign event last week in Philadelphia, Dr. Mehmet Oz spoke with Sheila Armstrong, who lost her brother to gun violence.Ryan Collerd/Associated PressMalcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic state representative from Philadelphia, said that if Dr. Oz and Senate Republicans cared about high crime rates, they would support investments in poor communities such as raising the minimum wage, and gun safety measures that go beyond the limited bipartisan bill signed by President Biden in June. That law expanded background checks for gun buyers under age 21 and funds red-flag laws that let authorities take guns from people deemed dangerous.“Dr. Oz and Senate Republicans do not give a damn about people in Philadelphia and about the crime that folks are enduring,” Mr. Kenyatta said.Mr. Keller, the Oz spokesman, did not answer directly when asked whether Dr. Oz would have voted for the bipartisan gun law. “Doctor Oz is interested in how the implementation of this law will occur, and was particularly interested in the new funding for mental health,” Mr. Keller said.Mr. Fetterman was so convinced that the Horton brothers were wrongfully convicted that after the pardons board rejected their first clemency petition in 2019 — Mr. Shapiro, the attorney general, voted against it — he suggested he would run for governor if that’s what it took to get them out.“The trajectory of my career in public service will be determined by their freedom or lack thereof,” he once told The Philadelphia Inquirer.The deputy superintendent of the state corrections department endorsed the Hortons’ release. A brother of the man killed in the 1993 shooting, for which the Hortons and a third man were convicted, was opposed. “They took a human life, and they don’t deserve to be out in society,” the victim’s brother, Reinaldo Alamo, told The Inquirer. The third man in the case, who police records said was the actual gunman, was released in 2008.The brothers finally won clemency in their second try, in 2020. Mr. Fetterman set his sights on the Senate, and Mr. Shapiro ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination for governor.Since the brothers returned home to Philadelphia, the corrections department has invited them to speak monthly to cadets training to be prison guards, Lee Horton said.Their work for the Fetterman campaign includes attending ward meetings, telling their story at rallies and simply walking the streets.“On any given day we’re out talking to people about John Fetterman’s policies about minimum wage, how he would make average, everyday working people’s lives better,” Dennis Horton said.His brother added: “We’re not angry. We gave up the anger years ago but, you know, we want to be able to live our lives and to be able to feed our families. We want to be able to have jobs.”Lee Horton dropping campaign signs off at businesses in Philadelphia on Friday.Hannah Beier for The New York Times More

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      Why Candidates Owe Voters Full Medical Transparency

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      The principal intent of campaigns is to give voice to the candidates’ positions on major issues. When casting their ballots, voters consider personality, party allegiance, character traits and other factors. In Pennsylvania’s Senate election, a candidate’s personal health has come to the fore, and the outcome could be a key in determining control of the Senate.In my experience, politicians who are not fully transparent in disclosing their health information can become vulnerable to the spread of misinformation, rumors and antics that detract from the candidate’s stances on major issues. That risk is playing out in the Fetterman-Oz race in Pennsylvania.It began in May, when the Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, experienced a stroke, a common affliction. But his campaign has undergone criticism for delays in disclosing relevant health information. It was learned that Mr. Fetterman was diagnosed with a serious abnormal heart rhythm, atrial fibrillation, in 2017. Since that diagnosis, Mr. Fetterman had failed to take prescribed medications and to visit a doctor until the stroke emergency. After his stroke, Mr. Fetterman received a pacemaker-defibrillator for another heart ailment, cardiomyopathy, which reduces the organ’s strength in pumping blood to the body.During recovery he has stammered, spoken haltingly and acknowledged difficulty in auditory processing, a common problem in strokes. In the upcoming Oct. 25 debate with his opponent, Mehmet Oz, Mr. Fetterman has requested accommodations, like a closed-caption monitor so he doesn’t miss words.Like other stroke survivors, Mr. Fetterman has benefited from an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the plasticity of the brain and from medical advances in detecting and treating strokes. He says his health is “robust,” and has responded to journalists’ questions about his fitness for office by saying, “Sometimes I might miss a word and sometimes I might mush two words together.” Such slips, while embarrassing, do not necessarily indicate cognitive problems like deficits in problem solving, reasoning and critical thinking.But the Fetterman campaign has given the public little opportunity to clarify his medical issue. Over the years, my reporting has found that, for various reasons, doctors’ statements concerning a political leader are not always as complete as they should be. The Fetterman campaign has released only one statement from his cardiologist, in June. Although his campaign has said the candidate has received normal scores on cognitive tests, it has not released his full cognitive testing results or information from a neurologist about the stroke-affected area of his brain.Mr. Fetterman may have avoided his health becoming a political issue had he, party officials and journalists met their civic responsibilities to check on his health when he entered the primary campaign. Mr. Oz, a former heart surgeon, only just released his own personal medical information, on Friday.In an election, voters expect that candidates can fulfill their duties for a full term. In my view, no ailment should prevent individuals from seeking elected office provided they have disclosed their full medical information. Voters define and decide fitness for office.A “Get Well Soon” card for John Fetterman at a watch party in Pittsburgh, PA in May while he was in this hospital recovering from a stroke.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesSome view disclosing a candidate’s health as a clash between an individual’s right to medical confidentiality and the public’s right to know about that candidate’s health. Because no one forces anyone to run for office, candidates can easily avoid such a clash by volunteering and authorizing their doctors to disclose complete health information.Seekers of elected offices may not relish disclosing personal health information. Their doctors may be annoyed at armchair physicians not involved with a politician’s medical care second-guessing their diagnostic and treatment decisions. Politicians should realize that disclosing limited information about their health can make it more of an issue than full transparency.Full disclosure is no guarantee that a healthy candidate will serve effectively in office or an ailing one will perform poorly. Nor does it guarantee that a healthy candidate will escape experiencing a serious ailment in office. When that occurs, the public generally supports allowing the office holder a reasonable recuperative period. Two sitting U. S. senators (Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, and Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland) experienced strokes earlier this year and have returned to work.But when ailments become incapacitating or interfere with members fulfilling their duties, Congress lacks its version of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which determines steps to remove a disabled president from office or appointing the vice president as acting president. Without such a provision, seriously ailing members of Congress are allowed to retain their seats until they face re-election at term’s end, and voters should be aware of that possibility.A benefit of candidates disclosing their health status, and attending to their own well-being, is that publicity about a politician’s medical care can be instructive. For example, discovery of President Reagan’s colon cancer after a colonoscopy in 1985 encouraged many other Americans to undergo the screening procedure. Perhaps Mr. Fetterman’s saga will encourage Americans to follow their doctors’ advice and journalists to motivate politicians to release fully transparent health information.Dr. Lawrence K. Altman, a former New York Times senior medical correspondent and columnist, is writing a book on the personal health of political leaders.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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      G.O.P. Senate Candidates Race to Close Fund-Raising Gap With Democrats

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      Their fund-raising dwarfed by their Democratic rivals, Republican nominees including Blake Masters and Mehmet Oz have been in Washington gathering cash from lobbyists.WASHINGTON — Rushing to raise money and close yawning gaps with their Democratic rivals, every Senate Republican nominee in a competitive race is taking precious time from the campaign trail to come to Washington this week and next to gather money before Congress leaves for the fall.Fund-raising invitations obtained by The New York Times reveal days full of dinners, receptions and even some free meet-and-greets — schedule-fillers the candidates hope they can use to make a good impression and pick up a check on the spot.Two thousand miles from Phoenix, Blake Masters, the Republican challenging Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, made a campaign pitch on Wednesday evening alongside Senator Mitch McConnell in a conference room near the Capitol. Mr. Masters accused his Democratic rival of portraying himself as a moderate while voting like a liberal.“We don’t need as much money as Kelly, just enough to get the truth out,” Mr. Masters said, according to notes from a person who was in the room, which was filled with lobbyists who had paid $1,000 per political action committee to attend.As political fund-raising goes, Mr. Masters was making a modest ask, and he isn’t the only Republican to downgrade his financial goals. The Republican Senate hopefuls, many of them first-time candidates, have little choice but to race from lobby shop to steakhouse alongside the party leaders some of them castigated in their primaries but who now serve as lures for access-hungry lobbyists.The reasons are wide-ranging. Republican small-dollar fund-raising has dried up in the face of soaring inflation. Former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless appeals for his own committees have siphoned cash that would typically go to candidates or party committees. And the party’s novice Senate nominees lack the sort of wealthy donor networks that more experienced candidates have nurtured for years.“These are candidates that have never run for office before and never done the work necessary to develop relationships at the grass-roots or donor level in their own states or nationally,” said Jack Oliver, a longtime Republican fund-raiser. He then alluded to the way that many of them claimed their nominations: “If you can just go on Tucker or get Trump to endorse you, you don’t have to go meet with voters or donors.”For some major contributors, summer has just wrapped up, the temperature hasn’t much changed, and the election feels some time away. The advent of widespread early and mail voting, however, along with the need to reserve airtime on local television stations, means there’s little time left for the candidates to gather the cash they need.“To donors it’s early, to candidates it’s late,” as Lisa Spies, a Republican fund-raising consultant, put it.Of course, candidates of both parties have long jetted into the nation’s capital to raise money from the influence industry. And even as this year’s Republican class struggles for cash, the candidates have support from outside super PACs, most notably the one Mr. McConnell effectively controls, to ensure that they remain financially competitive. (Mr. McConnell’s group, the Senate Leadership Fund, accounted for 90 percent of the money spent on television this week in the Ohio Senate race, and an even greater percentage in North Carolina.)The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Mr. McConnell has asked his fellow Republican senators to contribute 20 percent of the money from their leadership PACs this election, an increase over past campaigns, according to a Republican official familiar with the request.“This is why God invented super PACs,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist.Yet the frenetic cash dash around Washington, shortly before early voting gets underway in many states, underscores the urgency Republicans are feeling to cut into Democrats’ fund-raising advantage. A major part of the motivation: Candidates receive substantially better television advertising rates than super PACs, so an individual campaign dollar goes further on the air.A spreadsheet of television advertising reservations shared by a top Republican strategist this week makes clear why many in the party are alarmed about their fund-raising deficit. Head-to-head, Democratic candidates have been sharply outspending their Republican rivals for weeks. In some states, like Arizona, New Hampshire and North Carolina, the G.O.P. nominees hadn’t aired even a single commercial in their own right through August and into September.Even in Georgia and Nevada, perhaps the two states where Republicans have the best chance to flip Democratic-held seats, the Democratic incumbents are overwhelming their G.O.P. challengers.From the week of Aug. 14 to the week of Nov. 6, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia had over $30 million in television reservations, while his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, had just over $7.8 million booked. In the same time period, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, had over $16 million in television reservations while her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, had just over $6 million reserved.Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, shaking hands with former President Donald J. Trump in Las Vegas in July. From the week of Aug. 14 to the week of Nov. 6, Mr. Laxalt had only $6 million in television reservations.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesIn key Senate races, top Democrats are raising millions of dollars online every month. In August alone, Mr. Warnock received nearly $6.8 million from more than 200,000 contributions, and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin raised nearly $6.3 million from more than 120,000 donations.In Arizona, Mr. Kelly raised $5.7 million from more than 170,000 donations on ActBlue in August. That sum is more than Mr. Masters had raised in total from when he began his campaign in 2021 through mid-July 2022, the last date that data is available..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 Democratic advantage has been mitigated by outside Republican spending, including some hybrid advertising between the G.O.P. candidates and the Senate Republican campaign arm.But the disparity in candidate fund-raising explains why so many Republican Senate hopefuls have swapped public appearances at home for private events on more financially fertile terrain. It is Washington this week and next. Last week it was Florida, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, Rick Scott, squired eight candidates around his state and Sea Island, Ga., a resort community where his committee hosted a weekend donor retreat for many of the same contenders.What’s striking about the candidates’ schedules is how much work they’re putting in for relatively little financial payoff at a moment when some of the top-raising Democrats have stockpiled tens of millions. Individuals are limited at giving $2,900 to candidates, and PACs can contribute only up to $5,000.This coming Tuesday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, has Washington fund-raising receptions lined up at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., each hosted by a different group of lobbyists.It will be Dr. Oz’s second trek to the Beltway in a week: This past Tuesday, he was at the Northern Virginia home of Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, Republican operatives and Trump enthusiasts, where $5,800 granted a couple admission to an event and a photo with the television doctor turned Senate candidate.Mr. Laxalt, too, put in long hours far from Nevada. After attending the events in Florida and Georgia last week, he spent Tuesday at a $2,900-per-person dinner in Virginia’s well-heeled hunt country. Mr. Laxalt then came back to Washington to attend a series of events on Wednesday with lobbyists and Republican senators, concluding with an “Evening Cigar With Adam Laxalt Hosted by Premium Cigar Association” that cost $250 per person or $500 per PAC to attend (no word on if the cigar was extra).“The math is really simple: You can’t get there at $2,900 a pop,” said Mr. Reed, the Republican strategist.That’s not stopping the hopefuls from trying, however.Mr. Masters, who’s facing a Grand Canyon-size fund-raising gap with Mr. Kelly, charged only $500 per person to attend the reception with Mr. McConnell on Wednesday.The next day, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors hosted Mr. Masters for an afternoon gathering that was even more modestly priced.“This is a meet-and-greet, not a fund-raiser, so an opportunity for anyone who would like to meet the candidate to do so without having to make a financial commitment — though they would obviously welcome contributions!” Jade West, the wholesalers lobbyist, wrote in an email to potential attendees.J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, had just $628,000 in the bank at the start of this month.Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesOf all the Senate G.O.P. nominees, Mr. Masters may have criticized Mr. McConnell the most fiercely in the past. But that didn’t stop Mr. McConnell and his deputy, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, from hosting events for Mr. Masters and J.D. Vance, the party’s Senate nominee in Ohio and another candidate who took aim at the Senate leadership during the primary season.Mr. Vance had a paltry $628,000 in the bank at the start of this month.Mr. Oliver said that while it was probably too late to do now, Republicans should have lifted their Senate candidates’ fund-raising by creating a competition among the party’s would-be 2024 presidential candidates to see who could have raised the most for each of the top contenders.But, Mr. Oliver lamented, Mr. Trump and Fox News shape the G.O.P.’s wholesale politics today, all but determining primaries and therefore consuming the attention of candidates and their campaigns.“Relationship politics don’t exist anymore,” he said. “But that means it’s hard for J.D. Vance to go to Toledo and raise money because when you need a $500 check there, they don’t know you.”Shane Goldmacher More

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      Election Deniers in Senate Races Shift to Appeal to Voters in Middle

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      As post-primary pivots go, Don Bolduc’s overnight transformation from “Stop the Steal” evangelist to ratify-the-results convert could land him in a political hall of fame. It was an about-face so sudden and jarring that it undermined the tell-it-like-it-is authenticity with which he’d earned the Republican nomination for Senate from New Hampshire.But Mr. Bolduc was hardly the only Republican candidate to edge away from his public insistence, despite a lack of evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, or that 2020 had undermined the integrity of American elections.Blake Masters in Arizona, Tiffany Smiley in Washington State and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania have all made pivots — some artfully, some not — as the ardent, Trump-loyal voters who decided the Republican primaries shrink in the rearview mirror, and a more cautious, broader November electorate comes into view. These three Senate candidates haven’t quite renounced their questioning of the 2020 election — to right-wing audiences of podcasts, radio shows and Fox News, they still signal their skepticism — but they have shifted their appeals to the swing voters they need to win on Nov. 8.The real question now is: Can they get away with it?“I can tell you generally that candidates who do a 180-degree reversal in the middle of a campaign have to have a thought-out, strategic reason for doing so,” said Dave Carney, a New Hampshire Republican consultant who backed Mr. Bolduc’s primary opponent, Chuck Morse, but now supports Mr. Bolduc. “The pain has to be worth it,” he added.In some sense, the contortions are about having it both ways: signaling to undecided swing voters that a candidate is willing to move toward the middle, while winking at the right-wing base.After his primary victory in the Arizona Senate race, Mr. Masters, who was Mr. Trump’s pick to take on Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, removed language from his campaign website that falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen. “If we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today,” the website had unambiguously proclaimed.Blake Masters removed language from his campaign website that falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesOnce that erasure came to light, however, the Masters campaign let it be known that while the website may have changed, the candidate’s views had not. “I still believe the election was not free and not fair,” Mr. Masters told an Arizona radio station early this month. “I think if everybody followed the rules and the law as written, President Trump would be in the Oval Office.”Similarly, Dr. Oz has obscured his views more than changed them. After saying in April that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, Dr. Oz told reporters this month that he “would not have objected to” affirming President Biden’s election had he been in the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021.“By the time the delegates and those reports are sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it. That’s what I would have done,” he said.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Later that day, however, on the Fox News Channel, Dr. Oz answered a viewer’s question about whether the election was stolen by saying, “There’s lots more information we have to gather in order to determine that, and I’d be very desirous of gathering some.”Ms. Smiley, the Republican Senate nominee in Washington, dropped “election integrity” from a remade website after her primary victory, and with it, the statement that “the 2020 elections raised serious questions about the integrity of our elections.”Still, in a recent appearance on CNN, Ms. Smiley used a coded “he is our president” answer repeatedly when she was asked if Mr. Biden had been legitimately elected — language other Republicans have used to obscure whether they believe the outcome of the 2020 voting was accurate, while still affirming that Mr. Biden is indeed the president.“The campaign’s position has not changed on this issue,” said a Smiley campaign spokeswoman, Elisa Carlson. “Tiffany has long said that it should be easy to vote and hard to cheat — a position that is still reflected on our website.”Tiffany Smiley dropped “election integrity” from a remade website after her primary victory.Ted S. Warren/Associated PressMr. Bolduc’s problem has been his complete lack of subtlety or coded messaging, said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee who is now a city councilor in Dover.At a Republican debate just before the Sept. 13 primary, Mr. Bolduc, a retired brigadier general in the Army, declared unequivocally, “I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying that Trump won the election, and, damn it, I stand by my letter.” He added for good measure, “I’m not switching horses, baby. This is it.”.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.His nomination clinched, Mr. Bolduc on Sept. 15 left that horse in a ditch. “I’ve done a lot of research on this,” he said on Fox News after being shown a clip of his promise to stay the course on election denial, “and I’ve spent the past couple weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from every party, and I have come to the conclusion — and I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen.”When a flabbergasted Fox host, Dana Perino, pointed to Mr. Bolduc’s adamant statements before the primary, he shrugged: “You know, live and learn, right?”General-election turns to the center are nothing new, but few would say Mr. Bolduc, a political newcomer whose authenticity was his calling card, executed his smoothly.“Don spent the last three years hanging with primary voters, a third to a half who bought into the whole stolen-election thing, or at least thought something was fishy,” Mr. Cullen said. “When you spend that much time around people who feel that way, it’s easy to think everybody felt that way.”Then he won the primary and realized that it just wasn’t so, Mr. Cullen added.Mr. Bolduc’s post-primary switcheroo created a new problem: Even as he sought to court a general-election electorate, he now also needed to mend fences with his base. Supporters posted a Facebook message that they said Mr. Bolduc had sent them in which he explained his shift. Yes, he wrote with no evidence, election fraud in 2020 was rife — in mail-in ballots, voting machines and drop-box stuffing. But, he added: “Was Biden put into the presidency through a constitutional process … yes.”Mr. Bolduc’s Democratic opponent, Senator Maggie Hassan, has stuck largely to a campaign centered on abortion rights, and recently hit Mr. Bolduc on comments he made in August seemingly backing the privatization of Medicare. But she has used his flip-flop on election denial to say Mr. Bolduc “is trying to mislead Granite Staters and really hide his extreme record.”Dr. Mehmet Oz told reporters this month that he “would not have objected to” affirming President Biden’s election had he been in the Senate on Jan. 6, 2021.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesDr. Oz had an easier task, said G. Terry Madonna, a longtime Pennsylvania political analyst and pollster, now at Millersville University. Though Dr. Oz was endorsed by Mr. Trump and stood by the former president as he spouted lies about the 2020 election, Dr. Oz’s own statements on election fraud were vague. Now, he may be making headway with swing voters to close the gap with his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.Moreover, Mr. Fetterman has so far shied away from attacking Dr. Oz on his affiliation with Mr. Trump, said Berwood A. Yost, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, because Mr. Fetterman believes he can win over Trump voters in the state’s small towns and rural stretches. Attacks on the man they still love may not help Mr. Fetterman make that sale.“Trump attacks are not part of Fetterman’s campaign,” Mr. Yost said. “He’s trying to appeal to Trump supporters with ‘I look like you, I sound like you, and I’m running against Washington, too.’”That has allowed Dr. Oz to tack to the center to try to win over voters in the “collar counties” around Philadelphia. But Mr. Fetterman’s aides note that Dr. Oz has not locked up the core Republican vote the way the Trump-aligned State Senator Doug Mastriano has in the Pennsylvania governor’s race.What Dr. Oz is showing in appealing to moderate voters in the general election, they contend, is not so much a pivot as a forked tongue.“Oz is a total fraud who says one thing when he’s in the suburbs and one thing when he’s rallying with Trump and Mastriano,” said Emilia Winter Rowland, a Fetterman campaign spokeswoman. 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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      in Elections

      Herschel Walker Tests the Importance of ‘Candidate Quality’

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      Mehmet Oz could prevail over John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s Senate election and, well, I’m not sure what that would mean. The carnival (and crudités) of that contest precludes tidy lessons. And it’s impossible to know what voters will or won’t make of Fetterman’s stroke earlier this year.Ron Johnson could defeat Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin, and the deciding factors could be Johnson’s seasoning (two terms in the Senate) and age (67) relative to the 35-year-old Barnes’s youth. Race could come into it — Barnes would be Wisconsin’s first Black senator.But if, in Georgia, Herschel Walker beats Raphael Warnock? That’s different. Purer.It would probably mean that the 2022 climate was as hostile to Democratic candidates as Democrats initially feared it would be. And it would almost certainly say that party loyalty and ideological tribalism have rendered experience, character and competence all but obsolete — because Walker is about as ridiculous a Senate candidate as I can recall (and I recall both Christine O’Donnell and Todd Akin). Apart from the promise that Walker would vote with fellow Republicans, he brings little to the table.Race doesn’t come into this race: Both Walker and Warnock are Black. And Georgia has seemingly turned from light red to purple, or very purplish, at least to go by Joe Biden’s slim victory there in 2020 and its election in 2021 of two Democratic senators, Warnock and Jon Ossoff.Yes, Walker’s celebrity from his football days is of a kind and magnitude that Warnock can’t strictly match. But Warnock’s incumbency bridges any name-recognition gap.The unbridgeable divide is between the two candidates’ credibility and coherence.To read a deeply reported profile of Warnock by Shaila Dewan and Mike Baker that The Times published in January 2021 is to encounter a man with some minor messiness in his past, and with a history of blunt talk about racism in America that could be a political liability with some voters. But what comes across much more strongly is Warnock’s thoughtfulness and seriousness of purpose as he rose to the role of senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worshiped and preached.Thoughtfulness isn’t one of Walker’s hallmarks. During an appearance on Fox News after the massacre of schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas, he was asked where he stood on suggested policies to prevent such bloodshed. His response: “Cain killed Abel and that’s a problem that we have. What we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation — what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that, and we can stop that that way.”On the campaign trail, Walker took issue with the Green New Deal by saying: “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got to clean that back up.”Eloquence can at times be overrated, less a reflection of intelligence than a separate skill and smoothness. But its polar opposite, embodied by Walker, is often a clue to the speaker’s cluelessness. Walker supplements his cluelessness with dishonesty. He has lied about having a background in law enforcement. He has lied about having a college degree. He began his campaign as the father of just one child whom voters and journalists knew about. Another three children came to light later.When Mitch McConnell said in August that “candidate quality” could affect whether Republicans win control of the Senate, he was probably thinking of Oz. He was definitely thinking of Walker. If Walker ekes out a victory in Georgia in November, it will suggest how very little candidate quality matters anymore. And it will have implications far beyond the Peach State.Ivanka in My Inbox“My husband signed his new book,” Ivanka Trump recently wrote to me in an email.He did? All on his own? How proud she must be! How good of her to advertise the feat.“Advertise” being the operative word. The book, “Breaking History,” in which Jared Kushner recounts his immeasurable importance to the Trump administration and its incalculable benefit to the country, was published last month. Ever since, I’ve been deluged with digital missives from him, from her, about the book, the book, the book.“Friend,” Ivanka confided in an email on Monday, “my husband signed only a few copies.” She added that he and she would “love for you to have one.”“We can’t wait to hear what you think!” she added.Well, friend, the wait is over.I think that even by the standards of automatically generated, indiscriminately distributed emails, these are obnoxious — in their oppressive frequency, faux exuberance and utter disingenuousness.I think that implying that you’re giving away something when you’re about to disclose that you want a minimum of $75 — but $100 is even better, and there’s a button you can click to give $250 if you’re feeling posh! — perfectly captures the general crassness of political fund-raising and the specific crassness of Trump World.I think that I’m no more likely to click on $250 than I am to spend the roughly $21 that the book actually costs on Amazon because, while I read much that I find distasteful in the interest of staying current, there is no unplumbed wonder to Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner, no chance that we’re about to get an honest accounting from any one of them, no mystery about Ivanka and Jared’s motives here.They want to be feted and they want to be funded. I just want them out of my inbox.For the Love of SentencesArchivio GBB/Contrasto, via ReduxThis space last week put more than glittering prose on display. It also showcased my musical ignorance. I included a reader-nominated sentence that likened a rushing-heavy football offense when Tom Brady is your quarterback to a bevy of drum solos when Eric Clapton is your guitarist. Many of you justly wrote in to note that when Clapton played with Cream, there were many extended solos by the band’s renowned drummer, Ginger Baker. I offer this paragraph as my percussion penance.And now I turn to the death of Queen Elizabeth II — or, rather, to a mere sprinkle of the hundreds of thousands of excellent words written about it. In The Times, Hari Kunzru mulled the queen’s surrender to her peculiar station: “She seemed to accept that her role was to be shown things, so very many things.” (Thanks to Scott Kolber of Brooklyn, N.Y., for nominating that.) And Tina Brown described the queen’s cultured and deliberately opaque voice as having “the cut-glass tones of an everlasting British teatime.” (Chris Sheola, Ithaca, N.Y.)In The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead posited that Elizabeth “spoke so seldom that even people who didn’t care what the queen said cared what the queen said.” (Ed Gallardo, Sun City West, Ariz.) And Anthony Lane looked beyond the queen to the trajectory of the nation that curtsied to her: “Could it be that what was once an empire, and then a commonwealth, will shrink to a single country, and then at last to one quiet village in Gloucestershire, with an empty church and a thriving line in marmalade?” (Eric Walker, Black Mountain, N.C.)In The Washington Post, Ron Charles had great fun with his review of a hurried, bare-bones new thriller, “Blowback,” by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois. “The scenes are so short they could be written on napkins,” he wrote. “Several times the chapters break during conversations, as though somebody forgot to put a dime in the pay phone.” Additionally: “The dialogue is so corny it’s not delivered, it’s shucked.” (Carolyn Harrison, Kearney, Mo.)Also in The Washington Post, Monica Hesse’s take on a new Apple TV+ road trip/interview show starring Hillary and Chelsea Clinton included Hesse’s description of Hillary’s tenseness when she re-emerges in the public eye: “It’s like the vague sense of unease when it’s been too long since your toddler made an appearance, and the cat and the finger paints are missing, too.” The Clintons, Hesse wrote, “approach comedy much as the Coneheads approached Earth.” And through their conversations with other celebrities, they “discover that comedy is more difficult for women, and fame is trickier for women, and moms are more judged than dads. If any of this is news to you, then I wish you a swift recovery from your head wound.” (Valerie Congdon, Waterford, Mich., and Christina Mitchell, Voorhees, N.J.)And to return to — and end with — The Times, Katherine Rundell gorgeously distilled the poet John Donne’s belief in the expansiveness of our souls: “Tap humans, he believed, and they’d ring with the sound of infinity.” (Liz Keuffer, Cincinnati)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, put “Sentences” in the subject line and include your name and place of residence.Where I’ll Be and Whom I’ll Be WithOn the first Friday in October, I’ll be onstage in New Jersey with the MSNBC anchor Katy Tur, for the opening night event at the Morristown Festival of Books. While we’ll talk in large measure about my most recent book, “The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found,” I bet that we’ll also discuss the state of the country, Katy’s excellent memoir “Rough Draft” and more. Ticket information for the Oct. 7 event is here.On the last Friday in October, I’ll be on a stage near my home in North Carolina to interview my friend Alice Feiring, one of the country’s finest wine writers, about her terrific new memoir, “To Fall in Love, Drink This.” Ticket information for the Oct. 28 event is here.In between those engagements, on Oct. 13 at Duke University, I’ll be interviewing my Times colleague and friend Bret Stephens about conservatism, the midterms and the most profound challenges facing the country and the world. The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Penn Pavilion on Duke’s campus. Here are additional details.On a Personal (and Partly Regan) NoteRegan takes fewer rests like these as autumn approaches.Frank BruniThe mercury dips and Regan rises. She no longer shuffles miserably through the gauzy summer humidity or lies down in protest just a quarter mile into a walk. She bounds. She prances, as exhilarated by the advance of autumn as I am. Beware, all you lumbering woodchucks and distracted squirrels. The huntress has her groove back.She reminds me how profoundly the weather affects every creature’s movements and moods, how climate change translates into even more than melting ice, rising sea levels and burning forests (though those consequences are motive aplenty to deal with it). It has physiological and psychological implications, too. It augurs more days of weariness and — in terms of natural disasters — more nights of wariness.We’re at the mercy of our natural environments, though that hasn’t spurred us to show them proper respect. We’re heedless. Profligate.In the coming years, the woods that Regan and I range across will shrink. We’ve been warned. There are metal signs planted in various spots where trees meet pavement; each says that the street may be extended in the future. The growing population in our area of North Carolina will necessitate the construction or expansion of schools, and thickets will be sacrificed for that. Demand for housing around here outstrips supply, driving up prices, so new residential communities may be in order.And there’s no wrong in any of that. There’s sense in much of it. We can’t rail at politicians about the affordable housing shortage and then say: No more development here, no more development there, not in my backyard, not in the meadows where Regan thrills to the presence of deer.But we can be measured, conscious, responsible. We can do better than we’ve done in the past to recognize that our impact on the planet has an impact on us, that there’s a balance to be struck, that our technological advances haven’t separated our welfare — our happiness — from the state of the natural world.The heat, the cold, the water, the wind — as they change, so do we. My morning walks with Regan remind me of that. They’ll grow longer in the coming months, our exertions rewarded by the kaleidoscopic pageant that the leaves put on. May we never forfeit that color, that magic. May we never be foolish enough to.What’s at stake for you on Election Day?In the final weeks before the midterm elections, Times Opinion is asking for your help to better understand what motivates each generation to vote. We’ve created a list of some of the biggest problems facing voters right now. Choose the one that matters most to you and tell us why. We plan to publish a selection of responses shortly before Election Day. More