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

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

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      How the Races for Governor Could Determine Who Controls the Senate

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      Major midterm battlegrounds have both contests on the ticket, and how voters divvy up their picks could have significant consequences.WASHINGTON — John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, wants voters to think of his G.O.P. rival and the Republican running for governor in the Keystone State as one and the same.“They are MOZtriano,” Mr. Fetterman says in a You Tube campaign video, melding the names of Mehmet Oz, his opponent, and Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican candidate for governor whose campaign is sputtering, anointing them the state’s newest “power couple.”Supporters of Mr. Oz, on the other hand, are working to emphasize differences between Mr. Fetterman, the current progressive lieutenant governor with whom he is in a tight race, and Josh Shapiro, the more centrist Democratic attorney general and the heavy favorite to win the governorship.“Fetterman is way more radical than Shapiro,” says a woman in a new ad from American Crossroads, a Republican political action committee, which compares Mr. Fetterman’s record on the treatment of criminals unfavorably with that of Mr. Shapiro. The names of their Republican opponents don’t even come up.The dueling approaches in one of the nation’s marquee Senate races illustrate how, as midterm congressional races have tightened, contests at the top of the ticket are looming as a potentially decisive factor in the outcomes. Republicans and Democrats alike are trying to game out the crosscurrents, working to position their candidates either to ride the wave of a favored gubernatorial candidate or to distance themselves to avoid being pulled under by the drag of a fellow party member.In some of the chief battlegrounds this year — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire, among others — voters will choose both a governor and a senator. How they divide their votes between those two could determine control of the Senate and show whether ticket splitting, which has been on the decline for decades in polarized America, has new life.“There is considerable overlap between the governor’s races and the Senate battlegrounds,” said Nathan Gonzales, the editor and publisher of the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.But how the races intersect varies.In some states, including Pennsylvania, the candidate for governor of one party is comfortably ahead of their opponent, while the Senate race is much closer. In others, the polling shows the contests for both offices is very close.Georgia is a third category altogether. The Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, is running ahead of Democrat Stacey Abrams. But Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, has consistently but narrowly led his Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Ms. Abrams’s difficulties could weigh down Mr. Warnock’s chances in that race, unless voters split their ballots, choosing the Republican for governor and the Democrat for Senate.Then there are spots like New Hampshire, where voters appear to be regarding the two races as entirely separate. Gov. Chris Sununu, a popular Republican, is far ahead in the polls and expected to romp to victory over state Senator Tom Sherman, the Democrat. Yet Senator Maggie Hassan, the Democratic incumbent, is also favored over Republican Donald Bolduc, a far-right candidate who prevailed in the primary after Mr. Sununu declined to jump into the contest, where he would likely have been favored.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire is far ahead in his re-election bid. He declined to run for the Senate. Jon Cherry/Getty Images For ConcordiaCampaign officials say the potential New Hampshire outcome is not all that confounding given the state’s voting traditions and the effort candidates in both parties have put into showing that they are not tied down by party.“It is extremely common here,” said Kevin Donohoe, a spokesman for Ms. Hassan, of voters splitting their ticket between the two parties. “If you want to win here, you have to have an independent record and you have to have an independent profile, and that is what voters expect.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent, holds a double-digit lead in his race against former Dayton mayor Nan Whaley. But Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate contender, is running neck-and-neck with J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate and author endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.A recent poll by the Siena College Research Institute found that 20 percent of Ohio voters who said they were pulling the lever for Mr. DeWine said they also intended to vote for Mr. Ryan, a showing that could give him a shot in a state that was expected to choose another Republican to replace retiring Senator Rob Portman.The poll provided an opening for Mr. Ryan and his allies. NBC News reported that WelcomePAC, a Democratic group backing Mr. Ryan, took out newspaper ads asking voters, “Why are 1 in 5 Republican voters saying no to J.D. Vance?” and hitting Mr. Vance for his ties to Mr. Trump.But it is one thing to express an intent to split a ticket and another to do it. Voters can change their minds on Election Day based on myriad factors, including a desire to show party loyalty, the importance placed on each individual race and even the format of the ballot.“Are these tickets really going to split?” asked Don Levy, the director of the Siena College poll. “It is one thing in a poll to say, ‘Yeah, Tim Ryan, I like him and I’m not so sure about this J.D. Vance guy.’ But when you cast your ballot, then some people are going to pause and vote the team.”Given Mr. DeWine’s strength, a failure of potential ticket splitters to follow through could be very damaging to Mr. Ryan’s chances of winning.That has been the case in recent presidential election cycles, as American politics has become more tribal and voters have grown more likely to stay in their partisan lanes. In 2016, for the first time, every state with a Senate election backed both a senator and a president of the same party. It was not much different in 2020, with only Maine deviating.But research by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia found that midterm elections still produce more ticket-splitting when the White House is not up for grabs. In 2018, six states split their results between governor and senator, with five of them of backing a Republican governor and a Democratic senator. The report by J. Miles Coleman, an editor at the center, found that six states also delivered mixed results in 2014 and five in 2010.“If 2022 falls in line with the three most recent midterms, we can still expect five or six split-ticket cases,” Mr. Coleman wrote.Democrats hope Pennsylvania, which is crucial to determining control of the Senate, is not one of them, though Republicans say they are finding evidence of Shapiro-Oz voters who could decide the outcome.“Republican polling shows a substantial number of Shapiro voters actually favor Dr. Oz for the Senate based on the hot button issues of crime and the economy,” said John Ashbrook, a Republican strategist working on Senate campaigns and a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.Other analysts say a blowout win by Mr. Shapiro would seem to accrue to the benefit of Mr. Fetterman. The Fetterman campaign sees a healthy synergy between the two candidates and the two are expected to appear together as the campaign season draws to a close.“Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman are very different types of candidates,” said Rebecca Katz, senior adviser to Mr. Fetterman. “But together they appeal to a broad swath of Pennsylvania voters and offer a very strong contrast to extreme, Trump-backed candidates like Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano.” More

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      Don’t Buy the Republican Appeal to Workers

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

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      Governor’s Races Enter Final Sprint on a Scrambled, Surprising Map

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      Deep-red Oklahoma is in play for Democrats. New York and Oregon are within reach for Republicans. And several swing states have tight races with high stakes on abortion, elections and other issues.Democrats and Republicans raced on Saturday into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor, as the G.O.P. moves within striking distance of flipping the top office in a series of blue and battleground states and Democrats show surprising strength in several other contests.With pivotal races for the House and the Senate appearing to shift toward Republicans, the nation’s far more variable and highly consequential races for governor are drawing huge influxes of money. Democrats are also sending in their cavalry, dispatching former President Barack Obama to a rally in Georgia on Friday before appearances in Michigan and Wisconsin on Saturday and in Nevada on Tuesday.The stakes in these races have become broader and clearer in recent months. The Supreme Court has given states the power to write their own abortion laws, and Republican candidates in places including Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about the validity of the 2020 election.Republican candidates for governor, who enjoy a favorable political environment but in many states are being outspent by Democrats, have slammed the airwaves with an avalanche of crime ads. Incumbent Democrats have hit back by pointing to money they have pumped into law enforcement agencies and hammering Republicans for opposing abortion rights.The current president and his predecessor, both unpopular with swing voters, are absent from the closest races. President Biden recently stumped for the party’s struggling nominee in liberal Oregon and is headed to New Mexico next week. Mr. Trump is holding rallies in places that are safe for his party, like Iowa and Texas, or where he is aiming to prop up Senate candidates, as in Pennsylvania and Ohio.While the governor’s race in deep-red Oklahoma has become newly competitive for Democrats, and the party has a comfortable lead in divided Pennsylvania, the sour national mood has put the leadership of blue states like New York, New Mexico and Oregon within reach for Republicans. A G.O.P. governor in any of those states could block efforts to expand abortion access and other Democratic priorities.Some Democratic candidates, trying to turn the narrative around, have gone so far as to claim they are fighting an uphill battle — even in New York, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by two to one.“I’ve always said I was an underdog,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in Queens on Friday, a day before her Republican opponent, Representative Lee Zeldin, was set to appear with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “There’s circumstances sometimes you can’t control. You don’t know what’s happening nationally. There’s national waves. There’s a lot of forces out there.”Gov. Kathy Hochul with President Biden in Syracuse on Thursday. Democrats are throwing money into a last-ditch push to shore up her campaign against Representative Lee Zeldin. Kenny Holston for The New York TimesRepublicans have solidified their hold on the traditional presidential battlegrounds of Florida and Ohio, with incumbent governors building enormous fund-raising advantages and sizable polling leads, and Democrats have all but given up in those states. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has never been seriously threatened by former Representative Beto O’Rourke.In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who has centered her campaign on her effort to maintain abortion rights, is confronting a narrowing race against her Republican challenger, Tudor Dixon, though she still holds polling and financial edges. Mr. Obama will hold a rally for Ms. Whitmer in Detroit on Saturday.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.In an interview on Friday, Ms. Dixon, who opposes abortion rights, said she had “been on television and radio as much as possible” to make up for Ms. Whitmer’s cash advantage. Since the beginning of September, the governor and Democrats have spent four times as much on television ads as Ms. Dixon and Republican groups have.Asked if she would welcome a final-week visit by Mr. Trump, who last held a rally in the state on Oct. 1, Ms. Dixon mentioned a different surrogate — one who three years ago was running for president as a Democrat.“We’ve already had President Trump here,” she said. “We have other great people. Tulsi Gabbard is coming in this weekend.”Tudor Dixon with her family in Muskegon, Mich. Her campaign has far less money than Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, but polls in their race have narrowed.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesMs. Whitmer said that “Potus was here a while ago, and having Barack Obama here now is great,” referring to Mr. Biden by his presidential acronym. She added, “The whole world understands Michigan is a really important state on the national map and the consequences of this race are big.”The lone incumbent Republican governor in a competitive race is Brian Kemp of Georgia, who is leading his rematch with Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who lost to him narrowly in 2018. Polls show Mr. Kemp with a solid advantage, though there is some doubt about whether he will eclipse the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff in December..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.And in Arizona’s open-seat race for governor, the Republican nominee, Kari Lake, a television anchor-turned-Trump acolyte, is in a close race with Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, who is widely seen as having mounted a lackluster campaign. A victory by Ms. Lake could have major implications for future elections in Arizona, given her relentless false claims that the 2020 contest was stolen.Yet the presence on the ballot of Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat who has led in polls of his race, may help Ms. Hobbs survive.Unlike other Democratic candidates for governor in battleground states, Josh Shapiro, right, of Pennsylvania has a healthy lead in the polls.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesIn some states, Democratic candidates are putting up a stiff challenge or are even ahead. In 12 of the 13 closest governor’s races, the Democratic candidates and their allied groups have spent more money on television advertising since Sept. 1 than their Republican opponents have, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.In Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee, has built a yawning gap between himself and his underfunded far-right rival, Doug Mastriano, who has promised to ban abortion without exceptions and enact major new voting restrictions. Democrats are also far ahead of Trump-endorsed Republicans in Maryland and Massachusetts, liberal states where moderate Republicans have had recent success in governor’s races.But Democrats who swept into governor’s mansions in the 2018 electoral rejection of Mr. Trump now find themselves battling decades of history. Michigan and Wisconsin — where Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, is neck-and-neck with Tim Michels, a Republican — have not elected a governor of the same party as the sitting president since 1990, while Kansas and New Mexico have not done so since 1986.Tim Michels, the Republican nominee in Wisconsin, is in a razor-thin race against Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAt the same time, Republicans, who hold 28 governorships compared with Democrats’ 22, are attacking their Democratic rivals over crime in contests across the country.Few Republicans in close races have done so quite like Mark Ronchetti, a former TV weatherman running against Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, which Mr. Biden won by 10 percentage points in 2020.Since the beginning of September, 82 percent of the television ad spending from Mr. Ronchetti and the Republican Governors Association has been about crime, according to AdImpact data. Of all of the nation’s Republican candidates for governor, only Mr. Zeldin in New York has made crime more of a focus of his ads.Albuquerque, whose metropolitan area includes about half of New Mexico’s population, set a record for homicides in 2021. The killings are a staple of local television news coverage, so Mr. Ronchetti’s ads bashing Ms. Lujan Grisham on crime are often sandwiched between those news reports.“We’ve always had challenges of making sure we can have a safe city,” Mr. Ronchetti said in an interview. “For the most part, this was a safe place to raise your kids. But it’s gotten out of control.”Ms. Lujan Grisham’s closing advertising features sheriffs saying she has provided funding for more police officers. Democratic advertising has also highlighted Mr. Ronchetti’s opposition to abortion.Perhaps no Democratic nominee has put up as surprising a performance as Joy Hofmeister in Oklahoma.Joy Hofmeister, left, and Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma during their debate, when she pointed out that the state’s violent crime rate was higher than that of California and New York. Sarah Phipps/The Oklahoman, via Associated PressMs. Hofmeister, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, had a viral debate moment this month when she correctly noted that Oklahoma’s violent crime rate under Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, was higher than the rates in California and New York.Mr. Stitt protested that it wasn’t true.“Oklahomans, do you believe we have higher crime than New York or California?” he said. “That’s what she just said.”In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Hofmeister credited her strength in Oklahoma, where Mr. Trump won 65 percent of the vote in 2020, to focusing on local issues even as Mr. Stitt tries to nationalize the race by tying her to Mr. Biden.“He is reading from a national script,” she said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with reality. It’s this formula that he thinks somehow is going to work.”Luis Ferré-Sadurní More

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      Is a red wave about to touch down on US shores? Politics Weekly America – podcast

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      With less than two weeks to go before the November midterm elections, analysts are working overtime to try to predict the outcome. Will Republicans manage to take both the House and the Senate from the Democrats? Will the overturning of Roe v Wade be the catalyst that brings new Democrats to the polls? Is Donald Trump really as influential in the GOP as he thinks he is?
      This week, Jonathan Freedland and Joan E Greve bring us the latest on the races to watch, the candidates to pay attention to and the issues dominating the campaigns

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      Archive: Fox News, CNBC, CBS, MSNBC and ABC. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More

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      The 2022 Race for the House, in Four Districts, and Four Polls

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      President Biden is unpopular everywhere. Economic concerns are mounting. Abortion rights are popular but social issues are more often secondary.A new series of House polls by The New York Times and Siena College across four archetypal swing districts offers fresh evidence that Republicans are poised to retake Congress this fall as the party dominated among voters who care most about the economy.Democrats continue to show resilience in places where abortion is still high on the minds of voters, and where popular incumbents are on the ballot. Indeed, the Democrats were still tied or ahead in all four districts — three of which were carried by Mr. Biden in 2020. But the party’s slim majority — control could flip if just five seats change hands — demands that it essentially run the table everywhere, at a moment when the economy has emerged as the driving issue in all but the country’s wealthier enclaves.The poll results in the four districts — an upscale suburb in Kansas, the old industrial heartland of Pennsylvania, a fast-growing part of Las Vegas and a sprawling district along New Mexico’s southern border — offer deeper insights beyond the traditional Republican and Democratic divide in the race for Congress. They show how the midterm races are being shaped by larger and at times surprising forces that reflect the country’s ethnic, economic and educational realignment.“The economy thing affects everyone while the social thing affects a minority,” said Victor Negron, a 30-year-old blackjack dealer who lives in Henderson, Nev., and who was planning to vote for the Republican vying to flip the seat from a Democratic incumbent. “If everyone’s doing good, then who cares what else everyone else is doing.”The Four Districts Polled More

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      Fetterman vs. Oz Is Not Really Fetterman vs. Oz

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      So, how many of you watched the Pennsylvania Senate debate because you want to back the most articulate candidate?The whole country was wondering how well John Fetterman was doing, given his auditory processing issues. He can get his thoughts across, but there aren’t going to be any oratory prizes in the immediate future.If one of those had been given out on Tuesday night, Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate, would have won. Big shock, right? The former television talk-show star was more articulate than the guy who had a stroke.But deep down, nothing made much difference. Most viewers knew who they were going to support before the debate began. Hundreds of thousands of them had already voted. Makes total sense. The most important thing about this election, by far, is that it could decide who will control the Senate.There, the big votes are almost always divided by party. Be honest — were you really surprised that Fetterman was the one who wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $15? Or that Oz is the one who would protect the filibuster?At this point, party is all that matters. Still, there we were, trying to judge how the guys performed. On occasion, it was a little hard to tell whether Fetterman’s answers constituted normal political evasion or stroke-induced confusion. For instance, he’d once said he’d never support the very lucrative fracking industry, which many Pennsylvania workers love and virtually all Pennsylvania environmentalists hate. Then he changed his mind. On Tuesday, he said: “I do support fracking. And I don’t, I don’t. I support fracking, and I stand, and I do, support fracking.”That was it, and a very good example of how the repercussions from a stroke can make it much more difficult for a politician to achieve classic dodge-and-switcheroo.Unfortunately, given Fetterman’s trouble with quick repartee, he didn’t throw in a reminder of his opponent’s very recent metamorphosis into a Pennsylvania resident, or more than a quick jab about how Oz, who doesn’t seem worried about the minimum wage, is the guy with “10 gigantic mansions.”True enough. Would have loved to pursue that a little bit — I wonder whether Oz couldn’t be lending one of his Manhattan condos to the homeless. Or displaced Venezuelan refugees?Issue-wise, the big faux pas of the evening actually came from Oz, who flubbed his answer to an abortion question. The good doctor has, um, evolved since he was dispensing medical advice on TV. He was slightly vague but apparently pro-choice back then. Once he became an ambitious Republican politician, he discovered he was “100 percent pro-life.” Now that he’s running in a general election, he’s trying to jump back to the old between-a-woman-and-her-doctor territory.Sort of. On stage this week, he called for a decision made by “women, doctors, local political leaders …”Hmm, how many of you want to bring the local political leaders into this? May I see a show of hands?Oz seemed unthrilled about being asked if he’d back Donald Trump for the 2024 nomination. Which was a little ungrateful, given that he was probably on stage only because Trump had endorsed him in the Republican primary.Bringing up the former president was yet another reminder that our main concern right now is about which party wins control. If you want a Senate that’s going to reject anything that comes out of a Biden White House, feel free to consider the Republican candidates. Otherwise, come on …I know, it’s tough. Voters have less than two weeks to make a choice, and in a fair world they’d be able to think about more than that One Big Thing. What about Fetterman’s long-term prognosis? After the debate, his spokesman said he did “great tonight for a man who was in a hospital bed just several months ago.” That’s true, but it’s not a qualification voters would want to hear for the next six years.You certainly hope he’ll at least be able to get up and go to work. But whatever his condition, don’t express your concern by helping turn the Senate over to Mitch McConnell.If you’ve got a local election for governor or mayor, feel free to mull the character details. They’re the ones whose personality, self-discipline and charisma really matter. For instance, watching the gubernatorial candidates in New York, Kathy Hochul and challenger Lee Zeldin, go at it this week, you got to hear people talk about stuff they could actually do on their own, and not in a pack with 49 or 50 of their colleagues.True, it wasn’t the most stirring debate in state history and objective viewers might have found Zeldin a tad off-putting. (He opened with a rant about how wretched everything was, to which Hochul mildly replied, “Well, nice to see you too …”)Yeah, if you’ve got to vote for an executive, you do need to pay close attention. Take some of the time you were going to devote to those Senate races. On that front, you should have been homing in at primary time, when they picked the candidates. Now, the Republican and Democratic nominees are who they are.And the oratory certainly doesn’t matter. When was the last time a friend told you she’d changed her mind about a big issue after a rousing speech by Senator X? Well, it did sort of work for Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” But that was 30 years before John Fetterman was born.And it was a movie.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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      Pennsylvania Voters Absorb an Unusual Debate: ‘I Felt Sorry for Fetterman’

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      LEMOYNE, Pa. — Two professors walked separately out of a grocery store just outside Pennsylvania’s capital city on Wednesday. Each had different political leanings and different preferences in the state’s Senate race.But they agreed on one thing: The extraordinary debate the day before between Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat and stroke survivor, and Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee and celebrity doctor, was a painful ordeal.“I felt sorry for Fetterman,” said Deb Donahue, 68, an adjunct professor and an Oz supporter from Camp Hill, Pa. “I think he really struggled a little bit.”Across the grocery-store parking lot, the other professor, now retired, Mary Boyer, said she could not bring herself to watch the debate. But Ms. Boyer, 72, a Fetterman supporter from Lewisberry, Pa., said she had read about his difficulties articulating his message at times onstage.“I didn’t want to have to watch him suffering,” she said, even as she emphasized that she saw Mr. Fetterman as a strong candidate and a good fit for the state.Mary Boyer, a Fetterman supporter, did not watch the debate. She still thinks he’s a strong candidate.Amanda Mustard for The New York TimesIn more than a dozen interviews across Pennsylvania on Wednesday, voters’ reactions to the debate overwhelmingly centered on Mr. Fetterman’s often halting performance, prompting a range of responses from both Democrats and Republicans — alarm, protectiveness, empathy, disappointment, embarrassment, admiration, worry about the political implications.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.The biggest open question, though, was whether his clash with Dr. Oz — who set off his own backlash by suggesting that state laws on abortion should be decided by “women, doctors, local political leaders” — changed any minds in one of the most consequential Senate contests on the map.“I don’t think Fetterman won over any undecided votes — I think it’s going to leave a lot of people with a tough decision about perceived competency,” said Damian Brennan, 51, a Fetterman backer from Pittsburgh. “We’re kind of fans of his, and we were a bit concerned.”Dr. Oz convinced at least one: Tom Linus, 50, an engineer from Washington Crossing, Pa., said the debate had cemented his decision to vote for the Republican. But he suggested he was more swayed by Dr. Oz’s remarks than by Mr. Fetterman’s performance.“I was kind of borderline before, but I think Oz won me over,” Mr. Linus said. “He was really much more into the details than I was expecting him to be.”Mr. Fetterman, who had a stroke in May, is dealing with lingering auditory processing issues, his campaign says, a challenge that led him to use closed captions in a fast-moving debate against an opponent who has years of television experience. His answers were sometimes notably brief, and at times he trailed off or jumbled words.His team, which had sought to lower expectations before the event, announced on Wednesday that it had raised $2 million since the debate. This month, his campaign released a note from Mr. Fetterman’s primary care physician saying that he could “work full duty in public office.”Cheryl Smith, a pathologist from Philadelphia, said she was confident that Mr. Fetterman would make a full recovery from his stroke.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times“John is ready to fight for every vote these next two weeks and win this race,” said Joe Calvello, a spokesman for Mr. Fetterman. The campaign also turned Dr. Oz’s abortion comments into an ad.Mr. Fetterman, who has won statewide office, has a strong political persona in Pennsylvania as a shorts-wearing former mayor of Braddock, a struggling old steel town he worked to help revitalize. Some voters said they simply did not expect him to be a strong debater, health challenges aside.“This is a setting that I think he wouldn’t have presented himself well even before the stroke, because he’s not a natural debater,” said Amie Gillingham, 51, of Greensburg, Pa. “If you’re judging on the style of the debate, Oz was the clear winner because he’s a polished public speaker, and that is not Fetterman.”Ms. Gillingham said the debate format seemed to work against Mr. Fetterman, but she added that was not a reason to vote against him.“If he’s willing to put himself out there, warts and all, I have so much respect for that,” she said. “To say that he’s an idiot who isn’t capable of being a senator simply because he’s struggling under this specific debate format is disingenuous and ableist in the extreme.”Cheryl Smith, 75, a pathologist from Philadelphia, expressed confidence in Mr. Fetterman’s ability to do the job.“They are going against Fetterman because of his speech problems right now, but hopefully that will clear up,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. As long as your mind is working well, you know what’s going on.”For several Democrats, their reaction to the debate was rooted in how they believed other voters might perceive Mr. Fetterman’s performance. The debate came after weeks of polling showing a tight race, and while surveys differ, Dr. Oz has undeniably gained ground this fall.Larry Kirk, 81, of Berks County, Pa., is a Democrat and will be voting for Mr. Fetterman in November. But he thought Dr. Oz had outperformed Mr. Fetterman onstage.Tom Linus of Washington Crossing, Pa., said Mehmet Oz’s performance in the debate had won him over.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times“I think it will have a negative impact on Fetterman because he didn’t really answer the accusations very well,” Mr. Kirk said. “And for people who are merely going to listen and not really think it through for themselves or check the research, unfortunately, I think Fetterman might have lost a few independent votes.”Megan Crossman of South Philadelphia said she was mostly worried that other voters would conclude that Mr. Fetterman is not up to the job.“I’m a physician, so that doesn’t necessarily mean his cognitive skills are off, it’s just his ability to get the words out,” she said. “But it does make me concerned about what voters who are less familiar might think.”Russell Greer, 75, of Butler, Pa., said he was a Republican who intended to vote for Mr. Fetterman. He said he didn’t think Dr. Oz — whose longtime principal residence was in New Jersey — had lived in Pennsylvania long enough to understand the state or its people, and he has followed Mr. Fetterman’s career.But the debate, he said, was hard to watch.“I think he was forced into that debate to quell different opinions, and I think he didn’t,” Mr. Greer said. “I think it made it worse.”He said he watched Mr. Fetterman and Dr. Oz debate for about 15 minutes. Then he turned it off.Jon Hurdle More