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      Doug Mastriano Said in 2019 That His Pennsylvania Bill Would Treat Abortions as Murder

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      Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, indicated in 2019 that women should be charged with murder if they violated a proposed abortion ban, a comment that Democrats on Tuesday highlighted as another example of Mr. Mastriano’s embrace of policies that are well outside the political mainstream.As a state senator in October 2019, he co-sponsored a bill to ban abortion after the detection of electrical cardiac activity in the fetus, usually around six weeks.On the radio show Smart Talk, the host, Scott LaMar, asked Mr. Mastriano if a woman would be charged with murder if she were 10 weeks pregnant and knowingly had what would be an illegal abortion under the bill. Mr. Mastriano answered, “Is that a human being? Is that a little boy or girl? If it is, it deserves equal protection under the law.”“So you’re saying yes?” the host asked.“Yes, I am,” Mr. Mastriano responded.NBC News first brought attention to the interview on Tuesday. Mr. Mastriano’s team did not respond to a request for comment.The issue of abortion rights has been a central theme of the Pennsylvania governor’s race.In a state with a Republican-led Legislature, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee, has positioned himself as a bulwark against any effort to enact the kind of abortion bans that have taken hold in other states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Mr. Mastriano, who is behind in polling and advertising time, more recently suggested that “the people of Pennsylvania” will “decide what abortion looks like” in the state, not the governor — but there is no question that he has long maintained hard-right views on the issue.Asked whether he believed in exceptions for rape or incest or to save the life of the mother, he replied during a primary debate, “I don’t give a way for exceptions.” Although his state bill had sought to ban abortion after a few weeks, he said in the debate that he wanted to end it completely: “I’m at conception. We’re going to have to work our way towards that.”A Monmouth University poll over the summer found that only 10 percent of Americans surveyed thought abortion should always be illegal, and 65 percent of those surveyed said they would be bothered “a lot” if “states treated illegal abortions as a felony where the woman or her doctor could be charged with murder.”“Doug Mastriano has said his No. 1 priority is banning abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother — and now, it’s clear he also wants to prosecute women for murder for making personal health care decisions,” said Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for Mr. Shapiro. “Mastriano has the most extreme anti-choice position in the country.” 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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      Pennsylvania school district accused of banning Girls Who Code book series

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      Pennsylvania school district accused of banning Girls Who Code book seriesPen America says Central York school district banned the books but officials strongly deny it in statement A school district in Pennsylvania has banned the Girls Who Code book series for young readers, according to an index of banned books compiled by the free expression non-profit Pen America.The books are four of more than 1,500 unique book titles that have been banned by schools across the country after conservative pushes to censor books. According to a report released by Pen America in April, 138 school districts across 32 states have banned books from their classrooms and school libraries.A recent update to Pen America’s banned book index said the Central York school district last year banned the books The Friendship Code, Team BFF: Race to the Finish!, Lights, Music, Code! and Spotlight on Coding Club!. The school district has over 400 banned titles on the index.A statement from officials in that district on Monday strongly denied that they had banned the book series.“The information published in this article is categorically false,” the district’s statement said while linking to a Business Insider interview with the founder of Girls Who Code which reported the ban. “This book series not been banned, and they remain available in our libraries.”The Central York district last year received national attention after it banned resource materials listed in 2020 by its diversity committee, including children’s books and documentaries. A coalition of students and parents successfully pushed the district to rescind its ban after public pressure.In a statement explaining the ban of the diverse resources, the school district’s board president at the time, Jane Johnson, said: “What we are attempting to do is balance legitimate academic freedom with what could be literature/materials that are too activist in nature, and may lean more toward indoctrination rather than age-appropriate academic content.”The Girls Who Code series features a group of girls who become friends in their school’s coding club. The series is in partnership with Girls Who Code, a non-profit that runs computer coding clubs and programming in schools for girls.How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight backRead moreThe CEO and founder of Girls Who Code, Reshma Saujani, expressed her anger over the series being banned.“We use these stories to teach kids to code,” Saujani told Business Insider. “It felt very much like a direct attack on the movement we’ve been building to get girls coding.“This is an opportunity to realize how big this movement is against our kids and how much we need to fight.”Saujani said that the group Moms for Liberty, a conservative non-profit formed in 2021 that has been pushing book bans through local chapters across the country, was responsible for the Central York district’s ban on the series. The organization has advocated for banning books on race – including ones on the civil rights movement – and on LGBTQ+ themes, saying the volumes are “sexually explicit”, according to media watchdog Media Matters.Aggressive campaigns to ban books in schools and libraries across the country have flared up over the culture wars of the last two years. While campaigns to ban books have always existed in the US, the movement gained momentum in 2021 when conservatives took aim at the academic “critical race” theory and turned it into a buzzword to stoke fears of liberal ideals being taught in classrooms.According to Pen America’s banned books report, many of the titles being banned deal with LGBTQ+ themes or have non-white characters. The organization estimates that more than 300 groups, including local chapters of national organizations like Moms for Liberty, have been pushing for book bans. The groups have gained large traction through social media, where lists of titles have circulated.The campaigns try to deflect accusations of racism and bigotry by claiming they are targeting material that is offensive or inappropriate for children.Pen America estimates that 41% of banned books deal with LGBTQ+ themes while 40% have protagonists or secondary characters who are people of color.An author of one of the Girls Who Code books, Jo Whittemore, said on Twitter: “Some people choose not to focus on how awesome and empowering and inspiring these books are but instead choose fear.”TopicsPennsylvaniaUS politicsLibrariesnewsReuse this content More

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      Doug Mastriano’s Adrift Campaign: No TV Ads, Tiny Crowds, Little Money

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      HARRISBURG, Pa. — In the same spot where he spoke to thousands of people at a raucous State Capitol rally demanding an end to pandemic restrictions in April 2020, Doug Mastriano appeared on Saturday before a crowd of just a few dozen — about half of whom were volunteers for his ragtag campaign for governor of Pennsylvania.Mr. Mastriano, an insurgent state senator who in the spring cruised to the Republican nomination, is learning this fall that while it is one thing to win a crowded G.O.P. primary on the back of online fame and Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, it is quite another to prevail in a general election in a battleground state of nearly 13 million people.He is being heavily outspent by his Democratic rival, has had no television ads on the air since May, has chosen not to interact with the state’s news media in ways that would push his agenda, and trails by double digits in reputable public polling and most private surveys.There’s no sign of cavalry coming to his aid, either: The Republican Governors Association, which is helping the party’s nominees in Arizona, Michigan and six other states, has no current plans to assist Mr. Mastriano, according to people with knowledge of its deliberations.The Pennsylvania governor’s race is perhaps the most consequential in the country. Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel who chartered buses to the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that led to the attack on the Capitol, has vowed to ban abortion without exceptions and pledged to enact sweeping new voting restrictions. He would be likely to accomplish those measures given the Republican advantage in the state legislature.But the stakes aren’t apparent based on Mr. Mastriano’s limited resources. There is little indication that he has built a campaign infrastructure beyond the Facebook videos that propelled him to stardom in right-wing circles and to the vanguard of Christian nationalist politics.“I can’t even assess things because I don’t see a campaign,” said Matt Brouillette, the president of Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, an advocacy group that is a major player in Pennsylvania Republican politics. “I’ve not seen anything that is even a semblance of a campaign.”Mr. Brouillette, who backed one of Mr. Mastriano’s rivals in the G.O.P. primary, added: “Now, maybe he knows something we don’t on how you can win in the fifth-largest state without doing TV or mail. But I guess we’re going to have to wait until Nov. 8 to see whether you can pull something like that off.”Mr. Mastriano’s supporters are counting on a surge of under-the-radar grass-roots enthusiasm on Election Day and a political environment favorable to Republicans. Mark Makela for The New York TimesMr. Brouillette’s organization is the only one to air any television ads attacking Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general who won the Democratic primary for governor uncontested even as he spent $400,000 to help lift Mr. Mastriano to victory in the Republican primary.But while Commonwealth Partners has paid for 811 television ads urging Pennsylvanians to “vote Republican” against Mr. Shapiro, the Democratic nominee’s campaign has broadcast more than 23,000 ads promoting himself and attacking Mr. Mastriano since the May primary, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Republicans elsewhere who, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, won primaries against the wishes of their local political establishments are facing similar disparities in TV advertising in the final weeks of the midterm campaigns. Along with Mr. Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Trump-backed candidates for governor in five other states — Arizona, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and Michigan — have combined to air zero television advertisements since winning their primaries.Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, the R.G.A.’s co-chairman, was asked about whether he views Mr. Mastriano as a viable candidate during a question-and-answer session this month at Georgetown University.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Rushing to Raise Money: Their fund-raising dwarfed by their Democratic rivals, Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington.Inflation Concerns Persist: Several issues have come to the forefront during the six-month primary season that has just ended. But nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Election Deniers Pivot: “Stop the Steal” G.O.P. candidates are shifting to appeal to the swing voters they need to win in November. The question now: Can they get away with it?Toxic Narratives: Misleading and divisive posts about the midterm elections have flooded social media. Here are some prevalent themes.“We don’t fund lost causes and we don’t fund landslides,” Mr. Ducey said. “You have to show us something, you have to demonstrate that you can move numbers and you can raise resources.”In polls of Pennsylvania this month, both The Morning Call of Allentown and CBS News showed Mr. Shapiro with a lead of 11 percentage points over Mr. Mastriano, an advantage that has more than doubled since the primary. The most recent campaign finance reports show that Mr. Mastriano’s campaign account had just $397,319, compared with $13.5 million for Mr. Shapiro.Mr. Mastriano’s supporters say he’s following a Pennsylvania playbook written by Mr. Trump. They are counting on a surge of under-the-radar grass-roots enthusiasm on Election Day and a political environment in which Republicans are motivated by anger with President Biden.“I wish that Senator Mastriano had the money to be on the air,” said Charlie Gerow, a longtime Pennsylvania Republican operative who finished well behind Mr. Mastriano in the primary. He added, “But his nontraditional campaign seems to be working.”.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.There isn’t a lot of evidence that’s true.Mr. Mastriano, who this year spent $5,000 trying to recruit supporters on the far-right social media platform Gab, never built an army of small donors of the sort that have powered anti-establishment candidates elsewhere — including Mr. Trump.“Really not finding a lot of support from national-level Republican organizations, so we’re calling on people across Pennsylvania and across the United States of America to give directly to our campaign,” a glum-looking Mr. Mastriano said in a video on Facebook last week. “These large groups, we have not seen much assistance coming from them.”Mr. Mastriano in a campaign video posted on Wednesday on Facebook. He has not built an army of small donors like those that have fueled other anti-establishment candidates, including Donald J. Trump.Doug4gov.comThe video solicitation demonstrates the limits of Mr. Mastriano’s unorthodox campaign. Since he posted it on Wednesday, about 4,700 people have viewed the request — a small fraction of the weekly audience of millions for Mr. Shapiro’s deluge of television advertising, not to mention his ubiquity in the Pennsylvania news media.According to Mr. Shapiro’s campaign, he answered questions or conducted interviews with 41 Pennsylvania newspapers, television and radio stations during the first three weeks of September. During the same time period, Mr. Mastriano — who speaks only to conservative news organizations and podcasts — spoke with just three Pennsylvania outlets, according to media trackers.Those in the crowd on Saturday applauded Mr. Mastriano for what they viewed as his taking the fight to the news media. Supporters said his social media presence would be more than enough to counter Mr. Shapiro’s enormous financial advantage.“He has no need to spend money,” said Theresa Wickert, a retiree from Lebanon County, Pa. “It’s grass-roots. He has never put out a commercial against anyone the way that Shapiro and the others are putting them out. Never. He will never do that. That is not who he is.”Mr. Mastriano declined an invitation to an Oct. 3 debate at a dinner hosted by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, the first time in decades the organization has not held a debate between the state’s major-party candidates for governor. Mr. Shapiro will instead answer questions before business leaders at a “fireside chat,” an opportunity Mr. Mastriano also rejected.The campaign of Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, has aired more than 23,000 ads promoting himself and attacking Mr. Mastriano since the May primary, according to AdImpact.Marc Levy/Associated PressAfter speaking to about 60 people on Saturday — days before, his running mate, Carrie Lewis DelRosso, had urged supporters to attend “the big rally” — Mr. Mastriano hustled to a waiting S.U.V. while avoiding questions from reporters. A Pennsylvania state trooper shoved a local newspaper reporter out of the way as he tried asking Mr. Mastriano if he would accept the result of the November election.Aides to Mr. Mastriano did not respond to messages and declined to answer questions at the rally.Mr. Mastriano has resisted private entreaties from supporters to engage more with the news media — if only to spread his message to potential small-dollar donors.“We have sort of a fundamental distrust as conservatives that we don’t get a fair shake,” State Representative Mike Jones, one of the warm-up speakers for Mr. Mastriano on Saturday, said in an interview beforehand. “But when you’re at a financial disadvantage, you’ve got to get out there and take advantage of free media whenever you can.”There’s not much help coming for Mr. Mastriano from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, which was sufficiently in need of cash that, in a real-life Hail Mary, it sold its Harrisburg state headquarters in June to the Catholic church next door for $750,000.Mr. Shapiro has sought to fill the void left by Mr. Mastriano’s aversion to the news media and his inability to afford advertising, trying to win over moderate Republicans who might be put off by Mr. Mastriano’s far-right proposals.Mr. Shapiro has said he would appoint two parents to the state’s Board of Education and has endorsed Republican legislation to allow parents in some of the state’s public schools to use state aid for private school tuition — a move that drew praise on The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page.Mr. Shapiro said he had little sympathy for Mr. Mastriano’s aversion to the press corps.“The question I have when I look at his tactics regarding the media is, you know, what’s he hiding?” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview. “If he can’t answer questions from the Pennsylvania local media, how can you possibly be governor?”Mr. Mastriano speaking to supporters on Saturday in Harrisburg. A half-dozen men wearing uniforms of a local militia group, the South Central Pennsylvania Patriots, patrolled the area. Mark Makela for The New York TimesMr. Mastriano’s rally on Saturday was a hodgepodge of the state’s minor right-wing figures, many who came to prominence fighting public health restrictions early in the pandemic. A half-dozen men wearing uniforms of a local militia group, the South Central Pennsylvania Patriots, patrolled the grounds while a vendor stood behind a merchandise table without moving much product.During one speech, a state representative, David Zimmerman, revealed for the first time that he had received a subpoena from the F.B.I. in its investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “The F.B.I. looked for me all day long,” he said. “But what I did that they didn’t know is, I turned my phone tracker off.”Mr. Mastriano’s supporters said there was little reason to believe the crowd was indicative of his support.They cited an array of explanations for the double-digit crowd — a Penn State college football game up the road in State College, the annual Irish Fall Festival on the Jersey Shore and Facebook, the original source of much of Mr. Mastriano’s popularity.“This is good evidence of being shadow-banned on Facebook,” said the event’s organizer, a Philadelphia-area Uber and Lyft driver named Mike Daino who said he’d been kicked off the platform nine times for spreading misinformation. “They are banning conservative talk. But let’s continue on with the program.” More

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      Fetterman’s health at center of US Senate race in Pennsylvania as Oz fights to close gap

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      Fetterman’s health at center of US Senate race in Pennsylvania as Oz fights to close gapDemocratic nominee says he hopes supporters don’t ‘have a doctor in your life making fun of it’ amid questions over stroke Amid questions over his recovery from a stroke and demands he release his medical records, John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Pennsylvania, asked supporters if they had faced health challenges themselves.‘Women are the reason we can win,’ John Fetterman says at Pennsylvania rallyRead moreHe added: “I truly hope for each and every one of you you didn’t have a doctor in your life making fun of it.”The former mayor of Braddock, now lieutenant governor, was speaking at a campaign rally in Blue Bell. He suffered a stroke in May.His Republican opponent is Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon who became famous on morning TV, admitted in Senate testimony to promoting diet pills that do not work, insists he does not actually live in New Jersey and is endorsed by Donald Trump.The Oz campaign has repeatedly mocked Fetterman’s health problems. Doctored videos which seem to show Fetterman struggling to speak have spread on social media.Fetterman still leads in polling but the gap has closed as Fetterman’s health has become a campaign issue.Democrats insist their candidate is fine.“I was with him Saturday in Scranton,” Bob Casey, the serving Democratic US senator in Pennsylvania, told NBC News. “He had 1,000 people! … that connection is very strong. The other side is trying to break that and they’re having real trouble because they don’t have that same connection. That’s what the race is about.”Pat Toomey, the retiring Republican whose seat is up for grabs, told the same outlet: “If John Fetterman were elected to the Senate, and he’s not able to communicate effectively, if he’s not able to engage with the press, if he’s not able to engage with colleagues, he will not be able to do the job.”Oz has pressured Fetterman to commit to campaign debates. Earlier this month, the Republican told reporters: “John Fetterman is either healthy and he’s dodging the debate because he does not want to answer for his radical left positions, or he’s too sick to participate in the debate.”Fetterman then said he would debate Oz once. The event is set for 25 October.Oz has now released his medical records. According to the Associated Press, a New York City doctor found the 62-year-old to be in “excellent health” after an annual check-up on Thursday. The AP said the Fetterman campaign did not immediately comment.Pointing out that Pennsylvania could decide control of the Senate, now split 50-50, the Washington Post editorial board called for Fetterman to release his records.The board wrote: “Mr Fetterman is asking voters for a six-year contract without giving them enough information to make sound judgments about whether he’s up for such a demanding job.“We have called for full disclosure of health records from candidates for federal office in both parties, including Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and we believe Mr Fetterman should release his medical records for independent review.”The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has also called for Fetterman to release his records, to “reassure the public”.The Washington Post also said Fetterman should commit to more than one debate.It said: “Since returning to the campaign trail, Mr Fetterman has been halting in his performances. He stammers, appears confused and keeps his remarks short. He has held no news conferences.“Mr Fetterman acknowledges his difficulties with auditory processing, which make it hard for him to respond quickly to what he’s hearing. He receives speech therapy – and we wish him a speedy, full recovery – but the lingering, unanswered questions about his health, underscored by his hesitation to debate, are unsettling.”Speaking to NBC, the Fetterman adviser Rebecca Katz said: “John is communicating effectively with the people of Pennsylvania and running one of the best Senate campaigns in the country.“We don’t need to speculate about whether he can be an effective leader in January, after he’s had four more months to recover. He’s effective right now.”TopicsPennsylvaniaUS midterm elections 2022US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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

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

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      Progressive Network Will Spend $10 Million on Asian American Turnout

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      Two years after Asian American voters played a pivotal role in the presidential election, a coalition focused on building Asian American political power and engagement is launching a new $10 million midterm mobilization effort in critical battleground states. The Asian American Power Network, a coalition of organizations seeking to activate Asian American voters around progressive issues and candidates, is kicking off the initiative across six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The network is also training its eyes on three competitive House districts in California — two in Southern California and one in the Central Valley.“Asian American voters have been progressive” in some recent presidential elections, Nadia Belkin, the executive director of the network, said. “It’s no secret, though, that some of the Asian American voters do tend to be more swingy in the midterms. That’s why our group is spending a lot of time on the ground.”“Organizing our community,” she added, “requires a cultural understanding and nuance.”The network is an effort to support state organizations that are working on year-round engagement of Asian Americans.The midterms-focused initiative includes door-to-door canvassing and outreach by phone, text, mail and digital engagement in an array of languages. Aspects of the programming got underway earlier this month.In Pennsylvania the goal is to conduct voter outreach in 15 languages total, in support of Democratic candidates like Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, and John Fetterman, who is running for Senate. In North Carolina, efforts to engage Asian American voters will be conducted in 18 different languages across different media, including educational videos about voting.And the political arm of the Georgia affiliate is mobilizing for Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor, and Senator Raphael Warnock, both Democrats.In 2020, Asian American voters turned out in significant numbers in Georgia, as Democrats flipped the state first in the presidential election and then, in 2021, in a pair of runoff elections that cemented Democratic control of the Senate.But that result does not mean that the party has a lock on Asian American voters — a diverse and complex constituency — this year. A survey conducted this summer for the AARP by a bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research found that in congressional battleground districts, Democrats were underperforming among Asian American voters over age 50 compared with past elections. However, the Asian American Voter Survey, a large-scale poll, found earlier this year that Asian Americans leaned toward supporting Democratic House candidates by a margin of 54 percent to 27 percent overall, numbers that varied notably by individual constituencies. Ms. Belkin emphasized the importance of engaging the Asian American voters who turned out for the first time in 2020. “We do have a responsibility around talking to those voters about what’s at stake,” she said. “We have good rapport with many portions of the community, but I would say, you know, just like any other demographic bloc, we are working to do more and make sure that it’s sustained.” More