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      Nevada’s Costly, Photo-Finish Senate Race Pits Abortion vs. Economy

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      NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — As Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada took the stage at a high school here this week, she was fighting for her political life.Her re-election bid is seen by many as the tightest Senate race in the country. Republicans are throwing money and energy behind her challenger, Adam Laxalt, a political scion who, like Ms. Cortez Masto, is a former Nevada attorney general.Neither candidate could be called an electric campaigner, and Ms. Cortez Masto had a difficult slot that evening: shortly after John Legend and right before Barack Obama.After the appearance by Mr. Legend — who recently wrapped up a Las Vegas residency and played a couple of songs on a piano for an adoring audience — Ms. Cortez Masto spoke about how her grandfather was “a baker from Chihuahua” and how, before her, “there had never been a Latina elected to the U.S. Senate.”Her biographical bullet points were politely received. Then Mr. Obama took the stage and offered a reminder that his party has still not found a successor to match his charisma.To raucous applause, he hammered home Ms. Cortez Masto’s personal history in his inimitable cadences: “Third-generation Nevadan. Grew up here in Vegas. Dad started out parking cars at the Dunes,” he said, referring to a defunct casino where Ms. Cortez Masto’s father once worked. “She knows what it’s like to struggle and work hard.”Democrats are sending star figures to Nevada as both parties pour money into a political fight that could decide the balance of power in the Senate. The race was the most expensive political contest in Nevada history even before an $80 million splurge over the last month brought total ad spending to $176 million, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed the candidates deadlocked at 47 percent each; Mr. Laxalt had a comfortable lead among men, while Ms. Cortez Masto was likewise leading among women.Mr. Laxalt, a son and grandson of Nevada senators, held a rally in Las Vegas late last month with former Representative Tulsi Gabbard. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Cortez Masto and her allies have sought to focus on abortion rights, attacking Mr. Laxalt over the issue.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAnd increasingly, the campaign seems to be one of economics versus abortion.Democrats are battering Mr. Laxalt over his anti-abortion stance, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Nevada allows abortion up to 24 weeks, and after that in cases where the mother’s health is at risk. Mr. Laxalt has said he would support banning abortions in the state after 13 weeks, or the first trimester.One commercial broadcast Tuesday morning, paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, featured a Nevada woman assailing his abortion position, saying: “I take it incredibly personally that Adam Laxalt is working to take away the rights of my daughters.” Another spot, from the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC, includes audio of Mr. Laxalt saying during a breakfast with pastors that “Roe v. Wade was always a joke.”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.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Debunking Misinformation: Falsehoods and rumors are flourishing ahead of Election Day, especially in Pennsylvania. We debunked five of the most widespread voting-related claims.Ms. Cortez Masto returned to the topic on Tuesday night: “We know we can’t trust Laxalt when it comes to a woman’s right to choose,” she told the crowd. “This is a man who called Roe vs. Wade a joke, and he celebrated when it was overturned.”So often has Mr. Laxalt been attacked on abortion that he felt compelled to write an opinion column in The Reno Gazette-Journal in August “setting the record straight” on his position. He explained that when he said Roe was “a joke,” it was “a shorthand way of saying that the decision had no basis in the text of the Constitution.”Republican groups and the Laxalt campaign are generally focusing on the economy. Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and some of the highest gas prices, and a tourism-driven economy that was hit hard by the pandemic.“Inflation isn’t going away,” a narrator says in a Laxalt commercial running this week. “Gas and groceries are too expensive.” Another pro-Laxalt ad features a picture of Ms. Cortez Masto superimposed next to Speaker Nancy Pelosi as both are showered in cash. The spot, from the Senate Leadership Fund — the political action committee of Senate Republicans — makes the case that “Costly Catherine” is a high-spending Democrat.Mr. Laxalt and Ms. Gabbard at the rally in Las Vegas. He and his Republican allies have tried to put the spotlight on economic issues. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesRory McShane, a Republican political consultant who is working on other races in the state, believes the current dynamic favors Republicans.“You see in the polling that the economy is trumping abortion,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think anything’s stronger than the economy,” he added. “You don’t have to run TV ads to tell people how bad the economy is.”Kenneth Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the Democratic strategy “poses a risk.”“Abortion is very important to a big segment of the electorate, but that also means there are large segments of the electorate that don’t particularly care about abortion either way,” he said. “They may have a pro-choice or pro-life position, but it’s not what drives them to make their vote choice or drives them to turn out.”Mr. Laxalt’s saber-rattling on the economy, however, has plenty of skeptics. Nevada’s largest union, the 60,000-strong Culinary Workers, has sent members — cooks, cleaners, food servers — door to door to make the case for Ms. Cortez Masto and other Democratic candidates. More than half of the union’s members are Latinos, a group Mr. Laxalt has courted in Spanish-language commercials.Ted Pappageorge, the union’s secretary-treasurer, said in an interview that Ms. Cortez Masto had been an important ally on pocketbook concerns for union members, including expanding health benefits for workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic.“In 2020, we knocked on 650,000 doors statewide, and that was in the middle of Covid,” he said. “This year, in a midterm, we’re going to hit a million doors, and if we hit those doors, we’re going to win.”Few dispute the importance of the contest.“This race is the 51st seat,” Mr. Laxalt said this summer. “The entire U.S. Senate will hinge on this race.” He was speaking at the Basque Fry, a Republican event started by his grandfather, former Senator Paul Laxalt, whose family hailed from the Basque region straddling France and Spain. Mr. Laxalt is also the son of another former senator, Pete Domenici.Mr. Laxalt has been a divisive politician. He parroted Donald J. Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud when he served as the chairman of the former president’s 2020 campaign in Nevada. When he was attorney general, he was caught on a secret recording in which he pressured state gambling regulators on behalf of a major donor, Sheldon Adelson.And Mr. Laxalt’s bid to follow his forebears into the Senate has been fractious. Fourteen of his relatives have come out against him and thrown their support to Ms. Cortez Masto, calling her in a joint statement “a model of the ‘Nevada grit’ that we so often use to describe our Nevada forefathers.”Former President Barack Obama campaigned on Tuesday in Las Vegas for Nevada Democrats. “She knows what it’s like to struggle and work hard,” he said of Ms. Cortez Masto.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“The entire U.S. Senate will hinge on this race,” Mr. Laxalt said this summer. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Obama seized on the episode in his remarks on Tuesday night. “We all might have a crazy uncle, the kind who goes off the rails, but if you’ve got a full Thanksgiving dinner table, and they’re all saying you don’t belong in the U.S. Senate?” he said. “When the people who know you the best think your opponent would do a better job, that says something about you.”In his own closing argument, Mr. Laxalt, who served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the Navy, has tried to link Ms. Cortez Masto to President Biden, who polls show is unpopular in the state.“Her record is, she supported Joe Biden every step of the way,” he said at a recent campaign stop, according to Roll Call. “That’s why she doesn’t want Joe Biden to come here, because then she’s going to have to actually stand next to him and stand next to her voting record.”Ms. Cortez Masto is a protégé of Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who built a formidable political machine in the state and died last year. “She’s a workhorse, not a show horse,” Mr. Miller said, adding that in a typical year, a moderate like her “should be able to win a race like this by five points, but national conditions are a serious headwind.”Abortion has certainly not been her only issue. She has depicted Mr. Laxalt as a child of privilege in a “Succession”-style video and has put out commercials accusing him of being captive to big oil companies, in part because as state attorney general, he worked to thwart an investigation into Exxon Mobil over its climate policies.But abortion has been the most constant weapon for her and her surrogates.“Catherine’s opponent calls Roe vs. Wade a joke, and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe a historic victory,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday. “That may not be how most women in Nevada saw it.” More

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      Full Transcript of President Biden’s Speech on Democracy

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      President Biden delivered remarks Wednesday on democracy, political violence and the midterm elections in a televised address from Washington’s Union Station. The following is a transcript of his remarks, as recorded by The New York Times.Good evening, everyone.Just a few days ago, a little before 2:30 a.m. in the morning, a man smashed the back windows and broke into the home of the speaker of the House of Representatives, the third-highest-ranking official in America. He carried in his backpack zip ties, duct tape, rope and a hammer.As he told the police, he had come looking for Nancy Pelosi to take her hostage, to interrogate her, to threaten to break her kneecaps. But she wasn’t there. Her husband, my friend Paul Pelosi, was home alone. The assailant tried to take Paul hostage. He woke him up, and he wanted to tie him up. The assailant ended up using a hammer to smash Paul’s skull. Thankfully, by the grace of God, Paul survived.All this happened after the assault, and it just — it’s hard to even say. It’s hard to even say. After the assailant entered the home asking: “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” Those are the very same words used by the mob when they stormed the United States Capitol on January the 6th, when they broke windows, kicked in the doors, brutally attacked law enforcement, roamed the corridors hunting for officials and erected gallows to hang the former vice president, Mike Pence.It was an enraged mob that had been whipped up into a frenzy by a president repeating over and over again the Big Lie, that the election of 2020 had been stolen. It’s a lie that fueled the dangerous rise in political violence and voter intimidation over the past two years.Even before January the 6th, we saw election officials and election workers in a number of states subject to menacing calls, physical threats, even threats to their very lives. In Georgia, for example, the Republican secretary of state and his family were subjected to death threats because he refused to break the law and give into the defeated president’s demand: Just find him 11,780 votes. Just find me 11,780 votes.Election workers, like Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, were harassed and threatened just because they had the courage to do their job and stand up for the truth, to stand up for our democracy. This institution, this intimidation, this violence against Democrats, Republicans and nonpartisan officials just doing their jobs, are the consequence of lies told for power and profit, lies of conspiracy and malice, lies repeated over and over to generate a cycle of anger, hate, vitriol and even violence.In this moment, we have to confront those lies with the truth. The very future of our nation depends on it. My fellow Americans, we’re facing a defining moment, an inflection point. We must with one overwhelming unified voice speak as a country and say there’s no place, no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America. Whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans. No place, period. No place ever.I speak today near Capitol Hill, near the U.S. Capitol, the citadel of our democracy. I know there’s a lot at stake in these midterm elections, from our economy, to the safety of our streets, to our personal freedoms, to the future of health care and Social Security, Medicare. It’s all important. But we’ll have our differences, we’ll have our difference of opinion. And that’s what it’s supposed to be.But there’s something else at stake, democracy itself. I’m not the only one who sees it. Recent polls have shown an overwhelming majority of Americans believe our democracy is at risk, that our democracy is under threat. They too see that democracy is on the ballot this year, and they’re deeply concerned about it.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.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Debunking Misinformation: Falsehoods and rumors are flourishing ahead of Election Day, especially in Pennsylvania. We debunked five of the most widespread voting-related claims.So today, I appeal to all Americans, regardless of party, to meet this moment of national and generational importance. We must vote knowing what’s at stake and not just the policy of the moment, but institutions that have held us together as we’ve sought a more perfect union are also at stake. We must vote knowing who we have been, what we’re at risk of becoming.Look, my fellow Americans, the old expression, “Freedom is not free,” it requires constant vigilance. From the very beginning, nothing has been guaranteed about democracy in America. Every generation has had to defend it, protect it, preserve it, choose it. For that’s what democracy is. It’s a choice, a decision of the people, by the people and for the people. The issue couldn’t be clearer, in my view.We the people must decide whether we will have fair and free elections, and every vote counts. We the people must decide whether we’re going to sustain a republic, where reality’s accepted, the law is obeyed and your vote is truly sacred.We the people must decide whether the rule of law will prevail or whether we will allow the dark forces and thirst for power put ahead of the principles that have long guided us.You know, American democracy is under attack because the defeated former president of the United States refused to accept the results of the 2020 election. If he refuses to accept the will of the people, if he refuses to accept the fact that he lost, he’s abused his power and put the loyalty to himself before loyalty to the Constitution. And he’s made a big lie an article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party, the minority of that party.The great irony about the 2020 election is that it’s the most attacked election in our history. And, yet, there’s no election in our history that we can be more certain of its results. Every legal challenge that could have been brought was brought. Every recount that could have been undertaken was undertaken. Every recount confirmed the results. Wherever fact or evidence had been demanded, the Big Lie has been proven to be just that, a big lie. Every single time.Yet now extreme MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections, but elections being held now and into the future. The extreme MAGA element of the Republican Party, which is a minority of that party, as I said earlier, but it’s its driving force. It’s trying to succeed where they failed in 2020, to suppress the right of voters and subvert the electoral system itself. That means denying your right to vote and deciding whether your vote even counts.Instead of waiting until an election is over, they’re starting well before it. They’re starting now. They’ve emboldened violence and intimidation of voters and election officials. It’s estimated that there are more than 300 election deniers on the ballot all across America this year. We can’t ignore the impact this is having on our country. It’s damaging, it’s corrosive and it’s destructive.And I want to be very clear, this is not about me, it’s about all of us. It’s about what makes America America. It’s about the durability of our democracy. For democracies are more than a form of government. They’re a way of being, a way of seeing the world, a way that defines who we are, what we believe, why we do what we do. Democracy is simply that fundamental.We must, in this moment, dig deep within ourselves and recognize that we can’t take democracy for granted any longer. With democracy on the ballot, we have to remember these first principles. Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of monarchs or the moneyed, but the rule of the people.Autocracy is the opposite of democracy. It means the rule of one, one person, one interest, one ideology, one party. To state the obvious, the lives of billions of people, from antiquity till now, have been shaped by the battle between these competing forces, between the aspirations of the many and the greed and power of the few, between the people’s right for self-determination, and the self-seeking autocrat, between the dreams of a democracy and the appetites of an autocracy.What we’re doing now is going to determine whether democracy will long endure and, in my view, is the biggest of questions, whether the American system that prizes the individual bends toward justice and depends on the rule of law, whether that system will prevail. This is the struggle we’re now in, a struggle for democracy, a struggle for decency and dignity, a struggle for prosperity and progress, a struggle for the very soul of America itself.Make no mistake, democracy is on the ballot for all of us. We must remember that democracy is a covenant. We need to start looking out for each other again, seeing ourselves as we the people, not as entrenched enemies. This is a choice we can make. Disunion and chaos are not inevitable. There’s been anger before in America. There’s been division before in America. But we’ve never given up on the American experiment. And we can’t do that now.The remarkable thing about American democracy is this. Just enough of us on just enough occasions have chosen not to dismantle democracy, but to preserve democracy. We must choose that path again. Because democracy is on the ballot, we have to remember that even in our darkest moments, there are fundamental values and beliefs that unite us as Americans, and they must unite us now.What are they? Well, I think, first, we believe the vote in America’s sacred, to be honored, not denied; respected, not dismissed; counted, not ignored. A vote is not a partisan tool, to be counted when it helps your candidates and tossed aside when it doesn’t. Second, we must, with an overwhelming voice, stand against political violence and voter intimidation, period. Stand up and speak against it.We don’t settle our differences, America, with a riot, a mob, or a bullet, or a hammer. We settle them peacefully at the ballot box. We have to be honest with ourselves, though. We have to face this problem. We can’t turn away from it. We can’t pretend it’s just going to solve itself.There’s an alarming rise in the number of our people in this country condoning political violence, or simply remaining silent, because silence is complicity. To the disturbing rise of voter intimidation, the pernicious tendency to excuse political violence or at least, at least trying to explain it away. We can’t allow this sentiment to grow. We must confront it head on now. It has to stop now.I believe the voices excusing or calling for violence and intimidation are a distinct minority in America. But they’re loud, and they are determined. We have to be more determined. All of us who reject political violence and voter intimidation, and I believe that’s the overwhelming majority of the American people, all of us must unite to make it absolutely clear that violence and intimidation have no place in America.And, third, we believe in democracy. That’s who we are as Americans. I know it isn’t easy. Democracy’s imperfect. It always has been. But you’re all called to defend it now, now. History and common sense tell us that liberty, opportunity and justice thrive in a democracy, not in an autocracy.At our best, America’s not a zero-sum society or for you to succeed, someone else has to fail. A promise in America is big enough, is big enough, for everyone to succeed. Every generation opening the door of opportunity just a little bit wider. Every generation including those who’ve been excluded before.We believe we should leave no one behind, because each one of us is a child of God, and every person, every person is sacred. If that’s true, then every person’s rights must be sacred as well. Individual dignity, individual worth, individual determination, that’s America, that’s democracy and that’s what we have to defend.Look, even as I speak here tonight, 27 million people have already cast their ballot in the midterm elections. Millions more will cast their ballots in the final days leading up to November the 9th — 8th, excuse me. And for the first time — this is the first time since the national election of 2020.Once again we’re seeing record turnout all over the country. And that’s good. We want Americans to vote. We want every American’s voice to be heard. Now we have to move the process forward. We know that more and more ballots are cast in early voting or by mail in America. We know that many states don’t start counting those ballots till after the polls close on Nov. 8.That means in some cases we won’t know the winner of the election for a few days — until a few days after the election. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner. It’s always been important for citizens in the democracy to be informed and engaged. Now it’s important for a citizen to be patient as well. That’s how this is supposed to work.This is also the first election since the events of Jan. 6 when the armed, angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. I wish I could say the assault on our democracy ended that day, but I cannot.As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America — for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state — who won’t commit, that will not commit to accepting the results of the election that they’re running in. This is a path to chaos in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful, and it’s un-American.As I’ve said before, you can’t love your country only when you win. This is no ordinary year. So I ask you to think long and hard about the moment we’re in. In a typical year, we’re often not faced with questions of whether the vote we cast will preserve democracy or put us at risk. But this year we are. This year I hope you’ll make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote and how you vote.I hope you’ll ask a simple question of each candidate you might vote for. Will that person accept the legitimate will of the American people and the people voting in his district or her district? Will that person accept the outcome of the election, win or lose? The answer to that question is vital. And, in my opinion, it should be decisive. And the answer to that question hangs in the future of the country we love so much, and the fate of the democracy that has made so much possible for us.Too many people have sacrificed too much for too many years for us to walk away from the American project and democracy. Because we’ve enjoyed our freedoms for so long, it’s easy to think they’ll always be with us no matter what. But that isn’t true today. In our bones, we know democracy is at risk. But we also know this. It’s within our power, each and every one of us, to preserve our democracy.And I believe we will. I think I know this country. I know we will. You have the power, it’s your choice, it’s your decision, the fate of the nation, the fate of the soul of America lies where it always does, with the people, in your hands, in your heart, in your ballot.My fellow Americans, we’ll meet this moment. We just need to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. There’s nothing, nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together.May God bless you all. May God protect our troops. May God bless those standing guard over our democracy. Thank you, and godspeed. More

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      Trump’s Guys Have Their Work Cut Out for Them

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      If Democrats do better than expected in next week’s elections, let’s hope they send a thank-you card to Donald Trump.Just because it’d drive him crazy. But his meddling is also a real factor: If you look at some of the most competitive races, the awfulness of the Republican nominee is thanks in good part to Trumpian support.“My record is unparalleled, my endorsements, it’s totally unparalleled,” he bragged earlier this year. It certainly was extensive — he reportedly made about 200 primary endorsements. But there weren’t a ton of heavy lifts. His choices were mainly incumbents and others who were virtually unopposed.“It’s like the Celtics winning a game against the Little Sisters of the Poor,” said a friend of mine.Still, when there was a serious race, Trump had a major-league talent for picking the least attractive possibility.Take Georgia. Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock should probably be in deep, deep trouble given the general political climate. But the polls show a near-even race. Warnock sure is lucky that Trump made such a heroic effort to promote Herschel Walker, who was terrible even before he plunged into his serial abortion scandals.And then there’s J.D. Vance, who Trump is backing in the Ohio Senate race. The former president showed up for a Vance rally last month in Youngstown, standing right next to the contender, who, he told the crowd, “is kissing my ass, he wants my support so much.”A comment that has been quoted a time or 20 by Vance’s opponent, Tim Ryan.To be fair — if you really feel like being fair — Trump’s favorites generally did win. ( “Nobody’s ever had a record like this. I’m almost unblemished.”)Of course, it’s natural that voters in Republican primaries would care about the opinion of the last Republican president. Trump’s endorsement certainly made a difference in Arizona — where the deeply unappealing Blake Masters won the Senate nomination with his help.And his backing was also very important in Pennsylvania, where Republicans are now stuck in the governor’s race with Doug Mastriano, a state senator who’s argued that women who have abortions relatively early in a pregnancy should be charged with murder.The general elections are a different kind of competition, where the Trump name can be a little less, um, attractive. Wisconsin observers couldn’t help noticing that once Tim Michels had won the Republican nomination for governor, his campaign website scrubbed all references to “Endorsed by President Trump,” only to put them back up an hour later. Such is the life of the Trump acolyte.In New York, the Democratic candidate for governor, Kathy Hochul, cannot remind voters enough that her opponent, Lee Zeldin, has Trump’s backing. Zeldin, who was happy to have Trump appear at a September fund-raiser, now likes to focus on crime, and you will probably not hear the 45th president’s name in his ads unless Trump gets mugged on Park Avenue.Even when he’s not promoting anybody, Trump is … keeping in touch. It’s hard to avoid his emails, the vast, vast majority of which are asking for money. My absolute favorite, which arrived last month, announced he “just couldn’t wait any longer to tell you this EXCITING NEWS.”Which was — wait for it:“I HAVE BEEN NAMED THE #1 PRESIDENTIAL GOLFER IN HISTORY!”The namer was a conservative website called the DC Enquirer. We will not mention the very different opinion of experts like the sportswriter Rick Reilly, who wrote about Trump’s game in his book “Commander in Cheat.”But our former president was sharing this exciting news to remind us that “we still have a few boxes left of our LIMITED EDITION Trump Golf Balls.” A collector’s item!You can get any of this stuff by clicking a box and making a contribution — pick any amount you want, although that vibrant blue $250 box is doing a special happy dance. All the money goes to Trump’s own personal election fund-raising operation, which cynics might just refer to as Donald’s Piggy Bank. From which he’s forked out more than $13 million for TV ads over the last month to help out his fellow Republicans.That may sound nice, but put in another context, it amounts to about 15 percent of what he had on hand. And about one-fifth of the $71 million Republicans are getting from the Senate Leadership Fund, Mitch McConnell’s super PAC. McConnell, by Trump’s calculation, is a “Broken Old Crow.” So, of course, nothing Mitch does counts.I guarantee the emails will keep on coming. What else can Trump do? He’s still banned from Twitter and his attempt at a substitute, Truth Social, probably has fewer followers than some minor celebrities. Although definitely more than a semi-popular college sophomore.Well, hey, D.J.T. does need some diversion. His business organization is wrestling with multitudinous court cases in New York right now — tax fraud is a central topic.He’s been on the road a lot, making speeches, raising money and being protected by Secret Service agents who the Trump Organization has charged up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms. Yeah, he’s so grateful for security over the past few years he’s billed us more than $1.4 million.Let’s see what happens next. If his pitiful candidates don’t survive, maybe some Republicans will ask for their money back.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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      Can Lee Zeldin Reinvent His Way to the NY Governor’s Mansion?

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      SHIRLEY, N.Y. — As a young U.S. Army lawyer of unmistakable ambition, Lee Zeldin could almost see his future unfurling before him. It was his first stint in Iraq, and he was already imagining the kind of distinguished career in uniform that would have laid the groundwork for one in politics.Then a Red Cross message arrived on the base where Mr. Zeldin was embedded as a captain with the 82nd Airborne Division. His girlfriend had gone into dangerously premature labor with twin girls. Doctors were not optimistic about the babies’ survival. His commanding officer sent him home to mourn.“This I vividly remember the emotion of,” Mr. Zeldin, now a conservative congressman, recalled in a recent interview. “My priorities became all about my daughters.”The girls survived after months in the hospital. But rather than returning to Iraq, Mr. Zeldin took a desk job back at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, got married and then was discharged. At just 27, he found that the life he had imagined had veered off course.It was not the first time, nor the last. As a high school senior here on the South Shore of Long Island, Mr. Zeldin sought a prestigious appointment to West Point, only to fall short. After leaving the Army in 2007, he almost immediately entered a race for Congress, hoping to jump-start his political career. He lost in a blowout.But in every case, Mr. Zeldin has shown aptitude for finding a quick path to reinvention that has helped fuel his political ascent. Now, at age 42, it has put him closer than any Republican since George E. Pataki two decades ago to one of the nation’s most influential political posts, the governorship of New York.A few hundred Zeldin supporters attended a rally on Monday in Westchester County, traditionally an area controlled by Democrats. Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesThough Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic incumbent, remains the front-runner, Mr. Zeldin’s late surge in the polls has shocked even political strategists and sent Democrats scrambling to prop up their candidate. With Ms. Hochul’s huge war chest and a vast Democratic registration advantage, few expected Mr. Zeldin to come close to winning, and perhaps with good reason: He does not easily fit the profile of a New York power player.In a state shaped by wealthy business interests and often governed by larger-than-life personalities and family dynasties, Mr. Zeldin is an outlier. He grew up in law enforcement households of modest means. He can be introverted and awkward with voters. And in a state dominated by the political left, he is probably the most conservative serious contender for the governorship in modern memory — even voting to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.Yet a careful review of his public and private life, including two dozen interviews with family, friends, colleagues and critics, shows that Mr. Zeldin’s emergence as a political force stems from decades of meticulous planning, comfort with taking risks, well-timed alliances with more powerful Republicans and, above all, a knack honed from a young age for what allies call adaptation but his critics view as a more cynical political shape-shifting.Those qualities have been on full display in this fall’s campaign, as Mr. Zeldin moved swiftly to tap into two powerful currents of discontent that Democrats appear to have misjudged and that threaten to scramble the state’s usual political order: painful inflation eroding New Yorkers’ sense of financial well-being and fears about rising crime.“He’s grabbed the right issues and hasn’t let go,” said Rob Astorino, who lost to Mr. Zeldin in this year’s Republican primary.Mr. Zeldin, center, has heavily courted the Hasidic vote during his campaign stops in New York City, including a recent visit to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesBut his instincts have also been evident as he tries to execute another on-the-fly transformation, playing down hard-line positions that served him well while he climbed the Republican ranks in Albany and Washington but are now politically inconvenient, while offering scant details on some of his latest policy proposals.Who Is Lee Zeldin Up Against?Card 1 of 5Gov. Kathy Hochul’s rise to power. More

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      Republicans Float Changes to Social Security and Medicare

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      Democrats have seized on Republican proposals to limit retirement benefits to galvanize voters ahead of the midterm elections.WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs.Prominent Republicans are billing the moves as necessary to rein in government spending, which grew under both Republican and Democratic presidents in recent decades and then spiked as the Trump and Biden administrations unleashed trillions of dollars in economic relief during the pandemic.The Republican leaders who would decide what legislation the House and the Senate would consider if their party won control of Congress have not said specifically what, if anything, they would do to the programs.Yet several influential Republicans have signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden. Their ideas include raising the age for collecting Social Security benefits to 70 from 67 and requiring many older Americans to pay higher premiums for their health coverage. The ideas are being floated as a way to narrow government spending on programs that are set to consume a growing share of the federal budget in the decades ahead.The fact that Republicans are openly talking about cutting the programs has galvanized Democrats in the final weeks of the midterm campaign. Mr. Biden has made securing Social Security and Medicare a late addition to his closing economic messaging, and Democratic candidates have barraged voters with a flurry of advertisements claiming Republicans would dismantle the programs and deny older adults benefits they have counted on for retirement.Mr. Biden has repeatedly said he will not agree to cuts to Social Security, which provides retirement and disability pay to 66 million Americans, or Medicare, which provides health insurance to about 64 million people.“You’ve been paying into Social Security your whole life. You earned it. Now these guys want to take it away,” Mr. Biden said during a visit to Hallandale Beach, Fla., on Tuesday. “Who in the hell do they think they are? Excuse my language.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.Former President Barack Obama, who campaigned last week in Wisconsin for the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate, Mandela Barnes, excoriated Senator Ron Johnson, the incumbent Republican, over his plans for the legacy programs. Mr. Obama faulted Mr. Johnson for supporting tax breaks for the wealthy that were included in Republicans’ 2017 tax cut legislation, along with spending proposals that Mr. Obama said jeopardized Social Security’s future.American retirees “had long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security,” Mr. Obama said. “And if Ron Johnson does not understand that — if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who have worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect — he’s not the person who’s thinking about you and knows you and sees you, and he should not be your senator from Wisconsin.”Mr. Johnson has proposed subjecting Social Security and Medicare to annual congressional spending bills instead of operating essentially on autopilot as they do now. That would leave the programs susceptible to Washington’s frequent and fraught debates over funding the government, making it more difficult for retirees to count on a steady stream of benefits.Still, Mr. Johnson does not hold a leadership position, and it is unclear whether his ideas — or any of the more aggressive proposals presented by those in his party — would find purchase with Republican leaders. This week, he said that Mr. Obama had “lied” about his proposal and that he had never called for Social Security cuts.Mr. Biden and other Democrats have also criticized a plan from Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, who has proposed subjecting nearly all federal spending programs to a renewal vote every year. Like Mr. Johnson’s plan, that would make Medicare and Social Security more vulnerable to budget cuts.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said this year that a bill to sunset those programs every five years “will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda.”Still, the fact that key Republicans are openly broaching spending cuts to Social Security and Medicare — or declining to rule them out — is a break from former President Donald J. Trump, who campaigned on a promise to leave the programs intact.With President Biden in the White House, Republicans have little chance of securing changes to Medicare or Social Security.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesSeveral conservative Republicans vying to lead key economic committees in the House have suggested publicly that they would back efforts to change eligibility for the safety net programs. The conservative Republican Study Committee in the House, which is poised to assume a position of influence if the party claims the majority, has issued a detailed plan that would raise the retirement age for both programs and reduce Social Security benefits for some higher-earning retirees. The plan would increase premiums for many older adults and create a new marketplace where a government Medicare plan competes with a private alternative, in what many Democrats call partial privatization of the program.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who is in line to be House speaker if his party wins control, told Punchbowl News last month he would not “predetermine” whether Social Security and Medicare cuts would be part of debt-limit negotiations. Those comments suggested that, unlike in past negotiations, Republicans could demand future cuts to the programs in order to raise America’s borrowing limit and avoid a default on government debt. Mr. McCarthy later told CNBC that he had not brought up the programs and was committed to “strengthening” them, though he did not provide details.Asked whether Mr. McConnell would support any changes to the programs should Republicans capture the majority, aides pointed only to his specific comments about Mr. Scott’s plan.With Mr. Biden in the White House, Republicans have little chance of securing changes to either program.Democratic candidates and outside groups supporting them have spent $100 million nationwide this election cycle on ads mentioning Social Security or Medicare, according to data from AdImpact. Nearly half of that spending has come since the start of October.“Far-right extremists are gutting retirement benefits,” a narrator says in an advertisement targeting Cassy Garcia, a Republican seeking to unseat Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, in a fiercely contested Texas district. “They’ll slash Medicare and Social Security — benefits we paid for with every paycheck.”Republicans have campaigned far less on the programs, spending about $12 million this cycle on ads mentioning them. Republican candidates have largely embraced repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, which Mr. Biden signed in August and which reduces prescription drug costs for seniors on Medicare. Some candidates have begun pushing back against Democratic attacks about Social Security and Medicare.In a recent ad, Don Bolduc, a Republican challenging Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, says he will not “cut Social Security and Medicare for older Americans,” though it remains unclear if he would reduce benefits for future retirees. Mr. Bolduc spoke in favor of privatizing Medicare in August, Politico reported this fall.Democrats and Republicans largely agree Congress will need to ensure the solvency of the programs in the decade to come. Spending for the programs is projected to balloon in the coming decade as more baby boomers retire. The trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds estimate that a key Medicare trust fund will run out of money in 2028 and the main Social Security Trust Fund will be insolvent in 2034, potentially forcing cuts in benefits if Congress does not act to avoid them.In the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden proposed raising payroll taxes on high earners to help fund Social Security, while also making the program’s benefits more generous for many workers. He put that plan on the back burner in his first two years in office, as he pushed a sweeping economic agenda that included new spending on infrastructure, low-emission energy, health care and advanced manufacturing. Republicans largely oppose Mr. Biden’s tax increases.Fiscal hawks said this week that Mr. Biden’s attempts to wield Social Security and Medicare against Republicans in the midterms would only set back efforts to shore up the programs.“This is clearly election-time pot stirring,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in Washington. “Changes desperately need to be made to the programs to ensure solvency — politicians can disagree about what changes to make, but not whether they need to be made. It’s highly disappointing to hear the president, who knows better, resort to fearmongering rather than using his platform to help enact needed changes.”Emily Cochrane More

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      Biden, in Midterm Campaign Pitch, Focuses on Social Security and Medicare

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      MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — President Biden pressed his argument on Tuesday that a Republican victory in next week’s midterm congressional elections would endanger Social Security and Medicare, bringing his case to the retirement haven of Florida, where the politics of the two programs resonate historically.During a whirlwind one-day swing through vote-rich South Florida, Mr. Biden took credit for legislation he pushed through Congress to curb the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients and asserted that Republicans plan to undermine the foundations of the two major government programs benefiting older Americans.“They’re coming after your Social Security and Medicare, and they’re saying it out loud,” Mr. Biden told a crowd at his first full-fledged campaign rally since Labor Day. By contrast, he boasted that Social Security just approved an 8.7 percent increase in benefits, the largest in four decades. “The checks are going to go up and the Medicare fees are going to go down at the same time. And I promise you: I’ll protect Social Security. I’ll protect Medicare. I’ll protect you.”The president has turned increasingly to stark warnings about Social Security and Medicare in the closing days of the campaign, banking on a traditional Democratic issue to galvanize older voters, who tend to turn out more reliably during midterm elections than other generations. Republicans complain that such “Mediscare” tactics unfairly distort their position and reflect desperation by Democrats on the defensive over inflation, which is near a 40-year high.As he presented Republicans as the party of radicalism during his stops on Tuesday, Mr. Biden chastised some of its prominent figures for not taking an attack early Friday on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband seriously and spreading conspiracy theories about it.More on Social Security and RetirementEarning Income After Retiring: Collecting Social Security while working can get complicated. Here are some key things to remember.An Uptick in Elder Poverty: Older Americans didn’t fare as well through the pandemic. But longer-term trends aren’t moving in their favor, either.Medicare Costs: Low-income Americans on Medicare can get assistance paying their premiums and other expenses. This is how to apply.Claiming Social Security: Looking to make the most of this benefit? These online tools can help you figure out your income needs and when to file.“Look at the response of Republicans, making jokes about it,” Mr. Biden said at an earlier fund-raising reception for former Gov. Charlie Crist, who is seeking to reclaim his old office. “The guy purchases a hammer to kneecap” the woman who stands second in line to the presidency, he said of the assailant, and some Republicans brushed it off. “These guys are extremely extreme,” he said.The president’s trip to Florida opened a final week of campaigning before next Tuesday’s vote, but it did not go without its bumps. Mr. Biden, who at 79 is the oldest president in American history, fumbled at one point during his first talk of the day, confusing the American war in Iraq with the Russian war in Ukraine. While trying to correct himself, he then misstated how his son Beau, who served in the Delaware Army National Guard in Iraq, died in 2015.“Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia is doing,” Mr. Biden told a crowd at O.B. Johnson Park in Hallandale Beach. “Excuse me, the war in Ukraine,” he said. To explain, he told the audience, “I think of Iraq because that’s where my son died.” Then he seemed to catch himself again and sought to amend his words one more time. “Because, he died,” he said, apparently referring to his belief that Beau’s brain cancer stemmed from his service in Iraq and exposure to toxic burn pits.In addition to Florida, Mr. Biden’s travels this week are expected to take him to New Mexico, California, Pennsylvania and Maryland. With anemic approval ratings, the president is avoiding some of the most competitive states, like Arizona, Georgia and Ohio, where Democrats are not eager to have him at their side. But he will join former President Barack Obama on Saturday in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Biden was born, to bolster John Fetterman’s campaign for Senate, one of the hottest and tightest races in the country.Florida would seem to be fertile territory for Mr. Biden, given that the Inflation Reduction Act, which he signed into law after it passed on party-line votes this summer, caps out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses for Medicare recipients, limits the cost of insulin and empowers the government to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical companies, longtime goals of many older Americans. “We beat Big Pharma,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday.But when national Democrats talk about states where they believe they have good prospects next week, Florida does not make the list. Even though statewide races have been close in recent cycles, Democrats have felt burned by narrow losses and have been reluctant to invest the sizable amounts of money required in a state with so many media markets only to be disappointed again.In addition to Mr. Crist, who is seeking to oust the incumbent Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, Mr. Biden appeared with Representative Val B. Demings, the Democratic challenger to Senator Marco Rubio. Mr. DeSantis leads by roughly nine percentage points and Mr. Rubio by about seven percentage points, according to an aggregation of polls by the political data website FiveThirtyEight.Democrats chose a modest arena at Florida Memorial University, a historically Black college, for the rally, assembling a far smaller crowd than typically mustered by former President Donald J. Trump, a Florida resident.Addressing a largely Black audience, Mr. Biden boasted of his nomination of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and other diverse appointees. “Guess what? I promised you I would have a Black woman on the Supreme Court,” he said. “She’s on the Supreme Court. And she’s smarter than the rest of them.”He went after some Republicans by name. He called Mr. DeSantis “Donald Trump incarnate.” He accused Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the would-be new speaker, of being “reckless and irresponsible.” And he assailed Republicans like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the onetime QAnon follower who has worked to push the party to the right, for criticizing his effort to forgive some student loan debt while having their own Covid-19 loan debt forgiven.The president appeared most irritated by attacks on him over inflation. In Hallandale Beach, he pointed to his efforts to limit health care costs for seniors. “They talk about inflation all the time,” he said. “What in God’s name?” He added: “If you have to take a prescription and it cost you an arm and a leg and I reduce that, you don’t have to pay as much. That reduces your cost of living. It reduces inflation.”To bolster his contention that Republicans are aiming to undercut Social Security and Medicare, Mr. Biden once again cited a legislative agenda put forth by Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, that has been disavowed by other Republicans, most notably Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party’s leader in the upper chamber. Mr. Scott’s legislative agenda called for “sunsetting” all federal legislation every five years, meaning programs like Social Security and Medicare would expire unless reauthorized by Congress.Before the president’s trip to Florida, Mr. Scott said on Sunday that his position had been twisted and that “I don’t know one Republican” who favors cutting Social Security payments or cutting Medicare benefits.“I believe we’ve got to preserve them and make sure that we keep them,” Mr. Scott told Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on CNN. “What I want to do is make sure we live within our means and make sure we preserve those programs. People paid into them. They believe in them. I believe in them. I’m going to fight like hell to make sure we preserve Medicare and Social Security.” More

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      Why Election Experts Are So Confused About the 2022 Turnout Mystery

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      It’s a unique midterm year, with a Republican-friendly environment, an abortion ruling energizing Democrats, and increased partisanship in how people cast ballots.WILLOW GROVE, Pa. — It’s the biggest mystery of the midterms: Which groups of voters will turn out in the largest numbers?It’s also, obviously, the most important question of all. Most, if not all, of the big Senate races are within what political pros call the “margin of field” — meaning that a superior turnout operation can mean the difference between winning and losing.“It’s the only thing that matters right now,” said Molly Parzen, the executive director of Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania, an environmental group that is part of a coalition of liberal organizations running get-out-the-vote operations in the state.On a sunny day here in mostly Democratic suburban Philadelphia, I tagged along as Parzen’s group plowed through its file of middle-class voters in the town where Jill Biden spent some of her early years. It’s painstaking work, knocking on doors and gently nudging people to vote for Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s heated races for governor and Senate.Parzen said the races seemed even tighter to her than the public polls indicated. And the handful of voters in this blue-collar area who indicated that Fetterman wouldn’t win their vote — one older white man, echoing millions of dollars’ worth of negative ads from Republicans, said he wanted to “strangle him with his bare hands” over his perceived views on crime — suggested that the Senate race was worth watching closely.Nationally, we already have some data on the early votes cast so far — nearly 26 million as of Tuesday afternoon — but interpreting what the numbers mean is always something of an art. And this year, it’s more confusing than ever.For instance: Does the relatively low turnout of younger voters so far mean they aren’t enthusiastic about voting? Or does it mean they are reverting to their usual, prepandemic habit of voting on Election Day? Is there some more prosaic explanation, such as that colleges only recently started rolling out drop boxes on campus?Will there indeed be a surge of newly registered voters angered by the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, as some Democrats argue? Have pollsters corrected for the errors they made in 2020, when many of them overestimated Democrats’ eventual support? Or have they overcorrected?Almost universally, strategists confess befuddlement and uncertainty about an election that has shaped up somewhat differently than most, with the issue of abortion rights energizing Democrats and putting Republicans into a defensive crouch in many states.Republicans tend to be more confident that widespread public frustration over inflation will propel them to victory, regardless of the problems that have dogged them, like weak fund-raising and Senate candidates their own leaders have described as low in “quality.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.Democrats in particular are puzzling over the decision Republicans made during the pandemic to demonize mail-in and early voting, after years of dominating the practice in states like Arizona and Florida. In some states, Republican Party officials have quietly sent out mailers or digital ads urging their supporters to vote early, but more prominent Republican politicians dare not amplify those appeals — lest they be on the receiving end of a rocket from Donald Trump.It has often fallen to conservative outside groups, like Turning Point Action, to rally voters. The group, which is run by the controversial pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk, is holding a get-out-the-vote event on Saturday in Phoenix.“When you’ve convinced your base that it’s a fraudulent method of voting, you have very little room to change their minds this late in the game,” said Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm. “There are so many things that can go wrong on Election Day.”Fast-changing campaign innovationsGet-out-the-vote operations became objects of media fascination after Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, which capitalized on new ways of organizing volunteers, sophisticated social-science techniques and innovative social media strategy to run circles around John McCain’s more traditional operation. That led many Democrats to presume that they had an edge over Republicans in the art and science of campaigns — but Trump’s upset defeat in 2016 of Hillary Clinton, whose data and field operations were widely panned afterward by fellow Democrats, upended the conventional wisdom on that score. Fieldwork, never glamorous, has not had the same cachet since.“My assumption on everything is that Republicans are at least as good as Democrats in everything they’re doing,” said David Nickerson, a political scientist who worked on Obama’s campaign and studies turnout.“People adjust to innovations really quickly,” he added, “and if you do find one, it’s not going to last.”In one example that is famous among turnout specialists, George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign was stunned by Al Gore’s closing surge. Four years later, Karl Rove, Bush’s political guru, responded with a “72-hour plan” in the final days of the 2004 campaign that is widely credited for helping defeat John Kerry.But much has changed since the early 2000s, and lessons learned back then might not apply today. As money has flooded into political campaigns, Americans have become inundated with television ads, campaign fliers, social media posts and digital ads.People also follow politics much more closely than they did back then, even if there’s more noise competing for their attention.“It’s like sports now, dude,” said Ian Danley, a Democratic organizer in Arizona.Who’s got the best ground game?Campaigns love to boast about their “ground games,” whether it’s to feed the notebooks of information-hungry reporters or to motivate their own troops.In Arizona’s races this year, for instance, both parties claim to have the superior field operation. Senator Mark Kelly is relying on Mission for Arizona, the Democrats’ statewide coordinated campaign apparatus. That effort began in June 2021, the earliest Democrats have done so in Arizona. Democrats in Arizona also have an independent organizing effort run by a coalition of unions and progressive groups, which has led to occasional tensions.Infighting on the Republican side has made a parallel effort harder. The Republican Governors Association, for instance, has funneled its support for Kari Lake, the party’s nominee for governor, through the Yuma County Republican Party, rather than the state party. And while Kelly’s campaign is stocked with veterans of his 2020 victory, his opponent, Blake Masters, has run a bare-bones operation that has relied heavily on the support of an allied super PAC.“We are running an incredibly lean field operation, and it’s all internal to the campaign,” said Amalia Halikias, the campaign manager for Masters. “We are knocking on doors that often go overlooked: Democrat doors, low-propensity voters and people who have never voted before.”Democrats return to the doorsVeteran operatives say that get-out-the-vote practices like knocking on doors are even more important in midterm elections than they are in presidential campaigns.The reason? Turnout in midterms is usually around 20 percentage points lower than in presidential years, meaning that the tricks and tools campaigns use to persuade, cajole and nudge people to turn in their ballots or head to the polls become more crucial.Door-knocking, for instance, is about three to four times more effective in a midterm election than it is in a presidential election, Nickerson said, because during a presidential year, more voters are paying attention and are already planning to vote.A Democratic Party office in Eau Claire, Wis., after a canvassing event last month.Liam James Doyle for The New York TimesIn 2020, Democrats and their allies mostly stayed away from door-knocking because of the pandemic. They’re back out in force now, though some turnout-focused groups in Georgia have complained that donor fatigue has left them with fewer resources than in 2020.But assuming Democrats can roughly reach parity with Republicans this year, it could help neutralize what was a G.O.P. advantage during Trump’s re-election bid. Face-to face conversations are widely understood to be the most effective way to reach voters.According to Daron Shaw, a former George W. Bush campaign strategist who now studies turnout at the University of Texas, a good rule of thumb is that for campaigns, every 100 face-to-face contacts made are likely to yield 9 votes. In other words, a campaign that contacts 1,000,000 potential voters will nudge 90,000 of them to cast ballots for the candidate in question.Both parties expect the G.O.P. to rely heavily on a surge of Election Day turnout, while Democratic campaigns are furiously banking as many early votes as they can. That approach gives them a tactical advantage, Democrats say: It lets them work through their voter contact files and adjust their targeting on the fly, whereas Republicans in many states will have to trust that their models are accurate.All of these tactical advantages might make a difference only on the margins of a tight Senate or House race, though.Turnout is also driven by big-picture issues and trends, and those are not working in Democrats’ favor. In 2018, it was Democrats angered by Trump’s presidency who swamped Republicans and took back dozens of House seats. This year, Nickerson said, “for Republicans, it’s how mad are you about Biden and the economy?”What to readTop Democrats are openly second-guessing their party’s campaign pitch and tactics, worrying about a failure to coalesce around one effective message for the midterms, Lisa Lerer, Katie Glueck and Reid Epstein report.Representative Liz Cheney and other Republican opponents of Donald Trump are stepping up their efforts to thwart a comeback of his political movement, Jonathan Weisman writes.Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for Senate in Nevada, could easily be mistaken as a legacy candidate, with a grandfather who was once a governor and senator in the state. But he has shed much of his political inheritance, positioning himself as a child of the Trump era, Matthew Rosenberg writes.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Libertarian Candidate Drops Out of Arizona Senate Race and Endorses Masters

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      The Libertarian candidate running for Senate in Arizona — who had threatened to play spoiler in the closely watched race — is dropping out and endorsing Blake Masters, the Republican nominee.The decision, announced on Tuesday, gives Mr. Masters a lift heading into the final week as he seeks to unseat Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, who has generally held a narrow lead in the polls.“This is another major boost of momentum as we consolidate our support,” Mr. Masters said in a statement to The New York Times.Marc Victor, the Libertarian candidate, and Mr. Masters spoke on Monday for a 20-minute recorded conversation that Mr. Victor is expected to publish, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Mr. Victor had made such a conversation a precondition to quitting, technically offering such an opportunity both to Mr. Masters and to Mr. Kelly.“I found Blake to be generally supportive of the Live and Let Live Global Peace Movement,” Mr. Victor said in a statement. “After that discussion, I believe it is in the best interests of freedom and peace to withdraw my candidacy and enthusiastically support Blake Masters for United States Senate.”Mr. Victor’s underfunded campaign had a chance to make more of an impact than some other third-party candidates this year, in part because he was onstage for the race’s lone debate. (He made waves in the appearance by suggesting the “age of consent” is something “that reasonable minds disagree on” and “should be up for a vote.”)Mr. Masters appears to have gone to some lengths to court libertarian-minded voters and assuage any concerns from Mr. Victor. Last Thursday, he posted a picture from 2010 of himself with Ron Paul, the former congressman and libertarian folk hero, saying he was “honored” to have Mr. Paul’s endorsement. Mr. Masters also made recent appearances on Mr. Paul’s podcast and another libertarian podcast.Mr. Victor had previously been funded at least in part by Democrats, presumably hoping to redirect some votes away from the Republican nominee.Donations included $5,000 from the Save Democracy PAC, which says on its website that it is pursuing “a nationwide effort to confront and defeat Republican extremism” and another $5,000 from Defeat Republicans PAC. In May, Ron Conway, the California-based Democratic investor, gave Mr. Victor part of more than $45,000 in donations from various people who share the family name in California; those funds account for about one-third of everything Mr. Victor raised in total.A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday showed Mr. Kelly ahead, 51 percent to 45 percent, with Mr. Victor garnering 1 percent support. Mr. Victor has been shown as earning a larger share of the vote in other polls, including one in mid-October from the progressive group Data for Progress that had Mr. Victor pulling in 3 percent with Mr. Kelly and Mr. Masters tied.Voting has already begun in Arizona, with roughly 895,000 votes already cast, according to a tally made public by a Democratic group — equivalent to more than a third of the nearly 2.4 million votes cast in the last midterm election, in 2018. More