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      A Climate Change Skeptic’s Change of Heart

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      More from our inbox:How to Help the Homeless in Los AngelesDemocratic Wishes That Came True, Alas!Divorce and Politics Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Yes, Greenland’s Ice Is Melting, But … ,” by Bret Stephens (column, Oct. 30):Mr. Stephens’s piece is right on point — had it been written 20 years ago. Regrettably the environment did not wait for him or others “to be brought around” about “the need for action.” Rather, with scientific consensus building around an expected rise of two to three degrees Celsius by 2100, the partial solutions Mr. Stephens champions will leave us facing extreme climate impacts.Better that we adopt a more radical approach in the hope that we can stem the coming tide. Indeed, as Mr. Stephens suggests, we should focus on fixing the environment for our great-grandchildren, and need to consider family planning policies that reduce the size of future generations to help achieve a better balance between humanity and nature.Scott MortmanManalapan, N.J.The writer is an environmental lawyer and an adviser to the Fair Start Movement, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing child welfare and family planning.To the Editor:Bret Stephens wisely recommends that a lack of self-righteousness and an open mind would do a lot to advance public thinking about climate change, using his own evolution on the subject as Exhibit A. However, his fears about government playing a big role in addressing rising temperatures ignores some important recent history.Mr. Stephens points out that nuclear power will have to play a role in a less carbon-intensive future but fails to mention that its very existence was brought about by a massive program of government-funded and -directed research and development. He also points out that cheap natural gas produced by fracking has helped reduce our carbon footprint, and ignores the fact that both public and private funding played an important role in funding the research and development for that technology.And, perhaps most significant, he doesn’t mention the pivotal role played by German and Chinese government subsidies in driving down the price of solar panels by bringing their production up to scale.Fighting climate change is a very complex matter and will require carefully intertwining public and private initiatives. To see the marketplace as the sole possible agent of change fails to acknowledge how progress has occurred.Joshua MarkelPhiladelphiaTo the Editor:Letting market forces drive the consumption of goods and services might work for much of our economy, but it clearly hasn’t worked when it comes to protecting the health and well-being of our planet and its inhabitants from global warming. It takes too long.In 1888, the first U.S. wind turbine produced electricity. In 1900, more than a third of vehicles on our roads were electric. In 1954, Bell Labs developed solar energy. American clean energy science and innovation were there all along, but the oil and gas lobby was a powerful headwind to its usage.Our government needs to push against the destructive effects of global warming. We are running out of time.Fred EganYork Harbor, MaineTo the Editor:For the better part of 10 years, I have tried to convince my father of the seriousness of climate change and, for the most part, those conversations have not been fruitful. But after sending Bret Stephens’s article to him, we had a very thoughtful discussion about the importance of addressing it.I appreciate Mr. Stephens’s vulnerability and willingness to admit that his views have changed as he has learned more. In doing so, he gives conservatives an avenue not just to engage with the issue, but potentially to lead.I would like to hear more from Mr. Stephens about how climate activists could be more persuasive to climate skeptics. As he pointed out, climate change should not be just a left-of-center concern. We must be able to persuade everyone that we need to address global warming.Brendan HastingsChicagoHow to Help the Homeless in Los AngelesA homeless encampment adjacent to a parking lot in Venice, Calif., that has been designated for an affordable housing development.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve Homelessness Is ‘Absolutely Insane,’” by Ezra Klein (column, nytimes.com, Oct. 23):Mr. Klein is absolutely right: It is insane to try to solve Los Angeles’s housing crisis without a radically innovative approach. Fortunately, Los Angeles voters will be able to vote for one on the same ballot as their new mayor. Measure ULA would raise more than $900 million annually to prevent homelessness and create housing. It replaces politics as usual with the urgency and innovation we need.Written by housing providers and homelessness experts, Measure ULA dedicates 70 percent of revenues to affordable housing, the majority to support fast-moving, less expensive and other kinds of affordable housing that Mr. Klein wants to see.Sophisticated construction methods can bring down housing costs, as can the purchase of existing apartments and hotels for long-term housing. The measure also encourages community land trusts, single-family homes, residential hotels, accessory dwelling units and cooperative living models.Prevention is by far the cheapest solution to homelessness, and Measure ULA also funds rental assistance and legal services for tenants facing eviction.L.A.’s housing and homelessness crises are persistent and challenging, but they are not insoluble. Measure ULA attacks the problems at the root, and that is why it is the best hope in a generation for making meaningful progress toward housing every Angeleno with dignity.Stephanie Klasky-GamerNorth Hollywood, Calif.The writer is the president and C.E.O. of LA Family Housing, an affordable housing developer and homeless services provider.Democratic Wishes That Came True, Alas! Nicole Craine for The New York TimesTo the Editor:I remember that back during the primary season the Democrats were not only wishing that extreme Republican candidates would win, but in some cases they were actually helping them get the nomination because “they would be so easy to defeat!” At the time that practice seemed ill advised and downright insane.And sure enough, now there are extreme, election-denying Republican candidates poised to win office around the country. What the Democrats failed to recognize is that during the general election campaign, fringe candidates gain legitimacy.In the primary they’re the loony among several candidates who usually split the vote. Then the extremist voters coalesce around the extreme candidate and, presto chango, they’re the legitimate Republican nominee. Then established Republicans, for fear of any Democrat ever winning anything, endorse the extremist.The Democrats should have been more mindful of that old saw “Be careful what you wish for”!Ozzie SattlerPhoenixDivorce and PoliticsTo the Editor:As a man who has experienced the slow deterioration that leads to a divorce, I have wondered why I didn’t do more to stop the process. I think the answer is that my pride allowed many small irritations, over many years, to fester and grow past a breaking point. Once that happens, reason leaves, anger replaces it and the end point becomes almost inevitable.The political situation we are now in, as a country, feels very much like the downward spiral that ends in a divorce. Things that, at one time, could and needed to be discussed and debated to reach compromise have become weapons to attack the other side. Anger and hate grow, and it seems that the breaking point is in sight.But, unlike a divorce, we can’t just split the assets and go our separate ways, keeping the tears and pain within the family and friends. And whatever the outcome, there will be no do-overs when we look back. So I pray that we come to our senses and realize the incredible risks we are taking by letting pride and anger replace patriotism and respect for all.Mike WroblewskiAtlanta More

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      The Republican Party Made Trump the Focus of the Midterms

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      If Republicans have many things going for them in next week’s elections — an economy that’s like a millstone around Democrats’ necks, fear in the electorate about crime and a chaotic immigration system, President Biden’s low approval ratings — they are also taking what appear to be some enormous risks: having candidates on the ballot who many observers see as too inexperienced, extreme or scandal-burdened to win in November.But they forget that Republicans already took an enormous risk, in 2016, by nominating Donald Trump for president. And not only did they avoid ballot-box suicide to win the election, but it was the beginning of a renaissance for the Republican Party. Mr. Trump’s approach, gleeful culture war combativeness atop core conservative principles, delivered both short-term policy wins and long-sought victories for his party’s base, like tax cuts, a long procession of conservative federal judges, a Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, the American Embassy moved to Jerusalem. He also pleased the Republican right by giving the party a new focus on immigration and shifting its foreign policy away from wars and nation-building in the Middle East.The Republican Party’s strategy in 2022 has been to double down on the Trump approach. Its candidates for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and Georgia, Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz, are celebrities without political experience, as is Kari Lake, a former Phoenix area news anchor who is now the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona.Blake Masters, running for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, has never held office and is perhaps best known for his association with Peter Thiel, a billionaire co-founder of PayPal, for whom Mr. Masters once worked and with whom he co-authored the 2014 book “Zero to One.” Also close to Mr. Thiel, and likewise a first-time aspirant to office, is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, J.D. Vance, famed for his own best-selling book, the 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”Mitch McConnell may question “candidate quality,” but the Republican Party’s embrace of apparently high-risk candidates is a sign of confidence, not weakness. The party’s voters feel strongly enough about the populist, pro-Trump positioning that they have supported them over more experienced and less controversial figures.This reinvention is presenting midterm voters with something that looks fresh and new, at a time when the old party identities, and old norms and institutions, seem feeble and impotent.Joe Biden is a living symbol of that. In 2008, the Democrats branded themselves as the party of hope and change. President Biden is the farthest thing from a face of change, and fear of Mr. Trump has characterized the party’s messaging far more than any sense of hope. The Democrats are defensive, and what they’re defending seems to be naturally decaying — a political consensus that has disappointed Americans, fulfilling neither the demands for justice of the passionate left nor the middle class’s expectations for economic growth and stability at home and abroad.In these crumbling conditions, risk may be more attractive than hopeless defensiveness. And the G.O.P. is exciting, for good and for ill, in a way that the Democratic Party has not been since Barack Obama’s re-election. Boldness pays dividends, especially when the fundamental conditions of a midterm election make the risks smaller than they seem.Nominees like Mr. Masters, Mr. Walker and Ms. Lake have been controversial even in some quarters of the Republican Party. They have staked out hard-right political positions and have not backed down from aligning themselves with Mr. Trump even during an election season in which the former president’s conduct during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 is the subject of ongoing congressional hearings and his handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence under scrutiny by the Justice Department. Except for Mr. Walker, these candidates faced early competition in their primaries from experienced Republican officeholders.The party’s gambles look increasingly likely to pay off. Encouraged by recent polls, Republicans expect the right-wing populist approach of 2016 to produce midterm results like those of 1994, when the party picked up both chambers of Congress. Even so, skeptics of Trumpian reinvention of the Republican Party might wonder if its success — assuming it materializes — is not despite, rather than because of, Mr. Trump and his style of politics.Democrats contemplating a “red wave” next week might console themselves with the thought that nothing they could have done would have changed the fundamental forces giving Republicans an advantage this cycle. After all, the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections.If Democrats under Bill Clinton could lose both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate in 1994, and Republicans under George W. Bush could lose both in 2006, it may seem like destiny for the Democrats to lose their razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate under President Biden this year. Democrats lost the House in Barack Obama’s first midterm elections in 2010 as well, and the Senate in his second in 2014.What’s more, some Republicans who have defied and opposed Mr. Trump, like Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, are also poised to do well on Nov. 8. The former president’s critics in the party might well believe that any version of the Republican Party could do well in this environment, and the they might do even better without the new populist right.These thoughts are a comfort to those who would like to see American politics revert to what had passed for normal in the years before 2016. But they don’t overturn the daunting reality faced by both Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans: The Republican Party has chosen to remake itself in Trump’s image, and the political gestalt he created can win. It won the White House in 2016 and it has held on to the Republican Party as an institution even after the defeats of 2018 and 2020. This year Republican congressional and gubernatorial candidates are more Trump-like than ever, from their views on immigration and foreign policy to their disdain for the Republican Party establishment of the time before Mr. Trump. Experience counts far less than before, certainly in Republican primaries, while candidates like Mr. Walker, Mr. Oz, and Ms. Lake suggest that celebrity appeal will play a growing part in Republican politics, and thus the country’s, in the future.Mr. Vance, 38, and Mr. Masters, 36, for their part show that the reinvented Republican Party is attracting highly talented and intelligent young candidates who are likely to further accelerate the party’s ideological transformation. For its supporters, and perhaps for a wider curious public, the Republican Party has become exciting and evolutionary. While Democrats have taken some risks of their own this cycle, with candidates such as Pennsylvania nominee for U.S. Senate, John Fetterman, the party still seems more reactive than creative.The Republican Party has nominated and primed set to elect a wave of right-wing candidates who will shape American politics in the years ahead with or without Mr. Trump.The Republicans, in short, are taking entrepreneurial risks and have the initiative. And while the conditions of the 2022 midterms allow them to capitalize on it, the impetus itself is what matters most for our future.Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.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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      Republicans Have Made It Very Clear What They Want to Do if They Win Congress

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      What Republicans are offering, if they win the 2022 election, is not conservatism. It is crisis. More accurately, it is crises. A debt-ceiling crisis. An election crisis. And a body blow to the government’s efforts to prepare for a slew of other crises we know are coming.That is not to say there aren’t bills House Republicans would like to pass. There are. The closest thing to an agenda that congressional Republicans have released is the House Republican Study Committee’s 122-page budget. The study committee is meant to be something akin to an internal think tank for House Republicans. It counts well over half of House Republicans as members, and includes Representatives Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik and Gary Palmer — all the leaders save for Kevin McCarthy.After spending some time with the document, what I’d say is that it lacks even the pretense of prioritization, preferring instead the comforts of quantity. It lists bill after bill that House Republicans would like to pass. Legislation that would upend the structure and powers of the government, like the bill sponsored by Representative Byron Donalds that seeks to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, gets exactly the same treatment as Representative Bob Good’s bill to force schools to release their correspondence with teachers’ unions about when to reopen, or Representative Michael Cloud’s resolution disapproving of vaccinating 11-year-olds in Washington, D.C. There are plans to privatize much of Medicare and repeal much of Obamacare and to raise the Social Security age and no fewer than eight bills attacking Critical Race Theory.But even if Republicans win the House and Senate, they cannot pass this agenda. It would fall to President Biden’s veto. What Republicans could do is trigger crises they hope would give them leverage to force Biden to accept this agenda or perhaps force him out of office. And even where Republican leadership does not actually believe that crisis would win them the day, they may have to trigger it anyway to prove their commitment to the cause or to avoid the wrath of Donald Trump.Start with the debt ceiling. U.S. Treasuries are the bedrock asset of the global financial system. They are the safest of safe investments, the security that countries and funds buy when they must be absolutely sure that their money is safe. Much else in the financial system is priced on this assumption of American reliability: Lenders begin with the “riskless rate of return” — that is, the interest rate on U.S. treasuries — and then add their premiums atop that. If the U.S. government defaults on its own debt, it would trigger financial chaos. (I guess that’s one way to deal with inflation: Crash the global economy!)Republicans have been perfectly clear, though: They see the debt limit as leverage in negotiations with Biden. “We’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior,” Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader and potential Speaker of the House, told Punchbowl News. “We’re not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit, right?”McCarthy may sound measured, but that he would open the door to this tactic at all either shows his weakness or his recklessness. A hostage is leverage only if you’re willing to shoot. And there will be plenty of voices demanding that Republicans pull the trigger or at least prove their willingness to do so.One of those voices will be Trump’s. “It’s crazy what’s happening with this debt ceiling,” the former president recently told a conservative radio host. “Mitch McConnell keeps allowing it to happen. I mean, they ought to impeach Mitch McConnell if he allows that.”To put it gently, the record of Republican Party leaders resisting the demands of their party’s hard-liners, even when they think those demands are mad, is not inspiring. McConnell and the former Republican Speaker John Boehner didn’t have enough command of their members to reject Ted Cruz’s doomed 2013 shutdown over the Affordable Care Act, which both of them thought to be lunacy. And Cruz’s influence with the Republican base and the G.O.P.’s congressional caucus in 2013 was nothing compared with the power Trump now wields.That’s not the only looming crisis. At this point, much is known about the myriad attempts Trump and his backers made to subvert the result of the 2020 election. The country’s saving grace was that there was little preparation behind that effort, and Republicans in key positions — to say nothing of Democrats — proved hostile to the project. But as The Times reported in October, more than 370 Republicans running for office in 2022 have said they doubt the results of the last election, and “hundreds of these candidates are favored to win their races.”The 2022 election is very likely to sweep into power hundreds of Republicans committed to making sure that the 2024 election goes their way, no matter how the vote tally turns out. Hardly anything has been done to fortify the system against chicanery since Jan. 6. What if congressional Republicans refuse to certify the results in key states, as a majority of House Republicans did in 2020? What if, when Trump calls Republican Secretaries of State or governors or board of elections supervisors in 2024, demanding they find the votes he wishes he had or disqualify the votes his opponent does have, they try harder to comply? The possibilities for crisis abound.Here, too, Republican officeholders who don’t fully buy into Trumpist conspiracy theories may find themselves rationalizing compliance. This is a movie we have already watched. Most of the House Republicans who voted against certification of the 2020 election knew Trump’s claims were absurd. But they chose to hide behind Representative Mike Johnson’s bizarre, evasive rationale for voting as Trump demanded they vote without needing to embrace the things he said. Johnson’s solution was to suggest that pandemic-era changes to voting procedures were unconstitutional, thus rendering the results uncertifiable. It was nonsense, and worse than that, it was cowardice. But it’s a reminder that the problem is not merely the Republican officeholders who would force an electoral crisis. The enabling threat is the much larger mass of their colleagues who have already proven they will do nothing to object.Not all crises begin with a political showdown. Some could come from a virus mutating toward greater lethality. Some could come from a planet warming outsides the narrow band that has fostered human civilization. Some could come from the expansionary ambitions of dictators and autocrats. The past few years have brought vivid examples of all three. But particularly over the past year, the Republican Party has shown itself to be somewhere between dismissive of — and hostile toward — the preparations and responses these possible crises demand.Last week, I criticized the Biden administration for failing to find a party-line path to financing pandemic preparedness. But such a path was only necessary because the Republican Party has swung so hard against efforts to prepare for the next pandemic. The Republican Study Committee’s budget is a vivid example of where the party has gone on Covid. It is not that Republicans are pro-Covid. But the party’s energy is very much anti-anti-Covid. It includes policy after policy attacking vaccine mandates, emergency powers and vaccinations for children. But in its 100-plus pages I could find nothing proposing ways to make sure we are better prepared for the next viral threat.It is easy to imagine what such policies might be: The government was slow to authorize certain new treatments and tests, cumbersome in its efforts to dole out money for research, and not nearly as innovative as it could have been in deploying technology to monitor new and emerging diseases. This is a libertarian, not a liberal, critique of government. But the study committee’s budget offers no discussion of how deregulation might foster a better response next time.And it’s not just Covid. Republicans have long been skeptical of efforts to prepare for climate change. The study committee’s budget is thick with plans to goose fossil fuel extraction and bar federal dollars from supporting the Paris Climate Accords. Republicans have been, shall we say, divided in their affections for Vladimir Putin, but at least in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many backed efforts to support Ukraine. But McCarthy has suggested that Republicans will cut aid to Ukraine if they win in November, and he’s far from alone in wanting to see the United States back off from the conflict.I’ll say this for Republicans. They have not hidden their intentions, nor their tactics. They have made clear what they intend to do if they win. Biden ran — and won — in 2020 promising a return to normalcy. Republicans are running in 2022 promising a return to calamity.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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      Democrats, Don’t Despair. There Are Bright Spots for Our Party.

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      The Democratic Party and Senator Mitch McConnell rarely see eye to eye on anything. But if Democrats hold the line in the elections on Tuesday and keep control of the Senate — and we still have a shot — it will come down to candidate quality.That’s the phrase that Mr. McConnell used this past summer alluding to his Republican Senate nominees.Going into Tuesday’s vote, Democrats face fierce headwinds like inflation and the typical pattern of losses in midterm elections for the party in power. But unlike some Republican candidates — a real-life island of misfit toys — many Democratic Senate candidates have been a source of comfort: the likable, pragmatic, low-drama Mark Kelly in Arizona and Raphael Warnock in Georgia, the heterodox populists John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) and Tim Ryan (Ohio). If the party can defy the odds and hold the Senate, there will be valuable lessons to take away.For many election analysts, the hopes of the summer —  that the Dobbs decision overturning Roe could help Democrats buck historical trends — look increasingly like a blue mirage, and Republicans seem likely to surf their way to a majority in the House.Yet the battle for the Senate is still raging, and largely on the strength of Mr. Kelly, Mr. Warnock, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Fetterman. Their races also offer insights that can help Democrats mitigate losses in the future and even undo some of the reputational damage that has rendered the party’s candidates unelectable in far too many places across the country.In a normal midterm year, Mr. Warnock and Mr. Kelly would be the low-hanging fruit of vulnerable Democrats, given that they eked out victories in 2020 and 2021 in purple states.But they bring to the table compelling biographies that resist caricature. Mr. Kelly is a former Navy combat pilot and astronaut whose parents were both cops. Mr. Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, quotes Scripture on the campaign trail and compares the act of voting to prayer.They’ve rejected the hair-on-fire, hyperpartisan campaign ads that endangered incumbents often rely on. Mr. Kelly’s ads highlight his bipartisanship and willingness to break with the Democratic Party on issues like border security — he supports, for example, filling in gaps in the wall on the border with Mexico.Mr. Warnock, too, has focused on local issues: His campaign has highlighted his efforts to secure funding for the Port of Savannah and his bipartisan work with Tommy Tuberville of Alabama to help Georgia’s peanut farmers. These ads will probably not go viral on Twitter, but they signal that Mr. Kelly and Mr. Warnock will fight harder for the folks at home than they will for the national Democratic agenda.In Ohio and Pennsylvania, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Fetterman have showed up in every county, red or blue, in their states. Democrats can’t just depend on driving up the margins in Democratic strongholds — they also need to drive down Republicans’ margins in their strongholds.Mr. Fetterman is holding to a slim lead in polls. Most analysts doubt Mr. Ryan can prevail in what is a tougher electoral environment for a Democrat, but even if he loses, he helped his peers by keeping his race competitive, and he did it without a dollar of help from the national party. He forced national Republicans to spend about $30 million in Ohio that could otherwise have gone to Senate races in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.Anything could happen on Tuesday. Politics, like football, is a game of inches. It’s still possible that Democrats could pick up a seat or two. It’s also plausible that Republicans could take seats in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and even New Hampshire.But when the dust settles on the election, Democrats need to do some real soul-searching about the future of our party. We look likely to lose in some places where Joe Biden won in 2020. And what’s worse, we could lose to candidates who have embraced bans on abortion and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, views shared by a minority of the American people. This outcome tells us as much about the Democratic brand as it does the Republican Party.Fair or not, Democrats have been painted as the party of out-of-touch, coastal elites — the party that tells voters worried about crime that it’s all in their heads and that, by the way, crime was higher in the 1990s; the party that sneers at voters disillusioned with bad trade deals and globalization and that labels their “economic anxiety” a convenient excuse for racism; the party that discounts shifts of Black and Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party as either outliers or a sign of internalized white supremacy.If Democrats are smart, they’ll take away an important lesson from this election: There is no one way, no right way to be a Democrat. To win or be competitive in tough years in places as varied as Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, we need to recruit and give support to the candidates who might not check the box of every national progressive litmus test but who do connect with the voters in their state.Mr. Fetterman and Mr. Ryan offer good examples. Both have been competitive in part because they broke with progressive orthodoxy on issues like fracking (in Pennsylvania, Mr. Fetterman was called the “enemy” by an environmentalist infuriated by his enthusiastic support for fracking and the jobs it creates) and trade deals (in Ohio, Mr. Ryan has bragged about how he “voted with Trump on trade”).It also means lifting up more candidates with nontraditional résumés who defy political stereotypes and can’t be ridiculed as down-the-line partisans: veterans, nurses, law enforcement officers and entrepreneurs and executives from the private sector.In some states, the best candidates will be economic populists who play down social issues. In others, it will be economic moderates who play up their progressive social views. And in a lot of swing states, it will be candidates who just play it down the middle all around.It might also mean engaging with unfriendly media outlets. Most Democrats have turned up their noses at Fox News even though it is the highest-rated cable news channel, but Mr. Ryan has made appearances and even put on air a highlight reel of conservative hosts like Tucker Carlson praising him as a voice of moderation and reason in the Democratic Party. In the frenzied final days of the campaign, Mr. Fetterman wrote an opinion essay for FoxNews.com.This year we still might avoid losing the Senate. And Democrats can avoid catastrophe in future elections. It all comes down to two words: “candidate quality.”Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Affluent Greenwich, It’s Republicans vs. ‘Trumplicans’

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      Over the summer, the Greenwich Country Day School sent out an invitation for its annual Cider and Donuts event. To emphasize its commitment to diversity, the school noted that the autumn gathering was open to families “who identify as Black, Asian, Latinx, multiracial, indigenous, Middle Eastern, and/or people of color.”But to the alarm of the local Republican Town Committee, the invitation left out a demographic not often thought of as marginalized in this affluent community.“You listed nearly every group but white people … was that on purpose?” the committee asked in an Instagram post. “Is that how you bring people together? Inclusion …?”Stunned, the private school’s administrator graciously said the letter could have more clearly conveyed that all were welcome for cider, after which the Republican committee congratulated itself for striking a blow for civil rights: “Glad the RTC has helped our community become more inclusive.”The culture wars were destined to spill someday into the rarefied precincts of Greenwich. But who in the name of George Bush would have expected the charge to be led by a band of Trump acolytes who have taken control of the town’s Republican committee?The electoral worth of the party’s far-right swerve will be tested nationwide in next week’s midterm elections. Here in Greenwich, long a bastion of moderate Republicans like the elder Mr. Bush — a Greenwich Country Day alum — the takeover has people asking: Who are these Greenwich Republicans? And did they lock the town’s traditional Republican leaders in the hold of some yacht in Greenwich Harbor?The answer: They are a small, well-organized group that essentially applied the “precinct strategy” espoused by the former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, which calls for toppling local political establishments to clear the way for like-minded Republican candidates who will one day guide the country’s future.Beth MacGillivray, the chairwoman of the new Republican Town Committee, which stands by its “inclusion” moment, said the previous committee was too moderate and lackadaisical. She promised a “red wave coming in the midterm elections.”But some Greenwich Republicans worry that their party may venture so far right it will fall off the political cliff. For them, former President Donald J. Trump is the unpredictable uncle who could turn the family barbecue into a three-alarm fire. You don’t deny the relationship, but you don’t volunteer it either.This ambivalence was highlighted in 2019 — even before the committee’s rightward lurch — when Republicans became apoplectic over a sudden sprouting of campaign signs linking Mr. Trump with Fred Camillo, their candidate for the mayor-like position of first selectman. “Trump/Camillo,” the signs said. “Make Greenwich Great Again.”The signs turned out to be the satirical handiwork of Mark Kordick, a registered Democrat and Greenwich police captain with 31 years on the force. According to court records, Mr. Camillo texted a supporter: “He better pray I do not win because I would be the police commissioner and he will be gone.”A satirical sign linking a Republican politician, Fred Camillo, to former President Donald J. Trump.Leslie Yager/Greenwich Free PressMr. Camillo did win, and Mr. Kordick was fired. In suing the town and several officials, Mr. Kordick said that the signs were “to remind undecided voters and moderate Republicans unhappy with Trump that Camillo and Trump were members of the same party.”The lawsuit, like the midterm elections, is pending.‘Clowns’ Against ‘Outsiders’Greenwich, with its increasingly diverse population of 63,000, is no longer a Republican stronghold known for fiscal conservatism and social moderation. Just five years ago, the town had considerably more registered Republicans than Democrats; today, Democrats outnumber Republicans, while unaffiliated voters, including more than a few disaffected Republicans, outnumber both.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.A central reason: the divisive Mr. Trump, who was trounced here by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. He was vilified by the town’s progressives and disliked by most moderate Republicans, though he found support among some wealthy and influential residents.It was against this backdrop that the Republican Town Committee chose Dan Quigley, 50, as its new chairman in early 2020. A financial services consultant, stay-at-home father and party moderate, he said he benefited from being a political neophyte: “No baggage. No animosity.”No such luck.Dan Quigley, the former chairman of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee, found himself at loggerheads with outspoken Trump supporters.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesBefore long, Mr. Quigley found himself at odds with Carl Higbie, a local Trump stalwart who, in 2018, had resigned his position with the Trump administration after CNN reported his history of offensive statements, including: “I believe wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly, that the Black race as a whole, not totally, is lazier than the white race, period.”Mr. Higbie, who said these past comments were either “flat-out stupid” or taken out of context, contacted Mr. Quigley about delivering Trump signs to party headquarters for the 2020 campaign, only to have Mr. Quigley explain that he had quietly prohibited Trump material, so as not to hurt the chances of the party’s local candidates. (Mr. Trump would be crushed here by Joseph R. Biden Jr., who would win 62 percent of the vote.)This irked Mr. Higbie, which led to internal bickering, which led to a compromise of sorts. Some Trump signs were delivered to party headquarters, only to be consigned to a corner and covered with a tarp.Mr. Higbie, 39, is now the host of a morning weekend program on the right-wing broadcaster Newsmax. He said recently that he had long been unhappy with the “very establishment Jeb Bush-style Republican Party” in his hometown — “historically squishy,” he said — and he was still annoyed by Mr. Quigley’s suppression of Trump signs.Carl Higbie, a Newsmax host and former member of the Trump administration, clashed with the committee’s leadership.Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media“Look, dude, if you’re not going to support our presidential nominee, the sitting president, we have a problem with that,” Mr. Higbie said. “It turned a lot of people off.”Mr. Quigley called the moment “the first altercation I had with this group.”It was not the last.Months later, some Republicans vehemently opposed one of the Town Committee’s nominees for the Board of Education: Michael-Joseph Mercanti-Anthony, a longtime educator with a doctorate in education leadership whose employment in the New York City school system made him suspect. What’s more, he had donated about $400 to the Biden campaign.“They saw that as unforgivable,” said Mr. Mercanti-Anthony, 47, who described himself as “a conservative who does not believe Trump possesses the competence to be president.”Mr. Higbie used his Newsmax platform to criticize Mr. Quigley and Mr. Mercanti-Anthony as Republicans in name only. He showed their photographs to his national audience, including one of Mr. Mercanti-Anthony with his two young sons — their faces blurred, Mr. Higbie said, “because we’re civil here.”“We can’t let these clowns get away with this anymore,” Mr. Higbie told his viewers.Mr. Mercanti-Anthony won more votes than any other school board candidate in last November’s local elections, part of a Republican sweep that included retaining control of the town’s powerful finance board. An unqualified success for Mr. Quigley, it would seem.Michael-Joseph Mercanti-Anthony was elected to the school board despite his opposition to Mr. Trump and being portrayed as a Republican in name only.Leslie Yager/Greenwich Free PressDays later, in an opinion piece in the local paper, Mr. Quigley urged Republicans to move on from Mr. Trump — an “ego-driven political opportunist,” he wrote — and described the party’s right wing as “angry outsiders” who base their conclusions “on dodgy facts and conspiracy theories.”Most Greenwich Republicans do not share their values, he wrote with confidenceOusting the Old GuardOrganizations like the Greenwich Republican Town Committee may seem more like vanity projects than vehicles of power. But they decide who appears on a party’s endorsed ballot for the school board, the town council, the state legislature — the steppingstones to higher office.Normally, the committee’s underpublicized meetings attract few people. But on two frigid nights in early January, hundreds of registered Republicans showed up for caucuses to elect their committee members for the next two years — after some stealthy coordination by an anti-moderate contingent that included sending out “Dear Neighbor” leaflets vowing to “protect Greenwich from turning into San Francisco.”The insurgent slate overwhelmed the Republican caucuses, winning 41 of the 63 committee seats.“A complete, total blood bath,” acknowledged Mr. Quigley, who commended the winners for being “well organized” but also accused them of a “political coup.”“It made no sense,” he said. “We weren’t Democrats, we weren’t socialists, but people who previously were not engaged in politics believed that narrative.”Five self-described working mothers took over the executive committee, including Mr. Quigley’s successor as chair, Ms. MacGillivray, 60, who was fairly new to politics. She later recalled that when asked in 2020 to help Kimberly Fiorello, a conservative Republican, run for state representative, she initially balked, joking, “It’s golf season, for God’s sake.”Ms. MacGillivray, more seasoned now, wrote in an email that despite the electoral success under Mr. Quigley, people were dissatisfied with his “inactions” and wanted a “more dynamic and responsive” leadership. Others said that dissatisfaction with the “woke” direction of the public schools also played a role.Beth MacGillivray, the committee chairwoman, attended a Greenwich Republican clambake in September with Senator Rick Scott of Florida, right.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe new committee cites the familiar guiding principles of limited government, parental rights and individual freedom, as well as “America First,” the catchall trope of Mr. Trump. Still, the abrupt change in tone has been like golf cleats clattering on a country club’s marbled floor.There was the perceived need to champion white inclusion in mostly white Greenwich, for example. And the time Ms. MacGillivray, in opposing transgender athletes in scholastic sports, told the school board that the men on her college ski team were consistently stronger and faster — and “even one of the male ski racers” who was “gay,” she said, “out-skied any girl or woman on the racecourse every time.”There is also the committee’s connection to the Greenwich Patriots, a hard-right group that at times seems like the id to the Town Committee’s ego. The Patriots contend that Covid-19 vaccines are unsafe, rail against “highly sexualized, pornographic and profanity-laced content” in schools, and serve as a conduit for Mr. Trump, promoting his events and sharing his specious claim that the 2020 election was stolen.“In case you are wondering,” the group’s daily newsletter once advised, “election fraud was rampant in the 2020 election in all 50 states, including in Connecticut.”False. More than 1.8 million Connecticut residents voted in the 2020 election, but the state’s Elections Enforcement Commission has received just 31 complaints alleging irregularities. Three resulted in fines, with the rest dismissed, pending or found inconclusive.A Different Kind of PlatformOne way that the Town Committee severed its moderate past was by declining to participate in the candidate debates sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Greenwich. The league’s local chapter was “clearly biased” and dominated by Democrats, Ms. MacGillivray said, with a tendency to take “strident, vocal positions on political issues” like voting rules.The chapter’s president, Sandy Waters, a former Republican member of the Greenwich school board, disputed every point. The nonpartisan organization’s not-for-profit status allows it to support policy issues such as early voting, she said, and the decision by Republicans not to participate hindered the pursuit of an informed electorate.Republican committee members spoke to voters outside Town Hall in August.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesCandidates around the country are increasingly sidestepping events like debates. But some critics said that by doing so, Greenwich Republicans had managed to avoid questions about Covid vaccinations, abortion rights, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, false claims of electoral fraud — and Mr. Trump.Ms. MacGillivray said that the subject of Mr. Trump played no role in the caucuses. She also wondered why, in 2022, the media remained obsessed with the man.Perhaps because Mr. Trump’s ideology and style influence local politics so profoundly that John Breunig, editorial page editor of The Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time, described Greenwich as a three-party town: Democrat, Republican and “Trumplican.”The Greenwich Republican ecosystem is such that James O’Keefe, the founder of the conservative activist group Project Veritas, is practically a local celebrity.In March, Mr. O’Keefe promoted his latest book at a gathering in a Greenwich hotel that was organized with the help of Jackie Homan, the founder of the Greenwich Patriots and an unsuccessful candidate on the caucus slate that ousted the moderate Quigley group.Months later, Project Veritas released hidden-camera video of a Greenwich elementary school vice principal boasting to an unseen woman that he tried to block the hiring of conservatives, Roman Catholics and people over 30. The circumstances behind the heavily edited video are unclear, and the vice principal, since suspended, did not make unilateral hiring decisions.Still, some Greenwich Republicans asserted that the video reflected a larger effort to “indoctrinate students with specific political ideologies.” This would include antiracism training and social emotional learning, which aims to nurture mental well-being, among other goals, but which some on the right believe is intended to make white children feel guilty for being white.Such positions have baffled more moderate Greenwich Republicans like Mike Basham, a former member of the first Bush administration who recently moved to South Carolina after many years as a prominent local leader of the party.“How can people that bright believe some of this stuff?” he asked. “Who indoctrinated them?”An Ex-President’s ShadowMr. Trump’s name doesn’t need to appear on campaign signs for him to have sway in Greenwich.For example, there is Ms. Fiorello, 47, the state representative, who is up for re-election. A participant in the effort to replace Mr. Quigley, she has moderated events with doctors accused of spreading misinformation about Covid, as well as with No Left Turn in Education, a group opposed to what it calls “the radical indoctrination and injection of political agendas” in schools.Kimberly Fiorello, a Republican state representative, helped to push out the local committee leadership.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesAfter the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida — collecting boxes of material, including highly classified documents, that he had failed to return to the government — Ms. Fiorello posted a video expressing concern over the “raid.”“We have to secure this republic,” she said. “Active and engaged citizens is what it takes. Peaceful protest. But citizens, we need to speak out and protect what this country is founded on. There are some things that are happening right now that are simply unacceptable and truly un-American.”There is also Leora Levy, a wealthy Greenwich Republican who, in supporting Jeb Bush for president in 2016, described Mr. Trump as “vulgar” and “ill mannered.” When Mr. Trump won the nomination, she set aside her concerns to become an enthusiastic supporter, and he later nominated her to be ambassador to Chile (the nomination never received Senate approval).When Ms. Levy, 65, decided to challenge the Democratic incumbent, Richard Blumenthal, for the Senate this year, the state Republican committee declined to endorse her. But her local Republican committee did, as did Mr. Trump, during a phone call shared at a crowded party function.Six days later, Ms. Levy won the primary.Leora Levy, a Trump-backed Greenwich Republican, is running to unseat Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesSince then, she has joined her Greenwich compatriots in trying to navigate the tricky Trump terrain.“I was honored to win his endorsement,” Ms. Levy told The CT Mirror, a nonprofit news organization. “He and I agree completely on policy, but I’m Leora Levy … Trump is not on the ballot. Leora Levy is.”Last month the Levy campaign held a fund-raising event at Mar-a-Lago that featured Mr. Trump. For $25,000, you could have your photograph taken with the man who lost Greenwich twice. More

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      Fact-Checking the Misleading Claim About 87,000 Tax Agents

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      The claim, which has been debunked numerous times, has resurged ahead of the midterm elections. Here’s why it’s still wrong.As the midterm campaigns come to a close, Republican lawmakers are seizing on misleading claims warning that Democrats are recruiting an army of tax auditors, finding new resonance in an assertion debunked months ago.The assertion began to circulate when President Biden first outlined a wide-ranging social spending plan last fall. A whittled-down version of that plan, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, was enacted this summer, fueling a new wave of attacks that have gained momentum as the elections neared.That law provides the Internal Revenue Service with nearly $80 billion in funding, including $45.6 billion for enforcement activities. But the suggestion that this would amount to 87,000 additional tax collectors scrutinizing the financial filings of middle-class Americans is wrong.Here’s a fact check.What Was Said“When House Republicans earn the majority, we will STOP Biden’s army of 87,000 IRS agents hired to audit hardworking American families and small businesses.”— Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, in a tweet in November.“Senate Democrats could have secured the border to protect you and your family. They didn’t. Instead, they hired 87,000 IRS agents to audit you.”— Senate Republicans’ official Twitter account in November.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.“$80 Billion: Increased IRS Funding. 87,000: Full-Time IRS Agents Added Using $80 Billion in Funding. 710,000 New Audits on Taxpayers Making $75,000 or Less.”— a graphic Tiffany Smiley, the Republican candidate for Senate in Washington, shared on Twitter in October.These claims are misleading. The 87,000 figure refers to a May 2021 estimate from the Treasury Department of the total number of employees — not just auditors — the I.R.S. proposes to hire over the next 10 years with funding requested by Mr. Biden. And while the I.R.S. plans to conduct more audits, wealthy Americans and businesses will bear the brunt of that scrutiny, not, as Republicans have suggested, working families.Among the I.R.S.’s work force of about 79,000 employees, 10,000 are actually agents. (Of those, 8,000 are revenue agents who audit tax filings and 2,000 are special agents who investigate potential tax crimes.) In fact, the two most common I.R.S. jobs have little to do with tax auditing or investigations: about 13,000 are customer service representatives who answer taxpayer phone calls and 10,000 are seasonal employees who file mail or transcribe data. Other jobs include lawyers, examiners, technicians and appeals officers.The additional funding for to the I.R.S. will allow the agency to modernize its infrastructure and replace an aging work force, and it is unclear just how many full-time employees or agents will be hired in the next decade, Treasury Department officials said. The majority of those new employees will replace the 52,000 expected to retire in the near future, the officials said, and many will focus on customer service and updating the agency’s technology infrastructure — not investigating the finances of ordinary Americans.In other words, the funding will enable the I.R.S. to increase its work force over the next 10 years to 113,000 employees. That is about the same number of workers it employed annually in the early 1990s.In a September speech, Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, outlined some of that hiring — an additional 5,000 customer service representatives and fully staffing the agency’s taxpayer assistance centers — and committed to not raise audit rates for households making under $400,000 a year.Using historical audit rates, House Republicans estimated this summer that the additional funding will correspond to 710,000 new audits for taxpayers making $75,000 or less — as Ms. Smiley, the Republican candidate for Senate in Washington State, tweeted. But those calculations ignore the proportional effect on each income bracket.In the past decade, tax audit rates have fallen most starkly for higher income earners, which the I.R.S. attributes to diminished resources and therefore its inability to retain specialized auditors needed to examine the filings of the wealthy.Increasing funding for the I.R.S., the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in September 2021, would address those needs and result in increased audit rates for everyone, particularly for high-income earners.The I.R.S. examined 1.4 million individual income tax returns in 2010, about 1 percent of the total number filed. In 2018, the latest year with available data when Republicans started making these claims, audits decreased to 370,000, or about 0.2 percent.The budget office estimated increasing I.R.S. funding would return enforcement to its 2010 levels. Doing so would result in about 1.2 million more audits; of those, 583,000 would target people making less than $75,000.But that is because a vast majority of tax filers — about 70 percent — make under that threshold. Looking at what fraction of returns are examined by income group, rather than the sheer number, shows that wealthier taxpayers would have a better chance of being audited than lower-income earners under the law.Under 2010 levels of enforcement, about 0.5 percent of returns reporting between $1 and $75,000 in income would be audited, as would 1 percent of those with more than $75,000 in income. In comparison, those rates were 0.3 percent and 0.1 percent in 2018. For those making more than $10 million, more than 20 percent of returns would be examined under 2010 levels, compared with 5.3 percent in 2018.It is also worth noting that of those 710,000 additional audits cited by Republicans, about 127,000 would target those with “no positive income,” such as those who report negative business income or capital losses. Including these filers with lower-income taxpayers is also misleading, as they actually receive more audit scrutiny than any other income group outside of those making over $5 million annually.In a statement in support of the law released this summer, three former I.R.S. commissioners appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents disputed claims about increased scrutiny. The law would add “the capacity to enforce the tax laws against sophisticated taxpayers who today evade their tax obligations freely,” they said, “because they know that the I.R.S. lacks the tools it needs to pursue them.” More

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      In Georgia, Could a Football Win Help Walker Win as Well?

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      ATHENS, Ga. — Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign has had several tailwinds working for it this year: President Biden’s unpopularity and steady inflation top the list.And the Georgia Bulldogs aren’t hurting his cause, either. Even serious political analysts acknowledge that the Bulldogs’ strong season — they are undefeated in the powerful S.E.C. so far — may be helping Mr. Walker in his Senate race against Senator Raphael Warnock, by lifting spirits and stirring up nostalgia just in time for the most famous Bulldog ever to ask for votes.The connection was undeniable on Saturday, when Mr. Walker was the biggest star not in uniform on the day of the biggest college football game of the year, where Georgia beat the University of Tennessee, 27-13. Tammy Mitchell remembers being about 10 years old when she saw Mr. Walker, then a powerful young running back, lead the University of Georgia Bulldogs to a national championship in 1980.On Saturday, she had both football and politics on her mind as she attended a rally for more than 100 Georgia Republicans and Walker supporters, decked out in red and black Bulldogs paraphernalia, some with their faces painted, as they held signs supporting Mr. Walker’s candidacy for the Senate.“It’s very surreal,” she said. “I never thought as a little girl that years later this would be happening or he would even be running for Senate.” Ms. Mitchell stood next to her husband in a line to meet and take photos with Mr. Walker. She was counting on a win for his team and for Republicans on Tuesday, saying the former could help the latter.“I think it’s a sign,” she said.Tammy and Harrison Mitchell at a rally for Mr. Walker in Athens on Saturday.Nicole Buchanan for The New York TimesMr. Walker with his teammates after they won the National Championship in 1981, defeating Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesPeople see signs where they want to, but on this Saturday political vapors as well as football emanated from Athens. And if it was a bit of a stretch to say that control of the Senate and one of the biggest prizes in the midterms could come down to whether Mr. Walker’s team won again, some saw a convergence of sorts in the football game and the statistically tied race between Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock.Neil Malhotra, a professor of political economy at Stanford University, who has studied the ties between sports and politics, didn’t think the outcome of Saturday’s football game would mean more to voters than inflation and crime.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.But, he said, “emotional stuff” could be meaningful in such a tight race.“His whole candidacy seems to be specifically based on the fact that he’s a football star,” he said.Mr. Walker, whose campaign has had to navigate a slew of stumbles that had nothing to do with football, did not attend Saturday’s football game, according to his campaign aides. But he has made football — and his own legacy in the sport — a large part of his message on the stump. From his earliest events, many attendees have been die-hard conservatives or University of Georgia fans who remember when he led the team to victory. His stump speeches are a combination of loose political talking points and sports analogies. And at his Saturday rally, sporting a University of Georgia polo, Mr. Walker opened his stump speech with a nod to his alma mater before diving into a diatribe against Mr. Warnock — and making a prediction of his own.“Just like the Dawgs are going to win today, that’s what’s going to happen on Tuesday,” Mr. Walker said to cheers.The crowd at Saturday’s rally was thinner than at Mr. Walker’s prior events. Less than a half-mile away, ESPN’s College GameDay program hosted a live broadcast that attracted hundreds of fans.David Hancock, a 70-year-old Georgia fan, said he was in Athens for two reasons: to “see the Dawgs hopefully beat Tennessee and to see Herschel Walker’s speech.” Mr. Hancock said he planned to support the entire Republican ticket on Tuesday. He brushed off concerns that Mr. Walker’s lack of political experience could be detrimental to him if he won. Instead, he pointed to words from an advertisement that Vince Dooley, the former University of Georgia football coach, cut for Mr. Walker before he died in late October, underlining his former player’s approach to athletics.“He’s driven,” Mr. Hancock said. “If he falls down, he gets up and he goes forward. That’s what he’s done in this life.”Mr. Warnock made the best of things. In one ad for Mr. Warnock released during the game, three Georgia graduates conveyed their reverence for Mr. Walker’s accomplishments as a college football star, but said that was where it stopped. One was wearing a jersey with Mr. Walker’s No. 34, and another displayed a football autographed by him.“I’ve always thought Herschel Walker looked perfect up there,” said a man identified in the ad as Clay Bryant, a 1967 Georgia graduate, pointing to newspaper clippings of Mr. Walker on a wall in his home. “I think he looks good here,” another graduate said, gesturing to her jersey. “I think he looks great there,” the third one said, sitting next to the football and a copy of Sports Illustrated with Mr. Walker on the cover. “But Herschel Walker in the U.S. Senate?” the three asked critically in unison.Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.Senator Lindsey Graham, left, campaigned with Herschel Walker in Cumming, Ga., in October.Nicole Craine for The New York Times More

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      Pensylvania Democrats Worry About Threats in the County Where Trump Will Rally

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      Democratic officials in Westmoreland County, Pa., where former President Donald J. Trump is speaking on Saturday, said they had seen an uptick in disturbing incidents targeting Democrats in the past year.Westmoreland County, the populous area east of Pittsburgh, was once a Democratic-leaning enclave, but it has turned decisively red in recent years.“We are targets here,” Michelle McFall, the chairwoman of the county Democrats, said at a rally of supporters in October. She cited three incidents:In late summer, someone “tore down and destroyed” a 4-foot-by-8-foot sign for Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate for governor, within a day of its installation.In September, a man in a rainbow clown wig was arrested at a Dairy Queen in the county carrying a loaded handgun. He told police he wanted to “kill all Democrats,’’ according to news accounts.And on Election Day in 2021, a Democratic county committee member speaking in support of a write-in candidate outside a polling location in Alverton was attacked by a Trump supporter, who was charged with assault.To Ms. McFall, the episodes suggest a pattern of “how dangerous it is” to be a Democrat in Westmoreland County.But to Bill Bretz, the chairman of the county Republican Party, the incidents are unrelated and do not point to a pattern of violence or potential violence against Democrats.“I can’t count the number of signs we’ve had to replace — small, large, they get damaged or stolen,” Mr. Bretz said. “I don’t attribute that to any particular party.”He said Democrats were trying to deflect from their political difficulties in the midterms by promoting a “narrative of somehow being in a position where there’s some aggression from the Republican conservative people.”Lisa Gephart, the Democratic committee member who Ms. McFall said was physically attacked last year, said in an interview that she was 54 at the time and that her assailant was 34.She said the two had traded insults about President Biden and Mr. Trump before the man threw her against her car. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital and later required shoulder surgery, she said. The man she named as her attacker, Zachary A. Lambing, was charged with assault, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and harassment, according to court records. A criminal case remains active. Mr. Lambing said in response to a text message that the accusations against him were false. He said Ms. Gephart was “‘attacking’ me with her words” before the incident. Ms. McFall, the Democratic chairwoman, said that while she had no evidence of a statewide pattern of attacks on Democrats, she had recently compared notes with leaders of other rural counties at a statewide Democratic meeting. “Anecdotally, no one seemed to have stories or evidence of patterns of attack like we have in Westmoreland,” Ms. McFall said.Meanwhile, in Fayette County, just south of Westmoreland, a Democratic candidate running for a state House seat, Richard Ringer, told PennLive.com that he was knocked unconscious in his backyard on Monday by an unknown attacker. He told the outlet that his home had been the target of two recent acts of vandalism: A brick was thrown through a window, and graffiti that appeared to be related to the election was spray-painted on his garage door. More