Ryan, Timothy J (1973- )

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Can Tim Ryan Pull Off the Biggest Upset of the Midterms in Ohio?

      by

      ZANESVILLE, Ohio — Tim Ryan is a “crazy, lying fraud.” That’s how J.D. Vance, the best-selling memoirist turned Republican Senate candidate from Ohio, opened his remarks at his September rally alongside Donald Trump in the middle of the congressional district Mr. Ryan has represented for two decades.Mr. Ryan seems like an unlikely object of such caustic rhetoric. A 49-year-old former college-football quarterback, he is the paragon of affability, a genial Everyman whose introductory campaign video is so innocuous that it might easily be mistaken for an insurance commercial. His great passion, outside of politics, is yoga and mindfulness practice.“We have to love each other, we have to care about each other, we have to see the best in each other, we have to forgive each other,” he declared when he won the Democratic Senate primary in May.He isn’t just preaching kindness and forgiveness. For years, he has warned his fellow Democrats that their embrace of free trade and globalization would cost them districts like the one he represents in the Mahoning River Valley — and lobbied them to prioritize domestic manufacturing, which, he argued, could repair some of the damage.His efforts went nowhere. Mr. Ryan failed in his bid to replace Nancy Pelosi as House minority leader in 2016. His presidential run in 2020 ended with barely a trace. And his opponent, Mr. Vance, was expected to coast to victory this year in a state that Mr. Trump carried twice by eight points.But things haven’t gone as predicted. Mr. Ryan is running close enough in the polls that a political action committee aligned with Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, has had to commit $28 million to keep the seat (now held by Rob Portman, who is retiring), and Mr. Vance has had to ratchet up his rhetorical attacks against this “weak, fake congressman.”After years of being overlooked, Tim Ryan is pointing his party toward a path to recovery in the Midwest. On the campaign trail, he has embraced a unifying tone that stands out from the crassness and divisiveness that Mr. Trump and his imitators have wrought. A significant number of what he calls the “exhausted majority” of voters have responded gratefully.And his core message — a demand for more aggressive government intervention to arrest regional decline — is not only resonating with voters but, crucially, breaking through with the Democratic leaders who presided over that decline for years. The Democrats have passed a burst of legislation that will pave the way for two new Intel chip plants in the Columbus exurbs, spur investment in new electric vehicle ventures in Mr. Ryan’s district, and benefit solar-panel factories around Toledo, giving him, at long last, concrete examples to cite of his party rebuilding the manufacturing base in which the region took such pride.In short, the party is doing much more of what Mr. Ryan has long said would save its political fortunes in the Midwest. The problem for him — and also for them — is that it may have come too late.Mr. Ryan is a genial Everyman who says, “We have to see the best in each other, we have to forgive each other.”Gaelen Morse for The New York TimesTim Ryan was not always so alone in Congress. Manufacturing regions of the Northeast and Midwest used to produce many other Democrats like him, often with white-ethnic Catholic, working-class backgrounds and strong ties to organized labor. (Mr. Ryan’s family is Irish and Italian, and both his grandfather and great-grandfather worked in the steel mills.) One particularly notorious example of the type was James Traficant, who represented the Mahoning Valley in highly eccentric fashion and served seven years in prison after a 2002 conviction on charges that included soliciting bribes and racketeering. That left his young former staff member — Tim Ryan — to win the seat at age 29.A few stalwarts remain: Marcy Kaptur, whose mother was a union organizer at a sparkplug plant, will likely hold her Toledo-area House seat after her MAGA opponent lied about his military record. And Sherrod Brown, whose upbringing in hard-hit Mansfield and generally disheveled affect has lent authenticity to his own progressive populism (never mind the fact that he’s a doctor’s son and has a Yale degree), has survived two Senate re-elections thanks to his personal appeal and weak opponents.But nearly all the rest have vanished. Many of them fell victim to the Democratic wipeout in 2010. Others succumbed to the extreme Republican gerrymandering that followed. But central to their disappearance was the economic decline of the communities they represented, which was on a scale that remains hard for many in more prosperous pockets of the country to grasp.In the first decade of this century, after Bill Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993 and ushered China into the World Trade Organization in 2000, so many manufacturing businesses closed in Ohio — about 3,500, nearly a fifth of the total — that its industrial electricity consumption fell by more than a quarter. Mr. Ryan’s district was among the most ravaged. By 2010, the population of Youngstown had fallen 60 percent from its 1930 peak and it ranked among the poorest cities in the country.For the Democrats representing these devastated areas, the fallout was enormous. “We were always supposed to be the party of working people, and so those rank-and-file union members kept getting crushed, and jobs kept leaving, and their unions and the Democrats weren’t able to do anything for them,” said Mr. Ryan, when I met with him in August, after an event he held at a substance abuse treatment program in Zanesville. Democratic candidates were also putting their attention elsewhere, on social issues, and voters noticed.Mr. Ryan is determined not to make the same mistake. “You want culture wars?” he asks in one TV ad, while throwing darts in a bar. “I’m not your guy. You want a fighter for Ohio? I’m all in.”In the 2000s, as Mr. Ryan saw his band of like-minded Democrats dwindle, he started looking for answers, and he found some of them at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a small advocacy group founded in 2007 to promote American manufacturing and agriculture.The group’s theory is fairly straightforward: The “free trade” that has been so ruinous to manufacturing regions like the Mahoning Valley has been anything but free, given all the various forms of support that other nations provide their own industries. The group has been lobbying members of both parties to consider explicit support for U.S. producers, whether in the form of tariffs or subsidies, even if it means brushing up against World Trade Organization rules.For years, the Coalition for a Prosperous America and its allies in Congress ran up against free-trade orthodoxy. But growing alarm over climate change, the breakdown of global supply chains during the pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine have brought a stunning turnaround. The Inflation Reduction Act includes many of the kinds of policies that Mr. Ryan and C.P.A. have championed, including refundable tax credits for solar-panel production, a 15 percent alternative minimum tax for corporations, and requirements that electric vehicles have North American-made parts to qualify for consumer tax credits. This month, the Biden administration announced major new tech-export controls aimed at China, with the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, declaring that free trade “cannot come at the cost of further weakening our supply chains.”It’s a vindication for Mr. Ryan and his former House allies, such as Tom Perriello, who represented south-central Virginia between 2009 and 2011.Megan Jelinger for The New York Times“The elite echo chamber assumed away all the human costs” of globalization, said Mr. Perriello, instead of realizing industries needed to be helped to save middle-class jobs.Still, the shift has come only after tremendous economic losses for places like the Mahoning Valley and political losses for the Democrats. In the 2020 presidential election, Democrats lost white voters without college degrees by 26 percentage points nationwide, and their margins among working-class Black and Hispanic voters shrank, too. They lost Mahoning County, once a Democratic stronghold, for the first time since 1972.“For the most part, people lost jobs here and Washington wasn’t doing anything for them,” said David Betras, the former chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party. “And then Trump came along and he said, ‘Hey, they screwed you.’ People thought, ‘At least he sees me. He’s giving me water.’” It might be contaminated water, as Mr. Betras noted, “but at least it’s water.”Mr. Ryan’s attempt to point his party in a different direction in the Midwest is still running up against resistance, even as he has drawn close to Mr. Vance in the polls. The first ad released by Mr. Ryan’s campaign, in April, is Exhibit A.Wearing an untucked shirt, he delivers a barrage against the threat presented by China: “It is us versus China and instead of taking them on, Washington’s wasting our time on stupid fights … China is out-manufacturing us left and right … America can never be dependent on Communist China … It is time for us to fight back … We need to build things in Ohio by Ohio workers.”By the standards of the Ohio Senate race of 2022, it was pretty mild stuff. At an April rally with Mr. Trump, after completing his extreme pivot from Trump critic to acolyte, Mr. Vance lashed out at “corrupt scumbags who take their marching orders from the Communist Chinese.” But the Ryan ad nonetheless got opprobrium from Asian Americans, who said it risked fueling anti-Asian sentiment.Irene Lin, a Democratic strategist based in Ohio, found that remarkable. “It’s so weird that he runs an ad attacking China, and people say, ‘You sound like Trump.’ Tim’s been attacking China for decades! Trump co-opted it from us and we need to take it back, because Trump is a complete fraud on this.”Still, the episode underscored Mr. Ryan’s conundrum: how to match Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance when it comes to the decline of Ohio manufacturing without offending allies within the liberal Democratic coalition.When I asked Mr. Ryan in Zanesville how he would distinguish his own views from those of Mr. Vance, he insisted it would not be difficult. For one thing, he noted, Mr. Vance has attacked a core element of the industrial policy that Mr. Ryan sees as key to reviving Ohio: electric vehicle subsidies. At the Mahoning rallies, Mr. Vance denounced them as giveaways for the elites, which, as Mr. Ryan sees it, overlooks the hundreds of workers who now have jobs at the old Lordstown General Motors plant in the Mahoning Valley, building electric cars, trucks and tractors as part of a new venture led by the Taiwanese company Foxconn, and at a large battery plant across the street.“He’s worried about losing the internal-combustion auto jobs — dude, where’ve you been?” Mr. Ryan asked. “Those jobs are going. That factory was empty.”Mr. Ryan, left, at a debate with his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan says his focus on economic issues will resonate with the “exhausted majority” of voters.Gaelen Morse for The New York TimesLess than two months after Mr. Ryan’s anti-culture war ad, the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs ruling on abortion, bolstering Democrats’ prospects with moderate voters of the sort who help decide elections in places like suburban Columbus — and making it harder for Mr. Ryan to avoid hot-button social issues. He calls the ruling “the largest governmental overreach into personal lives in my lifetime,” but his continued focus on economic issues shows that he believes that’s not enough to win an election. Recent polls suggest he may be right.Mr. Ryan was in the Columbus suburbs on the evening after we spoke in Zanesville, but he was there to discuss the China ad, not abortion. At an event hosted by local Asian American associations, a few women told Mr. Ryan how hurtful they had found the ad. He answered in a conciliatory tone, but did not apologize.The ad, he said, was directed at the Chinese government, not Asian or Asian American people, and the things in it needed saying. “I got nothing but love in my heart. I have no hate in my heart,” he said, but the United States needed to rise to meet China’s aggressive trade policies. In Youngstown, Chinese “steel would land on our shore so subsidized, that it was the same price as the raw material cost for an American company before they even turn the lights on. That is what they have been doing.”“That is not in your ad,” said one of the women. “You need to put those things in your ad.”“I just want to make a point,” Mr. Ryan said. “One is, I love you. Two is, I will always defend you and never let anyone try to hurt you, never. Not on my watch. But we have got to absolutely and decisively defeat China economically. And if we don’t do that, you’re going to have these countries dictating the rules of the road for the entire world and continuing to try to displace and weaken the United States.”Watching Mr. Ryan, I was struck by what a delicate balancing act he was trying to pull off. He was, on the one hand, the last of a breed, a son of steel country with two public college degrees (Bowling Green State University and the University of New Hampshire) in a party increasingly dominated by professionals with elite degrees.But he was trying to adapt to today’s liberal coalition, too, with his soft-edged rhetoric and, yes, the mindfulness stuff, which Mr. Vance has lampooned. (“You know Tim Ryan has not one but two books on yoga and meditation?” he said at the September rally with Mr. Trump.)There were other models on the ballot this fall for how Democrats might seek to win in the Midwest: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan running for re-election on abortion rights, John Fetterman running for Senate in Pennsylvania on his unique brand of postindustrial authenticity, Mandela Barnes running for Senate in Wisconsin as an avatar of youthful diversity.But Mr. Ryan’s bid may have the most riding on it, because it is based on substantive disagreements within the party about how to rebuild the middle class and the middle of the country. For years, too many leading Democrats stood by as the wrenching transformation of the economy devastated communities, while accruing benefits to a small set of highly prosperous cities, mostly on the coasts, that became the party’s gravitational center. It was so easy to disregard far-off desolation — or to take only passing note of it, counting the dollar stores as one happened to traverse areas of decline — until Mr. Trump’s victory brought it to the fore.With its belated embrace of the industrial policy advocated by Mr. Ryan, the Democratic Party seems finally to be reckoning with this failure. It means grappling with regional decline, because not everyone can relocate to prosperous hubs, and even if they did, it wouldn’t necessarily help the Democrats in a political system that favors the geographic dispersal of party voters.It means recognizing the emotional power of made-in-America patriotism, which can serve to neuter the uglier aspects of the opposition’s anti-immigrant appeals. And it means transcending the culture-war incitements offered up by the likes of Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.The approach may well fall short this time in Ohio, because Mr. Ryan’s party has let so much terrain slip out of its hands. But even so, it showed what might have been, all along, and might yet be again, if a region can begin to recover, and the resentment can begin to recede.Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) is a reporter for ProPublica, an editor at large for The Baltimore Banner, and the author, most recently, of “Fulfillment: America in the Shadow of Amazon.”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

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      5 Takeaways From Vance and Ryan’s Final Ohio Senate Debate

      by

      Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican, clashed bitterly over issues of ideology and fitness for office in their final debate in the state’s marquee Senate race, as Mr. Ryan painted his opponent as extreme, and Mr. Vance lashed Mr. Ryan as ineffective and more liberal than he lets on.The contest in a state that former President Donald J. Trump comfortably won twice has remained more competitive than national observers initially expected with Mr. Ryan, a strong fund-raiser, casting himself as an independent voice. Still, he has an uphill climb, and he has not had much assistance so far from national Democrats.Here are five takeaways from their heated hourlong debate in Youngstown, Ohio:A strikingly contentious and sometimes personal hour.The debate crackled with condescension as the two men sparred, reflecting the close nature of the race. At times they referred to each other as “pal,” “our guy” or “buddy.” Mr. Ryan even accused his opponent, in two languages, of being a fraud.“J.D. Vance, all due respect, is a fraud,” Mr. Ryan said as they discussed immigration. Then he invoked a saying from his “little Italian grandmother” that he said translated into, “‘You have two faces.’ One for the camera, and one for your business dealings.”Mr. Vance, for his part, argued that Mr. Ryan was only masquerading as a moderate, and that, for all of his years in government, he had not delivered.J.D. Vance supporters gathered in Youngstown before the Senate debate on Monday.Gaelen Morse for The New York TimesEach man tried to saddle the other with the problems of their national parties.Mr. Vance sought to paint Mr. Ryan as a generic Democrat closely tied to President Biden as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — whom, Mr. Ryan noted, he once challenged for a leadership role.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Questioning 2020: Hundreds of Republicans on the ballot this November have cast doubt on the 2020 election, a Times analysis found. Many of these candidates are favored to win their races.Georgia Senate Race: The contest, which could determine whether Democrats keep control of the Senate, has become increasingly focused on the private life and alleged hypocrisy of Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.“You can’t run from the policies that she supported, that she has shoved down the throat of the people in Ohio,” Mr. Vance said.Mr. Ryan declared, “If you want to run against Nancy Pelosi, move back to San Francisco and run against Nancy Pelosi,” alluding to Mr. Vance’s time there as a venture capitalist.Mr. Ryan, for his part, sought to tie Mr. Vance to the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has campaigned with Mr. Vance. And he looked for ways to highlight his independence from his party, saying, for instance, that “I disagree with President Biden when he’s talking about relaxing some of the regulations down on the border, completely disagree with that.”He also sharply criticized Mr. Vance’s evolution in supporting Mr. Trump. “You were calling Trump America’s Hitler,” he said, adding later that “then he endorsed you and you said he’s the greatest president of all time.”Mr. Vance disputed the characterization. When he was pressed to name an area of disagreement with Mr. Trump, he expressed concerns with some of the more hawkish members of the administration.“The thing that was wrong about the Trump administration is they put a lot of people in the administration, a lot of bad personnel folks, who actually advocated limitless nonstop wars,” he said.A supporter of Mr. Ryan before the debate.Gaelen Morse for The New York TimesA fight over what it means to be extreme on abortion.Ohio became the center of a debate over abortion rights earlier this year when a 10-year-old girl who had been raped traveled across state lines to receive an abortion because of Ohio’s ban on the procedure in many instances. The issue was a flash point in the debate.“J.D. and his extreme crew, they want to have a national abortion ban,” Mr. Ryan said as he pushed for codifying Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned in June. “They’re not happy with people having to go to Illinois. They want people to get a passport and have to go to Canada. Largest governmental overreach in the history of our lifetime.”It was language reminiscent of the privacy-focused message used in Kansas by defenders of abortion rights ahead of a ballot measure on the issue this summer.Mr. Vance has said the 10-year-old should have been able to get an abortion and tried to cast Mr. Ryan as being extreme in his support for abortion rights. He also tried to change the subject by noting that the man who was arrested and charged in the Ohio case was an undocumented immigrant. A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement previously confirmed his undocumented status.Mr. Vance, in an extraordinary leap, tried to pin the blame for the attack on Mr. Ryan: “She would never have been raped in the first place if Tim Ryan had done his job on border security.”Mr. Vance spoke supportively of Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week national abortion ban, but like many Republicans, was reluctant to discuss specifics on abortion exceptions he supported, saying that, for example, while many support exceptions in instances of incest, “an incest exception looks different at three weeks of pregnancy versus 39 weeks of pregnancy.”A question about “great replacement theory” led to the most raw exchange of the night.The candidates were asked about a racist conspiracy theory that concerns the notion of white people being replaced by nonwhite people and has helped inspire mass shootings across the country.Replacement theory has crept into right-wing media, most notably Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News, where Mr. Vance has been a favorite guest. Mr. Ryan lashed Mr. Vance for spending time with lawmakers who “stoke this racial violence” as he described the role the theory played in the Buffalo mass shooting.“You are so desperate for political power that you’ll accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies, of engaging in racism,” shot back Mr. Vance, who added that he is “married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants.”He has warned of an “invasion” from immigrants, and in a campaign ad, suggested loose border policies ensured “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” But he said on Monday that the issue was not “about whites or nonwhites,” but that he was concerned about illegal immigration. “You can believe in a border without being a racist,” he said.“I would never talk about your family, J.D.,” Mr. Ryan said. “You don’t want to talk about the fact that you’re with the extremists in that belief.”“That’s disgusting and I’ve never endorsed it,” Mr. Vance insisted.Senator Rob Portman was the most popular person onstage.Mr. Vance and Mr. Ryan are vying to replace Mr. Portman, the center-right Ohio Republican who is retiring — and while he has endorsed Mr. Vance, both invoked him repeatedly.For Mr. Ryan, doing so signals his interest in bipartisanship. For Mr. Vance, who won the primary with strength from the right, it is a nod to the mainstream.Mr. Vance repeatedly invoked the endorsement. Mr. Ryan noted times when they have collaborated.“I’m not quite sure why Rob Portman endorsed you,” Mr. Ryan said at one point. “You don’t agree with any of the compromises that he’s been able to make in the last year.”Trip Gabriel More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      In Midterm TV Ad Wars, Sticker Shock Costs Republicans

      by

      Football fans in Las Vegas tuning into the Raiders game on Oct. 2 had to sit through multiple political ads, including one from Nevada’s endangered Democratic senator and another from a Republican super PAC trying to defeat her.The ads were each 30 seconds — but the costs were wildly different.The Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, paid $21,000. The Republican super PAC paid $150,000.That $129,000 disparity for a single ad — an extra $4,300 per second — is one sizable example of how Republican super PACs are paying a steep premium to compete on the airwaves with Democratic candidates, a trend that is playing out nationwide with cascading financial consequences for the House and Senate battlefield. Hour after hour in state after state, Republicans are paying double, triple, quadruple and sometimes even 10 times more than Democrats for ads on the exact same programs.One reason is legal and beyond Republicans’ control. But the other is linked to the weak fund-raising of Republican candidates this year and the party’s heavy dependence on billionaire-funded super PACs.Political candidates are protected under a federal law that allows them to pay the lowest price available for broadcast ads. Super PACs have no such protections, and Republicans have been more reliant on super PACs this year because their candidates have had trouble fund-raising. So Democrats have been the ones chiefly benefiting from the mandated low pricing, and Republicans in many top races have been at the mercy of the exorbitant rates charged by television stations as the election nears.The issue may seem arcane. But strategists in both parties say it has become hugely consequential in midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.From Labor Day through early this week, Senate Republican super PACs and campaigns spent more than their opponents on the airwaves in key races in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Hampshire, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact. But when measured in rating points — a metric of how many people saw the ads — the Democratic ads were seen more times in each of those states, according to two Democratic officials tracking media purchases.In other words, Democrats got more for less.“One of the challenges we face in taking back the House is the eye-popping differences between what Democrat incumbents and Republican challengers are raising — and what that affords them in terms of different advertising rates,” said Dan Conston, who heads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership that has raised $220 million and is one of the nation’s biggest television spenders.The price differences can be jarring.In Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate, paid $650 for a recent ad on the 6 a.m. newscast of the local Fox affiliate. The leading Republican super PAC paid $2,400.In Nevada, Ms. Cortez Masto paid $720 for an ad on CBS’s Sunday news show. Another Republican super PAC, the Club for Growth, paid $12,000.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.And in Arizona, Senator Mark Kelly has been paying $2,000 per spot on the evening news on the ABC affiliate. A Republican super PAC is paying $5,000.An analysis by The New York Times of Federal Communications Commission records, along with interviews with media buyers in both parties, shows just how much the different prices that candidates and super PACs pay is influencing the 2022 midterm landscape.“What matters at the end of the day is what number of people see an ad, which isn’t measured in dollars,” said Tim Cameron, a Republican strategist and media buyer, referring to the rating-points metric.The partisan split between advertising purchased by candidates versus super PACs is vast.In Senate races, Democratic candidates have reserved or spent nearly $170 million more than Republican candidates in the general election on television, radio and digital ads, according to AdImpact.The price that super PACs pay is driven by supply and demand, and television stations charge Republicans and Democrats the same prices when they book at the same time. So Democrats have super PACs that pay higher rates, too. But the party is less reliant on them. Republicans have a nearly $95 million spending edge over Democrats among super PACs and other outside groups involved in Senate races, according to AdImpact. That money just doesn’t go nearly as far.Several candidates who were weak at raising funds won Republican nominations in key Senate races, including in New Hampshire, Arizona and Ohio, and that has hobbled the party.“We’re working hard to make up the gap where we can,” said Steven Law, the head of the leading Senate Republican super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.But Democrats — buoyed by robust donations through ActBlue, the Democratic online donation-processing platform — are announcing eye-popping money hauls ahead of Saturday’s third-quarter filing deadline that are helping them press their advantage. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia raised $26.3 million. In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Senate nominee, raised $22 million. Mr. Ryan raised $17.2 million. Ms. Cortez Masto raised $15 million.“It’s a simple fact that candidates pay lower rates than outside groups, which means Democrats’ ActBlue cash tsunami could wipe out an underfunded Republican,” Mr. Law said.Republicans are hardly cash-poor. The Senate Leadership Fund alone has reserved more than $170 million in ads since Labor Day and raised more than $1 million per day in the third quarter. But the ad rates are eroding that money’s buying power.In the top nine Senate battlegrounds that drew significant outside spending, Republicans spent about 6.66 percent more on ads than Democrats from Labor Day through earlier this week, according to one of the Democratic officials tracking the media buys. But the Democratic money had gone further when measured by rating points, outpacing Republican ad viewership by 8 percent.In Nevada, for instance, the super PAC that paid $150,000 for the single commercial on Oct. 2, Our American Century, has been funded chiefly by a $10 million contribution by Steve Wynn, the casino magnate. Yet for a comparable price of $161,205, Ms. Cortez Masto was able to air 79 ads that week on the same station: daily spots each on the local news, daytime soap operas, “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” as well as in prime time — plus the Oct. 2 football ad, Federal Communications Commission records show.Las Vegas is perhaps the most congested market for political ads in the nation, with multiple contested House races, a swing Senate contest and a tight governor’s election, and some ballot measures. Both Democratic and Republican media-buying sources said the rates for super PACs had been up to 10 times that of candidates in some recent weeks.In a recent one-week period, Ms. Cortez Masto spent $197,225 on 152 spots on the local Fox station, an average price of $1,300 per 30 seconds. The Club for Growth Action, a Republican super PAC, spent $473,000 for only 52 spots — an average price of nearly $9,100 per 30 seconds.Republicans feel they have no choice but to pony up.“Republicans are facing a hard-money deficit, and it’s up to groups like Club for Growth Action to help make up the difference in these key races,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth.Some strategists have privately pressed super PACs to invest more heavily in digital advertising, where candidate rates are not protected. Super PACs pay similar amounts and sometimes can even negotiate discounts because of their volume of ads. But old habits, and the continued influence of television on voters, means much of the funds are still going to broadcast.“Super PACs have one charter: to win races. And so they spend there because they have to,” said Evan Tracey, a Republican media buyer. “They’re not running a business in the sense that shareholders are going to be outraged that they have to spend more for the same asset. It’s a cost of doing business.”The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has faced financial problems this year, cut millions of its reserved television “independent expenditures,” which are booked at the same rate as super PACs. Instead, in a creative and penny-pinching move, the committee rebooked some of that money in concert with Senate campaigns, splitting costs through a complex mechanism that limits what the ads can say — candidates can be mentioned during only half the airtime — but receives the better, candidate ad rates.Still, in Arizona, some of the canceled reservations from top Republican groups have further exacerbated the ad-rate disparity in the Senate race. That is because the party gave back early reservations only to have other super PACs step in — and pay even more.For instance, the Senate committee originally had reserved two ads for that Oct. 2 football game for $30,000 each and the Senate Leadership Fund had reserved another for $30,000. All three were canceled.Instead, a new Republican super PAC, the Sentinel Action Fund, booked two ads during the same game but had to pay $100,000 because rates had risen — forking over $10,000 more for one fewer ad.Data from one Republican media-buying firm showed that in Arizona, ads supporting Mr. Kelly, the Democrat, amounted to 84 percent of what viewers saw even though the pro-Kelly side accounted for only 74 percent of the dollars spent.The Sentinel Action Fund was paying $1,775 per rating point — a measurement of viewership — while Mr. Kelly’s campaign was spending around $300 per point, according to the Republican data. Blake Masters, Mr. Kelly’s Republican opponent, was receiving a price close to Mr. Kelly’s but could afford only a tiny fraction of the ad budget (around $411,000, compared with Mr. Kelly’s $3.3 million for a recent two-week period).“The disparity between Democratic campaigns’ strong fund-raising and Republican campaigns’ weak fund-raising is forcing the G.O.P. super PACs to make difficult decisions even though there continues to be a deluge of outside money on their side,” said David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.In Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund announced in August that it was making a $28 million television and radio reservation to prop up J.D. Vance, the best-selling author and first-time Republican candidate who emerged from the primary with a limited fund-raising apparatus.But despite outspending the Democratic candidate in dollars — the super PAC paid $3 million last week for ads, compared with Mr. Ryan’s nearly $1.5 million — Republicans were still at a disadvantage: Mr. Ryan’s campaign was sometimes getting more airtime, according to media buyers and F.C.C. records.The Republican super PAC was paying four or five times more than Mr. Ryan for ads on the same shows. And the sticker shock on big sports events is the most intense: On WJW, the Fox affiliate in Cleveland, last week’s Big Ten college football game cost Mr. Ryan $3,000 — and $30,000 for the Senate Leadership Fund. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Six Takeaways From the Vance-Ryan Debate for Senate in Ohio

      by

      In a sometimes heated, often personal debate, the two candidates vying for the seat of the retiring Senator Rob Portman — Representative Tim Ryan and the investor J.D. Vance — each took turns accusing the other of being elite and out of touch, while claiming the mantle of working-class defender.Here are six takeaways from the one and only Ohio Senate debate.Extremism vs. the economyMr. Ryan, the Democrat, had the difficult task of tarring Mr. Vance, the Republican, as a “MAGA extremist” without alienating supporters of Donald J. Trump in a state where Mr. Trump remains popular and which he won twice. He did so by saying Mr. Vance is “running around with the election deniers, the extremists,” like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and supporting some of the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.But in a state that has for decades worried about the economy and the loss of manufacturing jobs, Mr. Vance had a ready pivot: “I find it interesting how preoccupied you are with this at a time when people can’t afford groceries,” he told his opponent.China, China, ChinaMr. Ryan set the tone of his underdog campaign from the start with an advertisement attacking China, and he didn’t let up in the debate. He repeatedly accused Mr. Vance of investing in companies that did business with China or shipped jobs there. Mr. Vance taunted him with “name one.”China even muddied what had been a clear foreign policy debate. Mr. Vance stuck to the “America First” position of his benefactor, Mr. Trump, when it came to Ukraine, saying Democrats were “sleepwalking into a nuclear war.” But asked about defending Taiwan against a hypothetical Chinese attack, he shifted. “Taiwan is a much different situation than Russia and Ukraine,” Mr. Vance said.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.Herschel Walker: A woman who said that the G.O.P. Senate nominee in Georgia paid for her abortion in 2009 told The Times that he urged her to terminate a second pregnancy two years later. She chose to have their son instead.Will the Walker Allegations Matter?: The scandal could be decisive largely because of the circumstances in Georgia, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Pennsylvania Senate Race: John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, says he can win over working-class voters in deep-red counties. But as polls tighten in the contest, that theory is under strain.Change vs. serviceMr. Vance tried to present himself as an agent of change who would shake things up in Washington, accusing Mr. Ryan of being a career politician who accomplished little during his many years in the House. Embracing term limits, he said Mr. Ryan’s native northeast Ohio would have been better off if its congressman had left Washington a while ago and gotten a job in Youngstown.That riled Mr. Ryan, who spoke about his family’s history of service through its Catholic church — including running the “beer tent” at church events. “I’m not going to apologize for spending 20 years slogging away to try to help one of the hardest economically hit regions of Ohio,” he said. Adding that Mr. Vance should be ashamed of himself, he snapped, “You went off to California drinking wine and eating cheese.”Mr. Vance, putting himself forward as a young, savvy businessman more than as an acolyte of Mr. Trump, said he admires service. “What I don’t admire,” he said, “is the failure of accomplishment.”Crime and policingThe candidates struck a rare note of bipartisan accord on the need for local police departments to hire more officers, with Mr. Ryan boasting of delivering $500 million in federal funds for Ohio police through a pandemic relief bill. But then the debate took a nasty swerve. Mr. Ryan accused Mr. Vance of encouraging donations to Jan. 6 rioters who injured some 140 officers in the siege of the Capitol, warning his opponent, “Don’t even try to deny it.”“We’ve got your Twitter posts and everything else,” Mr. Ryan said. “He’s raising money for the insurrectionists who were beating up the Capitol Police.”Mr. Vance did not respond to the charge. Instead, he attacked Mr. Ryan for comments he made during civil disturbances in American cities after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.“Tim Ryan threw the police under the bus,” Mr. Vance said. “He attacked them as the new Jim Crow, as systemically racist, and he voted for legislation that would have stripped funding from them and redirected it toward litigation defense.”Separating from the partyThe Democrats may be trying to label Republicans allied with Mr. Trump as extremists, but it was Mr. Ryan, not Mr. Vance, who was looking for distance from his party leadership. He reiterated his view that President Biden should not run for re-election, and instead should give way to “generational change.” He called Vice President Kamala Harris “absolutely wrong” for saying the southern border is secure. And he insisted he had been a pain in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rear end.“I’m not here to toe the party line,” he said, mocking Mr. Vance for slavishly standing by Mr. Trump even when the former president said that the candidate must grovel to him, while using coarser language.A game changer? Not likely.The Senate campaign has been spirited and may be close, which is remarkable considering the Republican bent of the state and the commanding lead that its Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has in his quest for re-election. But Mr. Ryan has a tall order: He must persuade hundreds of thousands of Republican voters to cast their ballots for a Democrat in a year when the Democratic president is unpopular and the economy is faltering.Mr. Vance, after a heated primary season, has been accused of coasting through the summer, and he entered the debate with low expectations. But he knew the bar was low for him to prove himself palatable enough to ride Mr. DeWine’s coattails and the broader political winds. He most likely did that. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      The Vance-Ryan Senate Race In Ohio Appears Closer Than Once Expected

      by

      Less than two months before Election Day, the Ohio Senate race appears tighter than many once expected in a state that former President Donald J. Trump won by eight percentage points in 2020 — even as there are clear reminders of the limitations Democrats face there.From mid-May until the beginning of August, Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, the Democratic nominee, had the airwaves to himself, according to AdImpact, the media tracking firm. He has also had a significant cash advantage over his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, who won a brutal primary with assistance from Mr. Trump, who endorsed him and is set to campaign with him in Youngstown, Ohio, on Saturday.Mr. Ryan, who had an easier primary season, used those advantages in an effort to define himself early as an independent-minded “fighter” for Ohio, highlighting his differences with the national Democratic Party at every turn.He and other Democrats have also moved to brand Mr. Vance as an inauthentic San Francisco transplant.Mr. Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy” who once identified as a “Never Trump guy,” grew up in Middletown, Ohio, but later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Midterm Data: Could the 2020 polling miss repeat itself? Will this election cycle really be different? Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at the data in his new newsletter.Republicans’ Abortion Struggles: Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban was intended to unite the G.O.P. before the November elections. But it has only exposed the party’s divisions.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.“J.D. was born and raised in Ohio,” Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for the Vance campaign, said in a statement as he sought to tie Mr. Ryan to Washington Democrats.For all of Mr. Vance’s structural challenges over the summer, much of the available polling suggests a very close race in a state that shifted to the right in the Trump era, and Democrats are bracing for a challenging fall in key races across the country.Mr. Vance is now on the airwaves, assisted by significant outside spending. He, like other Republican candidates, is seeking to go on offense by emphasizing the issue of crime.And while Democrats see openings to paint Mr. Vance as extreme on the issue of abortion, they continue to face a difficult national environment defined by concerns about inflation and by President Biden’s approval numbers, which have improved but are still underwater.“He claims to be an independent voice, but in D.C., he votes with Biden and Pelosi 100 percent of the time,” Mr. Schroeder said in a statement about Mr. Ryan — a reflection of how Republicans are seeking to nationalize the race..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Ryan’s campaign argued that he had spent far more time campaigning in Ohio in recent months than Mr. Vance had.“This race is one of the most competitive in the country because Tim Ryan has outworked and outcampaigned” Mr. Vance, said Izzi Levy, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan. She accused Mr. Vance of spending “the four months since his primary hiding from Ohioans and traveling far from Ohio.”Some Republicans, too, have voiced concerns over what they saw as a limited campaigning effort from their nominee for much of the summer.J.D. Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” grew up in Ohio and later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.Emil Lippe for The New York Times“From that point as he won in May, he seemed to be running a stealth campaign, kind of like a former presidential candidate in 2020 was doing,” said David G. Arredondo, the executive committee chairman of the Lorain County Republican Party, referring to Mr. Biden’s limited in-person campaigning in the last presidential election at the height of the pandemic, which some mocked as a “basement strategy.” But Mr. Arredondo said he understood the approach.“Whether J.D. was in the basement or hanging out with his family, who knows, but I was not concerned,” he said, emphasizing that the campaign has accelerated in recent weeks, just as voters traditionally tune in — Mr. Vance is expected in Lorain County on Saturday. “And it was hard for me to convince my fellow Republicans, don’t worry, don’t worry, he’s going to be OK.”“Their sentiment is now changing,” he added.His campaign event on Saturday evening with Mr. Trump is at the same time as a football game between Ohio State and the University of Toledo, a point the Ohio Democratic Party has used to cast Mr. Vance as an out-of-stater: “Having a campaign event on a fall Saturday night is a cardinal sin in Ohio,” a statement from the party read. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats’ Midterm Dilemma: How to Back Biden, Yet Shun Him, Too

      by

      When President Biden appeared in central Ohio on Friday for the groundbreaking of a semiconductor manufacturing facility, he was joined by Tim Ryan, the Democrat running for Senate. The party’s candidate for governor, however, did not attend, saying from afar that she appreciated Mr. Biden’s visit to her state.Five days earlier, in Wisconsin, another crucial midterm battleground, the situation was reversed: Gov. Tony Evers shared a stage with the president at a Labor Day speech, while the state’s Democratic candidate for the Senate stayed away, marching in a parade beforehand but skipping Mr. Biden’s address.As they move into the final stretch of the midterm campaigns, Democratic candidates find themselves performing a complicated dance with an unpopular president, whose approval rating is rising but still remains stubbornly underwater. In ways big and small, Democrats have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, without alienating their base or distancing themselves from key parts of Mr. Biden’s agenda.It’s a dynamic that presidents often confront in midterm cycles. What has been especially striking this year is the degree to which Democrats have outperformed the president. Even those who say they somewhat disapprove of Mr. Biden were more inclined to vote for Democrats than Republicans in a Pew Research Center survey last month. Private polling conducted for the House Democratic campaign committee found that the net job approval of their most vulnerable incumbents, on average, was more than 20 points ahead of Mr. Biden’s, a dynamic that emerged as early as April and remained consistent at least through late August, according to a committee official.The distance between Mr. Biden and his party has forced Democrats to chart a particularly treacherous course in these midterms, in which success means defying nearly a half century of political history. The last time a party maintained control of Congress with a relatively unpopular president was in 1978. That November, Jimmy Carter’s approval rating hovered around 50 percent and Mr. Biden won re-election to a second Senate term.Those races are ancient history now to most in his party, who must navigate an intricate set of political decisions about how to deploy their leader in the midterms as the president accelerates his fall campaign schedule. The tensions are most acute in Senate races, where Democrats see a stronger opportunity to retain control than in the House. Candidates in both House and Senate contests have said pointedly, when asked about the president, that they are focused on their own races.“We’ve been very clear that I disagree with the president on things,” said Mr. Ryan, the Ohio congressman and Senate candidate whose contest in recent weeks has become more competitive than originally expected in a fairly Republican state. “People recognize that I am going to be for Ohio.”Tim Ryan, holding his son Brady, met voters at an Ohio State football game earlier in September.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Biden has joked that he will campaign for or against a candidate, “whichever will help the most” — a lighthearted acknowledgment from a political veteran that each candidate must make their own political calculations about their ties to the White House. Party leaders, candidates and the president have sought to recast the election as a choice between two radically different visions for the country, rather than the traditional midterm referendum on the president and his agenda.But the president’s advisers say they believe that Mr. Biden — who was a highly sought-after surrogate in 2018 — remains one of his party’s strongest messengers.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.Intraparty G.O.P. Fight: Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, mainstream Republicans have been vying to stop a Trump-style 2020 election denier running for Senate.Abortion Ballot Measures: First came Kansas. Now, Michigan voters will decide whether abortion will remain legal in their state. Democrats are hoping referendums like these will drive voter turnout.Oz Sharpens Attacks: As the Pennsylvania Senate race tightens, Dr. Mehmet Oz is trying to reboot his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, with a pair of pointed attack lines.In recent weeks, he has traveled to Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for events, appearing with a number of Democrats in challenging races. This week, he plans to appear with Maura Healey, the Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts, and is expected to headline a fund-raiser for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Biden adviser said.At a summer gathering of the Democratic National Committee in Maryland, where Mr. Biden spoke on Thursday, a number of party officials argued that the president should be embraced across the country, emphasizing the burst of legislative achievements enacted under his watch in recent weeks. His allies argue that, unlike in 2010 and 2014, when vulnerable Democrats ran away from signature accomplishments of the Obama administration like the Affordable Care Act, many candidates are running on Mr. Biden’s agenda this year.“He has so many bold and broad accomplishments that he can go a bunch of places and talk to people about what he was able to accomplish,” said Cedric Richmond, a close Biden adviser who was dispatched to the D.N.C. ahead of the midterm campaigns.That balancing act between supporting Mr. Biden’s agenda and keeping the president at arm’s length will only become more difficult this fall, as Republicans plan to unleash tens of millions of dollars of advertising tying Mr. Biden to candidates.Mr. Biden’s recent visits to key swing states have prompted grumbling from strategists who fear the visits distract from their efforts to localize their races and keep the focus on missteps by their Republican opponents.Some candidates, like Mandela Barnes, the Senate nominee in Wisconsin, have skipped stops with the president. Former Representative Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina Democrat now running for governor in that largely conservative state, has gone further than many in his party by openly calling on Mr. Biden to forgo re-election to make way for a younger generation.“I’m not running against him, and I’m not running with him — I’m running against McMaster,” Mr. Cunningham said, referring to his Republican opponent, Gov. Henry McMaster.Another group of candidates has highlighted policy disagreements on issues like Mr. Biden’s student loan proposal and his plans to lift Covid-era border restrictions, in an effort to appeal to the independent voters who helped power Mr. Biden’s victory.Many try to reference the president only in passing, if at all. Just three Democrats have run ads that even mention Mr. Biden in their general election campaigns, all of which stress their independence from the president, according to AdImpact, the media tracking firm.Representative Kim Schrier, Democrat of Washington, has aired an ad highlighting her political independence, featuring both a Republican and a Democratic mayor and emphasizing her work on bills passed under both Mr. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Earlier this summer, she aired an ad that highlighted “taking on the Biden administration to suspend the gas tax.”“I will work with anybody for the benefit of the district,” she said in an interview. “I will also hold either president accountable” when it comes to constituent interests, she said.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm, said that, overall, candidates in tight races are “making some version of the same argument, which is, ‘I know you have doubts about my party, but I’m getting the job done.’”A number of candidates have appeared with Mr. Biden in their capacities as government officials when he has visited their states to tout legislative achievements. It has been a way to suggest that they are fighting at the highest levels for local priorities, without necessarily rallying with him.When the president appeared in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in late August to discuss public safety, touting the federal money going to bolster community policing in the area, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee running for governor, was in attendance — in his government role as state attorney general, his office indicated.Mr. Biden in West Mifflin, Pa., at a Labor Day event attended by the Senate candidate John Fetterman, right.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhether voters draw such distinctions is another matter, especially because Mr. Biden has discussed the midterm elections at some of these events. In Pennsylvania, he praised Mr. Shapiro as well as John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate. Mr. Fetterman did not attend that event but later appeared with Mr. Biden in Pittsburgh on Labor Day. At one point in Wilkes-Barre, Mr. Biden reversed the offices for which they were running, saying of the roughly 6-foot-8 Mr. Fetterman, “Elect that big ol’ boy to be governor.”Mr. Biden, too, has a lot at stake in these elections. Midterm victories could provide a powerful counterpoint to those in the party arguing that he should not run for re-election in 2024. The president has already positioned the midterm races as a proxy war with his former rival, Mr. Trump, who harbors his own ambitions for a second presidential term.Representative Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat running in a highly competitive seat, said he felt “​​much better about things than I did three or four months ago.” He said the political landscape seemed to be changing because of the spurt of legislative achievements Democrats had landed and concern over abortion rights, while Republicans “seem increasingly stuck in the mud of Mar-a-Lago.”Asked if it would be helpful for the president to campaign with him, Mr. Malinowski replied, “I’d be happy for Biden or any president to come to my district to help me deliver for my constituents as he has.”“Donald Trump,” he added, “came to my district to play golf.” More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Do You Think Your Newfound Popularity Has Something to Do With Politics?

      by

      We’re getting Senate serious, people. And it’s all about you. The candidates need you, even if your home state doesn’t have a real nail-biter. (Chuck Schumer is going to be re-elected in New York. You heard it here first.)No matter where you’ve been over the summer, I bet you spent some of your time plowing through emails from Senate hopefuls asking you for money.It can get a tad … dispiriting. You wake up and take a look at your inbox. When you see there are over 50 new messages waiting, you have to assume that a few are actually from people you know.Nah. The one titled “Dinner Plans” isn’t about date night. Catherine Cortez Masto, the senator from Nevada, wants you to know that she and her husband just finished eating, and that while he’s doing the dishes, she’s got time to share a quick fund-raising request.(Let’s at least rejoice that no male Democratic senator will dare write you saying he’s reaching out while his wife cleans up the kitchen.)Last weekend, John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, was so engrossed in the meaning of Labor Day that he announced he’d decided to celebrate by not emailing anybody on Monday. (“… and that means we need today’s fund-raising to make up the difference.”)And when Labor Day did arrive, Fetterman …A. Took the day off and spent it watching “Sopranos” reruns.B. Challenged his staff to a Wordle competition.C. Wrote “I know I said I wasn’t going to email you today, but I want to share some thoughts.”Yeah, I know you know it’s “I know….”Val Demings, who’s running for Senate in Florida, sent me way more letters in August than anyone in my family did, all about her desperate need for funds to win what sounded like a very, very, very hard-fought primary — which, it turned out, she won with 84 percent of the vote. Demings piled up more than $47 million, some of which she still has on hand for her race against Marco Rubio.This is not a bad thing. I’ll bet her primary donors won’t mind having their money used to knock off Senator Rubio, a raving foe of abortion rights who recently called the Mar-a-Lago document scandal a “storage” issue.Of course, despite her big haul, Demings is right back blowing the emergency whistle. “I’m sorry to crowd your inbox, friend,” she wrote on Wednesday, warning that her campaign was “still short of our upcoming midnight fund-raising goal.”Cynics might presume that no candidate has ever, in history, actually reached a fund-raising goal. Really, do you ever remember getting a note saying: “Thanks, guys! We’ve got all the money we need now! Give to your pet shelter.”You do have to feel some sympathy — Senate campaigns are wicked expensive. The question is whether you should respond to this barrage of email requests for donations. The downside, as you probably suspect, is that it will make you an even more popular target.But do you want to tell all these candidates that if they need money, they’d better go to the PACs and corporate sponsors? Come on.“This is right now a kind of necessary evil,” Daniel Weiner of the Brennan Center said.“It’s the choice between a couple of wealthy donors or grass-roots fund-raising.”So if you’re reading all the stories about the critical Senate races in places like Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, it’s hard to tell yourself they’re none of your business. We’re talking about who controls the Senate — not to mention whether the nation will be spending another two years obsessing over the mind and mood of Joe Manchin.But it’s also hard to make a donation and keep your name from being given to — or purchased by — other campaigns. As it stands, this information is just another commodity. Sure, the Federal Election Commission could limit the sale of email lists. “But that’s going to be a bit of an uphill battle,” said Weiner, who spends a large part of his parental visits cleaning out his mother’s backed-up inbox.You can get yourself off any individual candidate’s list — there should be an “unsubscribe” option somewhere at the bottom of every plea. Or, if you’re not obsessive about keeping your inbox tidy, you can just ignore the emails and let them stack up — my husband is closing in on 85,000.I’m a deleter but also a kind of collector. Some of these campaigns do have particular … personalities.For instance, Tim Ryan, the Democrats’ Senate candidate in Ohio, is a mega-mailer who appears to be in a serious funk. “This is BAD,” began one of his recent missives, along with another announcing “A HUGE setback.” And, perhaps most distressing from the readers’ side, one that promised, “This is the longest email I’ll ever send you.”Don’t over-worry, Ryan fans — he’s doing better than expected in a state that’s become very tough for his party. And remember, this is the season when candidates try to sound as desperate as possible.Anyhow, it’s a good week for getting involved. We’re coming to the big finale. Look around and see who you’d like to help. Doesn’t have to be the Senate. Although, unless you have a deep personal connection, it’s probably OK to ignore all those requests from candidates for lieutenant governor.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

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      ‘A Stirring of Democratic Hearts’: Three Writers Discuss a Transformed Midterm Landscape

      by

      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Molly Jong-Fast, the writer of the “Wait, What?” newsletter for The Atlantic, and Doug Sosnik, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, to discuss whether the Democrats have shifted the narrative of the midterm elections.FRANK BRUNI: Doug, Molly, an apology — because we’re doing this in cyberspace rather than a physical place, I cannot offer you any refreshments, which is a shame, because I do a killer crudité.MOLLY JONG-FAST: The case of Dr. Oz is baffling. I continue to be completely in awe of how bad he is at this.DOUG SOSNIK: He is a terrible candidate, but he is really just one of many right-wing and unqualified candidates running for the Senate and governor. Herschel Walker in Georgia and most of the Republican ticket in Arizona are probably even more unqualified.BRUNI: Let’s pivot from roughage to the rough-and-tumble of the midterms. There’s a stirring of Democratic hearts, a blooming of Democratic hopes, a belief that falling gas prices, key legislative accomplishments and concern about abortion rights equal a reprieve from the kind of midterm debacle that Democrats feared just a month or two ago.Doug, do you now envision Democrats doing much better than we once thought possible?SOSNIK: I do. Up until the start of the primaries and the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, this looked like a classic midterm election in which the party in power gets shellacked. It has happened in the past four midterm elections.BRUNI: Is it possible we’re reading too much into the abortion factor?JONG-FAST: No, abortion is a much bigger deal than any of the pundit class realizes. Because abortion isn’t just about abortion.BRUNI: Doug, do you agree?SOSNIK: I am increasingly nervous about making predictions, but I do feel safe in saying that this issue will increase in importance as more people see the real-life implications of the Roe decision. So, yes, I agree that it will impact the midterms. But it will actually take on even more importance in 2024 and beyond.JONG-FAST: One of the biggest things we’ve seen since the Dobbs decision is doctors terrified to treat women who are having gynecological complications. In 1973, one of the reasons Roe was decided so broadly was because some doctors didn’t feel safe treating women. We’re having a messy return to that, which is a nightmare for the right.SOSNIK: For decades, the getting-candidates-elected wing of the Republican Party — which means people like Mitch McConnell — has had a free ride with the issue of abortion. They have been able to use it to seed their base but have not been forced to pay a political price. With the overturning of Roe, that has all changed. And polling shows that a majority of Americans don’t agree with their extreme positions.JONG-FAST: I also think a lot of suburban women are really, really mad, and people who don’t care about politics at all are furious. Remember the whole news cycle devoted to the 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio having to go out of state for an abortion. Roe is seismic.BRUNI: I noticed that in an NBC News poll released last week, abortion wasn’t one of the top five answers when voters were asked about the most important issue facing the country. Fascinatingly — and to me, hearteningly — more voters chose threats to democracy than the cost of living or jobs and the economy. Do you think that could truly be a motivating, consequential factor in the midterms? Or do you think abortion will still make the bigger difference?SOSNIK: There are two issues in midterms: turnout and persuasion. I am quite confident that the abortion issue will motivate people to vote. The NBC poll shows that Democrats have closed the enthusiasm gap for voting to two points, which since March is a 15-point improvement. And for persuasion, those suburban women swing voters will be motivated by this issue to not only vote but to vote against the Republicans.BRUNI: Is this election really going to be all about turnout, or will swing voters matter just as much? And which groups of Democratic voters are you most worried won’t, in the end, turn out to the extent that they should?SOSNIK: Yes, this midterm will be primarily about turnout. For Democrats, I would start by worrying about young people turning out, which was no doubt on the administration’s mind when it released a plan on Wednesday to forgive student loans.There is also a pretty sizable group of Democrats who have soured on President Biden. They are critical for the Democrats to turn out.BRUNI: Molly, Doug just mentioned President Biden’s announcement that he was forgiving some college debt for some Americans. Is that decision likely to be a net positive for the party, drawing grateful voters to the polls, or a net negative, alienating some Democrats — and energizing many Republicans — who think he’s being fiscally profligate and playing favorites?JONG-FAST: I grew up extremely privileged and for years grappled with the issue of fairness. In my mind, $10,000 was the floor for debt forgiveness. I am particularly pleased with the $20,000 for Pell grant recipients who qualify. I never thought America was a fair country, and it’s become increasingly unfair. Biden was elected with this promise, and he’s keeping it. I think that should help turn out the base.SOSNIK: Student loan forgiveness is a Rorschach test for voters. If you believe in government and a progressive agenda, it is great news. If you think that the Democrats are a bunch of big spenders and worried about the elites — the 38 percent of the country that gets a four-year college degree — then it will work against them.BRUNI: Will former President Donald Trump’s feud with the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. after the Mar-a-Lago search boost Republican turnout and work to the party’s advantage?JONG-FAST: Trump has been fighting with parts of the government for years. I’m not sure how fresh that narrative is. The people who are Trump’s people will continue to be Trump’s people, but much of this persecution-complex narrative is old.SOSNIK: The F.B.I. raid goes with several other items — Jan. 6, Roe, the Trump-endorsed right-wing nominees — that are driving this to be what I’d call a choice election.There have been only two elections since World War II when the incumbent party did not lose House seats in the midterms — 1998 and 2002 — 2002 was an outlier, since it was really a reaction to 9/11.Nineteen ninety-eight was a choice election: We were in the middle of impeachment when the country largely felt that the Republicans were overreaching; 2022 could be only the second choice midterm election since World War II.BRUNI: Democratic hopes focus on keeping control of the Senate or even expanding their majority there. Is the House a lost cause?JONG-FAST: The result of the special election in New York’s 19th Congressional District on Tuesday — widely considered a bellwether contest for control of the House in November, and in which the Democrat, Pat Ryan, beat a well-known, favored Republican, Marc Molinaro, by two points — makes people think that it is possible for Democrats to keep the House.I know that Democrats have about dozens of fewer safe seats than Republicans. And they hold a very slim majority — Republicans need to pick up a net of five seats to regain the majority. But I still think it’s possible Democrats hold the House.SOSNIK: It will be very difficult for the Democrats to hold the House. They have one of the narrowest margins in the House since the late-19th century. Because of reapportionment and redistricting, the Republicans have a much more favorable battlefield. There are now, in the new map, 16 seats held by Democrats in districts that would have likely voted for Trump. Expecting a bad cycle, over 30 Democrats in the House announced that they would retire.The Cook Report has the Republicans already picking up a net of seven seats, with the majority of the remaining competitive races held by Democrats.BRUNI: I’m going to list Democratic candidates in high-profile Senate races in purple or reddish states that aren’t incontrovertibly hostile terrain for the party. For each candidate, tell me if you think victory is probable, possible or improbable. Be bold.John Fetterman, Pennsylvania.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Raphael Warnock, Georgia.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Cheri Beasley, North Carolina.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Possible.BRUNI: Val Demings, Florida.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Ugh, Florida.BRUNI: Mark Kelly, Arizona.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Tim Ryan, Ohio.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Possible.BRUNI: Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: ​​ Name a Democratic candidate this cycle — for Senate, House or governor — who has most positively surprised and impressed you, and tell me why.JONG-FAST: Fetterman is really good at this, and so is his wife. Ryan has been really good. I think Mandela Barnes is really smart. I’ve interviewed all of those guys for my podcast and thought they were just really good at messaging in a way Democrats are historically not. Val Demings is a once-in-a-lifetime politician, but Florida is Florida.SOSNIK: Tim Ryan. I don’t know if he can win, but he has proved that a Democrat can be competitive in a state that I now consider a Republican stronghold.BRUNI: OK, let’s do a lightning round of final questions. For starters, the Biden presidency so far, rated on a scale of 1 (big disappointment) to 5 (big success), with a sentence or less justifying your rating.JONG-FAST: Four. I wasn’t a Biden person, but he’s quietly gotten a lot done, more than I thought he could.SOSNIK: Four. They have accomplished a lot under very difficult circumstances.BRUNI: The percentage chance that Biden runs for a second term?JONG-FAST: Fifty percent.SOSNIK: Twenty-five percent.BRUNI: If Biden doesn’t run and there’s a Democratic primary, name someone other than or in addition to Kamala Harris whom you’d like to see enter the fray, and tell me in a phrase why.JONG-FAST: I hate this question. I want to move to a pineapple under the sea.SOSNIK: Sherrod Brown. He is an authentic person who understands the pulse of this country.JONG-FAST: I also like Sherrod Brown.BRUNI: What’s the one issue you think is being most shortchanged, not just in discussions about the midterms but in our political discussions generally?JONG-FAST: The Supreme Court. If Democrats keep the House and the Senate, Biden is still going to have to deal with the wildly out-of-step courts. He will hate doing that, but he’s going to have to.SOSNIK: I agree with Molly. On a broader level, we have just completed a realignment in American politics where class, more than race, is driving our politics.BRUNI: Last but by no means least, you must spend either an hour over crudité with the noted gourmand Mehmet Oz or an hour gardening with the noted environmentalist Herschel Walker. What do you choose, and briefly, why?JONG-FAST: I’m a terrible hypochondriac, and Oz was an extremely good surgeon. I would spend an hour with him talking about all my medical anxieties. Does this mole look like anything?SOSNIK: The fact that you are raising that question tells you how bad the candidate recruitment has been for the Republicans this cycle.Other than carrying a football and not getting tackled, Walker has not accomplished much in his life, and his pattern of personal behavior shows him to be unfit to hold elected office.BRUNI: Well, I once spent hours with Oz for a profile and watched him do open-heart surgery, so I’m pulling weeds with Walker, just out of curiosity. And for the fresh air.Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) writes the “Wait, What?” newsletter for The Atlantic. Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser in President Bill Clinton’s White House from 1994 to 2000 and is a counselor to the Brunswick Group.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