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      Walker and Warnock Spend Big on TV Ads as Georgia Football Wins

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      Nothing quite holds an audience captive like a clash of undefeated college football behemoths. Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker didn’t need reminding of that on Saturday.Neither candidate in Georgia’s pivotal Senate race blinked at the $50,000 cost of a 30-second campaign ad during Saturday’s game between the top-ranked University of Tennessee and the third-ranked University of Georgia, according filings with the Federal Communications Commission.Each of them booked two ads on Atlanta’s CBS affiliate, with the National Republican Senatorial Committee listed as sharing some of the cost of one of the ads supporting Mr. Walker.On CBS in Atlanta, a 30-second ad during the pregame show or on Friday night prime time cost $5,000; it was a thrifty $75 during the station’s “Wake Up Atlanta” show in the 5 to 5:30 a.m. time slot on weekdays.Mr. Walker won the Heisman Trophy in the 1980s when he starred for the Georgia Bulldogs, which are the defending national champions in college football. Georgia beat Tennessee, 27-13.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.In one ad for Mr. Warnock that he highlighted on Twitter during the game, three Georgia graduates conveyed their reverence for Mr. Walker’s accomplishments as a college football star, but said that was where the praise ended. 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 graduate, pointing to photos 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.On social media, college football fans groused about being bombarded with attack ads run by the candidates and groups aligned with them, including dueling commercials that lobbed domestic abuse allegations at Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock.Senator Lindsey Graham, left, campaigned with Herschel Walker in Cumming, Ga., in October.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Walker has been roiled by accusations that he urged two women to have abortions, despite campaigning as a conservative who opposes the procedure.On the CBS affiliate in Savannah, Ga., Mr. Walker booked a 30-second ad during the game for $35,000, while Mr. Warnock reserved a 30-second block for $15,000. Advertising rates are typically higher for coordinated efforts between parties and candidates than for candidates on their own.On the CBS affiliate in Augusta, Ga., Mr. Walker reserved a pair of 30-second ads during the game for $25,890, with the N.R.S.C. listed as helping to pay for one, according to federal filings. Mr. Warnock bought ads on the same station, but not during the game.Mr. Warnock and Mr. Walker, who is backed by former President Donald J. Trump, were not the only bitter rivals in a close Senate race who invested heavily this week advertising around sporting events.In Pennsylvania’s open-seat contest, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate, spent six figures to run campaign ads during the World Series featuring the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros.Both candidates booked multiple ads on Fox’s Philadelphia affiliate at a rate of $95,000 for 30 seconds, according to federal filings. Mr. Fetterman also reserved 30 seconds of airtime during Thursday night’s National Football League game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Houston Texans. More

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      Why Aren’t the Democrats Trouncing the Republicans?

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      My big takeaway from this election season would be this: We’re about where we were. We entered this election season with a nearly evenly divided House and Senate in which the Democrats had a slight advantage. We’ll probably leave it with a nearly evenly divided House and Senate in which the Republicans have a slight advantage. But we’re about where we were.Nothing the parties or candidates have done has really changed this underlying balance. The Republicans nominated a pathetically incompetent Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, in Georgia, but polls show that race is basically tied. The Democrats nominated a guy in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke and has trouble communicating, but polls show that that Senate race is basically tied.After all the campaigning and the money and the shouting, the electoral balance is still on a razor’s edge. What accounts for this? It’s the underlying structure of society. Americans are sorting themselves out by education into two roughly equal camps. As people without a college degree have flocked to the G.O.P., people with one have flocked to the Democrats.“Education polarization is not merely an American phenomenon,” Eric Levitz writes in New York Magazine, “it is a defining feature of contemporary politics in nearly every Western democracy.”Over the past few years, the Democrats have made heroic efforts to win back working-class voters and white as well as Black and Hispanic voters who have drifted rightward. Joe Biden’s domestic agenda is largely about this: infrastructure jobs, expanded child tax credit, raising taxes on corporations. This year the Democrats nominated candidates designed to appeal to working-class voters, like the sweatshirt-wearing Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Tim Ryan in Ohio.It doesn’t seem to be working. As Ruy Teixeira, Karlyn Bowman and Nate Moore noted in a survey of polling data for the American Enterprise Institute last month, “The gap between non-college and college whites continues to grow.” Democrats have reason to worry about losing working-class Hispanic voters in places like Nevada. “If Democrats can’t win in Nevada,” one Democratic pollster told Politico, “we can complain about the white working class all you want, but we’re really confronting a much broader working-class problem.” Even Black voters without a college degree seem to be shifting away from the Democrats, to some degree.Forests have been sacrificed so that Democratic strategists can write reports on why they are losing the working class. Some believe racial resentment is driving the white working class away. Some believe Democrats spend too much time on progressive cultural issues and need to focus more on bread-and-butter economics.I’d say these analyses don’t begin to address the scale of the problem. America has riven itself into two different cultures. It’s very hard for the party based in one culture to reach out and win voters in the other culture — or even to understand what people in the other culture are thinking.As I’ve shuttled between red and blue America over decades of reporting on American politics, I’ve seen social, cultural, moral and ideological rifts widen from cracks to chasms.Politics has become a religion for a lot of people. Americans with a college education and Americans without a college education no longer just have different ideas about, say, the role of government, they have created rival ways of life. Americans with a college education and Americans without a college education have different relationships to patriotism and faith, they dress differently, enjoy different foods and have different ideas about corporal punishment, gender and, of course, race.You can’t isolate the differences between the classes down to one factor or another. It’s everything.But even that is not the real problem. America has always had vast cultural differences. Back in 2001, I wrote a long piece for The Atlantic comparing the deeply blue area of Montgomery County, Md., with the red area of Franklin County in south-central Pennsylvania.I noted the vast socio-economic and cultural differences that were evident, even back then. But in my interviews, I found there was a difference without a ton of animosity.For example, Ted Hale was a Presbyterian minister there. “There’s nowhere near as much resentment as you would expect,” he told me. “People have come to understand that they will struggle financially. It’s part of their identity. But the economy is not their god. That’s the thing some others don’t understand. People value a sense of community far more than they do their portfolio.”Back in those days I didn’t find a lot of class-war consciousness in my trips through red America. I compared the country to a high school cafeteria. Jocks over here, nerds over there, punks somewhere else. Live and let live.Now people don’t just see difference, they see menace. People have put up barricades and perceive the other class as a threat to what is beautiful, true and good. I don’t completely understand why this animosity has risen over the past couple of decades, but it makes it very hard to shift the ever more entrenched socio-economic-cultural-political coalitions.Historians used to believe that while European societies were burdened by ferocious class antagonisms, Americans had relatively little class consciousness. That has changed.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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      Trump’s Guys Have Their Work Cut Out for Them

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

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      Republicans Float Changes to Social Security and Medicare

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

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      Patty Murray Faces Stiff Challenge From Tiffany Smiley in Senate Race

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      SEATTLE — Ahead of their first election in Washington State, Carys Hagen and her partner, Shaw Lenox, stumbled upon a rally held for Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, on a stage in the corner of the Seattle Center.“Like, don’t love,” said Ms. Hagen, who identifies as a socialist, summing up her feelings about Ms. Murray after listening to the opening minutes of her stump speech. “But I’ll take ‘like’ any day of the week.”For Ms. Murray, who is facing a surprisingly tough race after three decades in Congress, the lack of enthusiasm is reason for concern.“If they just — ‘Oh, Patty’s fine, she always has been’ — that’s when elections get really tight,” Ms. Murray said in an interview. “Because we need Democrats to vote.”Since she first won her seat in 1992, Ms. Murray has steadily climbed the ranks to wield heavy, though understated, influence as a senior member of leadership and the chairwoman of the Senate committee that focuses on health, labor and education. Should she win a sixth term next week, she will be the fourth most senior senator and in line to be the top Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee that controls government spending.But her re-election hinges in large part on voters like Ms. Hagen putting aside their frustrations with a national party that has fallen short of some of its most expansive policy ambitions and casting a vote for Ms. Murray, whom many of them have come to regard as a fixture who will be there no matter what.She is working to fend off a surprisingly stiff challenge from Tiffany Smiley, a Republican who is mounting her first run for public office after years as a nurse, veterans affairs advocate and caregiver.Ms. Murray has spent the final weeks of her campaign trying to ward off complacency within her party.“We are a Democratic state,” she told a group at a “pro-choice, pro-Patty, pro-coffee” event at a local Seattle coffee shop. “If people vote.”In an open primary this year, Ms. Murray easily bested Ms. Smiley, winning more than 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Smiley’s nearly 34 percent, and she is still seen as the favorite to prevail. But Republicans have continued to funnel millions of dollars into Washington State, Ms. Smiley has out-raised the incumbent senator and polls have tightened in recent weeks, rattling some Democrats.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.If Ms. Smiley — who is 41, the same age Ms. Murray was when she first announced her run for office — were to prevail, she would be the state’s first Republican senator in more than two decades.Underscoring the severity of Ms. Smiley’s challenge in what political handicappers considered a safely Democratic seat until this month, multiple high-profile surrogates have trekked to Washington to rally for Ms. Murray and try to galvanize Democratic voters who they fear might fail to turn out for midterm elections in a typically liberal state.Tiffany Smiley, center, a nurse and veterans affairs advocate, is challenging Ms. Murray.Chona Kasinger for The New York TimesVice President Kamala Harris headlined a donor gathering in the state last week, as well as an event highlighting investments from the $1 trillion infrastructure law. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts came to rally supporters for Ms. Murray, a cerebral politician more comfortable in a private negotiation than at a raucous rally.“Patty is not the first person to jump into the spotlight; she’s not the loudest in high-volume debate,” Ms. Warren said in an interview before she walked out with Ms. Murray to Dolly Parton’s working woman’s anthem, “9 to 5.” “But she is effective — anyone who underestimates her is going to find out that they’re on the losing end.”Ms. Murray, 72, has also made a point of crisscrossing the Seattle suburbs and other parts of the state to connect with local leaders and ensure that her core Democratic supporters are turning out to vote. On a gray, drizzly Friday before the rally, she shuttled from a meeting with leaders at a historic Black church to visits with Asian American political leaders and businesses in the city’s international district.In prepared remarks that tick through her legislative accomplishments, she revisits the themes that helped pave her path to Washington three decades ago: the lore of how a male legislator dismissed her as a “mom in tennis shoes” — a slight that she adopted as her campaign calling card — her desire to protect women’s rights and a push to provide affordable health care.She has also focused on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision establishing a right to an abortion, and vowed to codify it into a law — a message that has resonated in the deep-blue suburbs and cities like Seattle.“We had this assurance for 50 years that we could make choices about our bodies,” said L’Nayim Austin, 51, who brought her 10-year-old daughter, dressed as a suffragist, to see Ms. Murray speak. “It’s infuriating.”Senator Elizabeth Warren, left, campaigned with Ms. Murray in Seattle in late October.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesMs. Murray has focused her campaign on turning out Democratic voters and supporting reproductive rights.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesAt her campaign office, where there are well-worn posters from previous campaigns scattered around, Ms. Murray described the election as challenging because “this time I have someone who isn’t telling people who she really is, and that’s much harder — she’s trying to look moderate, be conservative without telling anybody.”Ms. Smiley, who has pointedly noted that Ms. Murray once made a speech on the Senate floor praising her, has distanced herself from some conservative stances, saying she will not support a federal ban on abortion access or cutting back Social Security benefits. She has centered her campaign on reducing federal spending, addressing crime and increasing security at the nation’s southern border.And pressed in a recent interview, she asserted that President Biden is the nation’s “legitimately elected president,” though earlier in the campaign cycle, she dodged questions about whether he had been legitimately elected.That has led Ms. Murray and her allies to frame Ms. Smiley as aligned with the Republican Party’s far-right extremists, airing ads evoking the Jan. 6 riot and the prospect of cuts to social safety net programs. Ms. Smiley has accused her opponent of relying on political talking points to hide an ineffective policy record.“Maybe some of Senator Murray’s intentions are good, but we can’t base policy off of intentions,” Ms. Smiley said in an interview aboard her campaign bus, where she criticized many of Ms. Murray’s policies. “It’s very, very dangerous. Policy has to be based off of results.”Supporters have also connected with Ms. Smiley’s emotional recollection of her years of caregiving and advocacy, after her husband, Scotty, was blinded in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq and became the first blind active-duty officer in the Army.At a rally kicking off her bus tour across the state, Ms. Smiley held back tears as she talked about her husband’s encouragement for her political campaign, reiterating a pledge to work so “that our children have a country worth giving their eyesight for” as the crowd murmured and cheered in approval. She will linger after events to warmly embrace supporters and pose for selfies, thanking them for their prayers ahead of the election.“She’s probably the one and only person maybe in the state who can beat Patty Murray,” said Angela Dabb, a small-business owner and Republican who attended an event on Ms. Smiley’s bus tour at Nana’s Southern Kitchen, a restaurant in Covington that boasted fried chicken and catfish. “I was in tears — and so when a politician can move you like that, you know it’s coming from their heart.”Supporters of Ms. Smiley have connected with her emotional recollection of caregiving and advocacy, after her husband was permanently blinded in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq.Chona Kasinger for The New York TimesA crowd of more than 100 people applauded Ms. Smiley as she kicked off her bus tour in Maple Valley, Wash.Chona Kasinger for The New York TimesAt stops along Ms. Smiley’s bus tour, attendees described frustration with years of Democratic control in their state and across the country. For multiple voters, it was the first time they had decided to volunteer for a campaign and attend events, seeing a glimmer of hope that Republicans could not only claim a seat in the Senate, but also flip at least one in the House.Ms. Smiley, for her part, has also worked to weaponize Ms. Murray’s decades on Capitol Hill, riffing off Ms. Murray’s own motto to brand herself “a new mom in town.” At a bar in Maple Valley a short drive outside Seattle, where she began the bus tour, a raucous crowd of more than 100 people cheered and applauded as Ms. Smiley appeared with her husband, accompanied by Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, and a soundtrack of Americana classics.They whooped and laughed as Ms. Ernst joined other national Republicans in lampooning Ms. Murray’s more taciturn affect, noting “I don’t know that I’ve seen her smile once” and calling for a change in representation.But Ms. Murray remained adamant that there was more for her to do in the Senate.“When I was running before, it was — we had no voices in the Senate, there wasn’t anybody in the rooms who could say what we needed to say,” she said, reflecting on her first campaign, in what would become known as the “year of the woman.” “I’m now in that room, but I need to be in that room by being elected.”Ms. Smiley’s supporters described frustration with years of Democratic control both in their state and across the country.Chona Kasinger for The New York Times More

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

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

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      J.D. Vance Says He Will Accept Election Results, While Questioning 2020’s

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      J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, said Tuesday evening that he would accept the results of his election — while also saying he stood by his false claims that the 2020 election had been “stolen.”“I expect to win,” Mr. Vance said in a town-hall-style event hosted by Fox News, before adding: “But, of course, if things don’t go the way that I expect, I’ll support the guy who wins and I’ll try to be as supportive as I possibly can, even accepting that we’re going to disagree on some big issues.”But when one of the hosts, Martha MacCallum, noted that he had previously said the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump, whose endorsement propelled him to the nomination, Mr. Vance replied, “Yeah, look, I have said that, and I won’t run away from it.” He referred to state court rulings concerning elements of the way Pennsylvania had conducted its election, but none of those rulings called the results into question.The town hall event was split between Mr. Vance and his Democratic rival in the Senate race, Representative Tim Ryan, with each candidate appearing separately and fielding questions from the moderators and the audience.Mr. Ryan distanced himself from the left wing of the Democratic Party on inflation and abortion, something he has done often as he tries to win a Senate seat in a state that has shifted significantly to the right in recent years.While denouncing Republican abortion bans as extreme and inhumane, he said he believed third-trimester abortions should be allowed only in medical emergencies. That distinguishes him from many other Democrats, who have said that abortion should always be a decision between women and their doctors and that the government should play no role in regulating it. (Third-trimester procedures are very rare, accounting for less than 1 percent of abortions in the United States.)In promoting the ability of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act to live up to its name, Mr. Ryan highlighted its natural gas provisions, saying they would bring construction jobs to Ohio, while calling for tax cuts like an expanded child tax credit in the short term. He explicitly aligned himself with Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, whose objections limited the size of the legislation and ensured that natural gas provisions accompanied its clean energy measures.Mr. Vance, in his own discussion of inflation, called for Congress to “stop the borrowing and spending” — without specifying the spending cuts he wanted — and alluded to more oil and gas production.On abortion, he said he believed that “90 percent of abortion policy” should be set by state governments, while also indicating that he supported the 15-week federal ban proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. More

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      Schumer Can Take the Insults, if It Helps Keep Democrats in Power

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      For an hour on Sunday night, Senator Chuck Schumer endured insult after insult. He was called a liar and a failure. He was blamed for inflation, the decline of the shipbuilding industry, and death threats to Supreme Court justices. He was referred to as a modern-day Goliath, a “blind biblical giant,” a surprising description of a senator famed for both his spectacles and his slouch.Mr. Schumer took it all, seemingly treating the excoriation from his Republican opponent, Joseph Pinion, as an extended opportunity to remind voters of a series of Democratic accomplishments over the last two years during his tenure as Senate majority leader, a role he is clinging to even as his party faces serious headwinds in midterm elections next week.Democrats across New York and the nation are playing defense in the closing week of the campaign cycle as they try to protect their party’s control of the Senate and especially the House of Representatives, where Republicans are feeling bullish. That includes in New York, where the map includes competitive congressional races from Long Island to central New York, and where Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying fend off a challenge from Representative Lee Zeldin, a conservative Republican with deep ties to former president Donald J. Trump.Mr. Schumer does not seem in any danger: He is heavily favored to win a fifth term in the Senate, with a recent Quinnipiac poll showing him holding a 12-point lead. But it is a measure of where things stand for Democrats that Mr. Schumer was willing to trade time on Sunday night to trumpet his party in exchange for absorbing Mr. Pinion’s brickbats, which included a near-constant assertion that the senator has been in office too long.“Chuck Schumer has spent 42 years making promises about what he will do tomorrow,” said Mr. Pinion, 39, a former host and conservative commentator on the Newsmax network. “It’s always a day away. And you never trust a man who promises to do tomorrow what he had power to do yesterday.”For Mr. Pinion, the debate at Union College in Schenectady, hosted by Spectrum News, was perhaps his best chance at introducing himself to voters, a challenge considering the Quinnipiac poll found nearly 60 percent of those polled didn’t know enough about Mr. Pinion to form an opinion. (That cohort seemingly included Mr. Schumer himself, who opened the debate by saying, “Hi, Joe. Very nice to meet you.”)Mr. Schumer has long prided himself on an aggressive media strategy — reporters can set their watches by his 11:30 a.m. news conferences — and his frequent trips around the state, including visiting all of the state’s 62 counties every year, a pace he has continued even as Democrats seek to shore up support for Ms. Hochul and other candidates.That included a visit last week to Onondaga County, alongside President Biden, to bring attention to a $100 billion plan by Micron to build new computer chip manufacturing facilities near Syracuse.“This guy gets things done,” the president said of Mr. Schumer, during the event.Such was the argument the senator himself made on Sunday night, returning again and again to legislation passed by Democrats while he has served as majority leader, including measures to reduce the price of prescription drugs, tighten gun control laws, and pour money into manufacturing like that in Onondaga County.“Under my leadership, the Senate has had the most productive session in decades,” he said.Mr. Pinion has also stumped for months, roaming from motorcycle-and-morning coffee events in Western New York to rooftop fund-raisers in Manhattan to help fuel an underfunded campaign: Mr. Pinion’s latest filing, for example, with the Federal Election Commission shows his campaign committee with a little less than $12,000 cash on hand..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Pinion has seemingly tried to augment that lack of resources with a surfeit of fiery rhetoric and CGI-heavy broadsides: One of Mr. Pinion’s online ads shows him in an apocalyptic landscape, amid the burning ruins of skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty.“America is burning,” Mr. Pinion says, criticizing the federal outlay of dollars to Ukraine, high inflation and the baby-formula crisis. “And the politicians that started the fire want to blame someone else.”In another ad, he likened Mr. Schumer to a dinosaur presiding over “the Jurassic States of America,” a visual conceit complete with Mr. Pinion flanked by a pair of raptors. “Like my friends here, the American dream is about to go extinct,” he says, before turning to his prehistoric friends. “Sorry, guys, it’s true. You’re dead!”But his most recurring campaign theme has been that Mr. Schumer has been in Washington too long — nearly 42 years, between nearly two decades in the House of Representatives and his four terms in the U.S. Senate — with too little to show for it. A recent email blast noted that Mr. Schumer “has been in office longer than I have been alive.”“He says the job’s not done,” Mr. Pinion told a crowd in Amsterdam, N.Y., in September, alongside Representative Elise Stefanik and Michael Henry, the party’s candidate for attorney general. “If you haven’t got the job done in 42 years, perhaps its time to step aside and let some one else take a crack at it.”Mr. Schumer’s ads have showcased working-class supporters, as well as mailers linking Mr. Pinion to anti-abortion efforts by Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader.Like Mr. Pinion and his dinosaurs, Mr. Schumer has also shown a sense of humor, with an ad billed as “Yiddish Lessons with the Majority Leader.” In it, Mr. Schumer, who is Jewish, identifies Mr. McConnell, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mr. Trump as “schmos”; the riots of Jan. 6, 2021 as a “shande,” or shame; and mentions the words “kvell” and “naches” for his pride and joy at his legislative accomplishments.“Because fighting for New York is no schtick for me,” he concludes.On Sunday, Mr. Pinion was on the attack from the very beginning, calling out “the legend of Charles Ellis Schumer” before saying he wanted to do “some myth busting.”“He is, in fact, an exceptional politician, one of the best that has ever lived,” Mr. Pinion said. “But he’s a failed senator. He has failed the people of this state on multiple occasions.”Mr. Schumer rarely returned fire, sticking to promoting the raft of accomplishments that he hopes voters remember next week. But toward the end of the debate, he scolded Mr. Pinion, saying the race wasn’t about how long he had served, but whether he had delivered for New York.“I produce results, I am productive,” he said. “I’m not just shooting verbiage, and calling names.” More