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      The Racial Divide Herschel Walker Couldn’t Outrun

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      WRIGHTSVILLE, Ga. — The race for a critical Senate seat was in full motion by midsummer, but there were just a few Herschel Walker campaign signs sprinkled around his hometown.They were planted in front of big homes with big yards, in a downtown storefront window, near the sidewalk by the Dairy Queen. There were two on the corner by the Johnson County Courthouse, near a Confederate memorial.The support appeared randomly scattered. But people in Wrightsville saw a dot-to-dot drawing of a racial divide that has shaped Wrightsville for generations — and is now shaping a critical political race with national implications.“All those campaign materials were in the white community,” said Curtis Dixon, who is Black and who taught and coached Mr. Walker, a Republican, in the late 1970s when he was a high school football prodigy. “The only other house that has a Herschel Walker poster is his family.”It may not be an exaggeration. In a predominantly Black neighborhood of small homes about a block from where Mr. Walker went to high school, nine people, including a man who said he was Mr. Walker’s cousin, gathered on a steamy Saturday in July to eat and talk in the shade.No one planned to vote for Mr. Walker. Most scoffed at the thought.Around the corner, a retired teacher named Alice Pierce said nice things about Mr. Walker’s mother and family, as most people do.“But I’m not going to vote for him, I’ll be honest with you,” she said.Fearful of repercussions in a small town, and out of respect for members of the Walker family who still live in the area, many Black residents in Wrightsville spoke only under the condition of anonymity.One woman, taking a break from mowing her lawn, said Mr. Walker would be in over his head as mayor of Wrightsville. “He’s famous to some people, because of football,” she said. “But he’s just Herschel Walker to me.”Mr. Walker, who is one of the most famous African Americans in Georgia’s history, a folk hero for legions of football fans, is unpopular with Black voters. And nowhere is the rift more stark than in the rural farm town where he was raised about 140 miles southeast of Atlanta.Mr. Walker’s hometown, Wrightsville, sprinkled with his campaign signs. Few are in the yards of Black residents, a microcosm that shows the racial divide among Mr. Walker’s supporters.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesPolls show that Mr. Walker, despite his fame as a football player, may receive less than 10 percent of the Black vote in the Senate race against incumbent Raphael Warnock. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesSince June, polls have routinely shown Mr. Walker attracting less than 10 percent of Black voters in the race against incumbent Raphael Warnock, the pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. Although Mr. Walker often boasts he is going to win “the Black vote,” surveys have found him poised to win no more Black voters than other Republicans on the ballot.There are easy explanations: Mr. Warnock, who is also Black, is a Democrat who preaches at Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, and Mr. Walker is running as a Republican tied to Donald J. Trump.But there are complex reasons, too, especially in Wrightsville.“Herschel’s not getting the Black vote because Herschel forgot where he came from,” Mr. Dixon said. “He’s not part of the Black community.”Such feelings toward Mr. Walker have been present for decades. They are flowering ahead of November’s elections.But they took root during one seismic spring stretch in 1980. On Easter Sunday that April, Mr. Walker, the top football recruit in the country, committed to play at the University of Georgia in Athens. The signing made national news.Two nights later, after months of simmering tensions, there was a racial confrontation at the courthouse, a lit fuse that exploded into weeks of violence.The events, two of the biggest in town history, did not seem connected at the time. More than four decades later, their intersection may help decide the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.A confederate memorial near Wrightsville, the Johnson County seat.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times‘You can’t get into shape marching’Several two-lane roads lead to Wrightsville, a crossroads more than a destination, set amid rolling hills of farms and forests. It is the seat of a rural county with fewer than 10,000 residents, about one-third of them Black.A few miles from town, one road is labeled the “Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway.” Another passes by a substantial Confederate memorial. Down a nearby dirt road is the church that Mr. Walker attended as a boy.Another road to Wrightsville passes the spot, five miles from town, where Mr. Walker and six siblings were raised by Willis and Christine Walker in a white clapboard house.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Sensing a Shift: As November approaches, there are a few signs that the political winds may have begun to blow in a different direction — one that might help Republicans over the final stretch.Focusing on Crime: Across the country, Republicans are attacking Democrats as soft on crime to rally midterm voters. Pennsylvania’s Senate contest offers an especially pointed example of this strategy.Arizona Senate Race: Blake Masters, a Republican, appears to be struggling to win over independent voters, who make up about a third of the state’s electorate.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.The family home has been replaced by a stately, ranch-style brick one, where Mr. Walker’s widowed mother lives. Behind it is a second home, a place for Mr. Walker to stay when he visits. About eight storage buildings nearby hold his collection of classic cars.Mr. Walker’s childhood home is gone, replaced by a brick house where his widowed mother lives. A second home behind it is where Mr. Walker stays when he visits.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Walker, now 60, has mostly lived in Texas since the mid-1980s. He often comes to Wrightsville for the Fourth of July, and his cars comprise most of the parade. This year featured a new entry — a Chevy truck wrapped in an advertisement for “Team Herschel,” with Mr. Walker’s photo on the hood.The parade, just a few minutes long, takes place in front of the Johnson County Courthouse, perched on a central square surrounded mostly by empty storefronts. Banners on lampposts call Wrightsville “the friendliest town in Georgia.”But back in 1980, it was “a mean little town,” the Atlanta Journal reporter Ron Taylor wrote at the time, that “hangs at the damaged roots of all that did not grow after the sixties.”It was outside the courthouse in 1979 that the Rev. E.J. Wilson, a Black pastor and civil rights activist new to town, began organizing protests calling out the indignities of being Black in Wrightsville.Schools had been integrated, but plenty else felt separate and unequal. City jobs and services mostly went to white people. The police force was white. There was an all-white country club but no public parks or pools. Black neighborhoods had dirt roads and leaky sewers. There was still an all-white cemetery, Mr. Wilson pointed out.And plenty of residents could recall 1948, when the Ku Klux Klan marched on the courthouse and not one of the 400 registered Black voters voted in a primary election the next day.Mr. Wilson and John Martin, a local leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, saw Wrightsville as a rural echo of Birmingham a generation before, with Sheriff Roland Attaway in the hardened role of Bull Connor.Mr. Walker was the town’s most famous resident, a potentially powerful ally.“There were a few times after the Friday night football games when some of the protest leaders grabbed Walker, still in uniform and pads, and demanded he join them,” The New York Times Magazine wrote in 1981. “Sheriff Attaway offered to let Herschel carry a pistol. Most of the Black athletes quit the track team the same spring Herschel led it to its title.”Protests grew through the spring of 1980. So did opposition. National civil rights leaders arrived. The Klan and J.B. Stoner, the white supremacist politician later convicted of a church bombing, rolled in. There were standoffs and skirmishes.Some civil rights leaders saw Wrightsville as a rural echo of Birmingham a generation before. Peaceful demonstrations like this one in 1980 occasionally turned violent.Kenneth Walker/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via APThe 1980 Johnson County High School yearbook honored the football team, led by Mr. Walker, the nation’s top recruit. While Mr. Walker wore No. 34 in college and the pros, he was No. 43 in high school. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesTwo nights after Easter, the courthouse square filled with about 75 Black protesters and twice as many white ones. The Black protesters were attacked by the white crowd, and sheriff’s deputies joined in, Black leaders told reporters. No one was arrested.Violence continued sporadically for weeks. Schools and factories closed for fear of outbursts. A little girl, a woman and a policeman were hurt by gunfire. A cafe burned.In May, Sheriff Attaway and his deputies, guns drawn and bracing for a riot, rolled down South Valley Street into a Black neighborhood where Mr. Wilson’s red brick church still stands. They went door to door, arresting and jailing about 40 people, some for days, most without charges.Mr. Walker never got involved.“I’d like to think I had something to do with it,” said Gary Jordan, a white man who coached Mr. Walker in track and football, starting when Mr. Walker was in fifth grade. “I said, ‘You can’t get into shape marching. You’ve got to run. And practice is at 3.’”Mr. Walker had several other white mentors in town, including an owner of a service station where Mr. Walker worked and a farmer who had employed his parents. Another was a math teacher, Jeanette Caneega.“As a student in school, his role in society was not to solve the racial problems of the world,” she said this summer.“I don’t want to be divisive,” Gary Phillips, Mr. Walker’s high-school football coach, who is white, said, “but as an 18-year-old Black kid in Wrightsville with a lot of pressure on him, can you see how or why he might have decided that this is not the best thing for me, to start getting into this?”Mr. Walker soon left Wrightsville and rarely spoke about the episode. He declined to be interviewed for this article. In college, when he was asked by a reporter about the friction back home, Mr. Walker said that he was “too young” and “didn’t want to get involved in something I didn’t know much about.”.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.In a memoir published decades later, Mr. Walker only briefly noted the conflict. But he described a school confrontation between a Black student and the white principal the year before.“I could never really be fully accepted by white students and the African American students either resented me or distrusted me for what they perceived as my failure to stand united with them — regardless of whether they were right or wrong,” he wrote. “That separation would continue throughout my life with only the reasons for it differing from situation to situation.”He added: “I never really liked the idea that I was to represent my people.”Student football players warmed up on Herschel Walker Field.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAn Outsider at HomeToday, the school that Mr. Walker attended is shuttered behind a chain-link fence. A new school was built next to what is now called Herschel Walker Field. The complex sits on Herschel Walker Drive.Teachers, coaches and classmates in Wrightsville remember Mr. Walker’s demeanor. Polite. Humble. Kind. Respectful.People who plan to vote for him in November tend to mention those things, too. They credit Mr. Walker’s parents. Willis worked at a kaolin mine. Christine worked at a textile mill. They stayed mostly to themselves and taught their children to try to get along with everyone. “The good Christian woman that she is,” Mr. Walker wrote of his mother, “she also taught us that color was invisible.”Mr. Walker, in a family of strong athletes, was barely noticed until his junior year of high school. He was, by his telling, a chubby stutterer with so few friends that he paid children to talk to him. He was haunted by nightmares of wolves and was “petrified” of the dark and the Klan, he wrote in his memoir.He painted himself as an outsider, even in his hometown.“No one wanted to associate with me because I was an outcast, a stuttering-stumpy-fat-poor-other-side-of-the-railroad-tracks-living-stupid-country boy,” Mr. Walker wrote.In his early teens, Mr. Walker disappeared into books and devoted himself to fitness. He became a model student, a member of an honor society called the Beta Club. Ms. Caneega, the teacher who led the club, joked that she would have taught for free if she “had a class full of kids like him.”With no weight room in town, Mr. Walker did pull-ups from trees and ran barefoot along the railroad tracks. Mr. Jordan, the coach, wrapped a belt around Mr. Walker, fastened chains to him and had him pull truck tires across the Georgia red dirt.Mr. Walker won state titles in track in both sprints and the shot put and led Johnson County to a football state championship his senior year.The nation’s top college coaches crowded into Wrightsville. Some arrived by helicopter, landing on a field next to school. Mr. Walker delayed a decision for months through the tumultuous spring of 1980.“Part of that might be that he was so nice, he didn’t want to tell other people goodbye and no thanks after he got to know them a bit,” Vince Dooley, Georgia’s coach from 1964 to 1988, said.Mr. Walker flipped a coin. It landed on Georgia on Easter night.A coin? Many details of Mr. Walker’s biography bend toward fable. Until recently, it didn’t really matter. Mr. Walker was just a sports legend, spinning legends.Mr. Walker attracted national attention as a high-school football and track athlete. Residents remember coaches arriving by helicopter to woo him and watch him compete.J.C. Lee/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via APMr. Walker, as a freshman, led Georgia to the 1980 national championship and a Sugar Bowl victory over Notre Dame. He later won the Heisman Trophy, cementing his status in state history and folklore.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesBut as scrutiny befitting a Senate candidate has grown, Mr. Walker has been found to be a purveyor of fiction and misdirection about basic résumé facts, such as graduating from Georgia (he did not) in the top 1 percent of his class (no); about the size, scope and success of his companies (all exaggerated); about working in law enforcement, including the F.B.I. (he has not); and about his number of children.His candidacy has resurfaced his 2008 memoir, “Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder,” in which Mr. Walker described a dozen “alters,” or alternate personalities. It rekindled stories of Mr. Walker’s struggle with mental health, reminding voters of his admissions of violent tendencies (briefly chasing down a man he said he wanted to kill), suicidal thoughts (Mr. Walker, who nearly killed himself in an idling car in his garage, said he occasionally played Russian roulette with a revolver) and infidelity.His post-football life, especially, has been a stream of erratic behavior, some of it described in the book. Mr. Walker’s entrance into politics has prompted stories with new details surrounding allegations that he abused and made death threats against his former wife of nearly 20 years and his late girlfriend.He has denied the allegations and often deflects questions about his past by saying that he is “fighting to end the stigma of mental illness.”Such matters have not derailed Mr. Walker’s campaign. Stamped deeper into Georgia’s collective psyche is Mr. Walker’s first college touchdown in 1980. (“Oh you Herschel Walker! My god almighty, he ran right through two men!” the radio announcer Larry Munson shouted then.)When Mr. Walker arrived on Georgia’s campus, it had been less than a decade since the football team was integrated — one of the last in the country to do so. He became a near-instant hero among the school’s mostly white fan base when he led the Bulldogs to a national championship, playing in the Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame with a separated shoulder.“Up in a private box in the Superdome,” Dave Anderson of The Times wrote from the game, “the second most important citizen in Georgia peered down yesterday at the most important. President Carter was watching Herschel Walker run with a football.”Mr. Walker left Georgia after winning the Heisman Trophy his junior year, signing with the new United States Football League. State legislators wore armbands with Georgia’s colors, red and black, to mourn Mr. Walker’s departure.It was before his second season with the New Jersey Generals that the team was purchased by Mr. Trump, then a 37-year-old New York real-estate developer.“In a lot of ways, Mr. Trump became a mentor to me,” Mr. Walker wrote in 2008, “and I modeled myself and my business practices after him.”Mr. Walker was nudged into running for Senate by Donald Trump. The two met when Mr. Walker played for Mr. Trump’s United States Football League team in the 1980s.Audra Melton for The New York Times‘Run Herschel, Run’On a sweltering summer weekday at Jaemor Farms, a large produce stand off a rural highway, shoppers fondled ripe peaches and sampled ice cream.Mr. Walker sauntered in, still fit in a T-shirt and casual pants, trailed by a loose huddle of handlers. Heads turned. Mouths opened. An elderly woman rushed to her car to tell her husband.“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Drew Echols, whose family owns Jaemor Farms, a traditional campaign stop for would-be politicians. He shook his head and laughed. “It’s because they all know him. He’s Herschel Walker.”It was Mr. Trump who nudged Mr. Walker back to the bright lights of Georgia. Mr. Walker played 15 seasons of professional football, 12 in the N.F.L. He was wildly famous but never recaptured the success of his college career.“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the legendary Herschel Walker ran for the United States Senate in Georgia?” Mr. Trump said in a statement released in March 2021, adding: “Run Herschel, run!”And Mr. Walker did. He appeared at Trump rallies, where he stood out for his relative lack of vitriol. Bombast is not in Mr. Walker’s nature, though he does share Trump’s penchant for unscripted, sometimes incoherent, remarks.In July, for example, discussing China and climate change, Mr. Walker said that Georgia’s “good air decides to float over” to China, displacing China’s “bad air,” which returns to Georgia. “We got to clean that back up,” he said. And in May, after the school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, he delivered a soliloquy that began, “Cain killed Abel, and that’s a problem that we have.”His public performances raise questions about why Mr. Walker chose — and was chosen — to run.Mr. Walker is widely viewed as “not being ready for prime time,” said Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University in Atlanta who teaches African American politics. “Which for Black voters, who may be skeptical of the Republican strategy of nominating him in the first place, just smacks of what they view as tokenism.”Mr. Walker, with supporters in Oscilla, Ga. He tends to draw a crowd on the campaign trail.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Walker with Black clergy members at an event in Austell, Ga.Audra Melton for The New York TimesMuch of the recent campaign intrigue has been over whether Mr. Walker would debate Mr. Warnock, who makes a living preaching from a pulpit. (The two will face off in a debate later this month.) Mr. Walker is more comfortable with small talk. A lifetime of autograph seekers has made him comfortable with quick interactions and people smiling back at him.At Jaemor Farms, Mr. Walker met in a back room with about a dozen local farmers, all white. He was flanked by two polished white former state politicians, Terry Rogers and Butch Miller, who, like human crutches, kept the discussion moving forward whenever Mr. Walker wobbled into unfamiliar terrain.Mr. Walker half-joked that Democrats wanted to force farmers to use electric combines. He reminded the group that he was from rural Wrightsville. He said his grandfather raised cotton and peas.“I used to help pick,” Mr. Walker said. “I thought it was an upgrade to start baling hay.”The farmers laughed, knowingly. Then Mr. Walker detoured into remarks about China, TikTok and Archie Bunker.Georgia’s population is one-third Black, but Mr. Walker’s campaign staff is almost entirely white, as are the crowds that gather to watch him. “The thing you can’t measure about his support is how many people he’s going to pull in that never voted before, haven’t been involved, but know him from his Georgia football days,” Martha Zoller, a conservative talk-show host and political pundit in Georgia, said.Mr. Rogers, a former Republican state legislator and now a political consultant, noted that the Bulldogs are coming off their first national championship season since 1980.“This election’s being held during football season,” he said. “I think that goes a long way — especially if Georgia keeps winning.”The allusions to Georgia football are telling. Sanford Stadium in Athens, like many major sports venues in this country, remains a place where a mostly white fan base cheers mostly Black athletes. Mr. Walker, his No. 34 jersey long retired, is a link to feel-good nostalgia for a university where Black enrollment is about 8 percent. As a politician, Mr. Walker tries to keep his messages about race in America positive. He says he is pro-police without addressing violence against Black men. He spreads unfounded claims about voter fraud but does not address voter suppression. He says Democrats use race to divide “a great country full of generous people.”At a campaign stop in Wrightsville in August, he told a room full of women, nearly all of them white: “Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re racist.”In Wrightsville’s downtown, a shop promoted Mr. Walker’s candidacy. “We need to do more to promote Herschel here in his hometown,” said the shop’s owner, who is white.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWhat’s Left BehindChange moves slowly in Wrightsville. As Mr. Walker said of his hometown last year, “If you got one year to live, you move there. Because that year’s forever. Same old, same old.”Since Mr. Walker left four decades ago, several textile factories in the area have closed, including the one where Mr. Walker’s mother worked. So have a window factory and a meatpacking plant. Downtown storefronts have emptied.The median household income in Johnson County is around $42,000 per year. About one-quarter of residents live in poverty. The race divide has softened, but slowly. As recently as 2003, Wrightsville drew attention for being one of several small Southern towns that still held segregated proms.Across from the courthouse is a floral and collectibles shop called Kreative Kreations. This summer, its display windows were decorated with campaign signs for Mr. Walker. “Run Herschel Run,” read a larger banner over the storefront.The store owner, Kevin Price, who is white and nearly a decade younger than Mr. Walker, grew up in Wrightsville and recalled his family “packing up every Saturday morning and heading for Athens” to watch the Bulldogs play.“We need to do more to promote Herschel here in his hometown,” Mr. Price said.On a shaded bench across the street, a woman named Lisa Graddy wondered just where Mr. Walker had run.“He forgot about his hometown,” Ms. Graddy said.Exactly what she and other Black residents expect from Mr. Walker is murky. It is a combination of investment, representation, empathy and engagement.Mr. Walker still has family in Wrightsville but little support from other Black residents. Tommy Jenkins, a former high school teammate, is among the few of them who plan to vote for Mr. Walker.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWhy has he not used his fame, fortune and now his political standing to raise the voices of those he left behind, they ask. It is a question raised in 1980, echoing in 2022.One ex-teammate, Tommy Jenkins, said the answer to the question was once very simple. Mr. Jenkins was among the Black track athletes who boycotted the team and participated in the protests.“A lot of people criticized him for not standing up, but I understood why Herschel didn’t do it,” said Mr. Jenkins, a Black Wrightsville resident who intends to vote for Mr. Walker. “It would’ve ruined his career.”Christian Boone contributed reporting from Georgia. Alain Delaquérière contributed research. More

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      The Fetterman-Oz Race Is No Piece of Cake

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      OK, people. Time for some real political drama. Pennsylvania! Pennsylvania! Pennsylvania!Surprised you, didn’t I? But really, the Senate race there has it all. Swing state that could very well decide who holds the majority in the Senate and whether the rest of President Biden’s agenda has any real chance of getting passed.And the main candidates — the Republican, Mehmet Oz, and the Democrat, John Fetterman — are a stupendous diversion. You have the big, heavy issues, naturally, but they’ve also been fighting about stuff like where Oz actually lives and the right word to use for vegetables in the supermarket.Remember that last one? In an ongoing attempt to prove he’s just a regular guy and not a superrich TV personality with multiple expensive homes, Oz released a video of himself shopping for groceries and blaming Biden for the high cost of “crudité.”Imagine the euphoria in the Fetterman camp after that one. “In PA, we call this a veggie tray,” the candidate tweeted happily.Fetterman also released a video of three women wearing broccoli costumes. I know this doesn’t tell you a whole lot about what the candidates would do with, say, military spending. But you have to admit it’s a conversation maker.Oz is an accomplished heart surgeon and a TV personality who became famous for giving out health tips on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Most of his advice is perfectly reasonable. Really, that time he warned women that carrying a cellphone in their bras might cause breast cancer was long, long ago.Fetterman is Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, running as a regular guy who’ll wear a sweatshirt and shorts for pretty much anything from a picnic to a news conference to guiding the president on a tour of a bridge collapse. One of the duties of his job is to head the state Pardons Board, and you will not be surprised to hear that Oz is constantly reminding voters that he recommended pardons for people who were, um, convicts.One of the big talking points in the Senate race is residency. It’s certainly an issue that works for Fetterman, who has a tattoo on his arm advertising the ZIP code of the town where he once served as mayor. Oz made his home in a pretty fabulous New Jersey mansion during his precampaign days. Now, of course, he’s acquired a place in Pennsylvania. But Fetterman cannot remind the state too often that this is a rather recent development. (Democrats have a highway billboard near the state border telling motorists they’re “now leaving” New Jersey for Pennsylvania, “JUST LIKE DR. OZ.”)Issue-wise, Oz and Fetterman certainly diverge, although there has been a bit of squirming around. Particularly on the part of Oz, who used to be for gun control but became a Second Amendment fiend during the Republican Senate primary campaign. His abortion position is evolving. He emerged from that primary as “strongly pro-life” but now reminds voters he isn’t keen to punish anybody involved in terminating a pregnancy.Lately, Fetterman’s health has loomed large. He suffered a stroke in May, and while he’s certainly been getting better, there’s no question he still suffers from the effects, including what he calls “auditory processing” issues.Oz, in one of his very least charming tweets, sent out a picture of Fetterman in what looks like boxer shorts, his rather expansive stomach bare, calling him “Basement Bum.” Oz’s communications adviser claimed that if Fetterman had “ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke.”Given what a very, very big deal the outcome of the Pennsylvania race might be, it’s natural that things would go a little crazy. We can actually cheer the fact that it isn’t truly worse — that there’s been little focus on the fact that Oz, who describes himself as a “secular Muslim,” has maintained dual citizenship with Turkey.(Well, there’s been little focus from the Fetterman folk. In the primary, some of the other Republican candidates did try to make it a big deal.)Since Fetterman’s stroke restricted his campaigning, the race has focused more and more on the candidate debate. It looks as though there’s going to be only one, on Oct. 25.People, does this seem worrisome to you? Fetterman has been pulling farther and farther ahead in the polls, and there’s a definite feeling around that the debate is all that’s standing between him and the Senate seat.In normal circumstances, that’s unnerving; political history is full of stories about candidates who lost their lead when they blurted out one stupid thing. And let me admit that when Gov. Rick Perry forgot the name of one of the federal agencies he would eliminate if elected president, I reminded you of his “oops” moment constantly until his candidacy went down the drain.But that was Rick Perry, a terrible candidate running to be leader of the free world. Sort of a different situation. And Fetterman should be fine, right? Right?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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      Which Midterm Polls Should We Be Taking With a Grain of Salt?

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, to discuss the state of polling and of Democratic anxiety about polls ahead of the midterms.Frank Bruni: Amy, Patrick, as if the people over at Politico knew that the three of us would be huddling to discuss polling, it just published a long article about the midterms with the gloomy, spooky headline “Pollsters Fear They’re Blowing It Again in 2022.”Do you two fear that pollsters are blowing it again in 2022?Patrick Ruffini: It’s certainly possible that they could. The best evidence we have so far that something might be afoot comes from The Times’s own Nate Cohn, who finds that some of the Democratic overperformances seem to be coming in states that saw large polling errors in 2016 and 2020.Amy Walter: I do worry that we are asking more from polling than it is able to provide. Many competitive Senate races are in states — like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that Joe Biden won by supernarrow margins in 2020. The reality is that they are going to be very close again. And so an error of just three to four points is the difference between Democratic and Republican control of the Senate.Ruffini: This also doesn’t mean we can predict that polls will miss in any given direction. But it does suggest taking polls in states like Ohio, which Donald Trump won comfortably but where the Republican J.D. Vance is tied or slightly behind, with a grain of salt.Bruni: So what would you say specifically to Democrats? Are they getting their hopes up — again — in a reckless fashion?Walter: Democrats are definitely suffering from political PTSD. After 2016 and 2020, I don’t think Democrats are getting their hopes up. In fact, the ones I talk with are hoping for the best but not expecting such.Ruffini: In any election, you have the polls themselves, and then you have the polls as filtered through the partisan media environment. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing. On Twitter, there’s a huge incentive to hype individual polling results that are good for your side while ignoring the average. I don’t expect this to let up, because maintaining this hype is important for low-dollar fund-raising. But I do think this has led to a perhaps exaggerated sense of Democratic optimism.Bruni: Great point, Patrick — in these fractured and hyperpartisan times of information curation, polls aren’t so much sets of numbers as they are Rorschachs.But I want to pick up on something else that you said — “polls will miss in any given direction” — to ask why the worry seems only to be about overstatement of Democratic support and prospects. Is it possible that the error could be in the other direction and we are understating Republican problems and worries?Ruffini: In politics, we always tend to fight the last war. Historically, polling misses have been pretty random, happening about equally on both sides. But the last big example of them missing in a pro-Republican direction was 2012. The more recent examples stick in our minds, 2020 specifically, which was actually worse in percentage terms than 2016.Walter: Patrick’s point about the last war is so important. This is especially true when we are living in a time when we have little overlap with people from different political tribes. The two sides have very little appreciation for what motivates, interests or worries the other side, so the two sides over- or underestimate each other a lot.As our politics continue to break along educational attainment — those who have a college degree are increasingly more Democratic-leaning, those with less education increasingly more Republican-leaning — polls are likely to overstate the Democratic advantage, since we know that there’s a really clear connection between civic voting behavior and education levels.Ruffini: And we may be missing a certain kind of Trump voter, who may not be answering polls out of a distrust for the media, polling and institutions generally.Bruni: Regarding 2016 and 2020, Trump was on the ballot both of those years. He’s not — um, technically — this time around. So is there a greater possibility of accuracy, of a repeat of 2018, when polling came closer to the mark?Ruffini: The frustrating thing about all of this is that we just don’t have a very good sample size to answer this. In polls, that’s called an n size, like n = 1,000 registered voters. There have been n = 2 elections where Trump has been on the ballot and n = 1 midterm election in the Trump era. That’s not a lot.Bruni: We’ve mentioned 2016 and 2020 versus 2018. Are there reasons to believe that none of those points of reference are all that illuminating — that 2022 is entirely its own cat, with its own inimitable wrinkles? There are cats that have wrinkles, right? I’m a dog guy, but I feel certain that I’ve seen shar-pei-style cats in pictures.Walter: First, let’s be clear. Dogs are the best. So let’s change this to “Is this an entirely different breed?”I’m a big believer in the aphorism that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.Ruffini: Right. Every election is different, and seeing each new election through the lens of the previous election is usually a bad analytical strategy.Walter: But there are important fundamentals that can’t be dismissed. Midterms are about the party in charge. It is hard to make a midterm election about the out-party — the party not in charge — especially when Democrats control not just the White House but the House and Senate as well.However, the combination of overturning Roe v. Wade plus the ubiquitous presence of Trump has indeed made the out-party — the G.O.P. — a key element of this election. To me, the question is whether that focus on the stuff the Republicans are doing and have done is enough to counter frustration with the Democrats.Ruffini: 2022 is unique in that it’s a midterm cycle where both sides have reasons to be energized — Republicans by running against an unpopular president in a time of high economic uncertainty and Democrats by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe. It’s really unique in the sweep of midterm elections historically. To the extent there is still an energized Republican base, polls could miss if they aren’t capturing this new kind of non-college, low-turnout voter that Trump brought into the process.Bruni: Patrick, this one’s for you, as you’re the one among us who’s actually in the polling business. In the context of Amy’s terrific observation about education levels and the Democratic Party and who’s more readily responsive to pollsters, what are you and what is your firm doing to make sure you reach and sample enough Republican and Trump-inclined voters?Ruffini: That’s a great question. Nearly all of our polls are off the voter file, which means we have a much larger set of variables — like voting history and partisan primary participation — to weight on than you might typically see in a media poll (with the exception of the Times/Siena polls, which do a great job in this regard). We’ve developed targets for the right number of college or non-college voters among likely voters in each congressional district. We’re also making sure that our samples have the right proportions of people who have registered with either party or have participated in a specific party’s primary before.But none of this is a silver bullet. After 2016, pollsters figured out we needed to weight on education. In 2020 we weighted on education — and we got a worse polling error. All the correct weighting decisions won’t matter if the non-college or low-turnout voter you’re getting to take surveys isn’t representative of those people who will actually show up to vote.Bruni: Does the taking of polls and the reporting on polls and the consciousness of polls inevitably queer what would have happened in their absence? I will go to my grave believing that if so many voters hadn’t thought that Hillary Clinton had victory in the bag, she would have won. Some 77,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — the margin of her Electoral College loss — are easily accounted for by overconfident, complacent Clinton supporters.Walter: In 2016, there were two key groups of people that determined the election. Those who never liked Clinton and those who disliked Trump and Clinton equally. At the end, those who disliked both equally broke overwhelmingly for Trump. And, those Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t like her at all were never fully convinced that she was a worthy candidate.Ruffini: I don’t worry about this too much since the people most likely to be paying attention to the daily movement of the polls are people who are 100 percent sure to vote. It can also work in the other direction. If the polls are showing a race in a red or blue state is close, that can motivate a majority of the party’s voters to get out and vote, and that might be why close races in those states usually resolve to the state fundamentals.Bruni: Evaluate the news media in all of this, and be brutal if you like. For as long as I’ve been a reporter, I’ve listened to news leaders say our political coverage should be less attentive to polls. It remains plenty attentive to polls. Should we reform? Is there any hope of that? Does it matter?Ruffini: I don’t think there’s any hope of this getting better, and that’s not the media’s fault. It’s the fault of readers (sorry, readers!) who have an insatiable appetite for staring at the scoreboard.Walter: We do pay too much attention to polls, but polls are the tool we have to capture the opinions of an incredibly diverse society. A reporter could go knock on 3,000 doors and miss a lot because they weren’t able to get the kind of cross-section of voters a poll does.Ruffini: Where I do hope the media gets better is in conducting more polls the way campaigns conduct them, which are not mostly about who is winning but showing a candidate how to win.In those polls, we test the impact of messages on the electorate and show how their standing moved as a result. It’s possible to do this in a balanced way, and it would be illuminating for readers to see, starting with “Here’s where the race stands today, but here’s the impact of this Democratic attack or this Republican response,” etc.Bruni: Let’s finish with a lightning round. Please answer these quickly and in a sentence or less, starting with this: Which issue will ultimately have greater effect, even if just by a bit, in the outcome of the midterms — abortion or gas prices?Walter: Abortion. Only because gas prices are linked to overall economic worries.Ruffini: Gas prices, because they’re a microcosm about concerns about inflation. When we asked voters a head-to-head about what’s more important to their vote, reducing inflation comes out ahead of protecting abortion rights by 67 to 29 percent.Bruni: Which of the competitive Senate races will have an outcome that’s most tightly tethered to — and thus most indicative of — the country’s mood and leanings right now?Walter: Arizona and Georgia were the two closest races for Senate and president in 2020. They should both be indicative. But Georgia is much closer because the G.O.P. candidate, Herschel Walker, while he’s still got some problems, has much less baggage and much better name recognition than the G.O.P. candidate in Arizona, Blake Masters.Ruffini: If Republicans are going to flip the Senate, Georgia is most likely to be the tipping-point state.Bruni: If there’s a Senate upset, which race is it? Who’s the unpredicted victor?Walter: For Republicans, it would be Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. They’ve argued that the incumbent, Senator Maggie Hassan, has low approval ratings and is very weak. It would be an upset because Bolduc is a flawed candidate with very little money or history of strong fund-raising.Ruffini: I’d agree about New Hampshire. The polling has shown a single-digit race. Republicans are also hoping they can execute a bit of a sneak attack in Colorado with Joe O’Dea, though the state fundamentals look more challenging.Bruni: You (hypothetically) have to place a bet with serious money on the line. Is the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or “other”?Walter: It’s always a safer bet to pick “other.” One of the most difficult things to do in politics is what DeSantis is trying to do: not just to upend someone like Trump but to remain a front-runner for another year-plus.Ruffini: I’d place some money on DeSantis and some on “other.” DeSantis is in a strong position right now, relative to the other non-Trumps, but he hasn’t taken many punches. And Trump’s position is soft for a former president who’s supposedly loved by the base and who has remained in the fray. Time has not been his friend. About as many Republicans in the ABC/Washington Post poll this weekend said they didn’t want him to run as did.Bruni: Same deal with the Democratic presidential nominee — but don’t be safe. Live large. To the daredevil go the spoils. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or “other”?Walter: History tells us that Biden will run. If he doesn’t, history tells us that it will be Harris. But I feel very uncomfortable with either answer right now.Ruffini: “Other.” Our own polling shows Biden in a weaker position for renomination than Trump and Democrats less sure about who the alternative would be if he doesn’t run. I also think we’re underestimating the possibility that he doesn’t run at the age of 81.Bruni: OK, final question. Name a politician, on either side of the aisle, who has not yet been mentioned in our conversation but whose future is much brighter than most people realize.Walter: If you talk to Republicans, Representative Patrick McHenry is someone they see as perhaps the next leader for the party. There’s a lot of focus on Kevin McCarthy now, but many people see McHenry as a speaker in waiting.Ruffini: He’s stayed out of the presidential conversation (probably wisely until Trump has passed from the scene), but I think Dan Crenshaw remains an enormously compelling future leader for the G.O.P. Also in Texas, should we see Republicans capitalize on their gains with Hispanic voters and take at least one seat in the Rio Grande Valley, one of those candidates — Mayra Flores, Monica De La Cruz or Cassy Garcia — will easily be in the conversation for statewide office.Bruni: Thank you, both. I just took a poll, and 90 percent of respondents said they’d want to read your thoughts at twice this length. Then again, the margin of error was plus or minus 50 percent, and I’m not sure I sampled enough rural voters in the West.Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy and journalism 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. Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) is a co-founder of the Republican research firm Echelon Insights. Amy Walter (@amyewalter) is the publisher and editor in chief of The Cook Political Report.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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      Lawmakers Propose Measure to Avert Government Shutdown

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      The package would also provide major new aid to Ukraine, but its fate in an initial Senate vote on Tuesday is uncertain.WASHINGTON — Top lawmakers proposed a stopgap funding package on Monday night that would avert a government shutdown at the end of the week and set aside a major new round of emergency aid to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia.With funding set to run out when a new fiscal year begins on Saturday, lawmakers are aiming to quickly move the legislation through both chambers in the coming days to keep the government funded through Dec. 16. But even as the final details of the package came together, it faced an increasing likelihood that it could not pass in its current form.Most of the measures in the package, which would punt difficult negotiations over the dozen annual spending bills to after the November midterm elections, appeared to generate little opposition. It would provide just over $12 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine, and ensure the federal government could quickly spend money on natural disaster recovery efforts, according to a summary from the Senate Appropriations Committee. It also notably sidestepped the Biden administration’s request for emergency funds to combat the coronavirus pandemic and monkeypox, given Republican opposition.But the regular autumn scramble to avoid a shutdown has been complicated by the inclusion of a plan that would make it easier to build energy infrastructure across the country. The legislation is the product of a Democratic deal that helped secure the vote of Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a centrist Democrat, for the tax, health and climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, but lawmakers in both parties have objected to tying it to the must-pass spending bill.“I am disappointed that unrelated permitting reform was attached to this bill,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “However, with four days left in the fiscal year, we cannot risk a government shutdown; we must work to advance this bill,” he added.The sentiment was echoed in a separate statement by his House counterpart, Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, who noted that “while the bill provides a bridge to the omnibus, it is not perfect.”The Senate is set to take a first procedural vote on Tuesday, and it appears increasingly unlikely that the stopgap bill will advance with the permitting overhaul bill in tow. Should the package fail to secure enough support, lawmakers may strip out the permitting proposal and pass the government funding bill on its own to avoid a shutdown.Several Republicans, whose votes are essential in order to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the evenly divided Senate, have said they have little interest in helping to deliver on a promise that prompted Mr. Manchin to drop his opposition to the broader health, climate and tax plan and allow it to pass over their party’s unanimous opposition.In a statement, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, acknowledged the “significant progress” made toward a short-term bill that “is as clean as possible.” But, he warned, “if the Democrats insist on including permitting reform, I will oppose it.”Lawmakers in both parties have expressed opposition to the details of the permitting legislation, which Mr. Manchin released last week. Republicans have said the legislation does not go far enough to ensure projects are approved more quickly, while liberal Democrats are alarmed at provisions that would make it easier to build fossil fuel infrastructure and guarantee completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas project that passes through West Virginia..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.In an effort to speed up the permitting process, the legislation would instruct agencies to complete required environmental reviews within about two years for major projects and limit the window for court challenges.Some Democrats, including climate hawks, have signaled they will support the permitting package because they say it will help speed up the construction of transmission lines and other infrastructure needed to combat climate change and help deliver on President Biden’s pledge to cut United States emissions roughly in half by 2030.“To meet our climate goals, and as renewable energy projects continue to become more economically viable, we must enact reasonable permitting reform — which includes expedited review processes that also maintain fundamental environmental protections,” said Representative Sean Casten, Democrat of Illinois, in a statement. “Anything less is failing to do what is scientifically necessary to preserve our planet.”But at least one member of the Democratic caucus, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, has confirmed that he will vote against the stopgap spending bill because of the permitting reform legislation, meaning 11 Republicans will need to back the measure to avoid a filibuster if all 49 remaining senators in the Democratic caucus vote for it. In the House, dozens of liberal Democrats have called for a separate vote on the permitting measure.“Congress has a fundamental choice to make,” Mr. Sanders wrote in a letter urging his colleagues to reject the measure. “We can listen to the fossil fuel industry and climate deniers who are spending huge amounts of money on lobbying and campaign contributions to pass this side deal. Or we can listen to the scientists and the environmental community who are telling us loudly and clearly to reject it.”Mr. Manchin has begun a persuasion campaign centered on his Republican colleagues, including an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal and an appearance on Fox News.“It would be basically a lost moment in history if we don’t do this,” Mr. Manchin declared in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, he added: “I’m hoping that they will look at what we have in front of us — the energy independence, security, stopping Putin dead in his tracks, being able to do what we need to do to reduce the price of energy and helping people in their homes as far as energy cost there. We have a golden opportunity.”Ukraine’s recent military success, including reclaiming territory from Russia this month, has rallied lawmakers, who have already approved roughly $54 billion in military, economic and humanitarian aid this year, behind the prospect of pouring more money into the effort.The new package would set aside $3 billion for training, equipment, weapons and intelligence support for Ukrainian forces, as well as $4.5 billion for the Economic Support Fund, which is intended to help the Ukrainian government continue to function. It also would allow Mr. Biden to authorize the transfer of up to $3.7 billion of American equipment and weapons to the country.The legislation also aims to address a few domestic needs. In addition to providing $20 million to help address the water crisis in Jackson, Miss., and $2 billion for a block grant program to help communities rebuild after natural disasters in 2021 and 2022, it would give the federal government more flexibility to spend existing disaster aid quickly.The package also includes language that would ensure the Food and Drug Administration maintains the ability to collect industry fees that make up much of its budget.Catie Edmondson More

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      Don Bolduc Indicates He Has Not Entirely Turned His Back on Election Denial

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      All through his primary, Don Bolduc, a far-right Senate candidate in New Hampshire, said the 2020 election was stolen. A day after his victory was called, he reversed course. But eight days after that?He indicated on a podcast that he had not completely turned his back on the stolen-election movement, conveying that he found it unclear why his election-denial message had not been resonating with voters in the battleground state.“The narrative that the election was stolen, it does not fly up here in New Hampshire for whatever reason,” Mr. Bolduc said in a Sept. 23 appearance on The Mel K Show, a podcast aligned with the QAnon conspiracy movement.Then he renewed his false claim there had been fraud in the election.“What does fly” in New Hampshire, Mr. Bolduc said, “is that there was significant fraud and it needs to be fixed.”For about five minutes on the podcast, Mr. Bolduc attacked the expansion of mail-in voting during the pandemic and said voters in New Hampshire should be forced to present identification at the polls. He further stated his opposition to college students from out of state voting in New Hampshire.Shortly after winning his primary, Mr. Bolduc struck a far different tone in a Fox News interview, saying, “I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen.”“Elections have consequences, and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country,” he said in the interview.Mr. Bolduc’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.He is challenging Senator Maggie Hassan, whose underwhelming job approval ratings have emboldened Republicans in New England. The race could help determine whether Republicans gain control of the Senate in the November elections. More

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      G.O.P. Senate Candidates Race to Close Fund-Raising Gap With Democrats

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      Their fund-raising dwarfed by their Democratic rivals, Republican nominees including Blake Masters and Mehmet Oz have been in Washington gathering cash from lobbyists.WASHINGTON — Rushing to raise money and close yawning gaps with their Democratic rivals, every Senate Republican nominee in a competitive race is taking precious time from the campaign trail to come to Washington this week and next to gather money before Congress leaves for the fall.Fund-raising invitations obtained by The New York Times reveal days full of dinners, receptions and even some free meet-and-greets — schedule-fillers the candidates hope they can use to make a good impression and pick up a check on the spot.Two thousand miles from Phoenix, Blake Masters, the Republican challenging Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, made a campaign pitch on Wednesday evening alongside Senator Mitch McConnell in a conference room near the Capitol. Mr. Masters accused his Democratic rival of portraying himself as a moderate while voting like a liberal.“We don’t need as much money as Kelly, just enough to get the truth out,” Mr. Masters said, according to notes from a person who was in the room, which was filled with lobbyists who had paid $1,000 per political action committee to attend.As political fund-raising goes, Mr. Masters was making a modest ask, and he isn’t the only Republican to downgrade his financial goals. The Republican Senate hopefuls, many of them first-time candidates, have little choice but to race from lobby shop to steakhouse alongside the party leaders some of them castigated in their primaries but who now serve as lures for access-hungry lobbyists.The reasons are wide-ranging. Republican small-dollar fund-raising has dried up in the face of soaring inflation. Former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless appeals for his own committees have siphoned cash that would typically go to candidates or party committees. And the party’s novice Senate nominees lack the sort of wealthy donor networks that more experienced candidates have nurtured for years.“These are candidates that have never run for office before and never done the work necessary to develop relationships at the grass-roots or donor level in their own states or nationally,” said Jack Oliver, a longtime Republican fund-raiser. He then alluded to the way that many of them claimed their nominations: “If you can just go on Tucker or get Trump to endorse you, you don’t have to go meet with voters or donors.”For some major contributors, summer has just wrapped up, the temperature hasn’t much changed, and the election feels some time away. The advent of widespread early and mail voting, however, along with the need to reserve airtime on local television stations, means there’s little time left for the candidates to gather the cash they need.“To donors it’s early, to candidates it’s late,” as Lisa Spies, a Republican fund-raising consultant, put it.Of course, candidates of both parties have long jetted into the nation’s capital to raise money from the influence industry. And even as this year’s Republican class struggles for cash, the candidates have support from outside super PACs, most notably the one Mr. McConnell effectively controls, to ensure that they remain financially competitive. (Mr. McConnell’s group, the Senate Leadership Fund, accounted for 90 percent of the money spent on television this week in the Ohio Senate race, and an even greater percentage in North Carolina.)The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Mr. McConnell has asked his fellow Republican senators to contribute 20 percent of the money from their leadership PACs this election, an increase over past campaigns, according to a Republican official familiar with the request.“This is why God invented super PACs,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist.Yet the frenetic cash dash around Washington, shortly before early voting gets underway in many states, underscores the urgency Republicans are feeling to cut into Democrats’ fund-raising advantage. A major part of the motivation: Candidates receive substantially better television advertising rates than super PACs, so an individual campaign dollar goes further on the air.A spreadsheet of television advertising reservations shared by a top Republican strategist this week makes clear why many in the party are alarmed about their fund-raising deficit. Head-to-head, Democratic candidates have been sharply outspending their Republican rivals for weeks. In some states, like Arizona, New Hampshire and North Carolina, the G.O.P. nominees hadn’t aired even a single commercial in their own right through August and into September.Even in Georgia and Nevada, perhaps the two states where Republicans have the best chance to flip Democratic-held seats, the Democratic incumbents are overwhelming their G.O.P. challengers.From the week of Aug. 14 to the week of Nov. 6, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia had over $30 million in television reservations, while his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, had just over $7.8 million booked. In the same time period, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, had over $16 million in television reservations while her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, had just over $6 million reserved.Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, shaking hands with former President Donald J. Trump in Las Vegas in July. From the week of Aug. 14 to the week of Nov. 6, Mr. Laxalt had only $6 million in television reservations.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesIn key Senate races, top Democrats are raising millions of dollars online every month. In August alone, Mr. Warnock received nearly $6.8 million from more than 200,000 contributions, and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin raised nearly $6.3 million from more than 120,000 donations.In Arizona, Mr. Kelly raised $5.7 million from more than 170,000 donations on ActBlue in August. That sum is more than Mr. Masters had raised in total from when he began his campaign in 2021 through mid-July 2022, the last date that data is available..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.The Democratic advantage has been mitigated by outside Republican spending, including some hybrid advertising between the G.O.P. candidates and the Senate Republican campaign arm.But the disparity in candidate fund-raising explains why so many Republican Senate hopefuls have swapped public appearances at home for private events on more financially fertile terrain. It is Washington this week and next. Last week it was Florida, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, Rick Scott, squired eight candidates around his state and Sea Island, Ga., a resort community where his committee hosted a weekend donor retreat for many of the same contenders.What’s striking about the candidates’ schedules is how much work they’re putting in for relatively little financial payoff at a moment when some of the top-raising Democrats have stockpiled tens of millions. Individuals are limited at giving $2,900 to candidates, and PACs can contribute only up to $5,000.This coming Tuesday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, has Washington fund-raising receptions lined up at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., each hosted by a different group of lobbyists.It will be Dr. Oz’s second trek to the Beltway in a week: This past Tuesday, he was at the Northern Virginia home of Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, Republican operatives and Trump enthusiasts, where $5,800 granted a couple admission to an event and a photo with the television doctor turned Senate candidate.Mr. Laxalt, too, put in long hours far from Nevada. After attending the events in Florida and Georgia last week, he spent Tuesday at a $2,900-per-person dinner in Virginia’s well-heeled hunt country. Mr. Laxalt then came back to Washington to attend a series of events on Wednesday with lobbyists and Republican senators, concluding with an “Evening Cigar With Adam Laxalt Hosted by Premium Cigar Association” that cost $250 per person or $500 per PAC to attend (no word on if the cigar was extra).“The math is really simple: You can’t get there at $2,900 a pop,” said Mr. Reed, the Republican strategist.That’s not stopping the hopefuls from trying, however.Mr. Masters, who’s facing a Grand Canyon-size fund-raising gap with Mr. Kelly, charged only $500 per person to attend the reception with Mr. McConnell on Wednesday.The next day, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors hosted Mr. Masters for an afternoon gathering that was even more modestly priced.“This is a meet-and-greet, not a fund-raiser, so an opportunity for anyone who would like to meet the candidate to do so without having to make a financial commitment — though they would obviously welcome contributions!” Jade West, the wholesalers lobbyist, wrote in an email to potential attendees.J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, had just $628,000 in the bank at the start of this month.Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesOf all the Senate G.O.P. nominees, Mr. Masters may have criticized Mr. McConnell the most fiercely in the past. But that didn’t stop Mr. McConnell and his deputy, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, from hosting events for Mr. Masters and J.D. Vance, the party’s Senate nominee in Ohio and another candidate who took aim at the Senate leadership during the primary season.Mr. Vance had a paltry $628,000 in the bank at the start of this month.Mr. Oliver said that while it was probably too late to do now, Republicans should have lifted their Senate candidates’ fund-raising by creating a competition among the party’s would-be 2024 presidential candidates to see who could have raised the most for each of the top contenders.But, Mr. Oliver lamented, Mr. Trump and Fox News shape the G.O.P.’s wholesale politics today, all but determining primaries and therefore consuming the attention of candidates and their campaigns.“Relationship politics don’t exist anymore,” he said. “But that means it’s hard for J.D. Vance to go to Toledo and raise money because when you need a $500 check there, they don’t know you.”Shane Goldmacher More

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      Watchdog Group Accuses Republicans of Breaking Campaign-Finance Law

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      A campaign watchdog group has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, accusing the group of breaking federal law by using money that is supposed to be earmarked for legal expenses on campaign ads instead.The complaint was filed this week by the Campaign Legal Center after the unusual use of walled-off legal funds by the National Republican Senatorial Committee was first reported by The New York Times this month. End Citizens United, a group that advocates changes to campaign finance law, joined the complaint. In July, the Senate Republican campaign arm paid for $1 million in political advertising using money that, under campaign finance law, is meant to be for legal expenses. The spending, which appears to have been used for ads in the Senate races in Colorado and Washington State, is part of more than $3 million in media-related spending through the Republican committee’s legal fund, according to federal filings in 2021 and 2022.Senator Rick Scott of Florida oversaw an enormous wave of spending on digital ads at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn addition to the formal complaint by the watchdog group, the Senate Democratic campaign arm has asked the Federal Election Commission for a separate ruling on the legality of the practice, in an effort to spur the notoriously slow-moving agency into faster action.In its request to the F.E.C., the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked for legal guidance on whether money raised specifically into such a legal fund can be used to pay for television advertising — something the committee’s lawyer wrote is likely to be illegal.“It is beyond the imagination of the D.S.C.C. to understand why the N.R.S.C. believes that candidate attack ads are expenses incurred in connection with a legal proceeding,” Jacquelyn K. Lopez, a lawyer representing the Democratic committee, wrote to the F.E.C. in the request, which was filed Tuesday afternoon.Federal law stipulates that money raised for such an account, to which individual donors are allowed to give three times as much as they can to the main committee fund-raising vehicle, can be used only for “the preparation for and the conduct of election recounts and contests and other legal proceedings.”Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Republican committee, declined to comment on the request. Previously, he has said the committee will “always find the most effective, efficient and creative way to get our message out and stretch every dollar, in accordance with the law.”The Senate Democratic group is seeking an advisory opinion from the F.E.C. rather than filing a complaint about the Republican practice, in hopes of receiving a response before the midterm elections in November. The commission, divided evenly between Democratic and Republican members, is a slow-moving body that rarely scolds a political committee or candidate in the closing weeks of a campaign.The F.E.C. would typically have 60 days to respond to such an advisory opinion request, but because the general election is happening in less than seven weeks, the Democratic lawyers requested a response “within 20 days.”David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Senate Democratic committee, said it had not filed a complaint against the Republican practice because it hoped to receive an answer as soon as possible. The Federal Election Commission can take years to resolve formal grievances.But by seeking an advisory opinion instead of filing a complaint, the Democrats also leave open the possibility that in the future, they could engage in the same practice of using legal money to subsidize television advertising. More

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      Don’t Let Republicans Off the Hook on Same-Sex Marriage

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      Why is it always on the Democrats to compromise?To be the nice ones? To take the high road to nowhere?On Thursday, the bipartisan group of senators behind the Respect for Marriage Act, which would have enshrined federal protections for same-sex marriage, announced a delay on putting the measure to a vote, which had been expected to take place this week.According to the bill’s lead sponsor, Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, postponing the vote until after the November elections would increase the likelihood of getting the 10 Republicans on board necessary to push it through today’s filibustery Senate, where 60 votes would be needed for it to advance.Baldwin, and Democrats generally, are essentially conceding that it will be hard to get Republicans to commit to a measure that’s anathema to their base prior to the midterm elections. That in the interest of actually passing the bill, as opposed to putting Republicans on the record with an unpopular, anti-same-sex-marriage vote, Democrats should be generous and allow Republicans more time to muster support.Really? We’re supposed to believe it will be easier to bring Republicans on board after the election? If the Democrats retain the Senate post-election, Republicans will have little reason to vote against their base. If the Republicans retake the Senate, they’ll have less incentive still.Please. This just makes things easier on Republican lawmakers: A vote would force them to dissatisfy either swing voters, with whom same-sex marriage is highly popular, or their extremist base, with whom (to put it mildly) it is not. Easier for Republicans to scurry away from a proposal that’s politically risky, just as they did earlier last week with Lindsey Graham’s unpopular bill on abortion. And they’re doing this at the expense of the many Americans in same-sex relationships — married, engaged or on the cusp of commitment — for whom this just makes life harder and more precarious.This is exactly the moment to hold Republicans’ feet to the fire. It’s the moment for those Republicans who are in favor of gay marriage to stand up for what has become a clear majority position in the country, or to cave spectacularly to the prejudices of their base. As Senator Elizabeth Warren put it: “Every single member of Congress should be willing to go on the record. And if there are Republicans who don’t want to vote on that before the election, I assume it is because they are on the wrong side of history.”Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t. They could be true believers, or they could simply be selling their souls in the interest of staying in office. But those who do support gay marriage need to act. Particularly given the ominous words of Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which many interpreted as a threat to revisit the landmark 2015 decision establishing the right to same-sex marriage.If that right is no longer settled law, as had previously been assumed, it’s certainly a settled moral principle. Over the past seven short years and following the course of many long ones, same-sex marriage has reached the status of a basic and bedrock civil right. Currently 71 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. This not only includes the vast majority of Democrats, but as of 2021, 55 percent of Republicans according to Gallup. That is the definition of bipartisan consensus.In theory, I’m as much in favor of bipartisanship as the next pragmatist, despite the consistent battering the practice has gotten, especially from Obama’s failed efforts to woo Republicans on the Affordable Care Act onward. It’s hard to hold much hope in the ideal.When it comes to polarizing culture war issues, gay marriage may be the most unifying policy there is. Even under the capacious L.G.B.T.Q. umbrella, where disparate issues around sexual orientation, gay rights and gender identity split Americans across the political spectrum, you can’t get much closer to consensus than same-sex marriage. It may be the one clear-cut policy here that unites people rather than divides them.Alas, and unsurprisingly, it was Republican senators who requested the delay. According to Politico, a number of Republican senators complained that if Chuck Schumer forced a vote on the measure on Monday, they’d view it as politically motivated. As if delaying the vote for explicitly political reasons wasn’t politically motivated?What’s on Democrats here is the failure, once again, to play hardball — in the same way Republicans have done repeatedly and without remorse. To take just one recent and brazen example, Republicans pushed through a vote on Amy Coney Barrett days before an election, despite Democrats’ simmering fury over McConnell refusing to even consider Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination eight months before an election.Instead, Democrats are effectively joining Republicans in putting politics ahead of principle — and purely on behalf of Republicans. If politics were remotely fair play, Republicans would return the favor by voting overwhelmingly in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act during the post-midterm lame-duck session.Who here is holding their breath?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