From left, Nathan LaFrance, a Libertarian; Representative Tom Cotton, a Republican; Mark H. Swaney, the Green Party candidate; and Senator Mark Pryor, the Democratic incumbent, at a Senate debate at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Ark., on Monday.Credit Danny Johnston/Associated Press
Representative Tom Cotton spoke President Obama’s name far more often than he mentioned his opponent, the Democratic incumbent, Mark Pryor, in the first half-hour of their debate tonight.
In one five-minute period, Mr. Cotton said Obama or Obamacare 15 times and, among other things, blamed the Affordable Care Act for the rise in student loan rates and Mr. Pryor for increased tuition at the University
of Arkansas.
When it was Mr. Pryor’s turn, he sought to score points by pointing out four times in one answer that Mr. Cotton attended Harvard. “He probably couldn’t get into the University of Arkansas,”
the senator joked, before growing more serious. “He uses Harvard to pursue his political career.”
With details trickling in on the final quarterly campaign finance reports of the 2014 elections, two Republican candidates are finally catching up to the Democratic incumbents they have long trailed in the money
hunt.
One of the Republicans, Thom Tillis, running for the Senate in North Carolina, raised $3.4 million during the three months ending Sept. 30, a spokesman said. That is by far the best quarter for Mr. Tillis, who
has struggled with fund-raising for much of the campaign, even though he has had ample help from outside groups.
His opponent, Senator Kay Hagan, raised more, about $4.9 million, but she also blew through $11.6 million in a spending spree that succeeded in keeping her ahead in the polls. The two candidates entered October with Mr. Tillis enjoying a slight lead in cash on hand (about $200,000) for the first time.
The Republican Senate nominee in Colorado, Representative Cory Gardner, also has good news to report. He collected $4.4 million during the third quarter of 2014, out-raising the incumbent Democratic senator
Mark Udall, who took in about $4 million, according to his campaign.
Mr. Udall, like Ms. Hagan, has had to spend heavily to stay competitive: His campaign spent about $7.8 million during the quarter, including at least $1 million for advertising that will air after the Federal
Election Commission filing deadline on Wednesday. Mr. Gardner spent much less, about $4.5 million, and he ended the quarter with $1.4 million more in cash on hand that Mr. Udall.
Federal investigators and local officials surveyed the wreckage Tuesday of a single-engine plane that crashed near Key West, Iowa. The plane's pilot, Dr. Doug Butzier, the Libertarian Senate nominee in Iowa, was killedCredit David Kettering/Dubuque Telegraph Herald
The Libertarian Party candidate running for the Senate in Iowa, Doug Butzier, was killed late Monday night when the plane he was piloting crashed.
The plane went down near Dubuque not long after takeoff, according to local news reports. Mr. Butzier, 59, an emergency room physician, had not drawn significant support in the race.
In the most recent poll in The Des Moines Register, he was lumped into
the “someone else” category — 3 percent of the total.
The poll showed Joni Ernst, the Republican nominee, with the support of 47 percent of likely voters, and the Democratic nominee, Representative Bruce Braley, at 46 percent. With a margin of error of plus or
minus 3.1 percentage points, the poll effectively showed the race as too close to call.
Alison Lundergan Grimes greeted supporters before her debate with Senator Mitch McConnell on Monday, a day before the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee decided to stop airing ads in her support.Credit John Sommers II/Reuters
If Alison Lundergan Grimes defeats Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, it will be without the help of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the last weeks of the campaign.
The group’s expenditure arm has decided not to put up any more television ads in support of Ms. Grimes, a Democrat and the Kentucky secretary of state. The committee, which has poured $2 million into
the race, currently has no Grimes commercials on the air and has no television time reserved.
“The D.S.C.C. has already made several million dollars in investments on television and on the ground, and D.S.C.C. continues to make targeted investments on the ground,” said a committee official,
speaking anonymously to discuss a sensitive situation.
The official added that the group would “continue to assess the race” and had not ruled out buying television ads before Election Day.
The decision to go dark was first reported by Roll Call.
The D.S.C.C. denied that staying off the air in Kentucky was a sign that they were giving up on Ms. Grimes in her bid to unseat Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader.
“Of course Kentucky is still competitive,” said Justin Barasky, a committee spokesman.
The move seems intended, at least in part, to signal to Democratic “super PACs” that they need to get involved in the race to pick up any slack, as the campaign committee diverts its resources
to more competitive races.
The group recently bought nearly $1 million of ads in Georgia, where it had already spent $1.5 million and which it sees as increasingly competitive after comments recently came to light from 2005 by David Perdue,
a businessman and the Republican nominee, in which he said that he had spent most of his career outsourcing.
A Republican campaign flier has caused an uproar in a Maryland legislative race.
Voters on the state’s Eastern Shore received mailers over the weekend showing an image of the Democratic incumbent, Delegate Norman H. Conway, in a black ski mask over his face like a cat burglar, or
worse. It mentions his support of needle-exchange programs, among other policies.
Mr. Conway’s Republican opponent, Mayor Carl Anderton of Delmar, Md., told The Delmarva Daily Times that he had nothing to do with the flier.
He said it was a dirty trick more common in “big city politics.”
The newspaper identified the political operative behind the mailer as Joe Cluster, the executive director of the Maryland Republican Party. “Did I go a little overboard on pictures? Maybe,” he
told The Daily Times.
The Daily Times has also expressed shock over the harsh tone of the race in a district that covers two counties, Wicomico and Worcester. On the Eastern Shore, the paper scolded, “manners still matter.”
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.Credit Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas delivered a muscular foreign policy speech in London on Tuesday in which he defended Western military action against the Islamic State and seemed to distance himself further from the
isolationist streak of his potential rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, including Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and his fellow Texan Ted Cruz.
“In the Islamic State and all that goes with it, we’re dealing with a particular breed of fanaticism that leaves us with few options,” Mr. Perry said at a meeting of the United Services
Institute, a British research group. “The short of it is that we have a strong right to judge and every reason to act.”
Mr. Perry, who is considering a second run for president, took particular aim at those who say that Muslims do not want Western nations intervening in their affairs and that such intervention is often the inspiration
for Islamist extremism.
“The victims of jihad today have far more in common with you and me than they ever will have with their tormenters,” he said, adding that “there is not a Middle Eastern culture that allows
for the atrocities that are committed by ISIS.”
Mr. Perry is traveling to Britain, Germany, Poland and Ukraine this week as he seeks to burnish his foreign policy credentials.
Catering to his audience in London on Tuesday, Mr. Perry invoked the German bombing of the city during World War II and name-dropped British-born celebrities like Julie Andrews and Simon Cowell and cultural
touchstones like James Bond.
“When we in America think of enduring Western values, we think of you. We think of the people of this island,” he said. “It’s not just because to Americans you always sound so darn
smart and refined no matter what you’re saying.”
The Democrats’ chances of holding control of the Senate appear to be dwindling.
The Upshot’s forecasting model now gives Republicans
a 72 percent chance of gaining the seats needed to win control of the chamber, up from 68 percent on Monday. That’s the highest level since the Upshot started tracking the elections six months ago.
Improving fortunes for Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican incumbent in Kansas, are the reason for the bump, according to The Upshot’s Josh Katz.
Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that campaign finance rules had amplified the polarization in Congress because lawmakers were now constantly on the road raising money, leaving them less time to work together.Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Hillary Rodham Clinton continued to laugh off questions about her presidential aspirations on Tuesday, but she did shed some light on what she thinks is wrong in Washington.
Speaking at a Salesforce technology conference in San Francisco, Mrs. Clinton said the United States had made progress on racism, sexism and homophobia. But, she said, political divisiveness has grown worse.
“We’re right, they’re wrong, and that’s the end of the conversation,” Mrs. Clinton said in a discussion with Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum. “We are
breeding even more of the divisiveness, the intolerance and the failure to work jointly on shared goals.”
Mrs. Clinton said that campaign finance rules had amplified conflicts because lawmakers were now constantly on the road raising money, leaving them with less time to work together.
“We have these really perverse incentives,” Mrs. Clinton said. “The gulf that exists between ideologies and political viewpoints and the parties gets even wider because nobody is around
to spend time with each other to see face to face what kind of human being I’m dealing with.”
Mrs. Clinton also blamed what she said was a toxic media environment that had discouraged some qualified would-be candidates from running.
“People are looking for the best angle, the quickest hit, the biggest embarrassment,” she said.
As for her own political aspirations, Mrs. Clinton said that she said she did not intend to make any news today.
Representative Steve Israel outside the Capitol in 2011.Credit Drew Angerer/The
New York Times
Representative Steve Israel, the New Yorker who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is a bit of a Gettysburg buff.
He said that he was recently on a bus tour of the Pennsylvania battlefield when a fellow passenger noted he had received two of the committee’s incessant fund-raising emails while they were together.
Now Mr. Israel is doing some battlefield retrenching himself, building fortifications around endangered House incumbents facing an onslaught of Republican money.
So, in Gettysburg terms, who does Mr. Israel relate to as a battlefield commander? Is he James Longstreet, the Confederate general who advised Robert E. Lee to find a better defensive position? Is he George
Gordon Meade, the new Union general thrust into a major test? How about George Pickett, he of the infamous failed Confederate charge?
None of the above. Mr. Israel sees himself more as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Maine officer who led the defense at Little Round Top and helped preserve a Union victory by holding the Union flank even as
his troops ran out of ammunition.
He said he advised fellow Democrats to follow the example of the tenacious and courageous Chamberlain. “I tell candidates, and I tell the staff, innovate, innovate, innovate,” Mr. Israel said
Tuesday in a meeting with editors and reporters of The New York Times. “Don’t play by the old rules. Be bold. Just fix bayonets and charge.”
A show of past support in New Hampshire.Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The
New York Times
Welcome to Romney Watch, in which First Draft decodes — and debunks — the latest, recurring speculation that Mitt Romney might make a third run for president.
Not going to happen: In a story out this morning,
Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, told The Los Angeles Times about as emphatically as possible that the Romney family was through with campaigns. “Done,” she said. “Completely. Not only
Mitt and I are done, but the kids are done,” she said, referring to her five sons. “Done. Done. Done.”
But donors really want it: In a case of same-day whiplash, The Washington Post reports that donors and supporters of Mr. Romney really, really, really want him to run, and posits that this could force him to reconsider his insistence that, in fact, he will not run.
Still not going to happen: Appearing on “All Due Respect” a few days ago, Mr. Romney echoed his wife’s firm answer of no on 2016: “I am not running. I’m not planning on running.”
Somebody tell his advisers: Perhaps the most valuable piece of intelligence comes from Boston, where former members of the Romney high command are scratching their heads over the rampant speculation
that he will actually run, according to conversations with several of them. Their candid reaction: flattered befuddlement. “I’m sure Mitt is flattered by all the attention, but it’s
very wishful” is how one of these advisers put it.
Most plausible situation: Could this all, in the end, just be about staying relevant, the yearning of many who have entered, and clung to, the spotlight in American politics? That’s what
a New York Times Magazine article seemed to telegraph, when it described Mr. Romney as “noticeably
playing along” with the rumors.
Thom Tillis, the Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina, at a warehouse in Wilson.Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times
The National Republican Senatorial Committee is doubling down in North Carolina.
The group is pouring nearly $6 million into the state between now and Election Day — about $2 million each week — to help Thom Tillis, the Republican speaker of the State House, take on Senator
Kay Hagan, a Democrat. During the same period, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is scheduled to spend about $4.3 million.
The Republican committee, the leading player on the Republican side in North Carolina, will be spending nearly $10 million in all. The group’s internal reports show that undecided voters are beginning
to break for Mr. Tillis.
“Polls show North Carolinians are deeply concerned that as national security threats like ISIS emerged, Kay Hagan was asleep at the wheel,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the Republican committee.
“Thom Tillis is the only candidate in the race with a proven record of getting things done, unlike Senator Hagan, who simply voted whichever way that Harry Reid and Barack Obama wanted her to.”
Tired of fund-raising emails from candidates looking for a last burst of cash before the midterm elections? Jon Stewart offers a priceless rant on what’s been going in his inbox.
“Hey funny-man, long time no donate,” a fire-breathing emoticon said to Mr. Stewart. “Listen, give me your money or I will see you in hell.”
Of course, all the emails are the result of the growing costs of elections and advertising. Midterm fever, Mr. Stewart said, is just like Ebola but more expensive.
President Obama has decided to wait until after next month’s midterm elections to nominate a replacement for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., White House officials said on Tuesday, effectively ensuring
that the choice does not get mired in campaign politics.
The Senate has already left town for the fall campaign and so would not be in a position to confirm a nominee before the Nov. 4 vote anyway. But the decision to wait until early to mid-November foreshadows a
confirmation debate during the postelection session when lame-duck Democrats will still be in charge even if Republicans win a majority in the election.
Until now, the White House had been saying that the president would name a new attorney general as soon as possible, but Senate Democrats were pressing the president to wait. Mr. Holder has said he will stay
on in the job until his replacement is confirmed.
Among the candidates often mentioned by Obama advisers and Senate aides are Thomas E. Perez, the labor secretary; Kathryn Ruemmler, the former White House counsel; and Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the solicitor general.
The midterm elections may be three weeks away, but for prognosticators in the news media, 2016 is just around the corner.
And if attention from America’s top 15 newspapers is any guide, the presidential nominees this time around would be Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, according to a new study
from the Pew Research Center, which has been tracking mentions of potential candidates this year.
The report found that Mr. Christie and Mrs. Clinton have both been named as potential candidates in 82 newspaper articles.
They lead a pack that includes, in order of mentions, Mitt Romney, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. On the Democratic side,
Senator Elizabeth Warren is well behind Mrs. Clinton with 22 mentions, and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. comes in third with 18.
Newspapers’ interest in the presidential election has far surpassed the attention in 2010, with 541 articles written. That’s double the total at the same point in 2010.
Larry Pressler, independent Senate candidate and lover of verse, at a parade for the University of South Dakota.Credit Ryan Henriksen for The New York Times
In my piece today on South Dakota’s unpredictable Senate race, I noted how the candidates
there represented a departure from the cookie-cutter homogeneity that is now commonplace in races around the country. Few, however, break the mold like Larry Pressler, the former Republican senator now running
for his old seat as an independent.
Mr. Pressler seemed generally thrilled to be in his home state and back on the campaign trail 18 years after his defeat — “a glorious experience,” he called it — but he was particularly
delighted that his return to the hustings had allowed him to indulge a favorite pastime: poetry reading. Mr. Pressler repeatedly implored me to stay long enough in Sioux Falls to hear him read a bit of verse
on Wednesday evening. Perhaps trying to sweeten the deal, he approached me just minutes before a candidate forum at a Monday Rotary Club meeting to share that a reporter from The Times of London would be
at the reading.
Mr. Pressler was planning to read one poem from Badger Clark, South Dakota’s beloved 20th-century poet laureate. “We need to have a poet laureate in Washington, D.C., from South Dakota,”
Mr. Pressler wrote in a news release he wrote himself and forwarded over. “Usually that honor goes to an East Coast poet. But if I’m sent back to the Senate, I’m going to urge that we
have a poet laureate from South Dakota.”
One of the most fascinating quirks from Mr. Pressler’s long career was his brief flirtation with running for mayor of Washington in 1998. When I brought it up, he sought to play down how seriously he
considered a bid. “I can’t get rid of it,” he moaned. But he did not seem to pick up on the cliché of his having said at the time: “I have a lot of African-American friends.”
When I brought up the quote, he evinced no recognition at the “some of my best friends” usage and actually name-dropped one of his black friends: former Mayor Anthony A. Williams of Washington.
Good Tuesday morning from Washington, where President Obama will discuss his strategy to combat the Islamic State with about 20 foreign defense chiefs, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York is in town to talk national security, and the chances of the Republicans taking control of the Senate have inched up to 68 percent.
Democrats struggling to hang on to the Senate, who have been drowning in dreary news, have spotted a hopeful sign: Democratic voters who sat out the 2010 elections are becoming more interested in voting this
time.
In North Carolina, which permits early voting, 42,230 people had requested ballots as of Monday. Of that group, 17,364 did not vote in 2010, and among them, Democrats outnumber Republicans, 39 percent to 32
percent.
While it is difficult to predict how many of the North Carolina voters will ultimately turn in their ballots, the trend in Iowa suggests reasons for Democratic optimism.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reports that more than 21,000 Iowans who did not vote four years ago have already cast ballots: 53 percent of them are registered Democrats, 28 percent are unaffiliated,
and 19 percent are Republicans.
These so-called drop-off voters have been a major focus of the Democratic turnout operation, as the party tries to overcome the lethargy typical of midterm elections and attract a younger, more diverse electorate,
similar to the one that re-elected President Obama in 2012.
Michael P. McDonald, a University of Florida professor who tracks voting trends, said early indications suggested that the Democratic effort was paying off, though he cautioned against over-reading the data.
Republicans dismissed the numbers and said that they were gaining ground in early voting as they intensified their own outreach.
Drawing raised eyebrows in recent days for refusing to say whether she voted for President Obama, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democrat running for the Senate in Kentucky, didn’t budge
Monday night.
To divulge the answer, she said, would compromise “the constitutional right for privacy at the ballot box,” she said in a debate with Senator Mitch McConnell, whose chief strategy
has been to link his rival to the unpopular president.
Mr. McConnell did some fudging of his own on a question that has dogged him: What would become of the state’s popular health care exchange, Kynect, which has brought coverage to more residents than in
almost any other state, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed?
“The website can continue, but in my view, the best interest of the country would be achieved by pulling out Obamacare root and branch,” he said. (Of course, Kynect would almost certainly collapse
without the federal subsidies provided under the Affordable Care Act.)
Despite the fuzziness of both replies, the tight race has drawn such a deluge of TV ads that the debate — the only one scheduled — seemed to take on the nasty tone of the campaign.
Can you name the secretary of state in your state?
Probably not. The races used to be obscure, with many voters unsure of what secretaries of state actually do. (They administer elections.)
The contentious debate over voter ID laws and whether they discriminate against minority voters is changing all that.
On Tuesday, iVote, a national group devoted to aiding Democratic secretary of state candidates, will air its first ad in Nevada, one of four states
it is targeting this year. (The others are Colorado, Iowa and Ohio.)
The group says that it has raised $1 million and that it plans “significant” ad buys in Iowa and Nevada.
“What we’ve seen over the last several years is a systematic effort on the part of Republicans to very blatantly put barriers in the way of people voting,” said Jeremy Bird, a co-director
of iVote.
The Republican State Leadership Committee has its own initiative to support its secretaries of state candidates.
President Obama meets with Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and defense chiefs from 20 countries at Andrews Air Force Base to discuss the Islamic
State threat. Representatives from Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Netherlands, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain,
Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are attending.
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York comes to Washington with William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, to meet with F.B.I. and Homeland Security officials. Mr. de Blasio will
also meet with the president of the National Education Association.
In Arkansas, Senator Mark Pryor and RepresenatativeTom Cotton face off for their second debate in two days at 7 p.m. (CDT) at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is in San Francisco headlining an event at a Dreamforce software convention and is expected to take questions after her speech.
Wendy Davis will not pull the infamous “wheelchair ad” aimed at her opponent in the Texas governor’s race, Greg Abbott, who has used a wheelchair since
a jogging accident in the mid-1980s.
To demonstrate her commitment to the ad, which has been roundly criticized, Ms. Davis held a news conference on Monday with supporters — several in wheelchairs — who spoke up in its defense. An
Abbott campaign adviser responded by posting an article on Twitter that referred to those supporters as “props.”
That prompted an outraged tweet from Lamar White Jr., one of the Davis supporters at the news conference: “I am
a human being. Not a campaign prop. I volunteered to speak because @WendyDavisTexas is right.”
The 30-second ad features an empty wheelchair and a voiceover criticizing Mr. Abbott for “collecting millions” in a lawsuit about his own accident (he was struck by a tree while jogging) and then
arguing against similar settlements for others.
The ad “is about one thing — hypocrisy,” said Zac Petkanas, the Davis campaign’s communications director.
Ms. Davis is well behind in the polls: A Texas Lyceum survey released Oct. 1 had her down by nine percentage points to Mr. Abbott. Given those numbers, the ad should test the maxim that there is no bad publicity. The campaign said the ad had tested well in focus groups. And on Facebook and YouTube, it had been viewed more than a half-million times by Monday night.
Miscellany: Blue, a Democratic blog in New Hampshire, stumbled on a post by a Republican state senator that called a Democratic congressional
candidate as “ugly as sin.” Read the full rant.
