Midwest Manners Give Way in Last Illinois Governor’s Debate

Not much Midwestern civility – or subtlety – was left as the candidates for Illinois governor fussed at one another in their final debate before the election.

Bruce Rauner, the Republican candidate, had a blunt refrain on pretty much everything when it came to his opponent, Pat Quinn, the incumbent Democrat: failure.

On jobs, Mr. Rauner said, “Pat Quinn is a miserable failure.” On pension reform: “Governor Quinn has failed completely.” On education: “He’s failing on schools.”

On Mr. Quinn’s working with lawmakers: “a failure.”

Still, over the course of 60 minutes, there was time for variety. On gun enforcement, Mr. Rauner deemed Mr. Quinn “a disaster.” On crime: “Pat Quinn has been a disaster.” And on the interests of African Americans: “a disaster.”

For his part, Mr. Quinn, had his own, less-than-subtle theme for Mr. Rauner, a businessman.

At every turn, Mr. Quinn cited Mr. Rauner’s wealth, spitting out the words “billionaire” and “millionaire” like curses. (For the record, Mr. Rauner’s advocates have said he falls in the multimillionaire range.)

“My opponent has made a fortune – a fortune – out of the misfortune of other people,” Mr. Quinn said at one point. Then, at another, Mr. Quinn said, “I’m running against a billionaire who wants to give himself a $1 million tax cut and have savage cuts in our public schools.”

Afterward, Mark Brown, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, seemed to best reflect the exhaustion of a state from months of all-out battle:

Steyer Passes Adelson as No. 1 ‘Super PAC’ Donor

Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund founder who has pledged to spend $50 million of his own money to defeat Republican candidates in Senate and governor’s races this campaign cycle, exceeded that mark in September.

Mr. Steyer’s “super PAC,” NextGen Climate Action Committee, reported on Monday night that it received $15 million from him last month, putting his total contributions to the committee since June 2013 at $55 million.

That makes Mr. Steyer the largest super PAC donor, putting him ahead of the casino magnate Sheldon G. Adelson, who gave $49.8 million to super PACs during the 2012 campaign. More than half of Mr. Steyer’s donations to NextGen have come in the previous two months; he also gave $15 million in August.

NextGen has paid for millions in television advertisements and other campaign activities in Senate races, but also has become a donor to environmental organizations and to state committees: In September it sent $5 million to its Florida affiliate and $925,000 to the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund.

Ohio Governor Backpedals on Repeal of Health Law

Photo
Gov. John Kasich of Ohio says he has his own plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.Credit Tony Dejak/Associated Press

Wait, that’s not what I really meant.

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio said his comments about a Republican-led Congress being unlikely to repeal the Affordable Care Act — which commentators on the right and left pounced upon Monday — were taken out of context.

Mr. Kasich, a Republican mentioned as a 2016 presidential hopeful, in an interview distanced himself from the notion that he had accepted the health care law as a fait accompli. The idea is anathema to almost all Republican officials, and especially the party’s base.

In an Associated Press article about nine Republican governors who have expanded Medicaid, Mr. Kasich, referring to repealing the Affordable Care Act, was quoted as saying “that’s not gonna happen.”

He insisted that his comment referred only to a repeal of the Medicaid expansion option, not the entire act. (Late Monday evening, The A.P. updated its report to include the governor’s clarification.)

“I’ve always thought if we got a majority we would repeal Obamacare,’’ he said. “My only point was they’d probably make an accommodation for Medicaid expansion.’’

The governor was trying to control the damaging perception, not to say fatal for a would-be Republican presidential candidate, that he supports the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Kasich pushed Medicaid expansion through Ohio’s Republican-led Legislature over the opposition of Tea Party lawmakers, criticizing some conservatives for being hardhearted toward the poor and disabled. He had no regrets, he said. “This has had a very significant impact on people who have fundamentally really struggled and lived in the shadows,’’ he said.

It is an open question how expanding Medicaid benefits as generously as the Affordable Care Act allows, to adults earning up to 138 percent of the poverty level, could be paid for without increased taxes and Medicare cost reductions also created by the health care law.

Mr. Kasich said he was working on his own replacement for Obamacare but did not offer specifics. “I’m in favor of repealing Obamacare,” he repeated. “That’s all I can tell you.’’

Verbatim: Obama as Supreme Court Justice?

I think being a justice is a little bit too monastic for me. Particularly after having spent six years and what will be eight years in this bubble, I think I need to get outside a little bit more

–President Obama in an interview with The New Yorker

Lewinsky Live: I Was the Internet’s First Victim

Video

Lewinsky Reflects on Public Image

Monica Lewinsky, speaking at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, talked about being “the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed” on the Internet.

By Reuters on Publish Date October 21, 2014.

A few hours after joining Twitter, a move that upended the conversation in Washington, Monica Lewinsky spoke at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia. She talked about being “the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed” on the Internet.

Gillespie Reads Mean Tweets

Ed Gillespie, the Republican Senate nominee in Virginia, copped a bit from late night television and read some mean Twitter messages in a YouTube video.

The bit, which was first made popular by Jimmy Kimmel and has also been used by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, is good natured, as Mr. Gillespie has a slight wry smile on his face.

We’re not sure how big the sympathy vote is in Virginia, however.

First Draft Video: Scott Brown on Fixing Washington

Video

Brown on Fixing Washington

Scott Brown, a Republican candidate for Senate in New Hampshire, argues for more independents in Congress in our latest “Fixing Washington” video.

By Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times on Publish Date October 20, 2014. Photo by Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times.

Scott Brown, the Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire, is the latest to appear in the Fixing Washington video series on First Draft, where he argues for more independents in Congress.

Mr. Brown made news this weekend, with a recent poll showing him closing the gap in his race to unseat Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and his remarks that the country “would not be worrying about Ebola right now” if Mitt Romney had won the 2012 election.

From Bits: Senator Denounces ‘Paid Prioritization’ of Web Content

As the Federal Communications Commission reviews the antitrust implications of Comcast’s proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable, the Bits technology blog reports that the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking Comcast to promise not to “engage in paid prioritization” of Internet content.

Senator Calls on Comcast to Extend Net Neutrality Pledge

Senator Calls on Comcast to Extend Net Neutrality Pledge

Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, called on Comcast to commit to never allow so-called fast lanes on its network.

Blue Dogs Have Cash, but Nowhere to Spend It

The Blue Dog PAC, which at its height dished out more than $1 million to moderate and conservative House Democrats in three straight election cycles, has a rare problem: It has money, but few places to spend it.

Campaign finance reports filed Monday by the committee and covering September and the first two weeks of October contained not a single candidate contribution — the first time that has happened during an election year in the PAC’s history.

The group has made fewer donations since 2010, when many of its members lost their seats. In the final weeks of the 2012 election, the committee handed out just $15,000, when it had only a handful of candidates to support.

This year, the most recent contribution made by the PAC was in July for $150,000 to the House Majority PAC, a Democratic “super PAC.” Other recipients this year have included a county party in Nashville and various state party committees.

There are some candidates that fit the bill, but the group has already reached its contribution limit to most of them. Its most recent candidate contribution, $5,000 to Rocky Lara, running for the House in New Mexico, was in June.

As of Oct. 15, the Blue Dog PAC had $259,000 in cash on hand.

On This Day: Senate Seals History’s Greatest Property Deal

Photo
Two pages of William Clark's elkskin-bound journal, used to record events and terrain during the expedition into the Louisiana Territory.Credit Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

The United States Senate gets its fair share of criticism these days for failing to get much done, but on this day in 1803 it had one of its finer moments.

That’s when the Senate voted 24 to 7 to approve the Louisiana Purchase treaty, sealing what has become known as the greatest property deal in history (depending on one’s perspective).

The treaty doubled America’s geographic size, adding land that would become the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, as well as parts of Minnesota, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. President Thomas Jefferson managed to acquire the territory from a distracted Napoleon for just $15 million, or $300 million in today’s dollars.

While the deal with France, which amounted to less than a nickel per acre, is now widely celebrated as a coup, support was not unanimous at the time, as the Senate Archives recall.

Seven Federalist senators objected to Mr. Jefferson’s plan on the grounds that he was taking his executive powers too far. Senator Samuel White of Delaware feared that moving settlers so far from the capital would “alienate affections for the Union.”

But Senator James Jackson of Georgia was a strong proponent of the purchase and made the case that it was an offer the chamber could not refuse.

“We have a bargain now in our power, which, once missed, we never shall have again,” he said.

Biden on Airports, Lincoln and Governor Cuomo

Photo
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. backed Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plans to commission a redesign of four New York airports at a news conference Monday at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology next to La Guardia Airport in Queens. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

If Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s words of praise translate into votes, Andrew M. Cuomo should be re-elected governor of New York by a landslide.

Mr. Biden appeared in a hangar near La Guardia Airport on Monday to endorse Mr. Cuomo’s plans for commissioning a redesign of it and three other airports in New York — Kennedy International, Stewart International in New Windsor and Republic on Long Island.

In the process, Mr. Biden saluted Mr. Cuomo’s ambition and even likened him to Abraham Lincoln. “He’s like you, pal,” the vice president said to the governor. “He had vision.”

Mr. Cuomo was seated to Mr. Biden’s immediate left on a panel of five people, only two of whose voices were heard during an event that lasted about 45 minutes. Near the end of a rambling 25-minute discourse on the importance of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, Mr. Biden turned to Mr. Cuomo and said, “Governor, your ideas are as big and as bold as you are.”

Mr. Biden accepted some good-natured ribbing about a comment he made in Philadelphia in February, likening La Guardia to an airport in a “third-world country.” Mr. Cuomo suggested the source of that remark could have been Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Jay Leno or even Donald Trump.

But Mr. Cuomo said that Mr. Biden had been right, “or at least right enough.”

For his part, Mr. Biden uttered none of the gaffes he has become known for in discussing the airports. But he did flub the name of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s program to cut down on traffic fatalities, calling it “zero vision,” before quickly correcting it to Vision Zero.

Correction: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article mistakenly listed twice La Guardia Airport in a list of airports for which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has plans for commissioning a redesign of, and omitted another airport from the list. The list also includes Kennedy International Airport.

Obama Votes Early

Photo
President Obama cast his ballot in Chicago, his hometown, on Monday in early voting for the midterm elections, which are on Nov. 4. During his visit to Illinois, which began Sunday, Mr. Obama also campaigned for Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, and urged people to encourage friends and co-workers to turn out to vote. Credit Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

CHICAGO — President Obama cast his midterm election ballot in his hometown Monday, hoping to send a message to the Democratic faithful about the importance of turning out to vote.

A poll worker at the Dr. Martin Luther King Community Service Center checked the president’s name off her voting list, announcing “Barack Obama,” as she did so. “That’s me,” the president said before walking to the electronic voting machine to make his selections.

“I love voting. Everybody in Illinois, early vote. It’s a wonderful opportunity,” the president said, walking over to a group of fellow early-voters and giving a few hugs.

Outside the center, young children at a school across the street excitedly yelled “President Obama!” as crowds of people gathered around. After he voted, Mr. Obama’s motorcade traveled a few blocks to a South Side campaign office for Gov. Pat Quinn where volunteers were making calls urging people to start casting ballots.

Mr. Obama carried in three white boxes of food, joking that “Michelle sent these. We got broccoli, carrots.” Aides later said the boxes actually contained doughnuts and pastries.

Inside the campaign office, Mr. Obama walked around the room greeting the volunteers and urging them to work hard for the next two weeks.

“You guys keep on working now. Don’t get distracted,” Mr. Obama said to the small crowd in the room. “We’ve got work to do.”

The president continued to talk to volunteers as reporters were led out of the room.

“Nothing like campaign fever,” he said.

Michelle Obama Hits Trail on Midterm Final Stretch

Photo
Michelle Obama campaigned last week for Charlie Crist, the former Florida governor who is running for governor again as a Democratic candidate.Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Michelle Obama had been keeping a low profile for much of the midterm election cycle, until this month when she appeared with Democratic governors and a handful of Senate candidates.

While President Obama has been persona non grata in some states with hard-fought races, Mrs. Obama continues to be a welcome guest.

This week, she steps up the pace of campaigning, making trips on Tuesday and Thursday through Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado.

According to the White House, she will be in Iowa City on Tuesday to stump with Representative Bruce Braley at an Iowa Votes rally. Then she will make her way to Minnesota for an event with Senator Al Franken and Gov. Mark Dayton.

On Thursday, Mrs. Obama will head to Colorado for events with Senator Mark Udall in Denver and Fort Collins. Mr. Udall is running slightly behind Representative Cory Gardner in recent polls.

Me? I’m Likable. The Other Guy? Not So Much.

On a recent afternoon, Domenic Recchia, the Democrat who is running against Representative Michael G. Grimm in New York’s nastiest congressional race, boiled the art of campaigning down to its essence.

“When people meet me, they like me,” Mr. Recchia told me as he handed out fliers to commuters coming off the subway. “They want to vote for me. When people meet him, they don’t want to vote for him.”

Maybe. But first the voters have to meet him.

Video

Recchia Greets New Yorkers

Domenic M. Recchia Jr., a former New York City councilman from Brooklyn who is running for Representative Michael Grimm’s congressional seat, greeted New Yorkers coming off the subway.

By Jason Horowitz on Publish Date October 20, 2014.

Valerie Jarrett to Return to Work After Spinal Surgery

Photo
Valerie Jarrett is a senior adviser to President Obama.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama’s senior advisers, underwent spinal surgery in Chicago last week to treat cervical spine stenosis, White House officials said Monday. Ms. Jarrett is recovering and will return to Washington with Mr. Obama aboard Air Force One on Monday evening.

Officials said Ms. Jarrett’s condition involved a painful compression of nerves in the spine. They said she was “making progress every day and is already joining meetings by phone. She looks forward to being back at work full time in the near future.”

Ms. Jarrett, one of the president’s closest friends, oversees White House outreach efforts and serves as one of his chief confidants on domestic policy and political issues.

The president arrived in Chicago on Sunday night to attend a rally for Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois, a Democrat who is running for re-election. Mr. Obama is scheduled to cast his ballot in early voting on Monday and to attend a fund-raiser before returning to the White House.

Retro Report: The Cost of Campaigns

Video

The Cost of Campaigns

The Watergate campaign finance scandals led to a landmark law designed to limit the influence of money in politics. Forty years later, some say the scandal isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal.

By Retro Report on Publish Date October 19, 2014.

Watergate led to a landmark law intended to limit the influence of money in politics. Forty years later, some say the scandal isn’t what is illegal, it’s what is legal.

Today in Politics

Democrats Diverge From Obama on Ebola

Photo
Democrats anxious over the Obama administration's Ebola response have called on the president to institute a travel ban.Credit Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Good Monday morning from Washington, where midterm elections are just over two weeks away, and Republicans currently have a 69 percent chance of gaining control of the Senate. President Obama is back home in Chicago and heading to the polls early to vote for some old friends, Hillary Rodham Clinton joins Steven Spielberg for a Los Angeles fund-raiser, and opponents of the voter ID law in Texas have vowed to fight on.

Ebola may be contained so far in America, but the political impact of the virus is spreading ​rapidly.

Democrats running in conservative states worry that the Obama administration’s stumbling response to Ebola’s arrival in the United States is generating anxiety among voters — and reinforcing the Republican message that the world is a frightening place and President Obama is not equipped to manage it.

​That is why ​we have seen Democratic candidates in ​recent days criticizing the administration’s approach and forcefully urging the president to impose a ban on those traveling to the United States from West Africa.

​Federal health officials ​continue to ​oppose the ban, saying it will do little to contain the disease​, but the public overwhelmingly favors it, polls show​.

With just two weeks to go before Election Day, ​some Democrats are ​growing frustrated with what they see as the ​administration’s mishandling of the crisis and ​want to express their independence from Mr. Obama, who is deeply unpopular in states with pivotal Senate contests.

“Arkansans have every right to be upset,” said Senator Mark Pryor, who is among the most vulnerable of the Democratic incumbents. “Mistakes have been made where mistakes cannot be made.” He appeared Friday with the head of Arkansas’ health department at a news conference. Mr. Pryor and Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina called on Mr. Obama to institute the travel ban, as did Michelle Nunn, the Democratic Senate nominee in Georgia.

​It was especially striking on Sunday to see so few Democrats, with the exception of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, vigorously defending the president’s leadership on Ebola.​

David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser, ​vented on Twitter about the politicizing of the health crisis. “Caustic mix: Public health issue, falling news ratings and pols in the final weeks of election = unconscionable hype and demagoguery.”

— Jonathan Martin

Throwing Cold Water on a Georgia Governor’s Ebola Theory

One of the stranger theories about Ebola surfaced in the governor’s debate on Sunday between the incumbent, Nathan Deal, and the Democratic challenger, Jason Carter.

Mr. Deal faced ridicule for days last week in offering what seems like an easy cure, readily available in every home.

“Water kills the Ebola virus,” he said in an interview.

It was a remark that quickly evolved into a punch line and which on Sunday he blamed on the state’s public health commissioner.

Mr. Carter didn’t let him off the hook, saying it “was inappropriate last week for the governor to say that water cures Ebola.”

The Libertarian candidate in the debate, Andrew Hunt, a scientist and expert in nanotechnology, also did not spare his criticism of the governor. “We cannot have our leaders making such statements and then not retracting them ever,” he said. “That is bad.”

— Alan Blinder

Colorado Democrats Need Ground Game to Live Up to Reputation

There’s more on the line for Democrats in the Senate race in Colorado than the re-election of Senator Mark Udall.

A Udall victory is essential if the Democrats are going to keep control of the Senate map. But the party’s reputation is at stake, too: Its members want to prove that the voter turnout model pioneered in Senator Michael Bennet’s surprise victory in 2010 and in President Obama’s ability to carry the state two years later still works in their favor.

Mr. Udall is falling behind his Republican opponent, Representative Cory Gardner. Two polls from last week show the senator trailing: CNN (four percentage points) and Quinnipiac (six points).

There was no let-up over the weekend for both men, with even an upbeat Mr. Gardner acknowledging, “We have a lot of hard work ahead of us.”

At the same time, Mr. Bennet has been reminding voters that he, too, was down in the polls in 2010 but managed to eke out a victory that he said amounted to a difference of about one vote per precinct statewide.

Democrats, after being outspent on television in recent days, say they will also have a significantly larger presence on television than Republican groups for the last two weeks of the campaign.

— Carl Hulse

What We’re Watching Today

President Obama will take advantage of early voting and cast his ballot in Illinois before attending a Democratic National Committee event.

Hillary Rodham Clinton heads to Los Angeles for a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fund-raiser with a guest list that includes Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw.

Secretary of State John Kerry is in Jakarta, Indonesia, for the inauguration of Joko Widodo, the president-elect.

Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez, a possible attorney general candidate, speaks about the economy at 1 p.m. at the National Press Club in Washington.

Gov. Chris Christie is on the trail, attending campaign events in New Jersey, Kansas and Colorado.

At Brooklyn High School, Sanders Is Just a Name on the Wall

Bernard Sanders, the Vermont senator, is getting more national attention these days as he weighs a run for president.

But back at his old high school in Brooklyn, Mr. Sanders is not even the most famous political alumnus.

Or the second-most.​

O​ther graduates of James Madison High School include Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for whom the school’s mock courtroom is named and who graduated in 1950. New York’s senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, got his diploma there in 1967, a year after Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator.

In 2008, Madison High placed Mr. Sanders on its crowded Wall of Distinction, alongside four Nobel Prize winners, famed historians, the radio personality “Cousin Brucie,” and Judith Sheindlin, a.k.a. Judge Judy.

The socialist senator spent that day talking about his experience at Madison High and “how it enabled him to get where he is today,” said Jodie Cohen, the principal.

She called him a “gentleman” and “down-to-earth,” but didn’t recall thinking of him as a future presidential candidate. And even if he made it to the White House, Ms. Cohen didn’t foresee the school’s name being changed.

“But I believe,” she said, “that he would come back.”

— Jason Horowitz

What We’re Reading Elsewhere

The Hill reports that no matter how hard they campaign, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton don’t seem to be helping the so-called Clinton Democrats facing re-election this year.

Hillary Rodham Clinton understands the issues at stake this year far better than the candidates on the ballot, The Nation says.

The diminishing number of Southern evangelical voters is affecting this year’s Senate races, The Atlantic reports.

The Texas Tribune provides the view from the ground after the Supreme Court’s voter ID decision. The Austin Chronicle offers its own take.

The Associated Press reports that a Connecticut state Senate hopeful is learning what its like to run against a Kennedy.

Like the Politics Newsletter? Get it delivered to your inbox.