Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Arizona abortion rights advocates have been fielding confusing abortion laws in the state for months. Now, those advocates say the midterm elections are critical for determining access to abortion in the state.

Abortion providers in Arizona have been living in “legal limbo” since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, abortion rights advocates say.

A near-total abortion ban in the state with language dating back to 1864 was never technically repealed after the 1973 ruling of Roe. After the overturning this summer, the state’s current attorney general, Mark Brnovich, sought to reinstate that territorial-era ban, which a Pima County judge did in September.

Abortion providers and patients had to shift again when a court of appeals halted the 1864 law, instead invoking a 15-week ban that continues to be in place. However, that court is currently considering arguments on that law, as well as the 1864 law.

Going into the midterm elections, abortion rights advocates say the incoming elected officials will determine what happens next.

The Republican candidates for governor and attorney general, Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh, said earlier this summer they would “follow the law” in regards to an abortion ban, but have stayed quiet on the subject in recent weeks as the election nears.

“Their silence speaks volumes,” said Kristin Mayes, a Democrat who is running for attorney general. “That’s for a reason. They know how absolutely unpopular this 1901 law is. They know how indefensible it is, and they know that when Nov. 8 comes, the people of Arizona are going to resoundingly reject this extreme abortion ban, this attack on the people of Arizona, by voting them down.”

Lake and Hamadeh did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment about Mayes’ statement.

Advocates are looking to Katie Hobbs, the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate, and Mayes to counter a possible ban. While the two could not pass or overturn a law already in effect, they could impact whether that law is enforced or veto further bans passed by state legislature. Both Hobbs and Mayes have pledged to not sign or prosecute any laws that ban abortion.

Abortion rights advocates in the state say Mayes’ election is critical to ensuring abortion access.

“[Brnovich’s] office is the one who is fighting to lift the injunction,” Amy Fitch-Heacock, founding committee member and communications director of Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom, told ABC News. “If we have Kris Mayes in office, the very first thing she can do is say we are not prioritizing this case anymore.”

Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, told ABC News the reason Arizona abortion laws have been in such limbo is because of Brnovich’s actions in the attorney general seat.

“[Brnovich] decided to go to the court and ask the court to lift an injunction on the near total ban on abortion,” Fonteno said. “Nobody asked for this. He made this completely politically motivated move by putting politics over patients.”

“We believe this is the best and most accurate state of the law,” Brnovich said in a July statement. “We know this is an important issue to so many Arizonans, and our hope is that the court will provide clarity and uniformity for our state.”

Electing Hamadeh, Fonteno said, will ensure abortion bans are enforced, which Fonteno claims is not what the majority of Arizonans want. According to a Change Research poll from earlier this year, 71% of Arizonans oppose making abortion illegal.

ABC News has heard from some Arizona residents who say the Republicans do not plan to fully ban abortion.

“It’s not [totally banned]. That’s a scare tactic. That’s an absolute scare tactic,” Karen Deadrick said this summer. “And you know what, they can go to California and get there first, and if they want to, I think the Californians will even pay for you to travel there to get them to get there. So you know, if you’re really passionate about it, go there and get one.”

“They’re making it sound like Republicans want to just stop all of it,” Krista Smiley, another resident, told ABC News this summer. “That’s not true. It’s not true. There’s Christian organizations. There’s stuff out there to help.”

For abortion rights advocates whose work includes funding travel, medical and general expenses for Arizonans seeking abortion, electing an attorney general they know will not prosecute the procedure is critical, Eloisa Lopez, executive director of Pro-Choice Arizona and Abortion Fund of Arizona, told ABC News.

“Since June, our state has kind of been flipping back and forth about every two weeks with access, no access, and then access again, and then limited access, so it’s really been a state of chaos,” Lopez said. “Not just for patients who are trying to get appointments, but also for us organizations on the ground, who have to help people move to get their care.”

Beyond prosecution, the governor’s ability to veto legislation from the state legislature will also determine the state of abortion access in Arizona, Lopez said.

“Whoever moves into these positions of power, they are going to determine the course of our state, not just in the short term, [but] for the next couple of years while they hold office,” Lopez said.

New anti-abortion rights laws, she said, would “make it even harder for our state to get back to a level where we do have access and protections” because the more a state restricts abortion, “the longer it takes for us to repair and build it back into our communities.”

Fitch-Heacock added that while Hobbs has pledged to veto any legislation that further bans abortion in the state, Lake is likely to sign on to Republican efforts to limit access.

“We’ve already seen the Republican blueprint,” Fitch-Heacock said. “We know that they want a nationwide 15-week ban.”

However, Lake, like Hamadeh, has refrained from commenting on abortion during the last several weeks of her campaign. Lake is currently polling ahead of Hobbs, with a 64% chance of election, according to FiveThirtyEight.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former Cranston, Rhode Island Mayor Allen Fung, a Republican, is running a strong campaign in a House district President Joe Biden won by 13 points in 2020, threatening an upset with a message of moderation.

“I’m not into divisiveness. I’m not into spreading any type of election denials. I’m my own person. I’m going to be that voice of moderation down there. And I believe that I will bring that voice of centrism,” Fung told ABC News. “Hopefully, it’s not just myself.”

However, it’s becoming increasingly unclear who would fit the mold of the type of moderate Fung hopes will join him in Congress.

What counts as moderation in a Republican Party transformed under Donald Trump is unclear, as strategists say ideological labels are getting increasingly scrambled by emphasis on personality and attitudes toward the former president.

Some lawmakers, like Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, tout their moderate bona fides, noting their centrist policies on social issues and fiscal conservatism. Candidates like Fung and Colorado GOP Senate nominee Joe O’Dea are deploying similar playbooks as they seek to follow them to Washington.

Yet, the term “moderate” is getting bandied about more broadly, both in the media and among party operators and leaders, though in reality, party members say those cast as moderates are those who have lower key personalities and keep some distance with Trump, the GOP’s de facto leader.

“We’ve redefined conservatism, or I think the media largely has kind of in collusion with Trumpworld, redefined conservatism as Trumpism, and they’re not the same thing,” said former House GOP leadership aide Doug Heye. “And then if you’ve realtered what that term means, well, then moderate has to mean something different as well.”

“I don’t think there are many moderates, if any, in the Republican party today,” added Republican National Committee member Bill Palatucci. “It’s kind of an extinct breed. These days, the fight is between what I consider true conservatives and Trump apologists.”

Among those who have gotten slapped with the label of “moderate” include lawmakers like retiring Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who lost her primary to a Trump-backed challenger this year. Both supporting Trump’s impeachment after last year’s Capitol riot, but Toomey boasts a 92% rating from the American Conservative Union, and Cheney has a 77% rating, based on their voting records.

Another Republican touted as a modern moderate is Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who won his seat in 2021 with a laser focus on education while refusing to bear hug Trump.

Yet Youngkin has pushed for bans on the teaching of “divisive concepts” in schools, called for requiring transgender students to have formal parental permission to identify with their gender identity and has looked to pull out of an agreement with other states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Rumored to have an eye on a White House run in 2024, he’s also been campaigning with people like Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who has spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Strategists say the misidentification of moderates is on the rise as voters become less attuned with policy priorities.

“If you’re not raising your voice with pithy one liners on cable news, you’re a moderate. In our politics it’s become tone over substance. We do focus groups, raise your hand if you’ve been to the candidate’s website, no one ever raises their hand,” said one GOP strategist working on House races.

“So, how could Pat Toomey be a moderate? Well, because he doesn’t come across as an asshole. That’s it, period, end of discussion. We are living in a cable news, social media political time.”

And even for voters who remain invested in conservative policies, Trump thoroughly revamped what counts as Republican orthodoxy.

On domestic issues, Trump threw fiscal conservatism out the window, favoring heavy government spending that increased the debt. And on the global stage, he overhauled the GOP’s preference for free trade for one focused on “fair trade” forwarded by tariffs. And militarily, Trump shunned foreign interventions, a reversal for a party that historically advocated for a muscular armed presence overseas.

“I remember conservatives complaining about Ronald Reagan and big spending and some of his nominees and so forth. They held his feet to the fire. No one helped Donald Trump’s feet to a matchstick,” Heye said. “Donald Trump loves spending government money. And part of what that did is it exploded our deficit and our debt. And Republicans were put in the position of going along with Donald Trump on pretty much everything.”

To be sure, Democrats are facing an identity schism of their own. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have thwarted marquee Democratic policies in the 50-50 Senate and kept alive an ongoing ideological tug-of-war.

Republicans’ divides, meanwhile, are largely driven less by policy and more by Trump’s vice-like grip on the GOP grassroots.

“If anyone has ever discussed publicly, Donald Trump, as an existential threat to the Republican Party, they are outside the tent and will find no flap to bring them back in,” said one former Trump administration official.

“Those of us who are around Trump, I wouldn’t cross the street to put Liz Cheney out if she was on fire. And it’s almost entirely because she just couldn’t find it in her devotion to the Republican Party to support the Republican president of the United States. I mean, she did for quite some time and then she just fell off the wagon. From our perspective, it’s because when she walked away from Trump, she walked away from the Republican Party,” the former official said.

However, some party strategists and members express concern that such rigidity could leave races in some parts of the country off the table.

O’Dea, the GOP Senate nominee in Colorado, has voiced repeated opposition to Trump and taken moderate stances on issues like abortion and healthcare. That tact has made the race against Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, in a blue-leaning state surprisingly competitive, while GOP gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl, who early in her campaign flirted with election conspiracies, is anticipated to lose her challenge to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis by double digits.

“I do think that to Joe represents a kind of Republican that will need to be nominated in future elections if Republicans are ever going to come back,” said former Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams. “Heidi got in trouble early on because she threw in with the election conspiracy crowd. She has been paying a price for that ever since.”

“If he pulls an upset, which I still think could happen, I think that there could be a lot of lessons drawn from Joe’s campaign in other states,” Wadhams said.

However, the label “moderate” is increasingly associated with the derogatory moniker “RINO,” or Republican in name only, Wadhams said, threatening ideologically moderate candidates like O’Dea in primaries and making it harder to ultimately win office.

“I think the traditional conservative or moderate labels don’t really apply in today’s Republican Party because I don’t think there’s an ideological difference on issues of the day. A conservative Republican and a moderate Republican are still going to be, nine times out of 10, about the same on every issue facing the country,” GOP pollster Robert Blizzard said.

That’s firmly shifting the ideological spectrum of lawmakers still in the party further to the right.

When asked who would be considered a moderate in today’s GOP, the former Trump administration official pointed to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

McConnell has a lifetime 87% rating from the American Conservative Union.

Luke Barr contributed to this report.

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(PHOENIX) — A campaign staffer for Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, allegedly opened an envelope holding a suspicious white substance delivered to Lake’s campaign headquarters in Phoenix, her campaign told ABC News.

“Yesterday, a member of the Kari Lake staff opened an envelope delivered to our campaign office that contained suspicious white powder. It was one of two envelopes that were confiscated by law enforcement and sent to professionals at Quantico for examination, and we are awaiting details,” Lake campaign spokesperson Colton Duncan told ABC News in a statement. He added that the staff member is currently under medical supervision.

“Officers responded to a found property call at an office building near 40th St. and Camelback Road,” Sgt. Phil Krynsky of the Phoenix Police Department told ABC News on Sunday. “When officers arrived, they learned there were suspicious items located inside the mail. Additional resources responded to collect the items and secure the area. There have been no reports of injury and the investigation remains active.”

Krynsky told ABC News the additional resources who responded to the incident with Phoenix PD’s were their hazmat team, Bomb Squad and the FBI.

“Early this morning, Sunday, November 6th, the FBI, along with our local law enforcement partners, responded to a report of suspicious letters at an office building near 40th Street and Camelback Road,” the FBI National Press Office said in a statement. “No further information will be released at this time.”

Duncan, noting that Lake’s campaign headquarters remains under active investigation – and therefore shut for staffers’ use just two days out from the 2022 midterm elections – said: “We look forward to law enforcement completing their investigation as quickly as possible.”

“Rest assured, we are taking this security threat incredibly seriously and we are thankful for the Phoenix PD, FBI, first responders, bomb squad, and hazmat crews that responded to this incident,” he added. “In the meantime, know that our resolve has never been higher and we cannot be intimidated. We continue to push full speed ahead to win this election on Tuesday.”

The incident occurred less than a week after a man allegedly broke into Lake’s opponent, Democratic candidate for governor Katie Hobbs’ campaign headquarters.

Lake mocked the burglary, dubbing it “Jussie Smollett part two.”

A tweet from Lake campaign’s War Room on Sunday following the incident with the suspicious substance, questioned if the press would “immediately accuse our opponent of being responsible for this like they did to us over@katiehobbsWaterGate?”

Hobbs —- who is also Arizona’s current secretary of state— condemned Lake’s rhetoric in a statement confirming the break-in, which ultimately had no ties to the Lake campaign.

“The reported incident at Kari Lake’s campaign office is incredibly concerning and I am thankful that she and her staff were not harmed,” Hobbs said in a statement to ABC News on Sunday. “Political violence, threats, or intimidation have no place in our democracy. I strongly condemn this threatening behavior directed at Lake and her staff.”

Lake was at a rally with the GOP ticket Saturday evening after making bus tour stops earlier in the day. On stage there, she mentioned previously having her car tires slashed.

“You know that we crisscross the state. We’ve gone through tires, so many tires. We’ve had to change our tires on the car. We’ve actually had our tire slashed a few times, probably by, you know, people who’ve been brainwashed by the left. We have had all kinds of crazy things happen on the campaign trail,” she said.

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(PHILADELPHIA) — Pennsylvania’s staking its claim as center of the political universe this weekend as presidents past and present campaign for their candidates ahead of midterms Election Day.

President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama teamed up Saturday to stump for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro and Senate candidate John Fetterman in Philadelphia.

“This crowd is so loud I think they can hear us in Latrobe,” Biden said in his opening remarks, taking a swing at former President Donald Trump’s rally there later Saturday night. “They’re going to hear us on Tuesday.”

“The power to shape that outcome is in your hands,” Biden said. “Two years ago, you used your power not only to make Trump a former president, but a defeated president.”

Trump held a rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in support of Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz, calling them both “great people.”

“You’re going to elect the incredible slate of true America-first Republicans up and down the ballot,” Trump said. On the Biden and Obama event at Temple University, Trump said, “I heard they had a little rally.”

“They don’t call it the Keystone State for nothing,” said David Dix, a Philadelphia-based political strategist who has worked on Republican and Democratic campaigns, about the 11th-hour attention from both sides. “Once again, Pennsylvania is the political epicenter of the country and the balance of the House and Senate weigh from here on Tuesday.”

“It’s just another indicator that we are a deep purple state that makes up our mind late and oftentimes does split the ticket among Democrats and Republicans,” Dix added.

Pennsylvania’s marquee Senate race could determine which party wins control of the chamber. Republicans need to gain just one seat to become the majority, as Democrats currently control the 50-50 Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as the tie-breaker.

“That race has been on the razor’s edge for a long time,” said Christopher Nicholas, a longtime Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.

The margin between Fetterman and Oz is getting tighter by the day, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, with the two candidates separated by just 0.4 percentage points.

“There’s no quit in John Fetterman,” Biden said Saturday. “There’s no quit in Pennsylvania. There’s no quit in America, we just have to remember who we are, we are the United States of America.”

Biden also took a shot at Oz, who was criticized for living in New Jersey until late 2020: “I’ve lived in Pennsylvania longer than Oz has lived in Pennsylvania, and I moved when I was 10 years old,” Biden said.

In a message to voters on Saturday, Fetterman pitched himself as a lifelong public servant while accusing Oz of trying to “use” Pennsylvania and attempting to buy the seat.

Oz, in a closing pitch at a rally in Elizabethtown earlier this week, described himself as an agent of change and encouraged attendees to tell neighbors about his message on the economy, crime and the border.

“There are three topics that I have spent my campaign dwelling on,” he said. “They are the kitchen table issues that every family in Pennsylvania has talked about.”

The gubernatorial race between Shapiro and Mastriano is another contentious race, and one of the biggest tests of Trump’s election denialism on the ballot this cycle.

Mastriano, a Republican state legislator, attended Trump’s Jan. 6 rally just before the Capitol attack and has continued to spread the former president’s lies about the 2020 election results.

FiveThirtyEight’s polling average shows Mastriano behind in the race by roughly 10 percentage points.

Biden’s campaigned heavily in Pennsylvania this year, and in this final stop in Philadelphia he and Obama aimed to boost Democratic enthusiasm in a key area of the state. Obama, citing his own midterm losses in 2010, told rally-goers to make sure their friends vote.

“Democrats view it as crucial to get as high a turnout as possible in the city, especially among the Black community” said Nicholas. “That’s always the target for them.”

Biden’s success in the Democratic strongholds Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and their neighboring suburbs, ultimately led to his win there in 2020 over Trump.

Trump last visited Pennsylvania in September, when he held a rally for Oz and Mastriano in Wilkes-Barre. The stakes are high for the former president, who is laying the groundwork for a 2024 campaign and could make an announcement as soon as the week of Nov. 14, according to sources.

“Latrobe is essentially the epicenter of Republican turnout,” Dix said, noting nearby Allegheny County probably has more registered Republicans “than anywhere else in the state.”

“I certainly understand the strategy and why the former president decided to rally there,” Dix said.

– ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — With just two days until the midterm elections, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin believes that voters will send a “wake-up call” to President Joe Biden, electing Republicans to regain full control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Youngkin was responding to ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, who asked him in an exclusive interview: “First order of business, if Republicans take over the House and Senate, how do they work with President Biden?”

“I think the statement on Tuesday is going to be pretty clear. And I think there will be a larger majority in the House than people may have thought a few months ago,” Youngkin answered, adding that he predicts there will be a clear majority in the Senate as well.

“I hope that President Biden sees what Americans are going to say to him on Tuesday, which is ‘we’re not happy’ and we need a different agenda.”

Youngkin has been out on the campaign trail alongside several Republicans running in gubernatorial, House and Senate races.

Back in October, Youngkin made several stops in the swing state of Arizona, most notably to stump for far-right gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

“Kari Lake talks a heck of a lot about the 2020 election, falsely saying it was rigged, stolen,” Karl said to Youngkin in the interview, asking, “You don’t agree with that, do you?”

“I’ve said that President Biden is our president. He was elected our president,” Youngkin answered. When Karl followed up asking if Biden’s win was legitimate, Youngkin said it was, but shifted to pointing out that the president has “done a bad job.”

Since President Biden took office, various GOP elected officials have publicly called for his impeachment, introducing more than a dozen resolutions against him and members of his cabinet. As Karl raised the possibility of impeachment, asking if it would be a mistake to do so, Youngkin said he believes strongly “that our democracy’s better when our Congress exercises its oversight functions.”

Karl pressed for an answer, asking if he felt an impeachment of Biden was what voters have in mind. “Because I’ve been hearing that a lot,” he said.

Refusing to speculate on what kind of action fellow members of his party would take, Youngkin argued that he was a governor, not a member of Congress, with a duty to “deliver for Virginians.”

“But what Republican governors have demonstrated is they have led so much better coming out of this pandemic,” Youngkin stated. “Economic recovery, safe communities, delivering in schools, and as I’ve said, I think every state deserves a Republican governor.”

The latest forecasts from FiveThirtyEight show that of the 36 governorships up for election Nov. 8, the Republican candidate is favored in over half of those races. Republicans also have a good chance of picking up Nevada and Wisconsin, two major battleground states, and also Oregon, which hasn’t elected a GOP governor since 1982.

About half of Americans said in the most recent ABC News/Ipsos poll that either the economy or inflation is the most important issue in their vote for Congress. Nearly three out of four Republicans point to the two economic concerns as a priority, while only 29% of Democrats say the same, per the poll.

Karl asked for his thoughts on a potential re-election bid from Donald Trump as advisers close to the former president have signaled that he may be preparing to run again.

“The only timeline that anybody should be focusing on right now is the one that leads through November 8th,” Youngkin replied, adding that he is “not supporting anybody” at this time.

He also declined to indicate if he will mount a presidential bid of his own.

“This is a November 8th moment. And the reality is, folks that are talking about things beyond November 8th I think are missing the priority of today’s moment,” he said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said his party faces a difficult election on Tuesday amid stiff headwinds over the economy but insisted he still sees a “pathway” for Democrats to at least keep control of the Senate.

Booker noted to “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz that the party in the White House typically loses seats in midterm elections but noted there are still Senate pickup opportunities for Democrats in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

“Even though our economy is tough, people think about it and say, ‘wait a minute, this is the party trying to protect unions. This is the party that made sure we did things to lower prescription drug costs and lower health care costs. That this is the party at the end of the day that’s trying to protect fundamental freedoms like the right to control your own body,'” he said.

“So, I think that this is a tough election season. It’s a midterm election, but I still see a pathway for us to maintain control of the Senate.”

Democrats earlier this summer were favored to keep control of the Senate amid an uproar over the scrapping of constitutional protections for abortion and lower gas prices, but as the calendar turns closer to Election Day, the party has been rebuffed by stubbornly high inflation and an avalanche of attack ads over crime.

While the FiveThirtyEight Senate prediction model showed Democrats as more likely to win the Senate than Republicans, the forecast as it stands Sunday shows the GOP with a 55% chance of flipping the chamber, which is currently split 50-50.

Still, Booker predicted that voters would punish Republicans at the ballot box this Tuesday over ties to election deniers and backlash over last year’s insurrection.

“There’s a lot on the line. And we have to remember, after what we saw on January 6, Republican or Democrat, we should be electing people that believe in our democracy, that believe in our tradition, and ultimately want to unite people and not divide them,” he said.

Raddatz pressed Booker on whether Democrats have a focused enough economic message heading into Election Day, asking “did Democrats miscalculate just how important this issue is?”

“I’ve heard people show receipts of what we’ve accomplished in terms of helping to lower costs,” Booker said. “We were one vote shy … of the biggest middle class tax cut, one vote shy protecting fundamental rights. The individual people I see out there campaigning are speaking towards the pocketbooks of this country and reminding people about what Donald Trump’s agenda was when he had the reins, not just economic policies that favor the rich, but also things that undermine our very fundamental beliefs as a democracy.”

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(PHILADELPHIA) — Pennsylvania’s staking its claim as center of the political universe this weekend as presidents past and present campaign for their candidates ahead of midterms Election Day.

President Joe Biden and Barack Obama are teaming up Saturday to stump for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro and Senate candidate John Fetterman in Philadelphia at 5 p.m. ET.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump will be in Latrobe, where he’s holding a 7 p.m. rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport for Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz.

“They don’t call it the Keystone State for nothing,” said David Dix, a Philadelphia-based political strategist who has worked on Republican and Democratic campaigns, about the 11th-hour attention from both sides. “Once again, Pennsylvania is the political epicenter of the country and the balance of the House and Senate weigh from here on Tuesday.”

“It’s just another indicator that we are a deep purple state that makes up our mind late and oftentimes does split the ticket among Democrats and Republicans,” Dix added.

Pennsylvania’s marquee Senate race could determine which party wins control of the chamber. Republicans need to gain just one seat to become the majority, as Democrats currently control the 50-50 Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as the tie-breaker.

“That race has been on the razor’s edge for a long time,” said Christopher Nicholas, a longtime Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.

The margin between Fetterman and Oz is getting tighter by the day, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, with the two candidates separated by just 0.4 percentage points.

Fetterman spoke to the hosts of “The View” on Friday about the contest, first celebrating an 11th-hour endorsement from Oprah Winfrey — whose daytime show helped launch Oz as “America’s doctor” in the 2000s. “It’s unbelievable,” Fetterman said.

In a message to voters, Fetterman pitched himself as a lifelong public servant while accusing Oz “essentially using Pennsylvania” and attempted to buy the seat.

Oz, in a closing pitch at a rally in Elizabethtown on Wednesday, described himself as an agent of change and encouraged attendees to tell neighbors about his message on the economy, crime and the border.

“There are three topics that I have spent my campaign dwelling on,” he said. “They are the kitchen table issues that every family in Pennsylvania has talked about.”

The gubernatorial race between Shapiro and Mastriano is another contentious race, and one of the biggest tests of Trump’s election denialism on the ballot this cycle.

Mastriano, a Republican state legislator, attended Trump’s Jan. 6 rally just before the Capitol attack and has continued to spread the former president’s lies about the 2020 election results.

FiveThirtyEight’s polling average shows Mastriano behind in the race by roughly 10 percentage points.

Biden has campaigned heavily in Pennsylvania this year, and in this final stop in Philadelphia he and Obama will look to boost Democratic enthusiasm in a key area of the state.

“Democrats view it as crucial to get as high a turnout as possible in the city, especially among the Black community” said Nicholas. “That’s always the target for them.”

Biden’s success in the Democratic strongholds Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and their neighboring suburbs, ultimately led to his win there in 2020 over Trump.

Trump last visited Pennsylvania in September, when he held a rally for Oz and Mastriano in Wilkes-Barre. The stakes are high for the former president, who is laying the groundwork for a 2024 campaign and could make an announcement as soon as the week of Nov. 14, according to sources.

“Latrobe is essentially the epicenter of Republican turnout,” Dix said, noting nearby Allegheny County probably has more registered Republicans “than anywhere else in the state.”

“I certainly understand the strategy and why the former president decided to rally there,” Dix said.

– ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.

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(PHILADELPHIA) — Last weekend, John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, spent the penultimate Saturday before Election Day traversing Philadelphia, dedicating the entire day to campaigning in the city with a vote share he should have little problem winning. Rich with Democrats, the City of Brotherly Love went to President Joe Biden by more than 60 points in 2020.

The investment in Pennsylvania’s largest city, where more than four in 10 residents identify as Black, reflects an urgency to energize urban Black voters in the final days of a campaign that could decide control of Congress’ upper chamber.

Black voters in the United States overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates, including Biden, who received more than 90% of their vote in 2020, according to a Pew post-election analysis.

But some Black leaders in Pennsylvania fear that Democrats are taking the community for granted, a concern expressed in past cycles across the country.

Over the course of seven stops, Fetterman appeared with local and national Black leaders, including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, state representative Malcolm Kenyatta, and Philadelphia City Council President Darrell Clarke. He visited Black faith leaders, spoke outside a West Philadelphia grocery store, and rallied in front of a few hundred students at Temple University.

“I think this is where the election is going to be won,” Kenyatta, who represents the majority-Black North Philadelphia district that includes Temple, said in an interview after joining Fetterman at the rally, which drew mostly white attendees.

Kadida Kenner, CEO of the New Pennsylvania Project, a voting rights organization that has registered 20,000 people across the state this year, stressed the importance of Fetterman turning out Black voters.

“No Democrat is going to win a statewide election in Pennsylvania without the Black vote,” Kenner told ABC News. “And the margin has to be run up in Philadelphia, it has to be run up in the [Philadelphia suburbs], and it has to be run up in Pittsburgh.”

For more from ABC News’ team of reporters embedded in battleground states, watch “Power Trip: Those Seeking Power and Those Who Chase Them” on Hulu, with new episodes on Sunday.

Fetterman holds a sizable lead over his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, with Black voters: a New York Times/Siena poll earlier this month showed that 86% of registered Black voters in Pennsylvania plan to vote for Fetterman versus just 6% for Oz.

But that number lags behind Biden’s 2020 vote share, and the same poll found that just 63% of Black voters hold a very or somewhat favorable view of the lieutenant governor.

Those numbers may partly reflect the fact that Fetterman did not hold a public campaign event in Philadelphia until September, an absence some voters noticed.

“No,” Olivia Jarrett, a 31-year-old veteran who is Black, said when asked by ABC News if she thought Fetterman had spent enough time in the city.

“I don’t know what Fetterman does,” she said, while filling up her car at a North Philadelphia gas station.

But Jarrett, a Democrat, declared she would not vote for Oz because of his position on restricting abortion rights.

Kenner insisted it is imperative for Fetterman to spend more time in Philadelphia before Election Day.

“He needs to spend 40% of his time here in Philadelphia and make sure that Philadelphia voters are coming out and that they’re not apathetic about this entire election and that they’re feeling as though their needs are going to be met by a candidate coming to them and saying, ‘This is what I’m going to do for Philadelphia,'” she said, when ABC News spoke with her on Monday.

Fetterman has not held a public event in Philadelphia this week but will campaign there on Saturday with Biden and former President Barack Obama. He has held multiple events this week in the surrounding suburbs and will attend a rally in Pittsburgh Saturday with Obama.

In a press release recapping last weekend’s Philadelphia swing, the Fetterman campaign noted multiple other stops — which were not advised to the media — that the candidate has made in the city in recent weeks.

Democrats in the state believe that no matter his footprint in Philadelphia, Fetterman’s economic messaging should resonate with voters there.

“I think Fetterman, to his credit, from really the early stages of the campaign, has been focused on having a core economic message and plan,” said J.J. Abbott, a party strategist, who said the lieutenant governor’s policy positions — such as raising the minimum wage and fighting price gouging — are “really powerful” in Philadelphia.

Oz, meanwhile, has tried to woo Black voters by pledging to reduce the level of crime and drug use in Philadelphia, holding multiple “Safer Streets” discussions and walking through a neighborhood rampant with drug use and homelessness, where he helped several self-declared addicts register for detox admission.

That visit resonated with James, a retired health care worker in Philadelphia, who is Black and declined to give his last name.

“He showed a lot of compassion that I hadn’t seen,” said James, a Democrat who said he is still deciding which Senate candidate to vote for.

“They made him out to be an outsider, which he is, you know. But that struck me, going down there and showing compassion to the people on drugs and people struggling. That kind of struck me with Oz,” he added.

Oz’s attempts at courting Black voters have not come without controversy, however. In a September “Safer Streets” forum, he comforted an attendee, Sheila Armstrong, whom the campaign did not disclose at the time was a paid staffer. The lack of transparency drew a rebuke from the Fetterman campaign.

The Oz campaign shot back.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the racist attacks on Sheila Armstrong by John Fetterman’s campaign manager Brendan McPhillips. For a white man to attempt to diminish the experience of an African-American woman – who lost her brother and nephew to gun violence – because of her support for Doctor Oz plays into tired tropes about Black women not being able to think for themselves,” said Barney Keller, a senior adviser to the Oz campaign.

As for Fetterman’s efforts in Philadelphia, James said a recent appearance with Rep. Dwight Evans seemed like a “photo op.” He added that the lieutenant governor’s visits to Philadelphia in the campaign’s final days “might be too little, too late.”

But for Lotus Hines, a 42-year-old Black hospital worker and a Democrat, how Fetterman has divided his time on the trail means little.

“It really doesn’t make a difference to me where he hasn’t been,” she told ABC News, adding that Fetterman has her vote.

Will McDuffie is one of seven ABC News campaign reporters embedded in battleground states across the country. Watch all the twists and turns of covering the midterm elections every Sunday on Hulu’s “Power Trip: Those Seeking Power and Those Who Chase Them” with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

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(NEW YORK) — Tom Barrack, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump and his one-time inaugural committee chairman, was found not guilty on Friday of illegal foreign lobbying charges, a defeat for federal prosecutors in Brooklyn who accused the billionaire businessman of improperly acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.

After a trial that stretched nearly two months and saw testimony from two former Trump administration officials, a jury of five men and seven women reached the verdict after deliberating over three days.

Barrack was acquitted on all charges, which included conspiracy, obstruction, and lying to the FBI.

“God bless America. The system works,” Barrack said outside the courthouse following his acquittal. “I am humbled. The system is amazing, the people are amazing, I have no hostility.”

Asked by ABC News about his criticism of Trump during the trial, in which he said that his support of the former president was ultimately “disastrous” for his work, Barrack replied, “I root for all of them — it’s the toughest job in the world to be president of the United States.”

“I’m just done with politics,” he said.

Matthew Grimes, Barrack’s aide at his real estate firm who was charged alongside Barrack, was also acquitted.

“The word is clichéd, but I just feel grateful,” Grimes said outside the courthouse.

The Justice Department accused Barrack, 75, of illegally lobbying the Trump campaign and the early days of the administration while acting as a foreign agent for the UAE from 2016 to 2018 and failing to register with Justice Department as required by law.

Prosecutors also accused Barrack of lying to federal investigators when they questioned him about his ties to the UAE in 2019.

The high-profile case offered a glimpse into the workings of Trump’s inner circle during the 2016 campaign and the early days of his administration, and featured a star-studded cast of witnesses. Two former Trump administration cabinet officials, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, testified during the trial.

Several former Trump administration and Trump campaign officials, including Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Rick Gates, were also mentioned at various points.

Ryan Harris, a federal prosecutor, argued during closing statements that Barrack had attempted to “leverage his access” to Trump with his UAE contacts as part of an effort to enrich himself and his real-estate investment firm, which attracted large sums of money from the Emirati sovereign wealth fund around the time of Trump’s arrival in the White House.

In his closing arguments, Randall Jackson, a lawyer for Barrack, urged jurors to see through the government’s case, citing what he described as a “total lack of evidence.”

Barrack himself took the stand in his own defense for six days to defend himself against each of the charges against him. He spent hours explaining to the jury his longstanding business ties to UAE and how he sought to broker a relationship with the Trump campaign and the Middle East.

“I thought that was actually a great thing,” Barrack said of his efforts. “The idea of having somebody that had knowledge in both confused arenas that could create some web of understanding and tolerance is what I know we all needed.”

He laughed when asked by his attorney about the government’s allegation that he was working to “manipulate the public” and “spread UAE propaganda.”

“Not at all,” Barrack said.

Barrack also testified that he briefed then-candidate Trump on his interactions with United Arab Emirates officials as he tried to help Trump better understand Middle East issues.

“I talked to President Trump about it, and he said, ‘You do the right thing,'” Barrack testified.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is leaning toward announcing a third run for the White House, possibly as early as the week of Nov. 14, sources with direct knowledge of the matter told ABC News.

However, the sources said that the internal conversations about the timing, location and format of an announcement are extremely fluid.

Thursday night in Iowa, Trump, who has been teasing a 2024 run at rallies across the country for several months, got the closest he has come to confirming he will run.

Appearing at a campaign event for Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Sen. Chuck Grassley, Trump told a crowd of supporters, “In order to make our country successful, and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again.”

“OK?” he said. “Very, very, very, probably. Get ready, that’s all I’m telling you. Very soon. Get ready.”

Some aides have suggested the former president believes that declaring his candidacy would shield him from the numerous investigations that currently involve him and his allies. Trump is facing several federal probes, including the Jan. 6 investigation, the investigation into documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago, and an investigation into his social media company, Truth Social.

His namesake family real estate business, The Trump Organization, is currently on trial in New York for tax evasion and fraud — charges that would not be affected if he’s reelected president.

The company has denied wrongdoing.

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