Happy Thursday! Election Day is 19 days away. Congratulations to former President Bill Clinton, who has apparently taken up a new job as Uber driver for members of Congress.

• Kamala Harris Wednesday evening sat for a televised interview with Bret Baier, Fox News anchor and host of the nightly news program Special Report. Baier pressed the vice president on a range of issues, particularly border security. “How many illegal immigrants would you estimate your administration has released into the country over the last three and a half years?” Baier asked at the outset. Amid a testy back-and-forth, with the Democratic nominee declining to answer that question directly, Harris referred to legislation Biden proposed soon after being inaugurated as president. “The first bill, practically within hours of taking the oath, was a bill to fix our immigration system,” she said, while placing extra emphasis on the bipartisan border security bill congressional Republicans killed earlier this year at Donald Trump’s behest. Baier also pushed Harris to specify how her presidency would represent change given she has been vice president since January 2021. “First of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country.”
• Both the Harris and Trump campaigns agreed that the vice president’s interview with Baier, her first with Fox News, was a success for their respective campaigns. “Tonight on Fox News, Vice President Harris forcefully condemned Donald Trump’s unhinged rhetoric, joined Trump’s former vice president and top general in warning of the dangers of a second Trump administration, and laid out her plans to lower costs for the middle class and maintain America’s global leadership,” her team bragged. And from the former president’s campaign? “Kamala Harris just wrapped up her first non-softball interview of her vice presidency—and calling it a ‘complete and total disaster’ would be the understatement of the year. Over and over again, Kamala humiliated herself — angry, defensive, incoherent, and unwilling to take any responsibility for the destruction she has unleashed over the past four years.” It was more of the same on social media, with Democratic and Republican partisans both declaring victory for their nominee. 
• Meanwhile, Trump passed up another opportunity for a mea culpa on his management of the coronavirus pandemic and handling of January 6, 2021. In a Wednesday town hall with Hispanic voters hosted by Univision, the former president was asked by a self-described disaffected Republican to provide him reassurance for a potential second term by explaining his thoughts on the riot at the Capitol that ensued after the GOP nominee insisted that the 2020 election was stolen. “I want to give you the opportunity to try to win back my vote,” this man said. Trump’s response: “You had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington—they didn’t come because of me, they came because of the election, they thought the election was a rigged election and that’s why they came. Some of those people went down to the Capitol. I said peacefully and patriotically. Nothing done wrong, at all, nothing done wrong.”
• In a sign that the U.S. Senate race in Nebraska may be getting a little too close for Sen. Deb Fischer’s comfort, the incumbent Republican released an ad Wednesday featuring Donald Trump. Sitting in his airplane and speaking directly to the camera, the former president calls out Fischer’s independent opponent. “His name is Dan Osborn, and he’s a radical left person. He’d be a Bernie Sanders-type Democrat,” Trump says. Multiple polls show Osborn closing the gap in a state where Republicans have dominated and Trump is expected to win overwhelmingly. But the push by the Kamala Harris campaign to win Nebraska’s Omaha-based congressional district (the state awards electoral votes by district) that is giving Republican Rep. Don Bacon a run for his money seems to be hurting Fischer, running for a third term, as well.

OREGON, Wisconsin—Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde hosted a cookout here Wednesday evening, where he attempted to fire up his base by speaking about economics, immigration, and culture war issues before promising better days ahead.

“We’re going to victory, and then we’re going to fight like hell to take this wonderful country back, and I will do everything in my blood, sweat, and tear, to save this country, because I believe in God, family, and country,” he said during remarks to supporters just outside of the state’s capital of Madison.

Although Hovde did not hesitate to namecheck his opponent, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, and specify what he argued were her failures, two names never came out of his mouth: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Though he lamented “what has happened to our country in the last four years” under Democratic leadership and predicted America would become unrecognizable “if we get four more years of them,” Hovde never spoke about either candidate seeking the White House—even before a crowd that had no shortage of people sporting gear supporting Trump.

Baldwin took a similar approach at an event in Milwaukee Tuesday afternoon in which the two-term senator courted black voters, making no explicit attempt to energize them by extolling Harris’ virtues. She referenced the close margins by which Trump and President Joe Biden won the state in 2016 and 2020 but focused on promises of economic opportunity and personal liberties.

As Trump and Harris battle for the state’s 10 key Electoral College votes, the Senate candidates downballot are clearly aware of the fight at the top of the ticket, but they seem to prefer focusing on their own races. Polls in both contests have tightened. A month ago, Harris was up nearly 3 percentage points in 538’s polling average; her edge sits at 0.5 points today. Baldwin was ahead by several points four weeks ago; recent public and internal polls show the race is closer.

Although the two candidates locked in a suddenly competitive Senate battle may not want to talk about the presidential race, their prominent supporters do. Stumping for Baldwin Tuesday, Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers slammed Trump. Last night, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming warmed the crowd up for Hovde, connecting Harris with Baldwin.

“For four long years, people have been punished with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Tammy Baldwin’s spending, inflation, open border, weak America. They need to go,” said Barrasso, who is running for Senate Republican whip in the next Congress. “If there’s a way to screw it up, they have screwed it up, and the solution is Donald Trump and Eric Hovde.”

Sen. John Kennedy, who spoke after Barasso, chose to highlight Hovde’s character and Wisconsin bona fides. “Eric Hovde is a rock star. Eric Hovde is a beast. Eric Hovde is what cool looks like. Eric bleeds Wisconsin,” the Louisiana Republican said to the crowd’s delight. “I don’t know if I can say this, but he also—Eric Hovde pisses excellence!”

Voters were split on what attracted them to Hovde. Fifty-eight-year-old Bill Berry was drawn to his experience as a businessman and Wisconsin roots, rejecting an attack the Baldwin campaign has made accusing Hovde of being a California banker (to which he has responded by saying he grew up in Madison and has not been a California resident).

“When you hear him talk, he talks like one of us,” Berry told Dispatch Politics. “He talks like a Midwestern person. I spent four years in southern California, so I know how fake people can be, and he’s not fake.”

Meanwhile, 30-year-old Colleen Bri, who said she was “moderate” on the issue of abortion, expressed support for many of Hovde’s policy positions but said the presidential race took precedence in her mind.

“I think he’s on our side when it comes to tax issues, Medicare, border issues, so right now, I’ll do that,” she said. “I’m more concerned about the presidential election than I am the Senate and anything else.”

• Vice President Kamala Harris today hosts two campaign rallies in Wisconsin, stopping in La Crosse in the afternoon and Green Bay in the evening.
• Former President Donald Trump this evening is in New York City for the Alfred E. Smith Dinner, hosted by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The event traditionally includes the Democratic and Republican nominees and features them delivering comedic lines about themselves and their candidates, but Harris declined the invitation. 
• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz today campaigns for Harris in North Carolina. In the afternoon, the Democratic vice presidential nominee has two campaign events in Durham, including a rally alongside former President Bill Clinton. Later in the evening, Walz will hold a rally in Winston-Salem with rapper and activist Common. Afterward, the governor will travel to St. Paul, Minnesota. 
• Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio this afternoon campaigns for Trump in Pittsburgh, delivering remarks on the economy.
• Second gentleman Doug Emhoff today campaigns for Harris in Savannah and Garden City, Georgia, coinciding with this week’s kickoff of in-person, early voting in the state. He will be joined by Maya Harris, the vice president’s sister.
• West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice this evening campaigns for Trump in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. Justice, a Republican senatorial candidate favored to replace the retiring Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, is bringing his dog, “Babydog” with him to Waynesburg.
• The Trump campaign’s bus tour across North Carolina continues today with stops in Rutherfordton, Gastonia, Archdale, and Raleigh. Surrogates making their case for the former president at various stops include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, North Carolinian and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, and Trump confidant Corey Lewandowski, among others.

“Wisconsin is better than sex.”

—Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, campaigning for Wisconsin Republican Senate nominee Eric Hovde, October 16, 2024