Election Dispatches:Senate Rivals Clash in High-Stakes Debates in Maine and Georgia What We’re Covering Today Senate candidates debated in several battlegrounds on Thursday night, clashing over a range of issues as both parties fight for control of Congress. In Maine, Senator Susan Collins, a centrist Republican seeking her sixth term, faced Troy Jackson, a progressive Democrat, for the second time in three nights. Their debate grew heated with disputes over the Iran war, energy costs and abortion rights.

In Georgia, Representative Mike Collins, a Republican, tried to cut into the lead of his Democratic opponent, Senator Jon Ossoff, repeatedly attempting to paint him as wealthy and out of touch, while Mr. Ossoff criticized Mr. Collins for supporting President Trump’s unpopular economic polices. And in Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee, and former Representative Mike Rogers, his Republican rival, exchanged sharply personal attacks.

Maine Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a vulnerable Republican, joined Troy Jackson, her Democratic challenger, for a tense debate on Thursday that centered on President Trump’s policies and featured a feisty exchange over the war with Iran.

It was the second debate in three days between the candidates, who are scheduled to meet twice more next week. They are running neck-and-neck, according to polls, in a race that could be critical to determining which party wins control of the Senate. Here are five takeaways from the debate: ‘You owe me an apology’Mr. Jackson, attacking Ms. Collins over her past support for the war with Iran, claimed that Ms. Collins was profiting off the conflict, which she has been voting to end since April.

“Senator Collins and her husband are making money — more — off this war, and so are a whole bunch of other people,” Mr. Jackson claimed. “And that’s why this doesn’t stop.”Asked about the claim, Mr. Jackson’s campaign pointed to her husband’s disclosed stockholdings in two aerospace companies with contracts with the Pentagon. Both companies’ stock prices have fallen since the start of the war. Onstage, Ms. Collins appeared to be offended.

“That is absolutely outrageous,” Ms. Collins said, pointing a finger at Mr. Jackson. “And you owe me an apology.”Mr. Jackson said, “No, you owe me an apology.”

Twice more, Ms. Collins denounced the attack as “absolutely outrageous.”Trump again in focus Again and again, Mr. Jackson sought to tie Ms. Collins to the unpopular Mr. Trump. The senator, in turn, sought to distinguish herself from the president. They each offered their own stats for how often Ms. Collins voted with the president.

At one point, Mr. Jackson said Maine was struggling with an economy “Donald Trump and Susan Collins have created.”Ms. Collins noted that she had voted against Mr. Trump’s signature domestic policy bill and against the war. “Nobody has been more outspoken against the Canadian tariffs than I have,” she added, referring to Mr. Trump’s trade war with Canada. Mr. Jackson said Ms. Collins was “not being truthful” about her record.

Jackson says his campaign isn’t about Graham Platner At one point, the moderator, Jon Chrisos, asked Mr. Jackson whether voters should view his campaign as his own — and not as inherited from Graham Platner, the initial Democratic nominee, who dropped out after a rape allegation, which Mr. Platner denied.

“Well, it isn’t my own campaign,” Jackson said. “It’s the people across Maine — it’s their campaign. And I’ve said that consistently. It’s not about Troy Jackson, it’s not about Graham Platner.”Abortion remains center stage In the first debate, Mr. Jackson quickly focused on the 2018 vote by Ms. Collins, who supports abortion rights, to confirm a Supreme Court justice who later helped overturn Roe v. Wade, Brett M. Kavanaugh.

On Thursday, Mr. Jackson initially turned his attention elsewhere. But it wasn’t long before he was bringing abortion back up — and pointing to Mr. Kavanaugh.

“She knew that he was anti-abortion,” Mr. Jackson said, though Ms. Collins said in 2018 that Mr. Kavanaugh had convinced her that he would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Ms. Collins responded by noting that Mr. Jackson, a former Republican, opposed abortion protections years ago.

“The fact is that I have been pro-choice the entire time that I have served in the Senate,” she said. “That’s not true of Troy.”Term limits? Collins says elections do the trick.

In a late lightning round, the candidates were asked if Congress should have term limits.

Mr. Jackson, a former State Senate president and a newcomer to national politics, said: “Absolutely. I mean, we have them in Maine. They work well.”Ms. Collins, who is running for a sixth term and is now the longest-serving Republican woman in Senate history, rejected the idea. “That’s what you have elections for,” she said. Taylor Robinson contributed reporting.

The Maine Senate debate has ended. Senator Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican, and Troy Jackson, her Democratic challenger, focused heavily on issues that have a direct impact on voters in Maine, including the drastic increase in heating oil costs and other high energy prices. Collins was more testy toward Jackson, calling him “Troy,” accusing him of lying about her record and, at one point, demanding a public apology. For his part, Jackson called her “senator” and focused on economic attacks and charges of corruption. The candidates are scheduled to meet for their third of four debates next Tuesday.

Senator Susan Collins tries to flip attacks on abortion rights against Troy Jackson, the Democratic challenger, calling him an “extremist” on the issue because of votes he took in the state legislature more than a decade ago. Since then, Jackson, a former conservative who has since embraced progressive views, has championed Maine’s abortion law, which is one of the most liberal in the country. Jackson responds by again highlighting the senator’s pivotal support of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who joined the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in overturning Roe v. Wade.

The moderator, Jon Chrisos, asks Troy Jackson, the Democratic challenger, how Maine voters can view his campaign as his “own” after Graham Platner, the initial Democratic nominee, dropped out in the summer. “Well, it isn’t my own campaign,” Jackson says. “It’s the people across Maine — it’s their campaign. And I’ve said that consistently. It’s not about Troy Jackson, it’s not about Graham Platner.”

Susan Collins, who was first elected to the Senate in 1996, attempts to defend her long tenure in Washington, saying her decision to violate her earlier pledge to serve only two terms — she is seeking her sixth — has given Maine more federal power. Collins says she has secured $1.5 billion for 672 projects across the state during her time in Congress. “I couldn’t have done that in my early years in the Senate.”

During an exchange over the U.S. war with Iran, Troy Jackson, the Democratic challenger in Maine, accuses Senator Susan Collins and her husband of profiting off the conflict. “She could use her leverage to stop this war, but instead they’re making money,” he says, prompting an angry response from Collins, who calls the claim outrageous. “You owe me an apology.”Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent, and Representative Mike Collins, the Republican challenger, faced off Thursday night in the first debate in the battle for Georgia’s Senate seat.

The pressure was on Mr. Collins, who lags in the polls, to show that he is still in the fight to represent a state that President Trump carried in 2024. The two-term congressman’s polling numbers have looked so dismal that some Republicans have shifted resources away from the race.

Mr. Collins held his own against the more polished Mr. Ossoff on Thursday, but the zingers of the night came from the incumbent.

Here are six key moments from the debate in Georgia, where the election outcome on Nov. 3 could help determine control of the Senate. Tariffs used to be Trump’s favorite word. Now, it’s Ossoff’s.

Mr. Ossoff asked Mr. Collins at least eight times to explain how President Trump’s tariffs have helped Georgians. We counted.

The question was at the core of the incumbent’s strategy to hold Mr. Collins accountable for his voting record over the last year. In addition to tariffs, Mr. Ossoff returned time and again to Mr. Collins’s support for the war in Iran and his vote to pass Mr. Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, which included cuts to Medicaid and health insurance premiums.

Mr. Ossoff was clearly trying to portray Mr. Collins as nothing more than a yes man to Mr. Trump who has played a role in a second term that many Georgians are frustrated with.

“Whatever Donald Trump says," Mr. Ossoff said, “Mike Collins does.”

Collins painted Ossoff as a ‘trust fund kid’ who ‘wants you riding on mass transit.’In many of the most heated moments of the debate, Mr. Collins returned to one of his favorite attacks against Mr. Ossoff: that he comes from a wealthy family.

Mr. Collins called Mr. Ossoff a “trust fund kid who’s never had a job in his life” and who does not care about gas prices because he “wants you riding on mass transit.”Mr. Ossoff — whose primary holding is a blind trust worth between $1 million and $5 million, according to his financial disclosures — did not engage with the jabs for most of the debate. But in his closing argument, he returned fire at Mr. Collins for portraying himself as an everyday trucker when in reality he owns a trucking company worth as much as $25 million, according to his financial disclosure report. Ossoff attacked Collins for hiring aides associated with white nationalists.

In one of the zingers of the night, Mr. Ossoff accused Mr. Collins of hiring “half the Third Reich,” referring to the Republican congressman’s history of hiring aides who have espoused white nationalist and antisemitic views.

In another attack line that immediately circulated on social media, the Democrat also slammed Mr. Collins for reposting a video in 2024 of white male students taunting and jeering at a female Black student with racist and profane remarks.

“If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery,” Mr. Ossoff said, “Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.”Over the summer, a former intern and contractor for Mr. Collins’s leadership PAC posted a picture of himself on social media dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes, the Washington Post reported. Collins’s son-in-law has a track record of sharing Nazi imagery. And, according to a report in The Daily Beast on Thursday, two people who worked with his campaign were members of a group founded by a former member of the Klan.

A spokesman for Mr. Collins said the two people were unpaid volunteers, and the campaign did not know of their past associations.

Onstage, Mr. Collins did not directly deny the allegations. He said he has “condemned racism, antisemitism, hate.”Invoking Abdul El-Sayed, Collins casts Ossoff as anti-Israel.

To confront one of the most charged issues of this election cycle, Mr. Collins brought up a Senate candidate hundreds of miles away from the one standing next to him: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan.

Mr. Collins said that Mr. Ossoff supports Dr. El-Sayed, whom he characterized as a Democrat who “hates Israel” and “loves Iran.”Asked whether Israel is “guilty of committing genocide” in Gaza, Mr. Ossoff said it’s a question for the International Criminal Court, and accused Mr. Collins of wanting to “sanction and defund” the court.

Mr. Ossoff, who is Jewish, also said that he “cares deeply” about the security of Israeli people, “some of whom are members of my family,” and about “innocent Palestinian life.”The 2020 election still resonates in Georgia.

Mr. Ossoff turned a question about whether the federal government should set voting rules into an attack on Mr. Collins and Mr. Trump for what he described as being “obsessed with overturning the 2020 election.”The issue is resonant in Georgia, which became the focal point for election denial in 2020, when Mr. Trump called the Republican secretary of state and asked him to “find” enough votes to reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

Mr. Collins countered by trying to tar Mr. Ossoff for opposing federal voter identification legislation, known as the SAVE America Act, which would impose stricter voter ID rules and require proof of citizenship to vote. “People will go vote when they have confidence in our elections,” Mr. Collins said. And the elephant in the room: Ossoff for president? It was none other than Mr. Collins who brought up speculation about Mr. Ossoff’s ambitions.

He referred to the possibility that his opponent is considering a presidential run by saying that Hasan Piker, a provocative liberal streamer, had “endorsed Jon Ossoff for president for 2028.”Mr. Piker has not, in fact, made an endorsement. And Mr. Ossoff has not declared any intentions … yet.

Much of the focus in the Georgia Senate debate was on the economy, tariffs, health care and the Iran war. Senator Jon Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent, and Representative Mike Collins, the Republican challenger, often pivoted from directly answering questions to their preferred arguments on issues, and prepared attacks against each other. Ossoff certainly got in a lot of jabs against Collins, and Collins made his pitch to voters that he would be a very different senator if elected. The two men are scheduled to debate for a second and final time next Tuesday.

Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, turns an answer on voting rules into an attack on his Republican opponent, Representative Mike Collins, and President Trump. “They’re still obsessed with overturning the 2020 election,” Ossoff says. “Mike Collins has supported Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election, and he wants to give your tax dollars to the violent thugs and criminals who sacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.”Collins counters that Ossoff opposes Trump’s SAVE America Act, which would impose stricter voter ID rules that would make it harder to vote.

“People will go vote when they have confidence in our elections,” Collins says. Ossoff later says, “I want to hear if Mike still believes the 2020 election was stolen. What do you say, Mike?”Collins doesn’t respond.

Asked whether Israel is “guilty of committing genocide” in Gaza, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, a Democrat, says that is a question for the International Criminal Court, and accuses his Republican opponent, Representative Mike Collins, of wanting to “sanction and defund” the very same court. Ossoff, who is Jewish, also says that he “cares deeply” about the security of the Israeli people, “some of whom are members of my family,” and about “innocent Palestinian life.”

Collins says Ossoff supports Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, who Collins says “hates Israel.”Senator Jon Ossoff called Representative Mike Collins, his Republican opponent, a “bigot” and accused him of hiring “half the Third Reich” and promoting “neo-Nazi content online.”The reference is a swing at the sitting congressman’s history with staffers who have been associated with white nationalist leaders and touted antisemitic views.

One of the moderators also asked Collins about his son-in-law, who has shared antisemitic and pro-Nazi content online. Collins did not deny the accusations but said that he has condemned racism and antisemitism.

Almost halfway through this debate, Senator Jon Ossoff’s strategy seems to be holding Representative Mike Collins accountable for his votes in support of tariffs and President Trump’s signature domestic policy law, which cut social services such as Medicaid and health care subsidies. Collins, the Republican, seems to be focused on painting Ossoff, the Democrat, as wealthy and out of touch with Georgians.

Battle for the Senate Supplemental Graphic Battle for the House William Lawrence, the progressive Democrat challenging Representative Tom Barrett in a tossup House race in Michigan, will speak at a town hall on Friday with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, according to a news release. The town hall will be hosted by End Citizens United, a group that seeks to mitigate the influence of corporations and outside groups in politics.

Battle for the Statehouse More Election News María Corina Machado, the exiled opposition leader of Venezuela who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, recorded a video supporting Representative María Elvira Salazar’s re-election bid in Florida. Salazar, a Republican, represents a Miami-based district that President Trump carried with 57 percent of the vote in 2024. But the district has been rocked by deportations — including of Venezuelans — under the Trump administration.

Salazar directly criticized the White House on immigration in a provocative campaign ad that suggested she was worried her race against Eliott Rodriguez, a Democrat, might be closer than expected. Machado’s endorsement has drawn criticism from some Florida Democrats saying it is inappropriate from a foreign politician.

Candidates in three high-profile races that will help decide which party controls the Senate are scheduled to debate on Thursday night in battleground states.

The outcomes in Georgia, Michigan and Maine could ultimately determine the balance of power in Washington. Republicans are attempting to hold onto the majority in both branches of Congress for President Trump’s final two years in the White House. Here are the details: Candidates: Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, and Representative Mike Collins, a Republican. Time: 7 p.m. Eastern time.

Place: The debate will be held in the studio of WTVM-TV in Atlanta without a live audience. It will be broadcast on local TV stations owned by Gray Media, and streamed online by Atlanta First Media. Moderator: Rick Folbaum, a local news anchor for Atlanta News First. Other meetings: It will be the first of two planned debates between the candidates.

Candidates: Senator Susan Collins, a Republican running for her sixth term, and Troy Jackson, a Democrat who served in the state legislature.

Place: The one-hour event in a Westbrook, Maine, broadcast studio will be held without a live audience. It will be available to watch on the WMTW YouTube channel and Facebook page, as well as airing on WABI and WAGM. Moderator: Jon Chrisos, a local news anchor for WMTW-TV.

Other meetings: It is their second of four scheduled debates, after one earlier this week.

Michigan Candidates: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat, and former Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican.

Place: The candidates will meet at a TV studio in Grand Rapids, Mich., without a live audience. The debate will be broadcast by Nexstar, CBS Detroit and other local stations. It will be free to watch on WOOD-TV’s YouTube channel. Moderator: Rick Albin, a local reporter for WOOD-TV. Other meetings: It is the first of two debates that the candidates have agreed to.

President Trump again defended his confusing comments about the war with Iran earlier this week when he said: “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”In a social media post on Thursday, Trump struck a more conciliatory tone in his defense, saying that the two liberal cities, which he has previously denigrated as crime-ridden, were “two cities that I love” and that he was not inviting Iran to bomb them.

“In actuality,” Trump said, “what I was talking about was that a temporary increase in the price of gasoline is a small price to pay for Iran not having a nuclear weapon and, if you want to see a big price, can you imagine what it would be like if they bombed San Diego and/or Los Angeles?”Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, held a news conference Thursday in San Antonio to challenge Gov. Greg Abbott, who is running for a fourth term, to a debate at the governor’s mansion next week.

Abbott is facing the most challenging campaign of his career, with recent polls showing Hinojosa within striking distance or faring better than Abbott. There has not been a debate scheduled between the two candidates.

“He needs to stop hiding from the voters, hiding from his record, and debate,” Hinojosa said.

If Democrats make big gains in the midterm elections in four weeks, it may not only be because their most loyal voters come out in force, or because their candidates have converted Republican voters to their cause.

Instead, the Democrats’ dream blue wave could come from Republicans who sour on President Trump and stay home. It already has a name: the red undertow.

Across the country, signs are emerging of an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, even among those who consider themselves likely to vote. A stretch of rural southwest Michigan — long a Republican stronghold — illustrates the point, with more signs for blueberries and eggs than for political candidates. Volunteers are not showing up to door-knock. And many voters say they are tuning this election out.

“People are just more focused on everyday life,” said Lindsay Kronemeyer, 35, a conservative Christian mother of two who works in the construction industry. “I don’t hear the chatter on the Republican side of ‘Trump this, Trump that.’ He’s just not there in my head anymore.”Jim Pasek, a retired pharmaceutical plant maintenance worker who lives in the tiny town of Gobles, Mich., was baffled by a president he has voted for twice.

“He’s not making sense,” Mr. Pasek, 80, said. “It confuses me, and then I just get disgusted and tune out.”The idea of the red undertow was introduced last month by the political analyst Charlie Cook, who argued that the Democratic brand was still underwater, but that this election was not about a rising Democratic tide. It was about a drowning Trump brand.

In its wake, Mr. Cook wrote, an undertow will “pull many Republicans under.”In nearly three dozen interviews in Western Michigan, a sense of fatigue was constant, and that feeling goes beyond that region.

“President Trump has been saying, ‘Vote as if I was on the ballot,’ and that’s exactly what I’m going to do — not vote,” said Brandon Tremaine, 24, a graduate student in Texas who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020. “You do not campaign on being the ticket of peace and start a war of choice that is directly hurting Americans here at home and gotten Americans killed overseas.”Polls can be unreliable, and moods may be fleeting.

Trump loyalists are also known for not taking the calls of polling outfits, and that may be overstating Democratic strengths. Disaffected Trump voters may yet rally to vote as the possibility of a Democratic victory nears, and many Americans still love Mr. Trump.

“I’ll go the length with Trump,” said Jeff Gilbert, 67, a friend of Mr. Pasek in Gobles.

The numbers aren’t drastically far apart. A New York Times/Siena University national poll from last month found that Democrats were more likely to say they were absolutely certain to vote than Republicans, 61 percent to 56 percent. While Democrats led Republicans nationally by seven percentage points amonged voters, that advantage rose to nine points among likely voters. But in close races, a small gap could prove meaningful.

“People are tired,” Al Pscholka, a Republican and a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, said of Mr. Trump. “The whole divider-in-chief thing, it’s gotten to the point where it’s just exhausting.”The concern is showing in unlikely places. Representative Bill Huizenga, a Western Michigan Republican whose four House victories were all by comfortable margins, is in “the fight of his life” against a well-funded centrist Democrat from Kalamazoo named Sean McCann, said Rob Pocock, a retired Republican political consultant who has worked on campaigns in the region.

Nancy DeBoer, the local Republican state representative, also faces a serious fight against Joseph McClusky, a graduate of Hope College, a conservative Christian liberal arts college in Holland, Mich., who is openly gay.

“I would be shocked if Joseph wins, but I can’t believe he’s done as well as he has,” said Mr. Pocock, who teaches at Hope and had Mr. McClusky as a student. He said in Ottawa County, he was seeing Democratic yard signs in numbers he’d never seen before.

Western Michigan — home of Gerald Ford — may be seeing the ebb tide of the president’s MAGA movement, which had surged in this region, once known for a sober, Christian-inflected conservatism. In Ottawa County, ardent Trump supporters secured 8 of the 11 seats on the county commission after Covid. Pro-Trump forces won control of the state party, too.

Today, the MAGA wing is down to three seats in Ottawa County. They have also lost posts in Berrien and Kent counties.

“I think there’s a shift in the party back toward, we need a little bit of the establishment folks,” Ms. Kronemeyer said. “They exist for a reason.”If anybody should be enthusiastic about the election, it is Ms. Kronemeyer. She ran for a statehouse seat in 2022. She door-knocked for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020. But she said that when a friend asked her recently about the races in her area, she had to admit she hadn’t been following them closely.

She lives in deep-red Allegan County, where “traditionally in election years, yard signs would be peppered everywhere,” she said. But the only signs she’d seen this year were for a judge, she said.

Ten years have passed since Mr. Trump took the country by storm, bringing a message of economic populism that appealed to millions of working-class Americans.

“He was a ball of energy,” Mr. Pasek said, sitting at breakfast in Gobles last week with his friend, Mr. Gilbert. “You could feel it. You could see it.”Now, Mr. Pasek said, Mr. Trump seems to have lost his way. He started a war when he said he wouldn’t, sending the price of gas through the roof. And he seems to talk more about ballrooms and arches than he does about how he will bring prices back down. “He’s losing touch with the American people,” Mr. Pasek said.

Mr. Gilbert said that he had stopped following the news closely, choosing to spend more time outside with his dog, Mabel. But he voted for Mr. Trump in 2024, and he said he stands by that choice. He said he believed Mr. Trump had a plan for Iran.

Mr. Pasek countered, “He says he has a plan, but then he doesn’t tell us what it is.”

Mr. Pasek cited gas prices: “He says it’s chump change. No, it’s not! It’s killing the people.”He has noticed someone living in a car in a parking lot when he drives into town, he said. He worried about his granddaughter, 28, a college graduate from Michigan State University, who is working three jobs — one full-time and two part-time — but can’t find a house she can afford.

Those misgivings are being felt at the local party level. Doug Koopman, a member of the Kent County Republican Party’s executive committee, said that it had been a struggle to get the foot soldiers of the midterm elections — volunteer door-knockers and canvassers — to pick up brochures to distribute door to door, leaving bags of them sitting around the party headquarters. “There’s very low energy on the Republican side,” he said.

In 2024, people lined up for nearly a mile in the rain in Grand Rapids to see Mr. Trump speak the night before the election. His campaign was dominant on social media, reaching younger people who’d never voted before, such as Sebastian Covey, who remembered Mr. Trump “popping” on his feeds. Mr. Covey had not voted before 2024; he did that year, for the president.

Now 24, he said his focus was elsewhere. He lives more than an hour away from his landscaping job in Hudsonville, a bustling suburb just west of Grand Rapids, because rents are cheaper, but the rising gas price has made his commute painful. He swapped his truck for a car, but a colleague he had been car-pooling with just found another job. He and his girlfriend have been looking for a rental closer to work, but so far they have not found anything they can afford. He said he hadn’t thought about whether he would vote.

“I should care more, but it’s hard to keep up,” he said during a lunch break in a Wendy’s restaurant.

Even Republicans who are in politics say they are tired — worn out by the battles between pro-MAGA politicians and traditional Republicans. Bob Harrison, 76, a Republican county commissioner in Berrien County, where MAGA forces won control of the county G.O.P., said those forces took away the right to vote on party decisions from local elected officials like him.

Those officials “pretty much all walked away from the Berrien County Republican Party” to raise funds for their own political candidates, said Dr. Harrison, a retired community college president.

Dr. Harrison, who voted for Mr. Trump in 2024, said the hard-core Trump supporters remained unchanged, but “they’ve lost the support of the moderates like myself, people who think and choose and maybe split their votes.”Warren Stewart, 69, who lives in Stevensville, Mich., and works restoring old homes, said he liked to think that Mr. Trump was working to restore the country, but he is starting to have doubts.

Clients often get nervous when the project is only halfway through, he said, but he assures them that he always has a plan for bringing the home back to its original beauty. He wonders if Mr. Trump does, too. “Does he really know what he’s doing?”Mr. Stewart said.

He would never vote for a Democrat; he feels bludgeoned by liberals online, he said. But he’s not sure he’ll vote for Republicans, either.

“I just spent $60 on $30 worth of groceries and am about to go fill up for $5 a gallon,” he said, carrying two bags of groceries to his car. “It feels like they’re stress-testing us.”Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting and research.

Representative Ashley Hinson, the Republican nominee for Senate in Iowa, and her Democratic opponent, State Representative Josh Turek, sparred politely but sharply at their first televised debate over the war with Iran, Medicaid cuts, taxes and congressional stock trading.

The debate on Wednesday in Johnston, Iowa, came a week before early voting begins in a red state that has become increasingly competitive as President Trump’s approval ratings have sunk. Polls including a recent New York Times/Siena survey show a neck-and-neck race that could decide control of the Senate. The two candidates will debate on Tuesday night for a second and final time. Here are five takeaways from their first onstage face-off: Iowa has been rocked by Iran war fallout.

The unpopularity of the war with Iran has dominated these midterms, and Mr. Turek sought to capitalize on voters’ unhappiness early and often.

Ms. Hinson has voted against House resolutions calling on Mr. Trump to end the war or seek congressional approval for it. Mr. Turek criticized her for those votes and spoke about his father’s exposure to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. As a result, Mr. Turek noted, he was born with spina bifida, a birth defect.

“I’m an example of the generational consequences to these forever wars,” said Mr. Turek, who uses a wheelchair.

He also sought to tie the Mideast conflict to voters’ daily lives: “Iowans out there, when you’re struggling at the pump, that is because of Ashley Hinson,” he said near the end.

Ms. Hinson, for her part, tried to thread the needle between supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts and expressing concern about how long the war had lasted. She said that the conflict needed to come to “an immediate and successful end” but that Iran must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. The candidates tangled over Trump and his policies. Ms. Hinson needs Mr. Trump’s voters — but she also needs some distance from him.

“I’ll be President Trump’s ally when it is important for Iowa,” she said at the debate when asked about her promise last year to be Mr. Trump’s “top ally in the U.S. Senate.”“But I will push back on him. He knows this because I talk to him regularly on things that are wrong for our state.”Mr. Turek criticized Mr. Trump’s tariffs — he said farmers needed open trade “more than any other group” — as well as his sweeping tax and budget bill, which included major cuts to Medicaid. Mr. Turek argued that it was “fundamentally wrong” to cut Medicaid in a state with a “cancer crisis.”Iowa has one of the nation’s highest cancer rates.

Ms. Hinson fiercely defended the legislation, saying that its tax cuts had largely benefited the middle class and that she supported holding big health insurance companies accountable for denying and delaying care. They bent over backward to appear bipartisan.

Both candidates sought to persuade viewers that they would work across the aisle and put Iowans before party loyalty.

Mr. Turek, who was once aed Republican, emphasized that he had voted hundreds of times with Republicans in the State House, on matters including lowering taxes.

Ms. Hinson offered an even more surprising olive branch to voters of the opposing party — promoting her work with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime villain for Republicans.

“I got things across the line with Nancy Pelosi as speaker,” Ms. Hinson said. “So I think that shows that I can work with anyone.”They traded a few personal attacks …Onstage, each candidate sought to respond to attack ads from the other, and they lobbed their own jabs.

Mr. Turek accused Ms. Hinson of corruption, bringing up her increase in net worth since her election to Congress in 2020 without specifying how her work as a lawmaker would have contributed to it. Ms. Hinson emphasized that she and her husband had sold their publicly traded stocks after her election and that she had backed a ban on stock trading for members of Congress.

“More liberal lies,” she said, adding, “I want Iowans to know the decisions that I’m making in Washington, D.C., have nothing to do with the inside information I might be getting as a public servant.”She argued that Mr. Turek “stole” from taxpayers by taking a daily pay allowance while missing nearly half of the votes in the State House. Mr. Turek responded by saying she had missed nearly 200 votes. … but the debate was civil and unusually policy-focused.

Today’s political conversation can sometimes feel full of ad hominem attacks and explosive culture-war issues like abortion, gender and sexuality.

There wasn’t much of that in Wednesday’s debate. Ms. Hinson and Mr. Turek largely spoke in calm tones, digging deep into questions about issues like Medicaid, rural health care and the war. Both seemed focused more on substantive answers than on quippy attack lines.

They agreed on several points, including the idea that Congress should have term limits — a touchy subject, given that Iowa is home to the oldest member of either chamber, Senator Chuck Grassley, 93, a Republican who has served in Congress for half a century.

”It’s time to rotate the crops,” Mr. Turek said, adding that Mr. Grassley had “been a senator as long as I’ve been alive. He’s been involved in representative government since 1958. That is the Eisenhower administration.”

Ms. Hinson responded that “if there’s a term limit bill that comes to the floor, I’ll absolutely support it.”“I do want to eventually retire and spend time with my husband and my kids at some point, too,” she said.