Election Live Updates: Harris Keeps Up Media Push After ‘60 Minutes’ Interview

The proponents of the ballot measure, known as Proposition 1, have struggled to raise money. The lack of spending has left many voters uninformed or unaware of the ballot question. And strategists from both parties say the manner in which the proposition was written — without abortion explicitly mentioned — has given opponents a window to try to redefine and perhaps defeat it.

“The biggest thing that I’ve noticed, besides the legislative train wreck of this ballot measure’s language, is that virtually no one in the state even knows it’s there,” said John Faso, a former Republican congressman who opposes the measure.

Proposition 1 seeks to update the state’s Equal Rights Amendment, first passed in 1938, to include new protected classes that include “pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive health care and autonomy.”

The point of the measure, supporters say, is to codify certain legal protections — the right to an abortion, as well as freedom from discrimination based on disability, gender, sexuality and ethnicity, among others — into the State Constitution. That way, if politicians who opposed gay marriage or abortion ever came to power, it would be harder to restrict access to those existing rights.

But opponents of the proposal have framed it as a constitutional overreach and contend that it would affect issues like whether transgender girls can play on girls’ high school sports teams and parents’ ability to weigh in on their children’s health care choices.

The ballot measure’s fate may come down to who has more money to billboard their definition of the measure before voters go to the polls next month.

New Yorkers for Equal Rights, a committee backing Proposition 1, had indicated as recently as late August that it planned to raise $20 million to back the measure.

Filings show that the committee raised nearly $2.4 million over the past quarter, finishing with $1.6 million cash on hand, after spending hundreds of thousands on consultants.

That still would far exceed the $46,000 cash on hand reported by the proposition’s main opponent, the Coalition to Protect Kids, in its latest campaign finance disclosure.

Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to work to help the proposition and has committed to spending more than $1 million from her coordinated campaign committee on its behalf. The money would go to advertising and direct mail, among other efforts.

“It’s critical voters know that an abortion amendment is on the ballot in New York this year,” Ms. Hochul said in a statement. “New Yorkers deserve the freedom to control their own lives and health care decisions, including the right to abortion regardless of who’s in office, and this important investment will get that message out across the state.”

Where Voters Will Decide on Abortion in November

Ten states could expand abortion rights via ballot measures. Nebraska will also vote on proposed restrictions.

Other leading New York Democrats, including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Attorney General Letitia James and several congressional candidates campaigned last week across the state to support the proposition. They and others accused Republican opponents of using fear tactics to misrepresent it and to drive conservative voters to the polls.

“It is explicit as to what Prop 1 is doing,” said Sasha Neha Ahuja, campaign director for New Yorkers for Equal Rights. “It’s protecting abortion first and foremost, and it’s closing loopholes in the State Constitution so New Yorkers can’t be discriminated against by the government. The opponents to Prop 1 are anti-abortion extremists.”

But Republican opponents have mostly avoided mentioning abortion in their messaging. Instead, they have sought to recast the proposal as an unnecessary bid to expand the rights of migrants, as well as transgender adolescents who may be seeking to receive medical treatment or to compete on sports teams that align with their gender identity.

Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican who is facing a close race on Long Island, has said on social media that the proposition was a “radical referendum” that would “unfairly allow men into women’s bathrooms and sports.”

Polls commissioned by both sides suggest that Proposition 1 becomes less popular as voters hear about the broadness of the ballot language and its potential impact.

A Republican consultant, Vincent Casale, said that polls he conducted for candidates he declined to name showed a “significant shift in voter sentiment once they understand the amendment’s potential impact on women’s sports.”

“The detrimental impact of the E.R.A. can be messaged as unforeseen outcomes,” Mr. Casale wrote to clients in an August memo reviewed by The New York Times.

“Framing the argument around the impact on women’s sports provides a compelling, less polarizing way to communicate these concerns to a broad audience, including voters who would support measures they believe less discriminating or furthering abortion rights.”

Democratic consultants are similarly strategizing on how best to introduce voters to the ballot measure and recognize the potency of Republicans’ attack lines.

“If the opposition communicates in a vacuum on their terms (e.g., by stirring up fears about trans rights and the ‘migrant crisis’) without any response, Democratic candidates in these districts — as well as down-ballot Democrats — could be in real danger,” read a memo written by the Democratic polling firm the Global Strategy Group, which is working on the Proposition 1 campaign.

Their concerns are well placed. The measure’s prohibition banning discrimination based on gender identity has opponents like Mr. D’Esposito warning, without apparent evidence, that it would force the state to fund “experimental surgeries on children without parental consent.”

As for Republicans’ fears about children being allowed to compete on sports teams that align with their gender identity, supporters of the measure note that state law already allows that.

“This has long been the law in New York State, and the sky has not fallen,” said Katharine Bodde, co-director of policy for the New York Civil Liberties Union. “This is fearmongering.”

The main concern among supporters of the measure is that a deep-pocketed Republican might decide to finance a late-stage attack on it. In 2021, three proposed constitutional amendments were defeated after the cosmetics heir Ronald S. Lauder poured $3 million into the opposition's campaign shortly before the election. The amendments would have lowered barriers to vote and made it easier for Democrats to gerrymander congressional maps.

A new political action campaign tied to Mr. Lauder was created last month, stoking Democrats’ fears of a repeat of their 2021 defeat. But a representative for Mr. Lauder told The Times that he had decided against it, adding: “He will not be having any opposition to Prop 1 going forward.”

The specter of Mr. Lauder’s involvement in the campaign to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment nonetheless raised the alarm for the measure’s supporters.

“Ron Lauder fooled New Yorkers once in 2021, but no one should be fooled again,” Ms. Ahuja said. “Lauder and his allies have backed anti-abortion efforts and killed New York ballot measures, and now we see all the trademarks of him running his playbook yet again. This is a wake-up call for anyone still on the sidelines.”

Earlier this month, Nahiyan Taufiq and Hannah Cutten, both 26, knocked on doors in support of the measure in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

Ms. Taufig and Ms. Cutten have also been volunteering at weekly phone bank sessions. They said the responses from voters on the phone and in person have been similar.

Most did not know much about the ballot measure — or even that it existed. But their interest has grown when Ms. Taufiq and Ms. Cutten have appealed to them to flip over their ballots to “close dangerous loopholes that leave us open to extreme laws from extreme politicians.”

Ms. Taufiq said that of the voters she has reached in swing districts, some have warmed up after learning about the measure — but not everyone.

“Many people shut down when they hear about abortion,” she said before knocking on another door.

Then, she said, there were the people who simply cursed at her: “There’s lots of that.”

Grace Ashford contributed reporting.

Before Mr. Trump’s remarks, a rabbi led a ceremony in which a number of Jewish leaders and elected officials lit memorial candles and delivered remarks to honor the more than 1,200 people killed when Hamas attacked Israel last year. Event organizers left a section of chairs empty on either side of the stage with photos of hostages who remain in Gaza, a statement about their continued captivity.

But the energy changed with Mr. Trump’s arrival. He stood basking in applause and gave a small shuffling dance as “God Bless the U.S.A.,” his typical entrance music, played. He opened his remarks by talking about the hurricane approaching Florida, then indirectly criticized the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene.

Mr. Trump then decried the Oct. 7 attack. He vowed to back Israel’s right to defend itself, once again insisting that Israel had to finish its war quickly, and he called for the United States to play a stronger role in bringing about the end of conflict in the Middle East. “You have no idea the role that the United States has to play in order to get that ball over the goal line,” he said.

Mr. Trump did not blame the Biden administration for the Mideast conflict. But as he blamed “the leadership of this country” for a rise in antisemitism — ignoring the rise in reported antisemitic acts during his presidency — someone in the crowd called out “what leadership?”

Mr. Trump responded, “That’s true.”

Later, Mr. Trump spoke broadly about anti-Jewish hatred in America, claiming it existed within the Democratic Party but not in the G.O.P. The Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, has seen his campaign crumble after a CNN report that he called himself a “black NAZI” on a pornographic website. And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a Trump ally, has made a string of antisemitic remarks, including recently invoking an anti-Jewish trope by blaming Jews for killing Jesus to explain her vote against a bill meant to address antisemitism.

“The anti-Jewish hatred has returned even here in America, in our streets, our media and our college campuses and within the ranks of the Democrat Party in particular, not in the Republican Party, I will tell you,” Mr. Trump said.

After some applause from his supporters, he added: “The Republican Party has not been infected by this horrible disease. And hopefully it won’t be. It won’t be as long as I’m in charge, I can tell you that.”

Less than a month before Election Day, Ms. Harris’s interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” — the longstanding most-watched news program on television — came at a moment of increased exposure and pressure. She is set to appear on three major shows on Tuesday and at a Univision town-hall event on Thursday that is aimed at Spanish-speaking viewers.

Here are seven takeaways from Ms. Harris’s appearance on “60 Minutes,” which also interviewed her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.

Harris was in control of her message, but avoided repeated pushback.

From the opening seconds, Ms. Harris seemed calm and in command of the points she wanted to make — and she did not stray from them despite repeated follow-up questions. She avoided pushback when asked to detail how to end the yearlong war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. And she declined repeatedly to say whether the Biden-Harris administration should have acted earlier to restrict illegal immigration into the United States.

When Mr. Whitaker asked her if the administration had lost all sway over Mr. Netanyahu, Ms. Harris said, “The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles.”

Mr. Whitaker pushed again: “It seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.”

Ms. Harris responded, “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end” — an answer that did not address the volatile diplomatic tension at the heart of the question.

She has a Glock, and she knows how to use it.

Since beginning her short, intense campaign, Ms. Harris has offered up few new details about herself, but on Monday she answered a couple of questions about being a longtime gun owner.

She said she owned a Glock, a popular pistol that is the handgun of choice for many in law enforcement — perhaps fitting for a former California attorney general, San Francisco district attorney and a local prosecutor before that.

“Look, my background is in law enforcement,” she said, “and so there you go.”

Yes, the vice president said with a laugh, of course she had fired the weapon. She quickly added: at a shooting range.

Harris was pressed about ‘dealing with the real world’ on some of her plans.

Ms. Harris was asked several times about her plans to pay for her economic proposals, including a $6,000 child tax credit for families with infants. She vowed to raise taxes on the highest earners before Mr. Whitaker pushed back: “We’re dealing with the real world here,” he said. She said she believed that congressional leaders were privately willing to engage on the issue.

“When you talk quietly with a lot of folks in Congress, they know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said, ignoring a reality she has encountered as Mr. Biden’s No. 2: Discussions in private that seem promising do not always lead to public policy.

Still, Ms. Harris said she would need Congress to act on several proposals, including legislation that would continue to restrict immigration to the United States.

She has warned Tim Walz about misspeaking.

When Mr. Walz has been in the news lately, it has been about his misrepresentations of his military record and travels to China.

It was perhaps an acknowledgment of these distractions from the carefully crafted Harris campaign agenda when Mr. Walz, after being asked about disagreements he has had with his running mate, said that she had told him to button up some of his loose language.

“She said, ‘Tim, you know, you need to be a little more careful on how you say things,’” Mr. Walz said.

He said any embellishments he had made paled in comparison to those of Mr. Trump, whom he called “a pathological liar.”

“I will own up to being a knucklehead at times,” he said. “The folks closest to me know that I keep my word.”

Neither Liz Cheney nor Harris can quite believe they are allies now.

During a brief exchange at Ms. Harris’s event last week in Wisconsin with former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Mr. Whitaker asked the vice president what she would have said if someone had suggested four years ago that she would someday be campaigning with the archconservative Ms. Cheney.

“That’d be great,” Ms. Harris said, laughing.

Ms. Cheney laughed, too. “She’s really diplomatic,” she said.

Mr. Whitaker then posed the same question to Ms. Cheney. Could she believe she was here, speaking at a campaign event for Ms. Harris?

The former Wyoming congresswoman couched her support as vital to preventing Mr. Trump’s return to office.

“I hope that if you had said to me four years ago, ‘Our Constitution is going to be under threat and it’s going to be crucial for the parties to come together and to support Vice President Harris because she’ll defend the rule of law,’ I know I would’ve said, ‘That’s exactly what I’ll do,’” she said.

Her foreign policy would look a lot like Biden’s.

Discussing the diplomatic crises that have unfolded throughout the Biden administration, including the expanding Mideast conflict and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ms. Harris signaled that foreign policy in a Harris-Walz administration would hew closely to the policies of the Biden-Harris one.

Ms. Harris said she would not meet with Mr. Putin about ending the war in Ukraine without involving the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

She again warned of what could happen if her Republican rival were in office: “Donald Trump, if he were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. He talks about, ‘oh, he can end it on Day 1.’ You know what that is. It’s about surrender.”

But Ms. Harris did not hesitate when asked which foreign country was “our greatest adversary.” Iran, she said, is “the obvious one.”

“Iran has American blood on their hands,” she said, though she twice declined to engage in what she called hypothetical questions about what sort of military action she would take overseas.

Trump turned down ‘60 Minutes.’ Harris took advantage.

On the CBS show on Monday, Mr. Whitaker said Mr. Trump had agreed to an interview, then backed out, citing, among other things, the network’s promise to fact-check him on the air.

Ms. Harris pounced on the opportunity to point out that Mr. Trump “is not going to give your viewers the ability to have a meaningful, thoughtful conversation, question-and-answer with you.”

To get an idea of the substance of Mr. Trump’s policies, she said, “Watch his rallies. You’re going to hear conversations that are about himself and all of his personal grievances.”

The Gaza Strip is not part of Israel and has never been, though some Israelis have called for annexing it. It was occupied by Israel from 1967 until 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory. In 2007, after Hamas took over Gaza, Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade that restricted access to the area.

There is no record of Mr. Trump ever being in Gaza, during his time as president or as a businessman. In 2017, his first year in office, Mr. Trump visited Israel and traveled to the West Bank — a separate territory that is some 20 miles from Gaza at the nearest point — for a meeting with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in Bethlehem.

In the interview, Mr. Hewitt asked Mr. Trump, a real-estate developer, if Gaza, wide swaths of which have been destroyed over the last year as part of air and ground strikes in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack, could “be Monaco if it was rebuilt the right way? Could someone make Gaza into something that all the Palestinian people would be proud of, would want to live in, would benefit them?”

Mr. Trump replied, “It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything. It’s got, it is the best, I’ve said it for years. You know when — I’ve been there, and it’s rough. It’s a rough place, before the, you know, before all of the attacks and before the back and forth what’s happened over the last couple of years.”

Asked later what Mr. Trump was referring to when he said he had “been there,” a Trump campaign official did not provide a comment on the record. Speaking only on the condition of anonymity, the official said, “Gaza is in Israel. President Trump has been to Israel.”

The comment renews questions about how Mr. Trump would approach the region if he wins another term. Some in Israel, including hard-liners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, favor the idea of reoccupying and annexing Gaza.

Mr. Trump has made supporting Israel a centerpiece of his campaign over the past year. His supporters have praised several policy decisions he made as president, including the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and the historic Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and some Arab nations. Those efforts were pushed by Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

But Mr. Trump has made plain that he thinks Jewish voters in the United States should support him for those and other policies.

“I think that Israel has to do one thing, they have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Hewitt, referring to Jewish voters, when he was asked whether Israel would “recover fully” from the attacks. “I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not reciprocal, as they say, not reciprocal.”

“We must work to ensure nothing like the horrors of Oct. 7 can ever happen again,” she said. “And on this solemn day, I will restate my pledge to always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself, and that I will always work to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish people here and around the world.”

While Ms. Harris did not call for a cease-fire in Gaza during her prepared remarks — as she has in the past — she acknowledged the more than 41,000 Palestinians who have died, according to local health officials, in Israel’s campaign to eliminate Hamas.

“We must work to relieve the immense suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who have experienced so much pain and loss over the year,” she said.

During the vice president’s remarks, protesters could be heard chanting in the background.

The brutality of the Oct. 7 attacks and the mass death and grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by Israel’s response have complicated Democratic efforts to win support from Jewish, Muslim and Arab American voters, groups that have reliably backed the party in past elections.

Republicans have tried to use Israel as a wedge issue with Jewish voters, although former President Donald J. Trump has sometimes seemed to hamstring those attempts by claiming that American Jews who support Democrats hate their religion or are disloyal. And many Muslim and Arab Americans, particularly in the battleground state of Michigan, say they will not vote for Ms. Harris because she has not spoken out more strongly against the United States’ military and financial aid to Israel.

On Monday, all four candidates on the Democratic and Republican tickets publicly honored the Oct. 7 anniversary, as did President Biden, reflecting how deeply felt the attacks have been in the United States.

After Ms. Harris and Mr. Emhoff shoveled dirt over the base of the newly planted pomegranate tree, the vice president said in response to a reporter’s question that negotiating a cease-fire in Gaza was “one of the highest priorities of this administration.”

“We are not going to give up,” Ms. Harris said. “We are doing everything we can possibly do to get a cease-fire and hostage deal done. It’s one of the most important ways we will be able to end this war and bring any type of stability to the region.”

Earlier in the day, Mr. Biden participated in a candle-lighting ceremony at the White House to remember those killed on Oct. 7. He lit a yahrzeit candle and briefly crossed himself without making remarks.

Also on Monday, Mr. Trump observed the anniversary of the attack by visiting the grave in New York City of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, an influential leader of the Lubavitcher movement, a Hasidic group, who died in 1994. Mr. Trump is also scheduled to travel to Florida for an event on Monday evening with Jewish community leaders at his resort in Doral.

His running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, attended a memorial in the shadow of the Washington Monument in the U.S. capital, and used the platform to criticize Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris for their policies in the Middle East, asserting that they “haven’t done a thing” to bring home the hostages still held by Hamas. He also denounced pro-Palestinian protesters as “pro-Hamas,” saying that their calls for a cease-fire were equivalent to calling “for a unilateral surrender.”

Ms. Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who was traveling in California, marked the anniversary by paying his respects at the Nova Exhibition, an installation that moved from Tel Aviv to New York to Culver City and is dedicated to the music festival where more than 380 people were killed in the Hamas-led assault.

Reporting was contributed by Michael Gold, Chris Cameron and Katie Glueck.

He described talking to young voters and said: “Young women between the ages of 19 and 30, abortion is their No. 1 concern. That’s all they want to talk about. They are single-issue voters. And it’s all about pro-choice, pro-choice. ‘Well, Republicans are pro-life, they want to take my rights away and lock me up and throw me in prison.’ And I said, ‘Well, are you familiar with what the Democrats’ position is on abortion?’”

He then repeated the false claim, made by many Republicans, that legislation proposed by Democrats would allow abortions “up to and including the moment of birth” and “after the moment of birth,” and said: “That’s not an abortion after they’re born. It’s called murder. Like, that is the political position of the American Democrat Party.”

No state allows doctors to kill infants after birth, and no proposed legislation — including the Women’s Health Protection Act, which Mr. Sheehy appeared to cite with a reference to the “Women’s Health Care Act of 2021” — would change that prohibition. While the Women’s Health Protection Act would not ban abortion after a gestational cutoff, it would allow states to restrict it after fetal viability as long as they included exceptions for medical emergencies.

Mr. Sheehy is challenging Senator Jon Tester of Montana, who appears based on polls to be the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for re-election this year. Coupled with the seat Republicans are expected to gain in West Virginia, ousting Mr. Tester could give Republicans control of the Senate even if they don’t defeat any other Democratic incumbents.

The abortion segment of the recordings was publicized by The Daily Montanan on Friday, and a short, edited clip of it was further disseminated by the Montana Democratic Party on Monday. (That clip cut straight from the “Are you familiar” question to “It’s called murder,” omitting the reference to the Women’s Health Protection Act and supposed abortions after birth.) The party said Mr. Sheehy’s comments reflected “his plans to put politicians in charge of Montana women’s health care decisions.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Sheehy’s campaign in a statement didn’t specifically address the comments in the recordings, saying, “Tim has been crystal-clear that he is pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.” The statement also criticized Mr. Tester, blaming him for the state of inflation, home prices and security at the southern border.

Mr. Sheehy’s comments on abortion, an issue that has helped to fuel Democratic victories since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, were in some respects similar to those made last month by the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, Bernie Moreno.

Mr. Moreno, who is challenging Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, described many suburban women as “single-issue voters” on abortion. He added: “It’s a little crazy, by the way, especially for women that are like past 50. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”

The recordings of Mr. Sheehy also included remarks in which he promoted racist stereotypes about Native Americans, who are a significant voting bloc in Montana. Among other things, he said he had roped and branded cattle on the Crow Reservation and that it was “a great way to bond with all the Indians out there while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.”