Pennsylvania

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Democratic Party’s most powerful voices warned Saturday that abortion, Social Security and democracy itself are at risk as they labored to overcome fierce political headwinds — and an ill-timed misstep from President Joe Biden — over the final weekend of the 2022 midterm elections.

“Sulking and moping is not an option,” former President Barack Obama told several hundred voters on a blustery day in Pittsburgh. “On Tuesday, let’s make sure our country doesn’t get set back 50 years.”

LATROBE, Pa. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is predicting America’s destruction if his fellow Republicans don’t deliver a massive electoral wave on Tuesday. Democrats, led by President Joe Biden and two other former presidents, are warning that abortion rights, Social Security and even democracy itself are at stake.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Swing-state Pennsylvania is the stage for a clash of presidents on Saturday as each party’s biggest stars work to energize voters just days before voting concludes in high-stakes midterm elections across the country.

MALVERN, Pa. (AP) — On a chilly Saturday morning in mid-October, state and national Republican Party leaders made their way to a hotel patio restaurant in the critically important Philadelphia suburbs to energize loyalists heading into next month’s election that features an awkwardly fitting pair at the top of the Pennsylvania ticket.

CARMICHAELS, Pa. (AP) — In one of the most closely watched races in one of the most contested of battleground states, both gubernatorial candidates bring up religion. But in starkly different ways.

Republican Doug Mastriano’s campaign has several hallmarks of Christian nationalism, which fuses Christian and political imagery, words and rituals and promotes a belief that America has been and should be a Christian nation.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — More than five months after experiencing a stroke, Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman struggled at times to explain his positions and often spoke haltingly throughout a highly anticipated debate Tuesday against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz as they vie for a critical Senate seat.

In the opening minutes of the debate, Fetterman addressed what he called the “elephant in the room.”

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — As Sheila Armstrong grew emotional in recounting how her brother and nephew were killed in Philadelphia, Dr. Mehmet Oz — sitting next to her inside a Black church, their chairs arranged a bit like his former daytime TV show set — placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Later, he gave her a hug, and said, “How do you cope?”

MONONGAHELA, Pa. (AP) — House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday confronted President Joe Biden and the Democratic majority in Congress with a conservative midterm election agenda filled with Trump-like promises, working not only to win over voters but to hold together the uneasy coalition of his own party that has struggled to govern.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, released his health records as he maneuvers to keep questions about Democratic rival John Fetterman’s recovery from a stroke front and center in the hotly contested campaign.

Dr. Rebecca Kurth in New York City wrote in a four-page letter that she found the 62-year-old heart surgeon-turned-TV celebrity to be in “excellent health” in an annual checkup Thursday.

MYERSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Larry Mitko voted for Donald Trump in 2016. But the Republican from Beaver County in western Pennsylvania says he has no plans to back his party’s nominee for Senate, Dr. Mehmet Oz — “no way, no how.”

Mitko doesn’t feel like he knows the celebrity heart surgeon, who only narrowly won his May primary with Trump’s backing. Instead, Mitko plans to vote for Oz’s Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a name he’s been familiar with since Fetterman’s days as mayor of nearby Braddock.