The Pew Research Center predicted that only 40 percent of Americans eligible to vote in the 2014 midterm elections will do so on November 4. In the race for New York's 11th Congressional District, incumbent Michael Grimm, who was indicted on 20 counts of mail fraud, tax fraud, and perjury in April, and who earlier this year threatened to throw a NY1 reporter off of the balcony of the Capitol building, was chided by a Staten Island newspaper for being "hot headed" and "distasteful," and for making Staten Island "the laughing stock of the nation"; the paper endorsed Grimm, who has a 19-point lead in the polls. In a speech at the Hibernian Society in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, the incumbent in the state's Senate race, joked that "if I get to be president, white men who are in male-only clubs are going to do great"; FiveThirtyEight.com projected that Graham has a 99 percent chance of holding his seat. Ted Cruz, a likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate, responded to the news that Apple CEO Tim Cook was gay by telling a reporter that while he supported anti-gay marriage legislation, he agreed that same-sex couples should be allowed marry in states where it is legal. "Yes. No, no, I agree," he said. "Perhaps you are not understanding my position." A former neo-Nazi running for town council in Apple Valley, California, said he is "not a hater," and the chairwoman for the New Hampshire Republican Party likened winning seats in Congress to drowning Democrats. "Push their heads under over and over again," she said, "until they cannot breathe anymore." Tom Harkin, Iowa's Democratic Senate incumbent, said his challenger, Republican Joni Ernst, was "as good-looking as Taylor Swift," and for the second time in Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio's campaign, a former staffer accused him of sexual harassment. "His fly was undone, and he had his hand grasping his genitals," the male staffer said of an encounter with DeMaio, who leads by 13 percent in the polls.

-Harper's Weekly Review