Candidates give final pitches ahead of Election Day

NEW YORK - Candidates are remaining active, making multiple campaign appearances one day ahead of the election.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was at a Manhattan subway station during the Monday morning commute. Rep. Lee Zeldin, her opponent, was also going to be at a subway station on Monday. He chose one that a person was stabbed at over the weekend as he continues to highlight crime in his campaign.

President Joe Biden pilloried Republicans up and down ballots across the nation as election deniers who reveled in political violence, while his predecessor, Donald Trump, urged voters to oppose "growing left-wing tyranny" on the final Sunday before midterm elections that could reshape Washington's balance of power.

Wrapping up a five-state, four-day campaign swing with an evening rally at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, President Joe Biden championed Hochul. She's locked in a tight race with Zeldin, who is looking to become the state's first GOP governor since George Pataki left office in 2006.

The president said hundreds of Republican candidates for state, federal and local office are "election deniers, who say that I did not win the election, even though hundreds of attempts to challenge that have all failed, even in Republican courts."

Biden said that for the deniers, "There are only two outcomes for any election: either they win or they were cheated."

For national Democrats, meanwhile, the focus is on the fate of their narrow control of the House and Senate, which could evaporate after Tuesday.

New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the Democrats’ House campaign arm, is in a tough contest for his seat. But he insisted Sunday that Democrats are "going to do better than people think on Tuesday," adding that his party is "not perfect" but "we are responsible adults who believe in this democracy."

"I think this race is razor-close and I think everybody who cares about the extremism in this ‘MAGA’ movement — the racism, the antisemitism, the violence — needs to get out and vote and that’s not just Democrats, it’s independents and fair-minded Republicans," Maloney told NBC’s "Meet the Press," referring to former President Donald Trump’s "Make America Great Again" slogan.

Voters may rebuke the party controlling the White House and Congress amid surging inflation, concerns about crime and pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests the party in power will suffer significant losses in the midterms.

On a weekend that also featured Democratic rallies by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, first lady Jill Biden attended church services while campaigning in Houston on Sunday. Like her husband and his presidential predecessors, she argued that democracy itself was on the ballot.

"So much is at stake in this election," she said. "We must speak up on justice and democracy."

With The Associated Press.