Gov. Ned Lamont and his Republican challenger, state Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich, came closest to crossing paths Sunday in Enfield, while U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes and her challenger Chris Shea were in Meriden and Middlebury in an effort to turn out voters in the 5th Congressional District in the waning days of their campaigns.

Lamont and Fazio offered closing arguments in the swing town on the Massachusetts border that Lamont carried with 50.2% of the vote four years ago.

“It’s a hardworking, middle-class town,” Fazio said. “People on both sides of the aisle, they’re common-sense people. They’re not ideological or partisan people. They believe that you should be able to work hard, follow the rules and be able to pay your bills. And in this state, after eight years of the Lamont administration, it’s harder than ever to get by.”

Fazio campaigned at the Country Diner with two Republican incumbents in difficult races, Sen. John Kissel and Rep. Carol Hall, and Marie Pyznar, the GOP challenger to Rep. John Santanella, D-Enfield.

Less than two miles away, Lamont gave a pep talk in Santanella’s kitchen to volunteers.

“We’ve come a long way in the last eight years. We were hurting a bit back in the 2010s,” Lamont said, recalling the budget shortfall and debt he inherited from his predecessor, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, when he took office eight years ago.

“I think a lot of people were losing some confidence, losing a little bit of confidence in the state.”

Lamont, a Democrat seeking a third term, is favored by double digits in every recent public poll, and the time for persuading voters to choose a candidate is over. The focus is getting the base to turnout on Tuesday, though hundreds of thousands already have voted in early voting and by absentee.

At Santanella’s house, Lora Rae Anderson corralled volunteers for door knocking, assuring them the task involved no hard sell.

“We’re talking to friendly voters. We want to make sure that we’re turning people out,” said Anderson, a Lamont administration official and the volunteer manager of David Kiner’s campaign to unseat Kissel, who was elected 34 years ago.

Kissel, after surviving for so long in a district that leans Democratic, likened him to a cat who has expended his nine lives.

“I’m at absolutely the last of my nine lives on my second cat,” Kissel said.

He told Fazio he was grateful for the visit.

Fazio seemed content to drop back to his key message that voters should hold the Democratic governor and not the Republican president responsible for the high cost of living in Connecticut after making an issue of the governor pushing away the camera phone of a person who challenged him about an aide’s traffic ticket.

The governor’s campaign ignored the episode, while Fazio’s promoted the woman’s brief video, as did the conservative radio host, Reese on the Radio. His campaign called it a “criminal confrontation.”

Fazio campaigned later Sunday with Rep. Jill Barry, D-Glastonbury, who is running on the Independent and Republican ballot lines after losing the Democratic endorse. He was closing with a rally in Bristol.

Hayes and Shea in the 5th District

In the sprawling 5th Congressional District in the western part of the state, Hayes and her Republican opponent Shea sought to capitalize on the last day of early voting and convince voters not to sit out of a midterm election.

Democrats are buoyed by a favorable political environment, but the candidates focused on a closing message that called on voters to not get complacent during a high-stakes election year.

“You want to turn the news off. Everything is negative, everything is ugly. Working people are getting hit the hardest,” Connecticut state Treasurer Erick Russell said at a gathering in Meriden. “What you all have to remember is all of that is on the line right now this election cycle.”

“I know I’m preaching to the choir, but the main thing here is we got a couple of days left, and we can’t leave anything on the table, because this is an opportunity not only for us to win but win big,” he continued. Russell faces a challenge from Republican Fred Wilms.

Russell was joined by Hayes and state legislative candidates who gathered in Meriden before supporters went out to go door-knocking on a sunny and mild autumn day. He touted Connecticut’s legislature as a “back stop” to what’s coming out of Washington.

Hayes, who’s seeking a fifth term in Congress, delivered a forceful response to a room packed with a few dozen volunteers. She painted a picture much larger than the 5th District seat but of what she sees as the consequences nationally.

“It matters, every single election, because what we are seeing is a slow burn, chipping at the edges, eroding our democracy, intimidating the right to vote, doing all of these little things, which by themselves don’t seem significant, but all together is the recipe for disaster and where we are heading,” Hayes said. “So we have two days. Everything is on the line.”

Hayes brought up the H.R. 1, Republicans’ tax legislation that passed last year and was dubbed by Trump as the “big beautiful bill.” She argued that “the most damaging parts haven’t even gone into effect,” pointing to changes to Medicaid eligibility that’ll lead to cuts in the state and across the country.

“Give them a reason to make the issues that you care about a part of whether it be the Democratic priorities or the Republican priorities, it doesn’t matter,” Hayes said. “Let them know this seat is not yours to have. You don’t get to keep it. You have to work for it every single time.”

Midterms are challenging in general because turnout lags compared to presidential election years. On top of that, the party in power historically faces headwinds in a midterm year.

Shea, meanwhile, spent the morning with about two dozen local Republicans in Middlebury. They stood on the side of a main road, waving campaign signs for a number of GOP candidates running up and down the ballot on Tuesday.

Shea, a firefighter and retired Navy SEAL, said he’s working to get lower-propensity voters out to the polls.

“We’re feeling good, we’re working real hard on getting the word out and getting after folks — the presidential-year-only voters. There’s a ton of those registered,” Shea said, as he waved to cars that honked in support or drivers that flashed a thumbs up. “You get after a chunk of those and a couple other cities, it makes a big difference.”

Shea is a first-time candidate but noted that he has long ties to the 5th District compared to the past Republican candidate running for the seat. He’s hoping that’ll materialize into more support, along with his career in the military and his work at the Pentagon.

The 5th District is still considered the most competitive congressional race in the state. This cycle, election analysts who rate competitive races moved the 5th District much closer to Democrats.

National attention has shifted away from the district as outside groups in both parties look to other U.S. House races in the battle for control of Congress. That has largely dissipated, though both candidates got an 11th-hour boost from political action committees.

“I think they could have gotten more bang for their buck by investing a little bit here, which would have made the Democrats try to pump in two or three times as much,” Shea said about more involvement and financial support from Republicans at the national level.

“Based on what everybody says, I’m a pretty darn good candidate, based on my background, no criminal history, no nonsense, serving the country, serving locally,” he added. “That’s a pretty appealing candidacy to put in front of people.”

John Calabrese, chairman of the Middlebury Republican Town Committee, spent the morning alongside Shea and others to boost turnout.

“The base has to get out. That’s the bottom line. Even in Connecticut,” Calabrese said. “Connecticut has to draw independents. Republicans, we don’t have enough. But if we can draw some of the independents, I know we can pick up something.”

Calabrese said one of the bigger challenges for the party is getting younger voters into the political fold. “We have to get those people motivated to come out to an event like today, to spend some time,” he said.

The news about U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy’s stroke sent a shockwave throughout the campaign trail in Connecticut on Sunday.

Murphy “has been all over this country working for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, because he understands it’s not just about what happens to those small things, it’s about making sure that those big things are also taken care of,” she said. “It’s about making sure that we have Democratic majorities in the House and in the Senate. He’s going to be OK,” she said to applause.