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Good Wednesday morning from Washington, where Republicans have a 66 percent chance of claiming control of the Senate with midterm elections 13 days away. President Obama is meeting with his new Ebola “czar,” while big-name Republicans such as Representative Paul D. Ryan and Senator Rand Paul are barnstorming battleground states. But many in Washington will be looking back on the life of a journalism legend.

We were still at work in the Washington bureau on Tuesday night when word arrived that the Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who led the newspaper during Watergate and Vietnam, had died.

The news set off a flood of memories among those of us who knew him.

Elisabeth Bumiller, the Times deputy bureau chief, recalled her job interview with Mr. Bradlee in 1979. She was 23 and applying for a position covering parties for the Style section.

And Mr. Bradlee was already a legend.

“I was terrified,” Ms. Bumiller said. “I came down from Columbia Journalism School just before graduation. I was ushered into Ben’s office. He said: ‘Listen, kid, I’m just concerned that you are really young. This is a whole new city. Do you even know the names of the people in the cabinet?’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, I do.’ It was a total lie. Ben said to me, ‘I don’t believe you, kid, but you’re hired.’ “

Ms. Bumiller worked at The Post for five years and said it was “a thrilling place when he was around.”

It was Ms. Bumiller’s job to cover the Washington social scene, and she would occasionally run into Mr. Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn, who were among the city’s most sought-after party guests.

“I covered a party at Katharine Graham’s house once,” Ms. Bumiller said, referring to The Post’s publisher. “She had a party for President Reagan, when he was still president-elect. It was a tradition. All the reporters were outside her house on R Street. It was really cold out. Ben and Sally were inside. So he came out and said: ‘Kid, I feel really bad for you, it’s freezing out there.’ And he gave me the keys to his car. So I sat in his car with the heat on because I had to cover people coming and going to the party.”

Ms. Bumiller added: “He was like a character out of a movie. Not just women, men loved him, too. He was so dashing.”​

— Carolyn Ryan

From the tone of this year’s campaigns, you’d be forgiven if you thought the states with the closest elections were bleak landscapes unchanged since the Great Recession.

Yet on Tuesday, the monthly state jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the last one before Nov. 4 – showed that not to be true.

In Colorado, where the Democratic governor, John W. Hickenlooper, is in a dead heat for re-election and Senator Mark Udall, also a Democrat, is trailing, the unemployment rate dropped to a healthy 4.7 percent. (The national rate is 5.9 percent.)

The news from Florida wasn’t as good. Still, unemployment is at 6.1 percent, down from 6.9 percent a year ago, but Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, doesn’t seem to be benefiting.

Illinois? Its unemployment rate went to 6.6 percent from 9.1 percent in a year — the largest drop in the country — but the Democratic governor, Pat Quinn, is struggling.

In Michigan, unemployment is down to 7.2 percent from 8.8 percent a year ago. Yet the Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is clinging to a razor-thin lead in the polls.

Pennsylvania’s rate is 5.7 percent, and Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, is almost sure to lose.

— Jonathan Weisman

Barreling toward Election Day, Democrats are sharpening their final attacks — on one another.

With control of the Senate on the verge of slipping away, the behind-the-scenes sniping has begun, and it is likely to spill into public view any day.

Congressional strategists argue that President Obama, who is unpopular in several battleground states, shouldn’t have reminded voters there that it is his policies that are on the ballot. They say that the White House’s handling of Ebola and terrorism has been a drag on Democratic campaigns. The president’s allies say candidates’ appeals to swing voters have come at the expense of energizing the Obama coalition of younger voters and minorities.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that he expected the president would “get his fair share of credit” if Democrats held the majority.

“I’m also confident,” he said, “that if things don’t turn out the way that we hope and expect, that the president will get at least his share of the blame.”

— Julie Hirschfeld Davis

President Obama meets with Ron Klain, his new Ebola “czar,” at 3 p.m. in the White House.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. heads to Chicago for a campaign rally with Representative Brad Schneider, Senator Richard J. Durbin and Paul Vallas, a candidate for lieutenant governor. He’ll also attend a private event there with Senator Mark Udall of Colorado.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is in Iowa campaigning for Joni Ernst, the Republican Senate hopeful.

Representative Paul D. Ryan joins Thom Tillis, the Republican Senate nominee in North Carolina, for a rally at Wingate University.

The Department of Labor releases its latest reading on inflation at 8:30 a.m.

A fiery ​Gov. Chris Christie seemed to be appealing to his party’s conservative base on Tuesday when he spoke at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. He told the crowd that he was “tired of hearing about the minimum wage,” that he would “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act and that the country had become “saps for the teachers’ union​.”

Equally colorful, however, was the scene outside the speech, where two middle-aged men were waiting for the New Jersey governor, not to talk politics, but to seek his autograph. They were armed with baseballs, soccer balls, portraits and Sharpies.

​One offered to sell this reporter a baseball with “Chris Christie” scrawled between the stitching.

“I like this one, but I could let it go for, like, $80?” ​he said.

The encounter led us to wonder: Which potential 2016 ​candidate’s​ signature is worth the most?

A ​quick search on eBay ​shows Mr. Christie leading Republicans at $999.99 for a signed letter and envelope from 2011 in which he describes why he will not run for president, while a baseball ​signed by Senator Rand Paul goes for $395.

Senator Marco Rubio’s ​autographed portraits sell for $250, close in price to former Gov. Jeb Bush’s​, unless the picture is also signed by ​Mr. Bush’s brother and father. Then the price jumps to $4,999.99.

​Leading all contenders is Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose signed Yankees jersey is going for $4,999.99. A ​signed page of a memoir in which she describes the moment she learned her husband had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky is listed at $1,799.10.

— Nick Corasaniti

Mother Jones says a World Series victory by the Kansas City Royals would help Senator Pat Roberts and Gov. Sam Brownback win re-election in Kansas.

Anthony Weiner talks to Politico: “My political career is probably over.”

The News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C., sums up the unusual one-man debate when Senator Kay Hagan, as expected, did not turn up on Tuesday to face her challenger, Thom Tillis. Watch the opening moments.

The Economist provides a rundown of the reasons that Democratic candidates are running away from the Affordable Care Act.

FiveThirtyEight conducted a poll of pollsters and found that many of them do not trust their peers.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago is being sued by the city’s inspector, who says he’s being hindered in his job, The Chicago Tribune says.