Elections

A federal appeals court has denied Donald Trump’s emergency motion to block Mike Pence from testifying in a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, paving the way for the special counsel examining the matter to obtain potentially inculpatory accounts of Trump’s desperate bid to stay in power.The sealed ruling by the US appeals court for the DC circuit on Wednesday marks the end of Trump’s efforts to keep Pence from divulging information to federal prosecutors, unless his legal team takes the unlikely step of challenging the decision before the full DC circuit or the supreme court.Pence is considered a potentially consequential witness because Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress and was at a December 2021 meeting at the White House with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.The two interactions are of particular investigative interest to the special counsel Jack Smith as his office examines whether Trump sought to unlawfully obstruct the certification and defraud the United States in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results.Prosecutors have been trying to get Pence’s testimony for months, starting with requests from the justice department last year and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by Smith, who inherited the sprawling criminal investigation.The subpoena was challenged by Trump’s lawyers, who invoked executive privilege to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony, as well as by Pence’s lawyer, who argued his role as president of the Senate on January 6 meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch.Both requests to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony were largely denied by the new chief US judge for the court James Boasberg, who issued a clear-cut denial to Trump and a more nuanced ruling to Pence that upheld that he was protected in part by “speech or debate” protections.As a result, the former vice-president’s team declined to challenge the ruling. But Trump’s legal team disagreed, and filed an emergency motion to the US appeals court for the DC circuit – which was denied late on Wednesday by judges Gregory Katsas, Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins.A lawyer on the team representing Trump in the special counsel cases could not say whether they would appeal the ruling to a higher court, though such a move is not expected.In the wake of election day, Trump tried to pressure Pence into helping him reverse his defeat by using his largely ceremonial role as the presiding officer of the Senate on January 6 to reject legitimate slates of electors for Biden and prevent his certification.The effort relied in large part on Pence accepting fake slates of electors for Trump – a scheme that is also the subject of the criminal investigation – to create a pretext for casting doubt on the election results and stopping Biden from becoming president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe pressure campaign stemmed from Trump alongsidefigures inside and outside the government, including Trump’s lawyer John Eastman, other Trump campaign-affiliated lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and dozens of Republican members of Congress.Pence was among the few people who had one-on-one discussions with Trump on the day of and the day before the Capitol attack, which House January 6 select committee investigators last year concluded was a conspiracy that the former president had some advance knowledge of.Since Pence is precluded from testifying about any preparations for his role as presiding officer of the Senate it remains unclear how illuminating his testimony might be for prosecutors.But Pence’s team has long maintained in private that he can testify about other efforts by Trump, the Trump campaign and outside individuals to overturn the 2020 election results that could speak to their state of mind in the weeks from November 2020 to Biden’s inauguration. More

Joe Biden is officially running for re-election, and his candidacy will put some Democratic voters — those not only skittish about his age but also about his passion for policy — in a vise: They recognize the threat from the leading Republican candidates, but they’ve been underwhelmed by Biden, who’d be 82 at the start of a second term.The age question is a major concern for Biden, according to political advisers I’ve spoken to recently — and according to the chatter on cable news and online. And the sense that he has underwhelmed is particularly problematic for Biden when it comes to young voters. According to an Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School poll of 18-to 29-year-olds released Monday, just 36 percent of young Americans approve of Biden’s job performance. That number has steadily dropped over the course of his presidency.Though young voters were only 17 percent of the 2020 electorate, they’ll probably be a key to another Biden win, since he won about 60 percent of the 18-to-29 vote last time around. Younger voters can also be barometers of how much a candidate’s passion factors into his appeal.I reached out to several voting rights advocates and political organizers to discuss Biden’s bid, and the overall impression settles somewhere between cautious optimism and dampened enthusiasm, not so much about Biden’s age, but how voters, including younger voters, look at his policy priorities. As Clifford Albright, the co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, told me, although younger voters would generally like to see younger candidates, “the age thing can be overcome if you’re talking about the right issues.”Albright mentioned the presidential candidacies of Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s about a year older than Biden. As a contender for the Democratic nomination, he said, Sanders was held aloft by young voters because he vociferously championed issues that they cared about. They felt that he was fighting for them.It’s on those issues where some activists seemed to think Biden had left an opening for voter disappointment. They weren’t naïve about the structural obstacles in the way Congress operates that made legislative progress difficult, if not impossible, but they simply didn’t believe that Biden went down fighting on some of the initiatives that younger Democratic voters cared about most.One that sticks in their craws, undoubtedly because they deal with voting rights, was a sense that Biden didn’t fight hard enough for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.Nse Ufot, the founder of the New South Super PAC, chastised Biden for speaking about the voting rights bill at the Atlanta University Center — home to four historically Black colleges and universities, in a state where both senators were already committed to voting for the law — ahead of a push to the pass the bill, knowing there weren’t enough votes to pass it. Biden “should have been in West Virginia,” said Ufot, he “should have been in Phoenix, Ariz., because those are the people who need to hear it.”She said it seemed almost like a coach coming to the sideline to console a team in defeat even though there was still time left on the clock and the game was still being played. It just didn’t feel like an all-out effort to go down swinging.Ufot, channeling the rapper Ice Cube, said of Biden: “I need you to put your back into it!”But both Ufot and Albright considered the hesitation about Biden’s age a bit of a red herring. For them, policy and voter engagement — and the time and resources put into both — will be more determinative.On the policy front, Albright believes that the polling for Democrats, particularly in the fall of 2022, ticked up not only because the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but also because Biden finally took action on student loan forgiveness, the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act with the most significant climate provisions in American history and the passage of relatively narrow, but still significant, federal gun legislation. A half year later, these Democratic wins can feel like old news, but they were agenda items that Democratic voters, including young voters, cared deeply about.So if Biden made gains on some of the issues that young voters care about, why are the activists still concerned?Biden’s challenge when it comes to younger voters isn’t so much his age, but his posture, they say. He was elected in part as an antidote to the chaos of the Donald Trump years. But, as Albright sees it now, “some of that stability that he offers, some of that comfort or whatever that he offers some folks, that has actually been, from our perspective, part of the problem.”“When you’re in a moment like what we’re in,” Albright said, “you have to recognize that this is not a time for the normal, the traditional, the nostalgia or whatever, and that you need something different.”Ufot buttressed that sentiment more bluntly, saying, “People are trying to appear to be elder statesmen when the country is,” in effect, on “fire.”In a certain sense, Biden’s age becomes a proxy for other dissatisfactions voters may have with him. Trump is just four years younger than Biden, but he has convinced his followers that his venom is a marker of virility.Biden has to demonstrate more fight for more progressive policies. Even if he loses the battles, he has to show the scars. Positioning himself as the last line of defense against the return of Trump or the rise of an equally dangerous Republican isn’t sufficient.He has to show that he is more bulldog than bulwark.As Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of the New Virginia Majority, put it, in the next year and a half leading to the election, “I think you’re going to see more — at least I hope we’re going to see more — of that fight, because I think at the end of the day, voters want to vote for someone who they believe will fight for what is needed.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

Mr. Michel took orders, and millions of dollars, from a Malaysian financier who sought to gain political influence in the U.S., prosecutors said.A founding member of the hip-hop group the Fugees was found guilty in federal court on Wednesday of orchestrating a sprawling international conspiracy that used millions of dollars worth of foreign money for illegal lobbying and campaign contributions, the Justice Department said.The rapper Prakazrel Michel, known as Pras, had been accused of accepting $865,000 from Low Taek Jho, a Malaysian financier, and giving that money to a network of straw donors who used it to make campaign contributions to former President Barack Obama in 2012.Mr. Michel was also accused by prosecutors of trying to convince the Trump administration and the Justice Department to drop federal investigations into Mr. Low related to embezzlement, as well as assisting China in its efforts to have a Chinese dissident brought back to China, according to the Justice Department.Mr. Michel, who received millions of dollars for his part in the schemes, was convicted of 10 criminal counts including money laundering, illegal lobbying, witness tampering and campaign finance violations, according to court records. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison.“Today’s verdict demonstrates that anyone who engages in unlawful foreign-sponsored efforts to influence American officials, our elections, or the criminal justice system will be brought to justice,” Kenneth A. Polite, Jr., an assistant attorney general with the Justice Department, said in a statement.Mr. Michel’s lawyer, David E. Kenner, did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment on Wednesday evening.Mr. Michel’s conviction in U.S. District Court in Washington followed an extensive trial that included testimony from several big names in entertainment and political circles, including Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to The Associated Press and Politico.Mr. DiCaprio testified that Mr. Low seemed to be a legitimate businessman years ago when he said he wanted to donate to the Obama campaign, and Mr. Sessions testified about his knowledge of the Chinese extradition efforts.Prosecutors argued that Mr. Low essentially used Mr. Michel for back-channel dealings in the U.S., and that Mr. Michel was a subservient accomplice.Mr. Low, also known as Jho Low, is a fugitive and has been wanted by law enforcement in the United States and Malaysia for his role in the theft of $4.5 billion from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, according to the Justice Department. That case contributed to the electoral defeat and eventual indictment of that country’s former prime minister, Najib Razak.Mr. Michel, 50, of Coconut Creek, Fla., conspired with Mr. Low to funnel millions of dollars of Mr. Low’s money into the 2012 U.S. presidential election “as purportedly legitimate campaign contributions, all while concealing the true source of the money,” prosecutors said.Mr. Michel would receive Mr. Low’s money and contribute to Mr. Obama’s campaign personally and through about 20 straw donors, court records state. The men’s goals were to “gain access to, and potential influence with” Mr. Obama’s administration, according to prosecutors.The indictment accused Mr. Michel and Mr. Low of concealing the scheme from the Obama administration and from federal regulators.Federal officials learned of their activity in 2017. Mr. Michel was charged in 2019.Harry A. Lidsk, a special agent with the Justice Department, said in a statement that Mr. Michel “played a central role in a wide-ranging conspiracy to improperly influence top government officials.”In 2017, Mr. Michel also began to “engage in undisclosed lobbying campaigns” at the orders of Mr. Low and a Chinese government official, prosecutors said. Mr. Low wanted to have his embezzlement investigation dropped, and the Chinese official asked Mr. Low to help them get a Chinese dissident extradited, the Justice Department said.Mr. Michel did not manage to sway U.S. officials on either matter, court records show.Glenn Thrush More

The president also said that he was not the only Democrat who could beat Donald J. Trump, but that “I know the danger he presents to our democracy.”WASHINGTON — President Biden on Wednesday dismissed polling that suggests Americans are not interested in seeing a rematch between him and former President Donald J. Trump, saying he has a “job to finish” in bolstering the economy and reasserting U.S. leadership abroad.Mr. Biden, who is hosting President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea in Washington this week, was asked by a reporter during a Rose Garden news conference whether he believed he was the only Democrat who could defeat Mr. Trump.“I may not be the only one, but I know him well and I know the danger he presents to our democracy,” Mr. Biden said of his predecessor. He added that he probably would have decided to run again even if Mr. Trump had not entered the race.Recent polls show that Democrats are deeply ambivalent about Mr. Biden running again. They are broadly pleased with his job performance, but in addition to concerns about the president’s age, they want to see him clear the way for a younger generation of Democratic leaders to step up.Mr. Biden also was asked how he would respond to people who have reservations about his age. (Mr. Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term.)Mr. Biden said that he respected their concerns — “I can’t even say, the number doesn’t register with me,” he remarked at one point — but he said he was optimistic about his re-election message.“I respect them taking a hard look at it,” Mr. Biden said. “I take a hard look at as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run. And I feel good. I feel excited about the prospects.”In the Rose Garden, Mr. Biden made a case for extending his role as a “bridge” to a younger generation, as he has portrayed himself. He said that Mr. Trump had frayed America’s most meaningful global relationships, and that the national debt had ballooned under Mr. Trump’s leadership.Mr. Trump, who is 76, announced his candidacy late last year. He has spent the past 24 hours trying to rouse his donors and supporters by attacking Mr. Biden. (“Joe Biden couldn’t even deliver a REAL SPEECH to announce his presidential campaign,” read an email signed by Mr. Trump and sent to supporters on Wednesday morning.)Mr. Trump is under criminal indictment by the Manhattan district attorney, a Democrat, on charges of covering up hush money paid to a porn actress. He also is being investigated by the Justice Department for instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and illegally refusing to turn over classified documents.As Mr. Biden spoke on Wednesday, House Republicans were preparing to vote on a bill that would pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling while cutting domestic spending — a measure that would be dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate. As part of his re-election message, the president has tried to make the case to Americans that his experience (which has come with, yes, age) could be beneficial to navigating the collision course that lies ahead with congressional Republicans over debt spending.Mr. Biden also said his experience would be helpful on the world stage.“There’s still a contest between autocracies and democracies. And we’re the leading democracy in the world,” Mr. Biden said. “And it’s something I know a fair amount about, something I care about.” More

Mr. Manchin is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in next year’s elections, in a state, West Virginia, that has overwhelmingly trended red.Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia is set to announce a Senate campaign on Thursday, giving Republicans a strong recruit against Senator Joe Manchin III, one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2024.The West Virginia race is one of the most essential pickup opportunities for Republicans if they are to retake control of the Senate, which Democrats hold by a narrow 51-49 seat margin.Mr. Manchin, who represents by far the most Republican state held by any Democratic senator, has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election, but Republicans are hoping that Mr. Justice’s entry might spur him toward retirement.Mr. Manchin in recent years has been one of the few Democrats who can compete in the overwhelmingly Republican state.Mr. Justice’s team teased a “special announcement” at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. It made a point to note that his English bulldog — Babydog, known for a memorable appearance last year at Mr. Justice’s State of the State speech — would be present for the announcement.The advisory did not specify the nature of the announcement, though it offered a livestream link to a YouTube page with the description “The official YouTube channel for Jim Justice for U.S. Senate, Inc.” Two people with knowledge of Mr. Justice’s plans confirmed he would be entering the Senate race.Before facing Mr. Manchin, Mr. Justice would need to make it through a Republican primary. He will have at least one major opponent, Representative Alex Mooney, who has been closely allied with former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Mooney has already attacked Mr. Justice as a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” one of Mr. Trump’s and his allies’ favorite insults.Mr. Mooney has the backing of the Club for Growth, the influential conservative group that has spent heavily in recent Republican primaries, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, endorsed him last week.Mr. Justice, a billionaire businessman, was first elected governor in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, making him term-limited next year. He initially ran and won as a Democrat, but switched his party affiliation to Republican in 2017, less than a year into his first term.He made that announcement at a rally alongside Mr. Trump, saying, “Today I will tell you as West Virginians that I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor.” As is traditional for politicians who switch allegiances, he said his former party had moved away from him, not the other way around.Top Senate Republicans have been eager to lure Mr. Justice into the race. One Nation, a nonprofit group aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, recently began a $1 million ad campaign against Mr. Manchin for his support of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.Mr. Manchin appeared on Fox News this week, in an interview with Sean Hannity, and attacked the Biden administration for the way it had implemented the legislation. He even threatened to vote to repeal it over its climate provisions.Mr. Hannity asked why Mr. Manchin had remained with the Democratic Party.“Well, they don’t always get my vote, you know that — if I can’t go home and explain, I don’t vote for it,” Mr. Manchin said. “I think about that every day: Why am I a Democrat?”Shane Goldmacher More

The ad, paid for by the Democratic National Committee, tries to take back the mantle of patriotism often claimed by Republicans, leaning heavily on images of the flag and of the Capitol riot.The first television advertisement for President Biden’s re-election campaign aired on Wednesday, an opening salvo that leans heavily on images of the American flag, warns of domestic threats to democracy and repeatedly invokes the word “freedom.”The Democratic National Committee bought time for the ad, a 90-second spot called “Flag,” to run nationally on MSNBC and to run locally on stations in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Mr. Biden formally entered the race on Tuesday.The ad purchase is small, a largely symbolic outlay in parts of battleground states and on a liberal news network. The D.N.C. said it was the first of two ads in a two-week, seven-figure purchase.But its content signals an attempt to reclaim the mantle of patriotism — and the protection of democratic values, stability and rights — for Democrats, even as Republicans accuse them of pursuing a radical liberal agenda. The ad also portrays Mr. Biden as Americans’ best defender against “an extreme movement that seeks to overturn elections, ban books and eliminate a woman’s right to choose.”“In small towns and big cities, we raise our heads, our eyes, our hearts, for America, for the idea of this great country,” the ad says. “Joe Biden is running for re-election to make certain that the sun will not set on this flag. The promise of American democracy will not break.”The content and tone of the ad echo Democrats’ messaging in Wisconsin before its high-stakes judicial election early this month. Voters there overwhelmingly supported a liberal candidate for the State Supreme Court who openly backed abortion rights and cast the election as a battle for protection of “rights and freedoms.”A top Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA, also began a six-figure digital ad campaign in the same six battleground states on Wednesday, the group said. It added that it planned to spend $75 million on advertising in those states.The word “freedom” appears at least seven times in the D.N.C. ad — including the freedom for children to be safe from gun violence and the “freedom for women to make their own health care decisions.” Like much other messaging from Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders, the ad does not use the word “abortion.”Former President Donald J. Trump — the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024 — is also not mentioned by name, but the ad does feature video of his supporters at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The American flags that dotted the first 16 seconds of the ad — placed above suburban houses, fluttering atop the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, set against a backyard soccer game — give way to “Trump 2020” flags being waved by angry supporters. More

The evidence suggests it may end up mattering less to voters than their responses to polls indicate.Many Americans say they do not want President Biden to run for re-election, and his age is a big reason. In an NBC News poll released last weekend, 70 percent of adults said Mr. Biden, who is 80, should not run again. Asked if age was a factor, 69 percent of them said yes. Other recent surveys detect a similar lack of enthusiasm, with many voters — including around half of Democrats — calling him too old to seek the White House again.Taken at face value, it’s easy to imagine that his age could undermine the re-election campaign he formally announced on Tuesday. Mr. Biden, already the oldest president in U.S. history, would be 86 at the end of his second term. Republicans have amplified video of his verbal miscues — he also has a stutter — and suggested they reflect cognitive decline. Mr. Biden’s age is a frequent punchline on late-night television.But a review of the polling and academic research paints a surprisingly mixed picture. With the obvious caveat that a serious age-related gaffe or health crisis could change things, there are good reasons to think that Biden’s age may matter less than some polls suggest.1. Theory vs. practiceAmericans often express concern about aging leaders, but that hasn’t stopped them from voting for older candidates.In a recent USA Today/Suffolk University survey, half of Americans said that the ideal age for a president was between 51 and 65. Another quarter said they preferred candidates to be 50 or younger. But five of the last eight presidential nominees, including Mr. Biden in 2020 and Donald J. Trump (twice), have been well over 65. In several cases, voters chose them over much younger primary opponents. And dozens of senators or representatives over 80 have been elected in the past century.Concerns over age are also more nuanced than they may first appear. While most voters favor age limits for politicians, they disagree over what that limit should be. Many voters also say older lawmakers bring valuable experience and shouldn’t be barred from serving if they remain in good health.That doesn’t mean Americans who say they’re concerned about age are lying. Their voting choices may reflect the available options. “There’s nothing inconsistent about people saying no one in their 80s should be president and then voting for someone in their 80s if that’s the only choice they’re given,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.It’s also not clear that age is a disadvantage for older candidates. Older leaders tend to have lower approval ratings than younger ones, according to a 2022 study co-authored by Damon Roberts, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Colorado Boulder. But in his research, voters expressed relatively equal openness to supporting hypothetical candidates who were 23, 50 or 77.There are also just a lot of old politicians in office these days. “I don’t think that Biden in particular looks super out of place in the political scene right now,” Mr. Roberts said.Still, no one Mr. Biden’s age has ever sought re-election to the presidency, and other experts doubt he will blend in so easily. “The presidency is fundamentally different,” Mr. Ayres said. “The visibility is so much greater.”2. Party above allPolls do suggest that voters discern bigger issues for Mr. Biden than past older candidates (although pollsters seem to have asked about past candidates’ ages less often). But in a polarized era, party loyalty is far likelier to determine voters’ choice.“In the final analysis, we’re going to vote for the ‘D’ or the ‘R,’ ” said Karlyn Bowman, an emeritus fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies public opinion polling. “Partisan loyalty is so strong at this point that that will trump the other concerns.”Perceptions of Mr. Biden’s fitness also track with partisanship. Republicans — who are unlikely to back any Democratic candidate, no matter how spry — are the most apt to say that Mr. Biden is too old to run. His age also hasn’t stopped the vast majority of Democrats from deeming his presidency a success (though younger Democrats have expressed less eagerness to see Mr. Biden run again).“People are thinking about the election through the lens of other things,” said Margie Omero, a principal at GBAO, a Democratic polling firm. “Biden’s record, Trump’s record, what they see as the future of the country, legislative accomplishments, the fight for abortion rights.”Mr. Biden’s age may ultimately matter most to swing voters who are open to backing either party, giving them outsize clout to pick the winner. “It’s a very small slice of the population now, but still, it’s a very consequential one,” Ms. Bowman said.3. Just a numberThat brings us to whether Mr. Biden will be able to influence voters’ views about his fitness for office. In February, Ms. Omero and her colleagues at Navigator Research, a Democratic polling firm, recruited a small group of swing voters to watch Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address. Before the speech, just 35 percent of them described him as “up for the job of president.” After the address — which featured an impromptu back-and-forth with congressional Republicans over Social Security and Medicare — 55 percent rated him that way.Mr. Biden could also try to dodge the issue by continuing to limit his public appearances. Mr. Ayres worked on the 1996 Senate re-election campaign for Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, then 93, at a time when he was reportedly experiencing cognitive decline. “We tried to keep him as invisible as possible,” Mr. Ayres said.Past presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower and Mr. Reagan, have overcome questions about their age to win re-election decisively.But Mr. Biden is older than they were during their re-election campaigns. “The issue is not so much what he is like today,” Mr. Ayres said. “The issue is what he would be like in 2028.” The president may have to bank on voters overlooking any longer-term concerns about his age.4. The Trump factorMr. Trump, who will be 78 on Election Day, appears best positioned to win the 2024 Republican primary. He leads his closest potential competitor — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, 44 — in national polls and endorsements from other Republicans.Though the similar ages of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump could make the issue a wash, for now voters say they’re more concerned about Mr. Biden’s age. And if Mr. Trump aggressively attacks Mr. Biden’s fitness, he may draw more scrutiny to it than a younger but more restrained challenger could.But it’s also a message Mr. Trump has used before (see: 2020’s “Sleepy Joe”) in a matchup he didn’t win. At some point, all the talk about Mr. Biden’s age may start to feel to voters like old hat. More

Adam Sullivan holds deep influence over Gov. Kathy Hochul, her administration and campaign team, even as skepticism mounts over his judgment and distance from New York.With the Democratic nomination all but assured last spring, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and her campaign team began to plot a pre-emptive television ad to protect against Republican attacks already bubbling up around rising crime.Ad makers cut a 30-second spot, highlighting Ms. Hochul’s plan to secure city streets and subway trains. She told her campaign manager she was eager to see it on air, and she previewed it for donors at a private Park Avenue screening.But the ad never ran. After rounds of debate, one voice rose above the others. “Let’s focus on abortion,” Adam C. Sullivan wrote in a note to senior strategists reviewed by The New York Times. Crime could wait.A year later, the decision has come to be seen by many in Ms. Hochul’s orbit as a damaging miscalculation that helped her Republican challenger come dangerously close to upsetting her, and contributed to Democrats losing the House majority. It is also a testament to the unseen influence of Mr. Sullivan, an obscure operative who has leveraged a close bond with Ms. Hochul to become perhaps the most powerful political force in New York who almost no one knows.Mr. Sullivan, 42, has no formal job title or social media presence. He operates a small consulting firm from his home in a Colorado mining town, delivering strategy directives on issues like public safety far from the streets of New York City, where crime has unsettled some residents. And his generous compensation — estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — is mostly hidden from campaign records.Yet 18 months into Ms. Hochul’s tenure, Mr. Sullivan’s fingerprints can be found all over New York, according to more than two dozen people who have worked with him closely.Adam Sullivan, far left, largely remains in the background as the hidden force behind many of Governor Hochul’s stances and political strategy.He helped Ms. Hochul build her administration, advising her on early key hires; shaped two multibillion-dollar state budgets; and ran a 2022 election campaign that was criticized by Democrats for its lack of energy. Most recently, he helped the governor navigate the failed effort to muscle Justice Hector D. LaSalle onto the state’s highest court.Now, as the de facto head of Ms. Hochul’s political operation, Mr. Sullivan has been deputized to revive New York’s embattled state Democratic Party. And the outcome could have significant implications for Democrats’ chances to retake the House.Even by the Zoom era’s standards, the breadth of Mr. Sullivan’s influence from afar is unusual, puzzling much of New York’s clubby political establishment and exasperating many on Ms. Hochul’s own team.Most governors have a trusted, all-around enforcer who carefully guards their political standing. Ms. Hochul met hers in 2011, when Mr. Sullivan helped her win a special House election no one else thought she could. But rarely do people in his position phone in from 1,700 miles away or command so few relationships with key stakeholders.“Managing New York politics from Colorado is like managing the war in Ukraine from New York,” Charlie King, a veteran Democratic strategist, said. “You can be a very good tactician, but things on the ground move incredibly fast and you may just not be close enough to the action.”Many of those who work directly for Ms. Hochul’s political team and administration have taken an even harsher view. The Times spoke to more than 15 people at all levels who said Mr. Sullivan is known as a divisive presence. They related anecdotes of him disparaging subordinates, especially younger women; marginalizing those who disagreed with him; telling younger workers that the governor did not know their names; and frequently shifting blame when things have gone wrong.The aides and advisers insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation. But they said Mr. Sullivan had contributed to Ms. Hochul’s diminished political standing while escaping public scrutiny.In a written statement, Mr. Sullivan did not directly dispute those characterizations, but noted the intensity of the campaign. “I have always tried to treat everyone with respect and regret that there are people who feel I did not meet that bar,” he said.Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for the governor, did not address the workplace concerns in her own statement about Mr. Sullivan, saying that Ms. Hochul “values his ideas and guidance.”“Ultimately what drives her decision-making is what’s best for New Yorkers,” Ms. Wood said.Ms. Hochul has used Mr. Sullivan to advise her on the most recent state budget, which lapsed on April 1, and in current talks over the stalled 2024 budget.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThere are also questions about how and by whom Mr. Sullivan, who is not a state employee, is being paid.Since 2021, the governor’s campaign has paid roughly $50,000 directly to a limited liability company that Mr. Sullivan controls, “ACS Campaign Consulting.” But he earned far more through a secretive arrangement that rewarded him with a cut of the campaign’s ad spending, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. Assuming the arrangement was in line with industry standards, he would have netted at least $500,000 — a figure he did not dispute.The Times could only identify one other current client of Mr. Sullivan’s, the Reform Alliance, a nonprofit founded by the rappers Meek Mill and Jay-Z and others to change probation and parole laws. Mr. Sullivan would not identify other clients, but he said that none had business before New York State. He added that he had “never been paid to lobby or influence the governor.”The governor has leaned on other outsiders for help: The state paid nearly $2 million to Deloitte and Boston Consulting to help her with State of the State messages. Others with Ms. Hochul’s ear include Karen Persichilli Keogh, her top government aide; Jefrey Pollock, her longtime pollster; and Daniel French, who was until recently Syracuse University’s general counsel.While those advisers are mostly known in political circles, even basic biographical information about Mr. Sullivan is difficult to find. Ms. Hochul has mentioned him prominently only once, from the stage after her victory in November. And he seems to be his consulting firm’s lone employee, working mostly out of his home in Leadville, Colo., where he is an avid skier, except for occasional trips to New York.Of two dozen lawmakers, union leaders and campaign strategists contacted by The Times, only a few could correctly identify him.“I’ve never met him, I’ve just heard bad things about him — sorry,” Liz Krueger, an influential Democratic state senator from Manhattan, said.Mr. Sullivan’s proponents describe him as a talented tactician who steered Ms. Hochul through the aftershocks of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s resignation and helped her win a full term in office, even if it was bumpy.“Maybe he’s not the New York backslapper who knows everybody, but Adam has an unquestionable record of success,” Jess Fassler, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s longtime chief of staff, said.Ms. Hochul first hired Mr. Sullivan in 2011 as her campaign manager when she scored an upset victory in a special election for a House seat.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMr. Sullivan began his career as a political operative in 2000, and ran his first New York race in 2008, the same year he helped Ms. Gillibrand win re-election to the House.He was fresh off a stint with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in early 2011 when Ms. Hochul, then the Erie County clerk, decided to run in a special House election in western New York. She hired Mr. Sullivan as campaign manager because of his experience running special elections and his conviction, shared by few, that she could win. Despite long odds, she did.It was a boon for Mr. Sullivan. He managed a Senate race in New Mexico in 2012 and was Senator Mary Landrieu’s campaign manager in her failed re-election bid in Louisiana in 2014, until he was abruptly fired just weeks before Election Day.Ms. Landrieu said in an interview she had replaced Mr. Sullivan because she was losing and wanted a more familiar team. Afterward, Mr. Sullivan’s political work dried up, and Ms. Hochul appears to have been his only major political client since 2015.Things began to shift in summer 2021, as it became clear that sexual harassment claims would force Mr. Cuomo from office. With only a small circle around her, Ms. Hochul leaned on Mr. Sullivan, whose wedding she attended in 2018, to help build an administration, including choosing Brian A. Benjamin as lieutenant governor. (Mr. Benjamin later resigned amid federal corruption charges.)Mr. Sullivan played an even more active role in the campaign, involving himself in media strategy, Ms. Hochul’s day-to-day schedule and larger decisions like how to allocate millions of dollars on ad campaigns, including the one he intervened in last May.In that case, the campaign produced and tested the ad, “Safe,” to highlight public safety changes approved in the state budget. Ms. Hochul and other advisers pushed to air it across New York. In the communications viewed by The Times, Ms. Hochul’s campaign manager, Brian Lenzmeier, wrote that she “believes strongly that we need to get a crime ad into the mix and not be solely focused on abortion.” (Mr. Lenzmeier declined to comment.)But Mr. Sullivan often insisted that crime was a losing issue for Ms. Hochul. He believed the campaign’s resources would be better spent motivating Democrats to turn out on the issue of abortion rights, so he pushed to limit public safety messaging in areas like Long Island or to issues like gun laws. In the end, the campaign did not meaningfully challenge Republicans on crime statewide until October, after they had already whipped up a frenzy.Ms. Hochul survived by just six percentage points in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, and some party leaders believe her approach on crime helped Republicans win congressional seats. Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, told The Times’s Maureen Dowd that Ms. Hochul needed to deal with crime “early on, not 10 days before the election.”Mr. Sullivan’s allies said he stood by the campaign’s commitment to prioritizing attacks on Ms. Hochul’s Republican opponent on abortion. Mr. Sullivan declined to comment on campaign strategy.Since then, he has also resisted any quick course correction at the state Democratic Party. He and Ms. Hochul have stood by its chairman, Jay Jacobs, who has become a punching bag for Democrats, especially on the left.Mr. Sullivan’s allies say he and Ms. Hochul want to strengthen the party, but they could only describe vague plans. In the meantime, national Democrats do not appear to be waiting, announcing their own $45 million New York political machine.“Adam is the first person to pick up the phone and call me and be supportive,” Mr. Jacobs said in an interview. “I don’t think he has any agenda other than the governor being successful.”Susan C. Beachy More