Elections

Stella Tan and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAs Democratic Party leaders assessed their vulnerabilities in this year’s midterm elections, the one state they did not worry about was New York. That — it turns out — was a mistake.Despite being a blue state through and through, and a place President Donald J. Trump lost by 23 points two years ago, the red tide of this moment is lapping at New York’s shores.Why is New York up for grabs?On today’s episodeNicholas Fandos, a Metro reporter for The New York Times.A televised New York governor’s race debate this week. The race, among others in New York State, are closer than many Democrats expected.Pool photo by Mary AltafferBackground readingAhead of the midterms, New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country.Republicans are pressing their advantage deep into Democratic territory in the closing stretch of the 2022 campaign, competing for an abundance of House seats.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly. More

WASHINGTON — President Biden will travel to Syracuse, N.Y., on Thursday to highlight investments in semiconductor manufacturing and make a last-ditch attempt to win over voters on inflation, the economic issue that is dragging on Democrats ahead of the midterm elections.At a time when polls show that voters disapprove of the president’s handling of rising prices and trust Republicans more on the issue, Mr. Biden will seek to frame the elections as a choice between his administration’s ongoing efforts to lower costs for families and Republican aspirations to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy — which could fuel even higher inflation — and other plans that Mr. Biden says would raise health care and electricity costs.Senior administration officials told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that Mr. Biden would use his trip to celebrate the chip maker Micron’s announcement this month that it would spend up to $100 billion to build a manufacturing complex in the Syracuse region over the next 20 years, creating up to 50,000 jobs in the process. Company officials said that investment was enabled by a bipartisan advanced manufacturing bill that Mr. Biden championed and signed into law earlier this year.The administration officials said the area exemplified a community benefiting from Mr. Biden’s economic policies, which have also included a bipartisan infrastructure bill approved in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act, signed late this summer, which raises taxes on corporations, seeks to reduce prescription drug costs for seniors and invests hundreds of billions of dollars into new energy technologies to reduce the fossil fuel emissions driving climate change.They also said it was the right backdrop for Mr. Biden to amplify the contrast he has sought to draw with Republicans on inflation. Republican candidates have campaigned on rolling back some of the tax increases Mr. Biden imposed to fund his agenda, extending business and individual tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017 that are set to expire in the coming years, reducing federal regulations on energy development and other business and repealing the Inflation Reduction Act.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.In a memo released by the White House on Thursday morning, officials sought to frame those Republican proposals as potential fuel for further inflation, posing a risk to families struggling with high prices. “Their economic plan will raise costs and make inflation worse,” administration officials wrote.The memo suggests that among his other attacks in Syracuse, Mr. Biden will hit Republicans for what he says is an effort to raise costs for student borrowers. Several Republican-led states have sued to stop his plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for qualifying individuals.Mr. Biden has struggled in recent weeks to persuade voters to view inflation as an issue that shows the contrasts between him and Republicans, rather than a referendum on his presidency and policies.Polls suggest the economy and rapid price growth, which touched a 40-year high this year, are top of mind for voters as they determine control of the House and Senate. Nearly half of all registered voters in a New York Times/Siena College poll this month named economic issues or inflation as the most important issue facing the country, dwarfing other issues in the survey, like abortion. Other polls have shown voters trust Republicans more than Mr. Biden and his party to handle inflation.Through the start of this month, Republican candidates had spent nearly $150 million on inflation-themed television ads across the country this election cycle, according to data from AdImpact. Those ads blame Democratic policies under Mr. Biden, including the $1.9 trillion economic relief package he signed in 2021, for inflation; economists generally agree that the spending helped fuel some price growth but disagree on how much.Mr. Biden previewed his renewed attacks on Republicans on Wednesday evening, in a trio of virtual fund-raisers for Democratic members of Congress. In each one, Mr. Biden focused almost exclusively on economic issues, championing the laws he has signed and warning that Republicans would seek to roll them back.The president criticized Republicans for promoting what he called “mega-MAGA trickle-down economics,” and he said the tax cuts Republicans support risk creating turmoil in financial markets. He drew a direct parallel between the Republican proposals and the tax cuts for high earners in Britain pushed by former Prime Minister Liz Truss, which prompted a harsh backlash in financial markets that led Ms. Truss to resign after a brief tenure.“You read about what happened in England recently, and the last prime minister, she wanted to cut taxes for the superwealthy — it caused economic chaos in the country,” Mr. Biden said. “Well, that’s what they did last time, and they want to do it again.” More

Trump aide Mark Meadows must testify before Georgia grand jury, judge ordersTrump’s former chief of staff must answer questions about alleged attempt to overturn 2020 election result A judge on Wednesday ordered the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before a special grand jury investigating whether Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to overturn Georgia’s results in the 2020 election.Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows complies with January 6 subpoenaRead moreMeadows is a key figure in the investigation. He traveled to Georgia, sat in on calls with state officials and coordinated and communicated with influencers either encouraging or discouraging the pressure campaign.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, opened the investigation last year. Meadows is just one of several Trump associates and advisers whose testimony Willis has sought.Because Meadows does not live in Georgia, Willis, a Democrat, had to get a judge where he lives, in South Carolina, to order him to appear. Edward Miller, a circuit court judge in Pickens county, ordered Meadows to testify, a Willis spokesperson confirmed.Meadows’s attorney, Jim Bannister, said his client was “weighing all options” including appeals.“Nothing final until we see the order,” he said.Willis has been fighting similar battles in courts around the US. An appeals court in Texas has indicated it may not recognize the validity of the Georgia summonses. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, asked the US supreme court to intervene after a federal appeals court ordered him to testify.In the petition seeking Meadows’s testimony, Willis wrote that he attended a 21 December 2020 meeting with Trump and others “to discuss allegations of voter fraud and certification of electoral college votes from Georgia and other states”.The next day, Willis wrote, Meadows made a “surprise visit” to Cobb county, just outside Atlanta, where an audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes was being conducted. He asked to observe but was not allowed to because the audit was not open to the public, the petition says.Meadows also sent emails to justice department officials alleging voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere and requesting investigations, Willis wrote. And he took part in a 2 January 2021 call with the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump suggested Raffensperger “find” enough votes to overturn the president’s loss in the state.According to a transcript of the call, Meadows said Trump’s team believed that “not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted. And that’s at odds with the representation from the secretary of state’s office.” He also said he hoped they could agree on a way “to look at this a little bit more fully”. Raffensperger disputed the assertions.After the election, Meadows was widely seen in the White House as a chief instigator of Trump’s fixation on the election, passing along conspiracies about fraud other officials were forced to swat down. He pushed one theory that people in Italy had changed votes in the US with satellite technology, a claim the former justice department official Richard Donoghue labeled “pure insanity”.In a court filing this week, Meadows’s lawyer argued that executive privilege and other rights shield his client from testifying.Bannister asserted that Meadows has been instructed by Trump “to preserve certain privileges and immunities attaching to his former office as White House chief of staff”. Willis’s petition calls for him “to divulge the contents of executive privileged communications with the president”, Bannister wrote.Meadows also invoked that privilege in a fight against subpoenas issued by the House January 6 committee. Meadows has been fighting investigations of the Capitol attack and has avoided having to testify. He turned over thousands of texts to the House committee before refusing an interview.The House held Meadows in contempt of Congress but the justice department declined to prosecute.Special grand juries in Georgia cannot issue indictments. Instead, they can gather evidence and compel testimony and recommend further action, including criminal charges. It is up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.TopicsGeorgiaTrump administrationUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — Blue jeans evoked his hardscrabble upbringing, and a crisp dress shirt conveyed his success as a Yale Law School graduate, venture capitalist and best-selling memoirist — with the open collar signaling that he was still just J.D., who happens to be the Ohio Republican candidate for the Senate.This was the J.D. Vance uniform as he spoke one October Saturday to Republican campaign volunteers gathered in a Cincinnati office, near a portrait of a brow-knitted Donald J. Trump. Mr. Vance reassured those about to go door-to-door that at least they wouldn’t encounter his grandmother, the fierce Mamaw, who once told a Marine recruiter that if he put one foot on her property, “I’ll blow it off.”The crowd laughed in recognition, so famous is the tale of how Mamaw’s life lessons about loyalty, education and self-esteem helped Mr. Vance to overcome a poor, dysfunctional childhood. He would repeat the story at another event two hours later.The weekend of campaigning came a month after Mr. Trump told a packed rally in Youngstown that Mr. Vance was a suck-up. “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so much,” the former president had said — while Mr. Vance, Marine Corps veteran and Mamaw’s grandson, stood by.It was just one moment in Mr. Vance’s contentious race against his Democratic opponent, Representative Tim Ryan. And the reliably impolitic Mr. Trump delights in diminishing candidates aching for his benediction, especially one who once asserted that he was unfit for office — who once, in fact, wondered whether he might be America’s Hitler — but who, since entering politics, has demonstrated fervent fealty.“The best president of my lifetime,” Mr. Vance has maintained.Still, the kisses-my-ass tag has followed Mr. Vance like a yippy dog ever since, with Mr. Ryan gleefully invoking it again in their second debate last week. When Mr. Vance maintained that Mr. Trump’s comment was a “joke” that riffed on what he called without explication a “false” New York Times article — about the reluctance of some Republicans to have the former president campaign for them — one of the moderators sought clarification.“So I get this straight,” said Bertram de Souza, a local journalist. “When the former president said, ‘J.D. is kissing my ass because he wants my support,’ you took that as a joke?”“I know the president very well, and he was joking about a New York Times story,” Mr. Vance said. “That’s all he was doing. I didn’t take offense to it.”Supporters of J.D. Vance packed a campaign event in Beavercreek on Tuesday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBeyond reflecting a Republican Party utterly beholden to Mr. Trump, the moment highlighted the stark transformation of Mamaw’s centrist grandson into a Trump loyalist whose raw, combative style — he is fond of the term “scumbags” — has him well positioned to become the next senator from Ohio.This remarkable evolution has not gone unnoticed in Middletown, the distressed Rust Belt city where he grew up.Nancy Nix, 53, a prominent local Republican and the treasurer for Butler County, which includes most of Middletown, said that Mr. Vance’s conservative outsider persona resonates in a state that is red “and becoming redder.” She said that his down-to-earth manner and Ivy League intellect appeals to many voters, boding well for a bright political future.“I don’t know if his ambition knows any bounds,” Ms. Nix said.But others say his ambition comes at a cost. Ami Vitori, 48, a fourth-generation Middletonian who knows Mr. Vance, said that while she disagrees with most of his positions, he is a “good dude” whose about-face support of Mr. Trump smacks of cold political calculation.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.“He’s an opportunist,” she said. “He knows what he has to do to win, but I think, deep down, he hates it.”Rodney Muterspaw, 52, a Middletown councilman and former police chief, said he was a fan of Mr. Vance, who once endorsed his self-published police memoir. Still, he expressed surprise at Mr. Vance’s reaction to Mr. Trump’s supposed joke.“That’s just not the Middletown way,” said Mr. Muterspaw. “If someone calls you out like that, there’s going to be a very candid, not-so-nice response. I’m sure you’d hear some four-letter words there.”A cardboard cutout of former President Donald J. Trump in a Vance campaign office in Cincinnati.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesA volunteer holds campaign materials before a canvassing event in Cincinnati.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesMr. Vance spent this mid-October weekend plowing friendly ground. He began at the Hamilton County Republican headquarters in Cincinnati, where the nearly all-white crowd prepared to go door-knocking in a city that is 40 percent Black. After that he headed to an office park on the city’s suburban fringe, then on to a parking lot in the town of Lebanon, for more of the same.Tall, with gray flecking his brown beard, Mr. Vance has the campaign vibe of an easygoing, hyper-smart soccer dad. His go-to themes adhere to the 2022 Republican script that Democrats are to blame for every ill known to society, beginning with inflation.The Democrats are a “total disaster” who need to be sent a message, he said at one stop: “That if you declare war on our police officers, if you declare war on our energy industry, if you drive up the cost of everything and if you open up the southern border, we’re not going to take it anymore. We’re going to send you home and make you get a real job.”But Mr. Vance’s mild manner tends to mask the far-right influences that course through his positions, and which do not always jibe with the J.D. Vance presented in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”Earlier this year, on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Vance tweeted a link to an organization seeking support for people indicted in the attack — many of them charged with assaulting the police — followed by another tweet calling some of those being held “political prisoners.”He has said that he condemns the Jan. 6 violence, but that Democrats have overemphasized the attack on the Capitol, and the media’s “obsession” with the riot comes “while people can’t afford the cost of groceries.”J.D. Vance at an event in Cincinnati this month as he campaigned for the Senate.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesDuring the Ohio primary a few months later, Mr. Vance said, “I say it all the time: I think the election was stolen from Trump.”His campaign did not respond to repeated questions asking whether he believed that President Biden was legitimately elected.In his memoir, Mr. Vance lamented a “deep skepticism” of society’s institutions that he said was caused by a mistrust of the media and reflected by several conspiracy theories. These included that the government “played a role” in the Sept. 11 attacks and that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn., was part of a federal plot to build support for gun control.Both theories were promoted by the far-right provocateur Alex Jones, whom Mr. Vance mentioned in his book. But by the time he announced his candidacy last year, Mr. Vance seemed to have become more accepting of the Alex Jones brand.In September 2021, close to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, he called Mr. Jones “a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow.”He followed up by telling Fox News Radio that while Mr. Jones says “some crazy stuff” — such as asserting that the slaughter of 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook was a hoax — he also occasionally says “things that I think are interesting.”Mr. Vance declined to be interviewed for this article.J.D. Vance with supporters in Lebanon, Ohio, this month.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesOn Sunday afternoon, Mr. Vance donned a Cincinnati Bengals sweatshirt for the annual Darke County G.O.P. Hog Roast on the county fairgrounds in rural Greenville, where the compact is: Listen to some speeches, then line up for free hamburgers and hot dogs.“God, Guns & Trump” and “Trump 2024: Take America Back” banners hung on the walls, a young woman sang “God Bless the U.S.A.” and a signed copy of “Hillbilly Elegy” was being raffled off at the front table.Mr. Vance’s memoir described his family’s struggles with low-paying jobs, alcoholism, drug addiction and abuse — a self-destructive cycle he managed to escape through the tough love of his foul-mouthed, big-hearted Mamaw. He presented his “hillbilly” experiences as a reflection of a failed social system that discourages personal responsibility and feeds resentment against the government.The book was both celebrated as a primer for why Mr. Trump won the 2016 election and derided as an overgeneralization of poor white culture. Reception was also mixed in Middletown, population 50,000, where the book is set.Some residents, like Ms. Vitori, who bought and transformed the old J.C. Penney building into a boutique hotel and restaurant several years ago, said that the book, while vividly evoking Mr. Vance’s childhood, painted Middletown’s struggles with such a broad brush that it impeded ongoing efforts to revitalize the city.Ms. Vitori, a former member of the City Council, said that she confronted Mr. Vance, who seemed genuinely interested in helping his hometown. But nothing came of their discussions, she said.“Most people here either feel that he’s a good kid or that ‘He doesn’t represent me,’” Ms. Vitori said. “Very few people are rah-rah.”Kelly Cuvar, 43, a Democrat who works as a fund-raiser for congressional candidates and splits her time between Middletown and Washington, said that she also experienced childhood poverty while attending Middletown schools. But, she said, she came away with entirely different lessons.J.D. Vance in Columbus, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesVance supporters at a campaign event in Delaware, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Vance “has this idea that he did this himself and got himself out of poverty, the whole bootstrap thing,” Ms. Cuvar said. By contrast, she said, she was well aware of the safety net, “however flimsy,” that had helped her escape poverty, and felt “pure bafflement” that Mr. Vance’s takeaway was so different.“Sadness as well,” she added.Mr. Muterspaw, the former police chief, said the Middletown depicted by Mr. Vance is the same that he knew as a child growing up in difficult circumstances. He said that much of the lingering resentment of Mr. Vance centers more on his harsh past criticisms of Mr. Trump.Even when Mr. Vance apologized, he said, some people “did not forgive him.”But these same people will still flock to vote for Mr. Vance, Mr. Muterspaw said. He’s a Republican, he has Mr. Trump’s endorsement — and his political flip-flop is immaterial now that he’s ended up in the former president’s good graces.“It’s a politically strategic move,” Mr. Muterspaw said. “And I think it’s going to pay off for him.”Ms. Nix, 54, the Butler County treasurer, agreed that Mr. Vance needed Mr. Trump’s blessing, although she called the former president’s kiss-my-ass comment at the Youngstown rally “very sad.”As for how Mr. Vance handled what many saw as a public humiliation, she said: “That’s a tough pill to swallow. But he wants to win.”Commercials for J.D. Vance being shown in the Delaware County Republican Headquarters.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe many speeches at the Darke County hog roast finally ended, and a local official shouted, “Who’s hungry?” He began calling out table numbers to ensure an orderly procession to the promised food.Mr. Vance shook hands, smiled for photographs and paused for a few questions from local reporters. He said he expected to win the race “pretty comfortably,” no matter that polls suggest a neck-and-neck sprint.“Ohio polls always, always have missed big, and they’ve always missed a lot of Republican support,” he said. “I think we have a lot of work to do, but I feel very, very good about where we are.”Mr. Vance worked his way slowly toward the exit, past his raffle-worthy memoir, out into the warm autumn evening. Soon he was behind the wheel of a white S.U.V., his wife, Usha, by his side, their three children nestled in the back.Looking exhausted, the would-be senator from Ohio waved to a few campaign aides as he drove away, his many written and spoken words rattling behind like tin cans tied to the rear bumper — including what he told NBC News last year while seeking Mr. Trump’s endorsement.“My intuition with Trump — it’s interesting,” Mr. Vance had said. “I think that he gets a certain kick out of people kissing his ass. But I also think he thinks that people who kiss his ass all the time are weak.”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

Oliver Laughland travels to Walt Disney World, Florida, to see how a law restricting the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues is affecting voters in the run-up to the midterm elections. Republicans extended their majority in the state in 2020, and with far-right Governor Ron DeSantis up for re-election, will his divisive culture wars help him win a second term? More

When he was running in the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney in 2021, Alvin L. Bragg made a promise for his first day: He would stop prosecuting low-level crimes and incarcerate only people accused of the most serious offenses.Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor in 2022, has made his own Day 1 promise: If elected, he will inform Mr. Bragg that he is being removed from office for refusing to enforce the law.Mr. Zeldin has made that pledge repeatedly throughout his campaign, turning a local prosecutor into the unlikely focal point of a race for the state’s highest office, which has tightened in recent weeks. He used a debate Tuesday night against his Democratic opponent, Gov. Kathy Hochul, to attack Mr. Bragg for what he said was a failure to do the job of district attorney.But there is little that suggests that Mr. Bragg’s approach to serious crime differs significantly from that of other city prosecutors, including his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., and the Brooklyn District Attorney, Eric Gonzalez. Murders and shootings are down in Manhattan this year; though some other major crimes are up, including robbery, burglary and grand larceny, those trends are broadly in line with crime trends citywide.Mr. Zeldin’s promise to remove Mr. Bragg, the first Black Manhattan district attorney, is representative of a dynamic informing races all over the country: As some types of crime have risen in cities nationwide, Republicans have sought to capitalize on some voters’ unease with calls from progressive Democrats to overhaul the criminal justice system.Mr. Zeldin would not simply be able to show Mr. Bragg the door. New York’s Constitution grants the governor the power to remove certain public officers, but it calls for those facing removal to be given the charges against them and an opportunity to defend themselves. Mr. Bragg’s office can be expected to fight any removal effort.The Republican candidate’s attack on the district attorney’s office has placed Mr. Bragg in an unusual position. Just a year ago, he was elected with 84 percent of the vote against his Republican opponent.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.Mr. Zeldin’s pledge to push him out “is an authoritarian move,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a good government advocacy group. “If the voters recall a D.A., that’s the will of the voters. But for some other entity to override the will of the voters is antithetical to our system of governance.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Zeldin’s campaign did not return phone calls or respond to emails with questions about the pledge, including whether the candidate saw something uniquely improper about Mr. Bragg’s tenure. In an appearance on Fox News in July, Mr. Zeldin said that Mr. Bragg had been refusing to enforce the law since taking office, declining to prosecute some crimes while prosecuting others as lesser offenses.“Lee Zeldin is attempting to overturn the will of Manhattan voters one year after a local election that Alvin Bragg — a career prosecutor — won in a landslide,” said Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg. “This pledge, which is grounded in blatant fearmongering while deliberately ignoring facts and reality, is a direct attack on democracy.”Mr. Bragg’s campaign promise and the “Day 1 memo” that implemented it helped lock in public perception of his tenure, although he soon revised his policies to clarify that his prosecutors had the final authority when it came to decisions about charging and bail. But the memo has continued to define him in the eyes of skeptics, particularly after the Police Department commissioner, Keechant Sewell, sent an email to officers saying that she was concerned about the policies’ implications for public safety, officer safety and justice for victims of crimes.Mr. Zeldin, already a candidate, sent his first tweet calling for Mr. Bragg to be fired the day after Ms. Sewell sent her email and has since made the call a staple of his campaign.Until recently, he had promised to remove the district attorney on his first day in the governor’s office. During a Tuesday debate against his Democratic opponent, Gov. Kathy Hochul, he amended that, saying instead, “I’m going to remove him as soon as I can.”Lee Zeldin was already running for governor when Mr. Bragg took office, and pounced on an early memo that outlined the new district attorney’s vision.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesQuestions about his motivation may also complicate his plans: Mr. Bragg’s office is currently trying a criminal case against the family business of Donald J. Trump, an ally of Mr. Zeldin’s, and the district attorney’s investigation into the former president himself is “active and ongoing,” Mr. Bragg said last month.A spokeswoman for Mr. Zeldin, who has been a fervent backer of the former president, did not respond to a question about how the trial and investigation influenced his promise.There is precedent in New York for the removal of district attorneys. In 1874, and then again in 1900, a governor forced a New York City district attorney from office. And in the first half of the 20th century, several were either elbowed out of the way on specific cases or subject to hearings about whether they should be removed.Mr. Bragg, however, would be one of few to have his position challenged in the past 50 years.In 1973, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller began proceedings to remove the Queens district attorney after the prosecutor was indicted on charges of covering up a criminal investigation. (The district attorney resigned before the process ran its course.) In the 1990s, Gov. George Pataki removed the Bronx district attorney from a specific prosecution in a fight that reached New York’s highest court, which decided in favor of Mr. Pataki.The power to remove public officers is delineated briefly in New York’s state Constitution and elaborated on in the state’s public officers law. The measure appears to give the governor broad discretion in determining the process, outside of the hearing mandated by the Constitution. When past governors ordered removals, the process in most cases took several months, with a hearing involving witnesses, an accusation of wrongdoing and a defense.Prosecutors who share Mr. Bragg’s values say it is no coincidence that Mr. Zeldin has opted to challenge him.“Alvin’s a Harvard graduate, an accomplished lawyer, and now the city’s chief law enforcement officer, but he’s also a Black man from Harlem,” said Jarvis Idowu, a former Manhattan prosecutor. “That means, like Willie Horton and countless others, he’s easy fodder for this kind of dog-whistle scare tactic.”Victim rights advocates and others have said that Mr. Zeldin is well within his rights to remove Mr. Bragg — and that other sitting district attorneys should take note.“I’m in full agreement with it,” said Jennifer Harrison, the founder of Victims Rights NY, of Mr. Zeldin’s pledge. “Any district attorney that refuses to enforce the law or do their job should get their act together and be on notice if he gets elected.”Mr. Bragg is part of a movement of recently elected prosecutors who have pledged to adapt more lenient policies, saying that the impact of prosecution has fallen disproportionately on Black and brown people and arguing that harshly prosecuting petty crime is counterproductive. When Mr. Bragg announced his campaign in the summer of 2019, those candidates had won in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.Many have since been challenged, either in recall elections or by other elected officials who disagree with their policies. In San Francisco, the district attorney, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in June by a coalition of moderate voters incensed by the rise in property and quality-of-life crimes during the pandemic. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, suspended Andrew Warren, the Hillsborough County state’s attorney in August, citing statements that Mr. Warren had made declining to prosecute those who sought abortions or gender-affirming health care.And on Wednesday, Republicans in the Pennsylvania House filed articles of impeachment against the Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner, accusing him of failing to uphold the law.In an interview, Mr. Boudin said that Mr. Zeldin’s pledge and the other challenges to elected prosecutors all sprang from the same playbook.Republicans and police unions, he said, were “very intentionally deploying policies and practices to weaken and undermine and distract elected district attorneys who are part of a reform movement.”He added that he saw the trend as “intertwined with the Trump election-denying movement, that doesn’t care or respect the outcome of elections.”Michael Gold More

Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicOn today’s episode: Why this moment in politics will be defined by shifts at the grassroots level. We talk to conservative voters about the forces animating the midterm elections for them — and what Washington can learn from the people.What do you think of “The Run-Up” so far? Please take our listener survey at nytimes.com/therunupsurvey.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesOn today’s episodeAstead Herndon, host of “The Run-Up,” spoke with voters who had participated in New York Times polling, including Belinda Schoendorf, Michael Sprang, William Robertson and Alan Burger.Additional readingWith less than two weeks to go before the midterms, Republicans are vying for seats in deep-blue states.Twelve voters in their 20s, all living in swing states, spoke with New York Times photographers about the political issues they deem most important. Here’s what they said.According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, 71 percent of Republicans said they would be comfortable voting for a candidate who thought the 2020 election was stolen, as did 37 percent of independent voters and a notable 12 percent of Democrats.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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