Elections

Asthaa Chaturvedi, Neena Pathak, Diana Nguyen and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAt first, most of the attention on a major night of elections across the United States on Tuesday was on an unexpectedly close contest in the Virginia governor’s race.Once it became clear that the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, had successfully faced down Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic former governor, the focus switched to problems for the Democrats elsewhere.As the night went on, it became clear that the contest in Virginia was not a singular event — Republicans were doing well in several unlikely places.What do the results tell us about the current direction of American politics?On today’s episodeAlexander Burns, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate and former Virginian governor, lost his contest against the Republican’s Glenn Youngkin.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBackground readingReeling from a barrage of unexpected losses, an array of Democrats have pleaded with President Biden and his party’s lawmakers to address the quality-of-life issues that plagued their candidates in Tuesday’s elections.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Alexander Burns contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Soraya Shockley, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie and Rowan Niemisto.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda and Maddy Masiello. More

The victory over Jack Ciattarelli, which ended Democrats’ 44-year re-election losing streak in the state, was far tighter than polls had predicted.Gov. Philip D. Murphy is the first Democratic governor to be re-elected in New Jersey in more than 44 years. His campaign focused on his record during his first term and his left-leaning approach to governing.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesPhilip D. Murphy, a New Jersey Democrat whose aggressive approach to controlling the pandemic became a focal point of the bid to unseat him, narrowly held onto the governor’s office in an unexpectedly close election that highlighted stark divisions over mask and vaccine mandates, even in a liberal-leaning state.With roughly 90 percent of the vote tallied, Mr. Murphy was ahead of his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, by less than 1 percentage point when The Associated Press called the race just before 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday after a protracted count. The bulk of the outstanding votes were in Democratic strongholds.For Democrats who had long assumed Mr. Murphy’s victory was assured even as the national electoral picture darkened, the 24 hours after polls closed proved tense: Mr. Ciattarelli at one point held a substantial lead.Every public opinion poll throughout the campaign had showed that Mr. Murphy would coast to an easy victory. But Mr. Ciattarelli hammered away at the state’s high taxes and polarizing issues such as whether schools should teach about systemic racism, and he repeatedly asserted that Mr. Murphy’s tough Covid rules were undermining personal liberty.Democratic strategists began whispering about a vague sense of anxiety that only intensified after rank-and-file Republicans turned out in force to the second debate in South Jersey in mid-October.Mr. Murphy’s narrow victory — and a key loss in the Virginia governor’s race — were widely interpreted as ominous signs for Democrats, potentially signaling voters’ dismay with President Biden, fears about the economy and pushback on cultural issues that were central to some G.O.P. campaigns. Still, a win by any margin was considered a significant milestone. Mr. Murphy, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive, is the first Democrat in more than four decades to be re-elected in the largely suburban state.“You know, we just had the most ‘New Jersey’ experience,” Mr. Murphy said, joking about his protracted victory during a speech to supporters in Asbury Park late Wednesday night. “I was on my way someplace, and it took us longer to get there than we planned.”At the end of the contentious race, Mr. Murphy sounded a conciliatory note.“If you want to be governor of all of New Jersey, you must listen to all of New Jersey. And New Jersey, I hear you,” Mr. Murphy said.Mr. Ciattarelli did not immediately concede, and a spokeswoman wrote on Twitter that it was “irresponsible” to declare a winner in the close race.Mr. Murphy, 64, had campaigned largely on his first-term record and his unabashedly left-leaning approach to governing a state where there are nearly 1.1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans.The pandemic, which has killed about 28,000 residents, hobbled much of the region’s economy and disrupted the education of 1.3 million public school students, persisted as the campaign’s defining issue.Mr. Murphy used executive orders to enforce some of the country’s strictest rules to curb the spread of the virus. Just before Memorial Day he was one of the last governors to repeal an indoor mask mandate. As new cases of the highly contagious Delta variant spiked during the summer, he was among the first to require teachers to be vaccinated or submit to regular testing.The coronavirus pandemic was the defining issue of Mr. Murphy’s first term.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesResidents surveyed in polls and academic studies gave Mr. Murphy some of his highest marks for the way he responded to the pandemic.But Mr. Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman, made Mr. Murphy’s edicts a centerpiece of his campaign, using ads and stump speeches to attack vaccine mandates and mandatory masking in schools, and blaming Mr. Murphy’s lockdown orders for hurting small businesses and keeping students out of school for too long.Lindsey Laverty, 31, said it was Mr. Murphy’s mask and vaccine mandates that made her vote against him.“We need to get back to freedom and choice,” she said Wednesday in Somerville, N.J.The pandemic was by no means the only issue. Mr. Ciattarelli drove home a Wall Street-versus-Main Street theme and homed in on a 2019 comment by Mr. Murphy about taxes. “If you’re a one-issue voter and tax rate is your issue, either a family or a business — if that’s the only basis upon which you’re going to make a decision,” Mr. Murphy said, “we’re probably not your state.”Mr. Ciattarelli’s campaign plastered parts of the comment across billboards, on Facebook and in television ads all over the state.Mr. Murphy appeared to significantly underperform President Biden’s 2020 showing in highly educated suburban counties that had favored Democrats in the Trump era — the kind of counties that were central to the Democratic takeover of the House in 2018, including in New Jersey.“What’s changed in recent weeks is that President Biden’s approvals have taken a hit as the national mood has shifted,” said Michael Soliman, a veteran of New Jersey Democratic politics, referencing Mr. Biden’s weak poll numbers. He said Democrats — both progressive, like Mr. Murphy, and more conservative, like Steve Sweeney, the Democratic leader of the State Senate, who was still locked in a close race on Wednesday — were feeling the effect of that shifting national playing field.Michael DuHaime, who was the lead strategist for the Republican former Gov. Chris Christie’s victories in 2009 and 2013, said former President Donald J. Trump’s absence from the ballot returned some voters to the G.O.P. fold.“They didn’t like Donald Trump. It’s pretty simple. It wasn’t some endorsement to go far left,” Mr. DuHaime said.At campaign stops over the last week, Mr. Ciattarelli displayed a Boston Bruins jersey emblazoned with Mr. Murphy’s name as he reminded supporters of the governor’s Massachusetts roots and his white-shoe investment banking pedigree.In the end, more voters appeared to support the approach taken by Mr. Murphy, who in his first term established New Jersey as one of the most progressive states in the nation.Over the last four years, he locked in a deal to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15, raised the tax rate on income over $1 million and legalized marijuana. He made community college free for students in households with incomes of less than $65,000, restored voting rights to people on probation or parole, and authorized drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants.Results trickled in slowly after polls closed Tuesday at 8 p.m. from Democratic strongholds like Essex and Camden Counties, skewing the early totals and making it clear that the race would be far tighter than expected.Central to the delay in calling the race was the number of outstanding mail and provisional ballots.New Jersey did not permit local election officials to begin “preprocessing” ballots this year until Election Day, causing a backlog of more than 520,000 mail ballots to be counted in a single day. New voting equipment used to enable voters to cast ballots early, in person, also caused confusion; in some cases, voters had to use emergency provisional ballots to cast their votes — adding to the volume of ballots to tally.All 120 legislative seats were also on the ballot. Democrats were expected to retain control of Trenton, but did appear to be on track to lose several seats — including one held by Mr. Sweeney.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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As a Boston mayoral candidate, she had plenty of opportunity to pivot away from her more liberal ideas. She didn’t, and it paid off.Michell Wu is the first woman and the first person of color to be elected mayor of Boston.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesBOSTON — For progressives, Tuesday’s elections brought a litany of bad news and one conspicuous bright spot: Michelle Wu, the newly elected mayor of Boston, who took the stage in a scarlet dress, carrying her 4-year-old son on her hip.Ms. Wu, 36, was in intense campaign mode this summer when Eric Adams won the Democratic primary in New York, convincing many pundits that the progressive movement was sputtering at the ballot box, dampened by the practical concerns of older, moderate voters.Ms. Wu had time to pivot toward the center, but she did not: Right up until its last weeks, her campaign was built around an agenda that galvanized this city’s young left, like fare-free public transit, climate action and rent control.And that did not seem to hurt her, even with centrist voters. In Tuesday’s election, Ms. Wu trounced a more moderate opponent, City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, by a 28-point margin. Between the September preliminary election and Tuesday’s general election, she expanded far beyond the younger, more educated whites who are her base, winning by commanding margins among Black, Latino and Asian voters.Still flushed from her victory, Ms. Wu affirmed her plan to make the city into a laboratory for progressive policy, the kind she studied under her mentor Senator Elizabeth Warren.“Boston has come together to reshape what is possible,” she told supporters. “We are the city of the first public school in the country, the first public park, the first subway tunnel. We are the city of revolution, civil rights, marriage equality. We have always been that city that punches above our weight.”Ms. Wu was supported by Senator Elizabeth Warren, a national progressive leader.Philip Keith for The New York TimesMs. Wu’s campaign — and particularly her “years of infrastructure building and engagement” — should be a model for progressive candidates across the country, said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which endorsed her.“She doesn’t just represent transformational ideas in a vacuum; she was someone who built credibility in the local community over the years,” he said. “We’ve lost races when the candidates swing out of nowhere, and the first time people are hearing of them is when they run for office.”One explanation for her success is Ms. Wu herself, who is difficult to caricature as a radical.Over her four terms as a city councilor, Bostonians have gotten to know Ms. Wu as soft-spoken and thoughtful, intensely focused on policy, meticulous about showing up at meetings and returning phone calls. That experience acted as a “buffer,” if any was needed, “for someone this progressive to be elected mayor,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.“That kind of quiet, methodical style is a new style for progressives,” he said. “It’s a different kind of style that she has invented.”Lydia Chim, 26, a budget analyst who moved to Boston from California, said Ms. Wu struck her as experienced and practical, qualities she does not always find in progressives.“It’s a refreshing thing to see a progressive candidate who really knows how to get things done,” she said.Ms. Wu also cultivated relationships with the city’s conservative power centers, tapping into her Harvard pedigree and post-college experience as a management consultant and small-business owner. She comes across as “somebody who is very clearly into managing systems,” which has helped her build trust in those parts of the city, said Jonathan Cohn, the chair of a local Democratic committee and a progressive activist.“Her career is where it is because she has done a good job of catering to business owners and progressives at the same time,” he said.Ms. Wu has also benefited from some conditions outside her control.The demographics of Boston are changing rapidly, with young professionals drawn to the city for jobs in technology, medicine and education. Boston has become “an intellectual elite city,” said Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Its politics, she said, are changing accordingly.“Boston might be a harbinger for the situation in our big cities,” she said. “They are expensive to live in. People are more educated. That might be a difference we will see.”It helped that the popular incumbent, Mayor Martin J. Walsh, was tapped as the federal labor secretary in January, leaving the Boston race wide open. By then, Ms. Wu was four months into a campaign against Mr. Walsh, criticizing his administration for insufficient action to combat racial injustice and climate change.In open races, it is not unusual for voters to opt for a candidate who has characteristics the previous mayor did not, said David Axelrod, a Democratic political consultant.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

Joe Biden said “people are upset and uncertain about a lot of things” after Democrats suffered the loss of a gubernatorial seat in Virginia. Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe one year after the party took control of the White House and Congress. Biden won Virginia by 10 points in 2020 before the victory of political newcomer Youngkin.

Body blow for Biden as voters in Virginia and New Jersey desert Democrats More

Glenn Youngkin’s defeat of Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race shocked some. But it resulted from multiple factors. Democrats still haven’t delivered on their promises or moved major legislation — their infrastructure, social spending and voting rights bills — through Congress. And McAuliffe ran a last-cycle campaign, an anti-Donald Trump campaign.Of course, there are structural, historical patterns that still hold true in states like Virginia, where voters tend to punish whichever party controls the White House. But what can’t be denied is the degree to which Youngkin successfully activated and unleashed white racial anxiety, positioning it in its most potent form: as the protection of the vulnerable, innocent and helpless. In this case, the white victims in supposed distress were children.Youngkin homed in on critical race theory, even though critical race theory, as Youngkin imagines it, isn’t being taught in his state’s schools. But that didn’t matter.There are people who want to believe the fabrication because it justifies their fears about displacement, powerlessness and vulnerability.In fact, the frenzy around critical race theory is just the latest in a long line of manufactured outrages meant to tap into this same fear, and the strategy has proved depressingly effective.There was the fear of “race-mixing” among children — including the notion that Black boys might begin dating white girls following the desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. (By the way, this was a variation on the ancient and dusty fear peddled during Reconstruction that not only were Black men incapable of governing, but their rapacious nature also put white women at risk of rape and devilment.)There was the fear of a collapse of the Southern way of life and society following the successes of the civil rights movement. That gave rise to the Republicans’ “Southern strategy.”Richard Nixon used the fear of a lost generation to launch his disastrous war on drugs, which was not really a war on drugs at all but yet another way to ignite white racial anxiety.Nixon aide John Ehrlichman would later tell Harper’s Magazine:“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”Ronald Reagan employed the myth of the welfare queen to anger white voters.As The New Republic put it, “the welfare queen stood in for the idea that Black people were too lazy to work, instead relying on public benefits to get by, paid for by the rest of us upstanding citizens.”This, even though, as the Economic Policy Institute pointed out, “Compared with other women in the United States, Black women have always had the highest levels of labor market participation regardless of age, marital status, or presence of children at home.” In fact, working-class white people have benefited most from assistance from the government.George H.W. Bush ginned up fears of white women being raped by Black former prisoners with his 1988 Willie Horton ad, hammering home a tough-on-crime message.Even Democrats got in on the action during Bill Clinton’s presidency with their “crack baby” mythology, painting a dystopian portrait of an entire generation. Black children and young adults, they implied, were “superpredators,” unrepentant, incorrigible criminals who roamed the streets, willing “to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons,” as then-Senator Joe Biden said.Sarah Palin tried her best to other Barack Obama and make white people afraid of him, accusing the Illinois senator of “palling around with terrorists.” At the same time, birthers were questioning if Obama was born in the United States and wondering whether he was Christian or Muslim.Then came Donald Trump, the chief birther, who ratcheted up this fear appeal to obscene levels, positioning Mexicans as rapists and Muslims as people who hate America. He disparaged Black countries, demonized Black athletes and found some “very fine people” among the Nazis in Charlottesville.So it’s no wonder Youngkin’s critical race theory lie worked. The parasite of white racial anxiety needed a new host, a fresher one.You could argue that the Democrats made missteps in Virginia. Absolutely. But, to win, Democrats also needed to tamp down white people’s fears, which is like playing Whac-a-Mole.Some of the very same people who voted against Donald Trump because they were exhausted and embarrassed by him turned eagerly to Youngkin because he represented some of the same ideals, but behind a front of congeniality.Youngkin delivered fear with a smile.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

Walking to the polls on Election Day, I suddenly had a vision of all my neighbors trying to break out of the doldrums by voting for Curtis Sliwa for mayor.Sliwa was the nominee of the desperate, massively outnumbered New York City Republican Party, and while he has plenty of conservative positions on issues like mandatory vaccinations (no), he is better known as an animal lover who has 17 cats in a studio apartment he shares with his wife.On Tuesday, Sliwa’s big moment involved an attempt to bring a kitty into the polling site. It was one of several dust-ups between the candidate and the election workers that ended with his ballot jamming the scanning machine.At about that point I suddenly wondered: What if this guy wins? It was not an outcome most people had ever considered, for obvious reasons. But gee, the country was in such a foul mood, the status of the Biden administration so subterranean. The image of Congress wasn’t really much better than that apartment full of cats. What if, just to show their profound irritation, the voters went Sliwa?Didn’t happen. The winner, Eric Adams, a Democrat, is a former police officer who ran a smooth campaign about his plans for reforming crime-fighting in New York. Early results suggest Sliwa will be very, very lucky to get a third of the vote. I am sharing this because I know a lot of you need some happy political news to tell friends over the weekend.Some Possible Post-Election Conversational Strategies for Liberal Democrats:— Find a few next-generation stars to burble over, even if they just got elected to your town’s zoning board of appeals.— Funny stories about other cats.— Ranting about Joe Manchin.Perhaps you noticed that, just before Election Day, Senator Manchin called a press conference to announce that he wasn’t sure he could support Joe Biden’s social services program because of his concern about the “impact it’ll have on our national debt.”Given Manchin’s super-status as a Democratic swing vote, we certainly have to pay attention to his fiscal conservatism and obsession with the national debt. After we stop to muse — just for a minute — that his state, West Virginia, gets about $2.15 in federal aid for every dollar its residents send to Washington.But back to the positive side of the elections — or at least the less-depressing-than-originally-perceived side. That big governor’s race in Virginia, won by the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, was maybe the worst blow of the evening for Democrats. But when you’re having those dinner table conversations — or, hey, drinking heavily at a bar — be sure to point out that the loser, Terry McAuliffe, is a former Virginia governor. His state seems to have a real problem with chief executives who hang around, and there’s a law that makes it impossible for a sitting governor to run for re-election. McAuliffe was trying for a comeback after his enforced retirement — a feat that’s been achieved only once since the Civil War.Didn’t work. Will you be surprised to hear that Donald Trump is taking credit?The other governor’s race, in New Jersey, was way more dramatic than expected, with incumbent Philip Murphy fighting off a surprisingly strong challenge from Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman. Very possible this one could still be in recount purgatory during the holidays.I really hope Murphy, a rather fearless leader in the war against Covid, is not being punished for vaccine mandates and mandatory school masking, which Ciattarelli complained about endlessly. Or that the irritable voters wanted to get back at their governor for remarking, a few years ago, that if you’re a person whose only concern is tax rates, New Jersey is “probably not your state.”Ciattarelli reportedly spent about $736,000 running that quote in a 10-day broadside of ads. But I’ll bet most New Jersey voters accept the governor’s view, however grudgingly. Almost all of them must have some state concerns besides taxes — schools? Street lighting? The end of black bear hunting?Fortunately, you won’t be expected to argue that Tuesday was one of the great days in the history of American democracy. Otherwise, some detail-oriented colleague might mention that a House district near Columbus was won by the chairman of the Ohio Coal Association.Yeah, and Minneapolis failed to pass its public safety program. It seems that Seattle will end up with a new law-and-order mayor rather than criminal justice reform.On the other hand, there were loads of stories to remind you how our country, for all its multitudinous failures to live up to the American dream, still also manages to come through. A lot. Boston elected its first woman and first person of color as mayor. Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Kan., each elected its first Black mayor. Cincinnati chose an Asian American mayor, and Dearborn, Mich.’s next mayor is going to be an Arab American Muslim.Cheer up, people. We made it through another election. Take the holidays off from politics if you want. Just ignore the new flood of emails asking you to donate to some worthy candidate’s quest for a House seat in 2022. What’s the rush? You’ll hear from them again next week. And the week after that. …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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More