Elections

Rallying around what it calls “parental rights,” the party is pushing to build on its victories this week by stoking white resentment and tapping into broader anger at the education system.After an unexpectedly strong showing on Tuesday night, Republicans are heading into the 2022 midterm elections with what they believe will be a highly effective political strategy capitalizing on the frustrations of suburban parents still reeling from the devastating fallout of pandemic-era schooling.Seizing on education as a newly potent wedge issue, Republicans have moved to galvanize crucial groups of voters around what the party calls “parental rights” issues in public schools, a hodgepodge of conservative causes ranging from eradicating mask mandates to demanding changes to the way children are taught about racism.Yet it is the free-floating sense of rage from parents, many of whom felt abandoned by the government during the worst months of the pandemic, that arose from the off-year elections as one of the most powerful drivers for Republican candidates.Across the country, Democrats lost significant ground in crucial suburban and exurban areas — the kinds of communities that are sought out for their well-funded public schools — that helped give the party control of Congress and the White House. In Virginia, where Republicans made schools central to their pitch, education rocketed to the top of voter concerns in the final weeks of the race, narrowly edging out the economy.The message worked on two frequencies. Pushing a mantra of greater parental control, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, stoked the resentment and fear of some white voters, who were alarmed by efforts to teach a more critical history of racism in America. He attacked critical race theory, a graduate school framework that has become a loose shorthand for a contentious debate on how to address race. And he released an ad that was a throwback to the days of banning books, highlighting objections by a white mother and her high-school-age son to “Beloved,” the canonical novel about slavery by the Black Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.But at the same time, Mr. Youngkin and other Republicans tapped into broader dissatisfaction among moderate voters about teachers’ unions, unresponsive school boards, quarantine policies and the instruction parents saw firsthand during months of remote learning. In his stump speeches, Mr. Youngkin promised to never again close Virginia schools.While Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee, and his party allies eagerly condemned the ugliest attacks by their opponents, they seemed unprepared to counter the wider outpouring of anger over schools.Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s governor-elect, pushed a message on education that stoked the resentment of white voters while speaking to broader frustrations with schools.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesFor weeks before the Virginia election, Republicans pointed to the school strategy as a possible template for the entire party. Mr. Youngkin’s narrow but decisive victory on Tuesday confirmed for Republicans that they had an issue capable of uniting diverse groups of voters. The trend was most evident in Mr. Youngkin’s improvement over former President Donald J. Trump’s performance in the Washington suburbs, which include a mix of communities with large Asian, Hispanic and Black populations.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, listed education as a main plank of his party’s plan to reclaim power, with promises to introduce a “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”“If the Virginia results showed us anything, it is that parents are demanding more control and accountability in the classroom,” he wrote in an election-night letter to his caucus.Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads, one of the most active outside groups working to elect Republicans to the House and Senate, said the strategy was ripe for replicating in races across the country.“It’s always possible to overdo something,” he added, cautioning that Republicans would be unwise to pursue attacks that appear hostile to teachers themselves. “But very clearly there’s a high level of concern among parents over political and social experimentation in schools that transcends ideology.”While the conservative news media and Republican candidates stirred the stew of anxieties and racial resentments that animate the party’s base — thundering about equity initiatives, books with sexual content and transgender students on sports teams — they largely avoided offering specific plans to tackle thornier issues like budget cuts and deepening educational inequalities.But the election results suggested that Republicans had spoken about education in ways that resonated with a broader cross-section of voters.In Virginia, the Youngkin campaign appealed to Asian parents worried about progressive efforts to make admissions processes in gifted programs less restrictive; Black parents upset over the opposition of teachers’ unions to charter schools; and suburban mothers of all races who were generally on edge about having to juggle so much at home over the last year and a half.“This isn’t partisan,” said Jeff Roe, the Youngkin campaign’s chief strategist. “It’s everyone.”Democrats largely declined to engage deeply with such charged concerns, instead focusing on plans to pump billions into education funding, expand pre-K programs and raise teacher pay.In Virginia and New Jersey, the Democratic candidates for governor adopted the approach of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who faced a recall challenge that exploited similar lines of attack but beat it back by leaning into vaccination and mask mandates in schools. Ahead of the midterms, many of the educational issues are sure to linger.Already, the effects of remote learning on parents have been severe: School closures drove millions of parents out of the work force, led to an increase in mental health problems among children and worsened existing educational inequalities. Many of those effects were borne most heavily by key parts of the Democratic base, including women and Black and Latino families.Strategists, activists and officials urged Democrats to prepare for the Republican attacks to be echoed by G.O.P. candidates up and down the ticket.Virginia was among the East Coast states that were slowest to reopen their schools. Some parents supported the cautious approach, but others became angry.Kenny Holston/Getty ImagesGeoff Garin, a top Democratic pollster, said the party’s candidates needed to expand their message beyond their long-running policy goals like reducing class sizes and expanding pre-K education.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia may inspire Republican imitators vying to win over Trump supporters without embracing the former president outright.Since he burst onto the national political scene in 2015, Donald J. Trump has strong-armed one Republican after another into submission. But in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin did something new: He managed to keep the former president at a politically safe remove without alienating him or his allies.Mr. Youngkin’s success in the Virginia governor’s race speaks not only to his own deft handling of his party’s volatile and unpredictable standard-bearer but also to Mr. Trump’s apparent willingness to place himself on the sidelines during a campaign that received wall-to-wall coverage on cable news.What is not known is whether Mr. Youngkin’s formula is repeatable elsewhere, particularly in the 2022 midterm elections. Mr. Trump has little track record of ceding the spotlight or allowing other Republicans to take credit for any political success, and there is little reason to expect that to change.Early on in his own campaign, Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity executive, recognized Mr. Trump’s usefulness to his political prospects. In the spring, during the Republican nominating contest in Virginia, Mr. Youngkin echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud. After winning the G.O.P. nomination at a party convention in May, Mr. Trump endorsed him and Mr. Youngkin told a conservative radio host that he was honored.“President Trump represents so much of why I’m running,” Mr. Youngkin said at the time.But thereafter, Mr. Youngkin mainly kept quiet about the former president. Mr. Trump, in turn, made no public demands of fealty and encouraged his Virginia supporters to flood the polls, something he refused to do ahead of the January special elections in Georgia that gave Democrats control of the Senate.Mr. Youngkin focused his campaign on education policy, eliminating taxes on groceries and gasoline, and other local issues that were hardly Trump priorities. He insisted that he planned to run his own race, staying away from two rallies that Mr. Trump called into. And he rarely spoke about the issues that used to motivate the Republican base, such as gun rights or opposing abortion.But embedded in his education policy was a pitch to the same white grievance politics that fueled Mr. Trump’s campaign — an attack on critical race theory, a graduate-level academic framework that has become a stand-in for a debate over what to teach about race and racism in American schools. In Virginia, it served as a catchall rallying cry akin to the states’ rights battles of generations past.And the Democrats seemed to help Mr. Youngkin more than Mr. Trump did.Mr. Youngkin did not need to remind Mr. Trump’s supporters that the former president had backed him. His Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, turned much of his campaign, and his closing argument above all, into a message tethering Mr. Trump and Mr. Youngkin together, a gambit designed to energize the Democratic base — which it did in Northern Virginia.Even President Biden joined in the Trump-bashing, speaking far more about his predecessor than his own agenda during a rally for Mr. McAuliffe last week in Arlington.“The reason I mentioned Trump,” the president told reporters on Wednesday, was because issues that Mr. Trump supports, even while out of office, were “affecting their lives every day and they’re having a negative impact on their lives.”Mr. Youngkin successfully fused the Republican Party’s past and present, building a coalition of Trump partisans and moderates who disengaged with the G.O.P. during the former president’s White House tenure.The Republican turnout on Tuesday — aided by an expansion of the mail-in and early-voting laws denounced by Mr. Trump — swamped what otherwise would have been a respectable showing by Mr. McAuliffe, whose total, while still being counted, showed he won at least 500,000 more votes than he received during his winning 2013 campaign.But Mr. Youngkin did a notch better, with his pro-Trump and anti-Trump coalition, a theme he hewed to during his victory remarks.“Together, together, together, together, we can build a new day,” he said.Mr. Youngkin’s triumph may inspire copycat Republicans eager to win the allegiance of Mr. Trump’s supporters without a sustained public embrace of the former president. The tricky part will be doing so without alienating elements of the party critical to winning in competitive contests.As results poured in showing Mr. Youngkin ahead on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump issued three separate self-congratulatory statements. Then on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump told John Fredericks, a conservative radio host and the chairman of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Virginia, that Mr. Youngkin would have been crushed without his support.“Without MAGA, he would have lost by 15 points or more,” Mr. Trump said.Former President Donald J. Trump said Mr. Youngkin would not have won the election in Virginia without the support of his MAGA supporters.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Youngkin spent $20 million of his own money to subsidize television ads portraying him as a from-the-bootstraps business success, clad in a campaign-logo fleece vest that cemented his image as a suburban dad. Weeks later, Mr. McAuliffe began airing his own ads attacking Mr. Youngkin as a Trump acolyte.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

Glenn Youngkin’s victory over Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race surprised many people in a state that has been trending blue for years. Republican candidates also won the other top races in the state, for lieutenant governor and attorney general.All three races were high-profile, closely fought affairs. Yet there were no claims of fraud by the losers, no conspiracy theories about Venezuelan despots rigging voting machines, no spurious lawsuits demanding recounts. As of Wednesday afternoon, at least, the State Capitol in Richmond stands untouched.How refreshing to see adults accepting defeat with grace.And the stakes were plenty high. Democrats across the country had grown increasingly anxious over the polls coming out of Virginia, and for good reason. It’s considered a bellwether for the midterm elections, and Tuesday’s vote served as the first major referendum on the Biden era.The McAuliffe campaign’s reaction to his crushing loss? Gird yourselves. “Congratulations to Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin on his victory,” Mr. McAuliffe said in a statement Wednesday morning. “I hope Virginians will join me in wishing the best to him and his family.”Come again? Republican turnout was way up in key precincts; surely Mr. McAuliffe was teeing up to make some wild accusation about partisan operatives stuffing ballot boxes. “While last night we came up short, I am proud that we spent this campaign fighting for the values we so deeply believe in,” the statement said.It’s almost like listening to a foreign language, isn’t it? Over the past year, Americans have been subjected to an endless temper tantrum by one of the country’s two major political parties — a party now led by people who have apparently lost the capacity to admit defeat. One year to the day since the polls closed in 2020, Donald Trump still hasn’t formally conceded that election. He couldn’t even muster the dignity and decorum to hand over the presidency to Joe Biden in person, skipping town on Inauguration Day like a crook on the lam.This can’t-accept-defeat mentality began in earnest before the 2016 election, which Mr. Trump said was rigged even after he won, and it has set the tone for all that has come since. It emboldened the absurd and dangerous campaign of lies about election fraud in 2020, which notably focused on the big cities where larger numbers of Black voters live. It led directly to the deadly Jan. 6 riot that Mr. Trump incited at the U.S. Capitol. And it continues to infect the party 10 months later, as top Republicans still refuse to acknowledge Mr. Biden as the legitimately elected president and Republican-led states pass laws to make it easier for their legislatures to overturn the will of the voters if they don’t like the result.Speaking of election fraud, Republicans have been strangely quiet on the topic this time around. Interesting how that works: When a Democrat wins, it’s ipso facto proof of fraud. When a Republican wins — presto! — the election is on the level. This is how so many top Republicans managed to keep a straight face in 2020 as they argued that votes for Mr. Biden were fraudulent even while votes for winning Republican candidates farther down the same ballot were magically untainted.Hey, Republicans! This does not have to be so hard. All you have to do is value American democracy more than you value your own party’s hold on power. I guarantee that Democrats want to win just as badly as you do, and yet they take their lumps like grown-ups.Here are some examples to learn from: In 2016, Hillary Clinton conceded less than a day after polls closed, even though she was running neck and neck with Mr. Trump in key swing states and was sitting on a popular-vote lead that would eventually swell to nearly three million votes. President Obama called Mr. Trump in the middle of the night to congratulate him; this is the most basic stuff of peaceful democratic transitions, and yet Mr. Trump could never bring himself to do it.Or recall what Vice President Al Gore did on Dec. 13, 2000, conceding one of the closest elections in more than a century after the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to stop the vote counting in Florida. “I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession,” Mr. Gore said in a nationally televised address that should stand as one of the most important moments in American history.Alas, Republicans these days seem more intent on deflecting criticism than on hearing it. Cue the references to Stacey Abrams, who refused to concede the 2018 Georgia governor’s race after losing to her Republican opponent, Brian Kemp. Agreed, that wasn’t good. It also wasn’t good that Mr. Kemp, as the secretary of state at the time, was in charge of running the election in which he was a candidate. After her defeat, she and others accused him of suppressing turnout by purging Georgia’s rolls of more than 1.4 million inactive voters. It’s worth noting that Ms. Abrams was not the incumbent and that no major Democratic figures publicly supported her refusal to concede.Losing is hard. It happens to everybody. But a concession is not just a symbolic gesture. It is the sine qua non of representative democracy — a literal enactment of the loser’s acceptance of the legitimacy of his or her opponent. When a single candidate refuses to concede, it’s corrosive. When a sitting president and much of his party refuse to, it can turn deadly, as the world saw on Jan. 6.I’m no fan of Mr. Youngkin, but he won fair and square, just as Mr. Biden did a year ago. Maybe Mr. Youngkin’s victory will remind his party that it can still prevail in closely fought elections and accept the ones they lose. Meanwhile, Republicans should read Mr. McAuliffe’s statement and remember why it’s so important to lose gracefully.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

In the first statewide elections since Donald Trump’s defeat, Republicans appear to have won the governor’s race in Virginia, as well as coming closer than expected in New Jersey. While this is surprising — Republicans had not won a statewide race in Virginia in 12 years — Virginia voters have swung against whichever party holds the White House in 10 of the last 11 gubernatorial races. Perhaps reinforcing this penchant for split governance, Democrats appear to have held the historic gains they made four years ago in the House of Delegates, despite running within district lines heavily gerrymandered toward Republican advantage.The clearest message for Democrats nationally is that the fear of Trump 2.0 is not enough to win elections. Congressional Democrats, especially those in tough races, should be sprinting to immediately pass the boldest possible version of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. Democrats need to look like the party that knows how to govern and produces results that benefit Americans of every race and region.I learned this lesson as part of the congressional class that lost the 2010 midterms. While some suggest my vote for the Affordable Care Act cost me my seat, I was sure that the real political cost was incurred by watering down the original proposal and taking far too long to pass it. Right now, the fight is not just immediately to pass Build Back Better but whether new benefits like child-care subsidies for the working and middle class kick in next year or down the road. Prescription drug reform should be strong enough that voters can see cheaper prices by next year’s election. Democrats need to run on results that families have felt.Democratic delegates ran ahead of the statewide ticket, protecting most of the gains made four years ago. As State Senator Jennifer McClellan noted: “Since taking the majority in 2019, Virginia Democrats have made generational progress on a wide range of issues voters care about. We’ve raised the minimum wage, expanded paid sick leave, passed a 100 percent clean energy law, expanded voting, civil, worker and reproductive rights, implemented criminal justice reform and taken major actions on gun safety and community college affordability.” Democratic incumbents running as “reformers with results” may be a winning formula. Voters are angry, exhausted after nearly two years of lockdowns, economic insecurity, and general disruptions of normal life. They are eager to blame whoever is in charge, which Republicans translated into enormous gains in the suburbs and sweeping wins in rural areas. Glenn Youngkin, like Mr. Trump in 2016, ran as an outsider ready to shake up the status quo. Historically, Democrats tend to win with younger “change” candidates, like John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. While Mr. Biden was seen as a break from that trend, he may have represented “change” in the immediate contrast to Trump in ways that have been harder to maintain as president.Anachronistic efforts to blame the left have fallen flat, given that neither Terry McAuliffe, Philip Murphy or Mr. Biden represent the most progressive wing of the party. The old center-left divide obscures new divides. The fault lines of American politics today are partisan, but the ideologies on either side are surprisingly fluid, as Mr. Trump proved. For the past two weeks, the Youngkin campaign flooded my digital feed with ads attacking Mr. McAuliffe for his corporate PAC donations from Dominion Energy. Banning corporate contributions was a major part of the reform platform that propelled Democratic delegates to office in 2017. This issue has grass-roots energy across the aisle. Anti-corruption advocates, namely Clean Virginia, have built broad political support while sometimes butting heads with leaders of both parties. This is a trend traditional pundits seem to miss — that winning issues are emerging less from the old bipartisan consensus than anti-establishment comparisons. This is true about antitrust enforcement and accountability for Big Tech, limiting presidential war powers, and eliminating dark money and corporate power in politics. Any course correction should focus on steering Democrats to prioritize benefits popular with moderates, like paid family leave and strong prescription drug reform, ahead of protecting corporate lobbyists.The issues gaining bipartisan support today are rarely emerge from established institutions. Republicans can win by running up numbers in vast expanses of low-population rural areas, and Democrats ignore those areas at their peril. The two groups in Virginia most likely to benefit from debt-free community college, for instance, are white rural families and recent immigrants or their children. We will not rebuild a common American dream when the establishment cares more about the price of the bill than the price Americans are paying to have a future. We do not need to win back all the old Johnny Cash Democrats, but authentic reformers with roots in these communities can level the score.The culture wars clearly profit Republicans at the polls and Facebook’s bottom line. By leaning into red-hot school board fights, Youngkin became the first major Republican candidate in years to rally the MAGA base while keeping Donald Trump out of state. The Democratic Party does not support defunding the police or teaching critical race theory in public schools, so it is not surprising they are losing a battle they have no desire to wage. They lack the ability to declare a unilateral détente in the culture wars, and fear of Trump’s shadow failed to scare suburban voters with the same intensity as the images Republicans conjured of public schools running out of control.Finally, Republicans can win fair elections. Their win in Virginia came despite Democrats passing the kind of voting rights reforms that have been stymied at the federal level. When Republicans focus more on winning over voters than making it harder to vote, they can win in areas thought to be blue. Voting reform was and should be a bipartisan issue. Early and easier voting helps historically marginalized communities. While this has been and remains primarily African-American voters, it also applies to rural voters working a double shift, younger families that may be moving frequently to find work, and seniors still navigating health threats. Let’s put the lies about rigged elections to rest, and see whose agenda most voters endorse. That may not bridge our partisan divides, but could get us back to agreeing on the right rules of the game in our shared democracy.Tom Perriello represented the Fifth Congressional District of Virginia in the House from 2009 to 2011, and ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2017 race for governor.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

Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate future, struggling to energize voters without a presidential foil and losing messaging wars to Republicans.The menacing thunder couldn’t get much louder for Democrats.Few in the party had high hopes that their era of rule in Washington would last beyond the midterm elections next year. But the Republican resurgence on Tuesday in Virginia — a state that President Biden won by 10 percentage points last year — and surprising strength in solidly blue New Jersey offer a vivid warning of the storm clouds gathering as Democrats look warily to the horizon.For five years, the party rode record-breaking turnouts to victory, fueled by voters with a passion for ousting a president they viewed as incompetent, divisive or worse. Tuesday’s results showed the limitations of such resistance politics when the object of resistance is out of power, the failure of Democrats to fulfill many of their biggest campaign promises, and the still-simmering rage over a pandemic that transformed schools into some of the country’s most divisive political battlegrounds.The Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former private-equity executive, defeated the Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for Virginia’s governor.Melissa Lyttle for The New York TimesIn Virginia, the Democratic nominee for governor, Terry McAuliffe, was beaten with relative ease by Glenn Youngkin, a Republican private equity executive and political newcomer.In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, faced a stunningly close race after being expected to coast to victory. In Minneapolis, voters rejected a ballot measure pushed by progressives that would have replaced the Police Department with a public safety department.Perhaps most strikingly, the crushing setbacks for Democrats in heavily suburban Virginia and New Jersey hinted at a conservative-stoked backlash to the changing mores around race and identity championed by the party, as Republicans relentlessly sought to turn schools into the next front in the country’s culture wars.For Democrats, the results on the nation’s single biggest day of voting until the midterms next year raised alarms that the wave of anti-Trump energy that carried them into power has curdled into apathy in a base that is tired of protesting and is largely back at brunch. Or, in what would be even more politically perilous, that the party’s motivation has been replaced by a sense of dissatisfaction with the state of a country that has, despite all of Mr. Biden’s campaign promises, not yet returned to a pre-Covid sense of normalcy.Virginia Shifts Right in Race for GovernorThe Republican candidate for governor, Glenn Youngkin, received much stronger support in every corner of the state than President Trump did in 2020. Mr. Youngkin defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, according to The Associated Press. More

Here is a lightly edited transcript of Eric Adams’s speech on Tuesday at the Marriott hotel near the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn after he was declared the victor in the mayor’s race:The team told me to come through the back, come around the stage, come directly in, and they said this is the way we want you to move. And I said to them, “I’m the mayor.”And if they only knew the level of energy I get when I walk in your crowd. There’s days on this journey when I was just so depleted, and tired and just weary. And historically, I was able to just go out to Queens and sit down with Mommy and she would re-energize me. Then when Mommy transitioned in April, I would move among you somewhere, at a train station, at the grocery store, walking inside the laundromat or just going to some of the barbershops late at night in Brownsville and Bed-Stuy, and go inside when they finish cutting heads, and we’d just sit there and just talk.You don’t know how much you fuel me. You just fuel me every day, and let me tell you the uniqueness about the fuel that it’s a Shakespearean tragedy that many of you don’t know. It doesn’t matter if you are in Borough Park in the Hasidic community, if you’re in Flatbush in the Korean community, if you’re in Sunset Park in the Chinese community, if you’re in Rockaway, if you’re out in Queens, in the Dominican community, Washington Heights — all of you have the power to fuel us.We are so divided right now, and we’re missing the beauty of our diversity. We have to end all of this division of who we are, where we go to worship, what do we wear — no! Today we take off the intramural jersey and we put on one jersey, Team New York.So New York City, brothers and sisters — and I just need to pause for a moment because it’s so important for me to do this. Five people I must acknowledge, and I will acknowledge all of you within time, but there are five people I must acknowledge.First is my sister Ingrid Martin. Where is Ingrid? If I can quote one of the most philosophical geniuses of our time, Drake: “Started from the bottom, now we’re here.” Her husband and I were rookie cops together in the police academy. When her son was born, her husband gave me a picture of him laying on his chest. I put that picture inside my police hat and every time I went on patrol I looked at him. He’s now a grown man, he’s an adult now. But it reminded me what we were doing every day, that we were on patrol. And she never, never left my side, never left my side, no matter how challenging it was, she fought. She built a foxhole. When she ran out of bullets, she picked up rocks. When she ran out of rocks, she picked up dirt. When she ran out of dirt, she just dug a tunnel. But she never left my side and I’ll never forget what she has done for me throughout this entire journey. Amazing, amazing woman.Second is my man Nate. Nathan. I trusted him with my whole campaign, and I said, “Listen, you work it out and no one is going to get in your way. But one things for sure: you’d best not screw it up. Stayed up nights two, three, four in the morning calling him talking to him. Just calling from time to time and just saying I just wanted to know how you are doing. And just spending time bonding together, because when you are in a battle, there is someone you have to trust and expose yourself to and know that they are not going to take it and sharpen it and turn it to a knife and hold it at your throat, but they are going to be there throughout this entire journey. That’s who he was and I appreciate you for that.And the man that captured my voice, my brother Evan Thies. Where is Evan? Communications director, all of you know who he is, you know how dedicated and committed he has been, and he just played a major role in putting together our communication.And lastly, came to Borough Hall, there was a woman there speaking broken English, came from Peru, just wanted to eke out a living for her family. She came into my office one day and she said, you know I’m not supposed to do this but I just wanted to give you some advice. And she gave me that advice and she became the center of Borough Hall. She took over my entire life and made sure that we were able to be a functioning office and it’s so significant because sometimes we have the tendency to believe that because someone has not mastered our dialogue and our phonetics that there is a level of ignorance, and it is not, it is just the ability to give them the opportunity and they will rise to the occasion all the time. Mastering the sound of English does not make you the greatest leader or the greatest person and so Gladys, I thank you so much, Gladys.Here we are, New York, here we are. I know many of you I want to acknowledge, but I just wanted to point out that group that I pointed out just now. So, brothers and sisters and the people of our city, they have spoken. And tonight New York has chosen one of you, one of our own. I am you. I am you. After years of praying and hoping and struggling and working, we are headed to City Hall.For a young man from South Jamaica, Queens, who grew up with all of the challenges that every New Yorker faces, tonight is not just a victory over adversity, it is a vindication of faith. It is a proof that people of this city will love you if you love them. It is the proof that the forgotten can be the future. It is the proof that this city can live up to its promise.The campaign was never, never, never about me; this campaign was about this city and the people in it, from every corner and every background in this city. Those who have been left behind and believed they would never catch up. This campaign was for the underserved, the marginalized, the abandoned. This campaign was for those who have been betrayed by their government. There is a covenant between government and the people of our city. You pay your taxes, we deliver your tax dollars through goods and services. We have failed to provide those goods and services. Jan. 1 that stops. That stops.And the campaign was not just for them: It was by them. I am so proud of what we have accomplished and I can never repay the hard work and dedication of so many who worked tirelessly to get us here. This is your victory and I will carry your cause to City Hall. This campaign was for the person cleaning bathrooms and the dishwasher in the kitchen who feels they are already at the end of their journey. It was for those who feel they were there but forgotten, and they are also those who make the city operate every day. They may right now be at Rikers Island, sitting in a cell or in a precinct sitting in the holding cells. I am speaking to them tonight.My mother cleaned houses. I washed dishes. I was beaten by police and sat in their precinct holding cells, certain that my future was already decided, and now I will be the person in charge of that precinct and every other precinct in the City of New York because I’m going to be the mayor of the City of New York.There may be a young person out there right now that believes they’re not smart enough to go to college and to succeed. I did too. But I overcame a learning disability and went to college and was able to obtain my degrees. And now I will be the mayor in charge of the entire Department of Education.And you may be homeless. You may be living from one shelter to the next, and you may say to yourself that this is my destiny. But I want them to hear the story of my siblings up here carrying a garbage bag full of clothing to school every day because we thought we would come home and the marshals were going to throw us out. We know their story, we know their journey. I want them to get the energy from what we are doing today to know the possibilities are there. Where are you are is not who you are. We’re going to make sure of that. And that’s why I ran for mayor. Because I wanted to turn pain into purpose. This city betrays New Yorkers every day, especially the ones who rely on it the most. My fellow New Yorkers, that betrayal stops on Jan. 1. We are going to make a difference. My story is your story and I did not just want New Yorkers to hear my story, I wanted them to feel my story. I wanted them to know: I am you. The life I lived is the life many are living right now. We are the same. This is not about Eric Adams becoming mayor. This is about carving out a pathway so people can enjoy the prosperity that this city has to offer. And so, you’re going to find some blemishes, because I’m perfectly imperfect and the city is made up of perfectly imperfect people. That’s the combination that is going to allow us to create a perfect city where we leave no one behind. That’s the city we’re fighting for.So this is not my moment. This is the moment for all the people who have hit the bend in the road. A bend in the road is not the end of the road as long as you make the turn. Tonight we are going to make the turn and take our city in a new direction.And I also believe all of us together can accomplish this task. The past two years have been hard. Even New Yorkers, the most resilient people in the world, we’ve had moments. We had moments of doubt — I’m clear on that. We took a hit, we watched as Midtown turned into ghost town and our parking lots became morgues. Trailers filled with bodies of our loved ones and family members. We saw the most vibrant city on earth reduced to silence. Worst of all, the inequalities we already faced were deepened and widened. Then violence erupted, knocking us even further backward.And as we stand here tonight, there are hundreds of thousands more New Yorkers without a job than there were pre-Covid. But when I think about those setbacks, I also think about how far we’ve come.I think about those who gave everything to get us here. It gives me hope and I want you to have hope. I want you to believe again. Believe again. Let’s walk differently. Let’s hold our heads up. Let’s have the step in our pace, because we are New Yorkers. We must believe in who we are. So I think about Percy Sutton. I think about Shirley Chisholm and David Dinkins and Dennis deLeon. I think about Larry Kramer. I think about Peter Yew. Those were revolutionaries who won wars without firing one shot. I think about my fellow officers and firefighters every day, New Yorkers who lost their lives saving others from the Twin Towers. And let me be clear on this: I am not creating a division between my firefighters, my police officers, my E.M.T.s, my teachers, my other civil servants. We are in this together. We will find a way to get through this together. No division, no division..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}I think about the nurses and hospital workers who went to their job every day during the height of Covid, rising above the fear and uncertainty. And the reason I know so well what they were doing: because when others fled, I led. I went to those hospitals. I visited them. I delivered P.P.E. and food. I was on the ground with them to let them know that I’m not elected to be served, I’m elected to serve and I’m going to serve the people of the city.And I think of Mommy, a domestic worker. And my siblings are here. It was six of us. And I say it all the time as much as I can: She loved them all, but she adored me. She was an amazing woman. Single parents all over the city who struggle day in and day out for lifetimes with only one goal: to create opportunities for their children that they never had. And that’s what Mommy did for all of us. She watched us continue to develop into responsible adults. And she had to do it on her own because the city was not there for her. And I will never forget that my glory — my glory is not my story. I only had a badge as a cop because my mom used a rag and a mop to create a better future for me. I think about those heroes of New York and I am inspired. I am lifted up on the wings of their spirit. And I am reminded that we owe them a great debt of gratitude that can only be repaid with our belief in each other and our city. We will betray those who were on the front line for us if we don’t believe in the greatness of this city. They sacrificed themselves because they believed in that. Now is an opportunity to once again believe in who we are. We will need the strength to face a three-headed crisis: We are fighting Covid, crime and economic devastation all at once. So we’re going to invest in each other. We are going to lift up those who are struggling with child care, health care and affordable housing. We are going to launch an unprecedented job program to link out-of-work New Yorkers not just with jobs, but with skills and training. And we’re going to talk — hear this, because this is very important — we’re going to talk to the C.E.O.s of our city’s biggest corporations and ask them to offer paid internships to students from underserved communities. Listen folks. We have to get this out of our head: that our C.E.O.s in this city don’t want to participate in the uplifting of our inner city. The problem is we haven’t gone there and asked them to do so. So it’s time to build bridges that we’ve destroyed in the past. We need each other. That’s what we need in this city. We have to turn our economy around by reaching our hand out to the business world to grow the companies we have here, while attracting new emerging industries — life sciences and cybersecurity, and with a blue-collar green jobs initiative that boosts our economy while making our city more resilient. Every job we create in corporate America must be a pathway and pipeline to the inner city. We have some talent in NYCHA. Just get out of the way and give them the opportunity to fill these jobs in this city.And we’re going to do this, particularly for the women who are in this room: We want universal child care. Universal child care. We all know what happens when mothers stay home to raise the children — their careers are stymied. They don’t get promoted, they don’t get the opportunities. Our child care, universal child care is not going to be day care or just sitting in a room somewhere watching TV. We’re going to build into our educational opportunity to develop these young minds before they get to pre-K and 3-K. We’re going to do it early and we’re going to give mothers doulas so they can learn about nutrition and what they need to do when that baby is born. If we don’t get this right — don’t let anybody kid you, if you don’t educate, you will incarcerate, and we don’t want to incarcerate our young people.And we’re going to get the safety we need and the justice we deserve. They go together. By driving down gun violence and crime from our streets while we drive our biases and bad behavior from those who are tarnishing the shield. And how dare people ask me, do I sit down and talk to gang members who are trying to get their life right? You’re darn right I am. You’re darn right. You do an analysis of those gang members and know what you’re going to find? You’re going to find learning disabilities, dyslexia. You’re going to find all of those mental health issues, the problems we ignored and betrayed those young people for produced what you’re looking at. You’re seeing the hate that New York has created, and it’s time to stop that hate.But let’s be clear, let’s be clear here. As I talk to my gang members, Jan. 1 the conversation stops. You won’t shoot up my city. You won’t stab young people in schools. You won’t sell drugs and guns on my streets. I am extending an opportunity to get out of gangs and get in a job, to get into schools, become gainfully employed. We’re not going to just talk about safety, we’re going to have safety in our city. If we do these things, then New Yorkers will be able to fulfill their dreams. And that should be the goal of government — not to preach, but to provide. To allow people to reach their full potential. Sometimes, folks, we’re going to succeed. Sometimes we’re going to try and we’re going to fail. But damn it, we’re not going to fail at trying. That’s something we’re not going to lose at.So let me be clear as I stand here before you, with a heart filled with hope and purpose and love for this city. Looking out over this horizon and seeing you gives me hope. This is our moment. This is our opportunity. This is our moment as a city. And I tell you something. In four years, this city is never going to be the same, never going to be the same. Once we move forward, we will never go back. We will never go backwards. We will never go backwards. We will never go backwards. Because America is the only country, we are the only country on the globe with dream attached to our name. There’s no German dream. There’s no Polish dream. There’s no French dream. But damn it there’s an American Dream. You don’t leave a nightmare to come live in a nightmare. We have to allow those 10 million dreams to come alive and to benefit from what this country has to offer.On Jan. 1, that’s the promise. That’s what we will accomplish. So tonight I have accomplished my dream. And with all my heart, I’m going to remove the barriers that are preventing you from accomplishing yours. And if I’m allowed to say, in the words of one of the most famous Brooklynites, the owner of Snapple soft drinks, we are going to win because we are made of the best stuff on earth. We are New Yorkers. I want to bring on my governor, where is she? We are here in the house, Gov. Kathy Hochul. We’re going to need her. So thank you so much for coming down. Please say a few words, governor. More

Gov. Philip D. Murphy pulled ahead of his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, on Wednesday in the race for governor of New Jersey, a contest that was still too close to call and was emboldening national Republicans. Mr. Murphy, a Democrat in his first term, trailed by more than 50,000 votes at one point after the polls closed on Tuesday night, an unexpected deficit in a race that a recent Monmouth University poll had him leading by 11 points. But Mr. Ciattarelli’s once significant lead had evaporated as results trickled in from Democratic strongholds, especially those in northern New Jersey like Essex County, which includes Newark. With 88 percent of the expected vote counted, Mr. Murphy led by 1,408 votes as of 10 a.m. on Wednesday, according to tallies reported by The Associated Press.By dawn on Wednesday, Democrats expressed optimism that Mr. Murphy would survive once all the votes were counted.Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, predicted that Mr. Murphy would win during an appearance Wednesday on CNN while acknowledging the restlessness of voters.“My takeaway overall in this election is that people want action,” Mr. Gottheimer said. “They want results, and they deserve results.”At about 12:30 a.m., both candidates took the stages at their election-night parties to tell supporters that the results of the contest would not be clear until all provisional and vote-by-mail ballots were counted.“We’re all sorry that tonight could not yet be the celebration that we wanted it to be,” said Mr. Murphy, surrounded by his family in Asbury Park’s Convention Hall. “But as I said: When every vote is counted — and every vote will be counted — we hope to have a celebration again.”Mr. Ciattarelli, 59, said much the same thing, but appeared far more relaxed after outperforming every public opinion poll conducted during the campaign in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 1.1 million voters.“We have sent a message to the entire country,” Mr. Ciattarelli told supporters gathered in Bridgewater. “But this is what I love about this state, if you study its history: Every single time it’s gone too far off track, the people of this state have pushed, pulled and prodded it right back to where it needs to be.”At 4 a.m., the candidates remained in a statistical dead heat, with about 12 percent of votes still uncounted.Regardless of who wins, the razor-thin margin has made clear just how divided voters are about the tough policies Mr. Murphy imposed to control the spread of the coronavirus, and his liberal agenda on taxation, climate change and racial equity.Mr. Murphy, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive and ambassador to Germany, had campaigned on the unabashedly left-leaning agenda he pushed through during this first term.But the defining issue of the campaign was 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.Mr. Murphy was one of the last governors to repeal an indoor mask mandate and among the first to require teachers to be vaccinated or submit to regular testingMr. Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman, made Mr. Murphy’s strict pandemic edicts a centerpiece of his campaign. The Republican opposed Covid-19 vaccine mandates and mandatory masking in schools, and he blamed Mr. Murphy’s early lockdown orders for hurting small businesses and keeping students out of school for too long.Kevin Armstrong and Lauren Hard contributed reporting. More