Elections

Andrew Yang failed in his campaigns for president of the United States and mayor of New York City, but that has not stopped him from trying to disrupt the political status quo with a new party, which he has named “Forward.” This time, the candidate known for evangelizing universal basic income, or U.B.I., is championing ideas like open primaries and rank-choice voting (which, incidentally, was the voting system used in the mayoral race he lost). But critics are skeptical that he needs to work outside the two-party system to accomplish these goals.[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Yang whether the new party is a gimmick to sell books or a real solution to political polarization. She presses him for some self-reflection on his mayoral campaign, and they unpack whether lack of government experience is an asset or a liability. Also, we get an update on the Yang Gang.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Andrew YangThoughts? Email us at [email protected].“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Matt Kwong, Daphne Chen and Caitlin O’Keefe, and edited by Nayeema Raza; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Liriel Higa. More

Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of illegally financing his 2012 presidential bid by exceeding France’s strict electoral rules and sentenced to a year of house arrest. He said he would appeal.PARIS — A French court on Thursday sentenced Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, to a year of house arrest for illegally financing his failed 2012 re-election campaign by wildly exceeding France’s strict electoral spending limits.Mr. Sarkozy, 66, was president from 2007 to 2012. Though he is no longer active in politics and continues to be dogged by multiple legal entanglements, he is still an influential voice on the French right. Shortly after the verdict, his lawyer announced that Mr. Sarkozy would appeal the conviction, which puts the sentence on hold and leaves him free.“President Sarkozy never asked to be treated better than anyone else, but there is no reason he should be treated any worse,” the lawyer, Thierry Herzog, told reporters outside the courtroom in Paris.It was the second of several legal cases pending for Mr. Sarkozy to end with a conviction in recent months, and the first time he was convicted for actions that he undertook while in office, further threatening to tarnish his legacy.In March, he became the first former president in France’s recent history to be sentenced to actual jail time after he was convicted on charges of corruption and influence peddling for trying to illegally obtain information from a judge on a legal case against him.Mr. Sarkozy has appealed that conviction as well, and he is unlikely to spend time behind bars in the near future. Appeals could take years to go through the courts, and even if Thursday’s sentence is upheld, the court that convicted Mr. Sarkozy said he would be able to serve it at home with an electronic monitoring bracelet.Still, Mr. Sarkozy is now only the second former president in France’s modern history to be convicted of a crime — Jacques Chirac was found guilty in 2011 of embezzling and misusing public funds when he was mayor of Paris.The verdict against Mr. Sarkozy on Thursday came after a yearslong investigation and a trial in May and June, both of which focused on his 2012 re-election campaign and on France’s stringent electoral rules.Under French law, spending on electoral campaigns is capped to ensure candidates compete on a level playing field. In 2012, the limit for presidential campaigns, per candidate, was about €16.8 million, or about $19.7 million, in the first round of the elections, and about €5.7 million, or about $6.7 million, on top of that in the second round for the two top vote-getters, who included Mr. Sarkozy.But suspicions that his campaign had exceeded those limits arose after the election. Prosecutors began an investigation in 2014, causing turmoil within Mr. Sarkozy’s political party.Ultimately, prosecutors determined that the campaign had spent at least €42 million, or about $50 million — almost twice the legal limit.The case became known as the Bygmalion affair, named for the public relations and event planning company suspected of issuing false invoices to Mr. Sarkozy’s political party for rallies that were actually for Mr. Sarkozy’s presidential campaign. Prosecutors argued that the goal of the fraud was to hide the overspending from the electoral authorities.The former head of the Bygmalion subsidiary Event & Cie, Franck Attal, at the Paris courthouse on Thursday.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Sarkozy has denied being aware of any false billing, and he was not charged with wrongdoing in that regard. Instead, the charges of illegal campaign financing relate only to the overspending, for which he has already paid a fine.During the trial, Mr. Sarkozy rejected the prosecution’s portrayal of a lavish campaign, suggesting that the false invoices had been used instead to enrich Bygmalion — led at the time by close friends of Jean-François Copé, the president of Mr. Sarkozy’s party and one of the former leader’s political rivals.Mr. Sarkozy also claimed that in 2012 he had been extremely busy with his presidential duties and had barely been involved with the campaign’s budgeting and logistics.“I was president, head of the Group of 20, and in the campaign, I was directing political strategy,” Mr. Sarkozy told the court in June. “Organizing rallies, the sound systems, the lighting — I had better things to do.”But prosecutors asserted — and the court agreed — that Mr. Sarkozy had neglected warnings from his aides, especially over a profusion of campaign events, some of them expensive, large-scale rallies. As a veteran politician with years of experience, they argued, he could not have ignored signs that spending was out of control.“This was not his first electoral campaign,” the court noted in its ruling.Jerome Lavrilleux, the deputy director of Mr. Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign, on Thursday at the courthouse in Paris.Stephane Mahe/ReutersThirteen other people were also accused of involvement in the fraud, including former campaign staff members, party officials, aides close to Mr. Sarkozy and former executives at Bygmalion.All were convicted on Thursday and handed prison sentences ranging from two years to three and a half years — some of that time suspended and some of it under house arrest. Several of the accused also received fines.But prosecutors concluded that there was not enough evidence to determine who had masterminded the false billing scheme in the first place.Mr. Sarkozy has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the web of legal cases that has plagued him since he left office. Some of them have been dropped, including one in which he was accused of manipulating the heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics fortune into financing his 2007 presidential run.But Mr. Sarkozy is still dogged by accusations that his campaign received illegal financing from the government of the Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who died in 2011. The investigation into those accusations, the most serious one against him to date, is still continuing.Despite a failed comeback attempt in 2016, Mr. Sarkozy is still popular with the base of his conservative party, Les Républicains, which has yet to settle on a candidate for the 2022 presidential elections. Mr. Sarkozy’s endorsement is coveted by many of those jockeying for the position.Christian Jacob, the head of Les Républicains, called the conviction “shocking” and said Mr. Sarkozy had his party’s full support.“I want to express, in my name and in the name of Les Républicains, our affection, our support for Nicolas Sarkozy and our immense pride of having had him as President of the Republic,” Mr. Jacob said on Twitter.Constant Méheut More

It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at Gov. Kathy Hochul’s moves to raise money and her potential opponents’ moves to run in the Democratic primary next year. We’ll also look at how rainy September really was.From left: Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times; Vincent Tullo for The New York Times; Dave Sanders for The New York TimesGov. Kathy Hochul has been in office for only 36 days. But there are signs that the peripatetic successor to Andrew Cuomo is preparing for something that will happen on her 308th day in office, eight months 30 days from now — the Democratic primary in New York.As my colleagues Nicholas Fandos and Katie Glueck explain, Hochul is revving up an aggressive fund-raising apparatus to build a formidable financial advantage — as much as $25 million. Her goal is to fend off potential rivals in what could become a battle for the direction of the state Democratic Party.The moves she has made, including hiring a campaign manager and other senior political advisers, have not gone unnoticed. Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, made his first public move toward running for governor on Tuesday, forming an exploratory committee and framing a progressive agenda. He also outlined contrasts with Hochul, suggesting that she had not pushed back against Cuomo when she was his lieutenant governor.His announcement amounted to an unofficial start of the 2022 campaign for governor. Mayor Bill de Blasio — prevented from running this November for re-election by term limits — has discussed the governor’s race with allies. On Tuesday, he told reporters, “I intend to stay in public service” after his term ends, adding, “There is a lot that needs to be fixed in this city and this state.” His longtime pollster recently conducted a survey to gauge the mayor’s appeal beyond New York City.Representative Thomas Suozzi, who represents parts of Long Island and Queens, has maintained an active fund-raising schedule.Will Letitia James run?But the biggest question is whether the state attorney general, Letitia James, will enter the field. Some of her allies sound increasingly confident that she will, although she dodged a question about her political future during an appearance in New York City on Wednesday. (She defended her investigation of Cuomo, which led to his resignation — and which he repeatedly assailed as politically motivated.)James is seeking donations for her re-election as attorney general. But she could transfer that money to another statewide account. She reported that she had $1.6 million in cash on hand in her most recent campaign filing in July, slightly less than Hochul reported in August. People close to James maintain that she could draw national interest, much as Stacey Abrams’s campaign for governor of Georgia did in 2018. James, if she ran and were elected, would be the nation’s first Black woman governor.For now, some donors are taking a wait-and-see approach or are hedging their bets with smaller contributions, in part because Hochul has only just begun to wield decision-making power in Albany. “Kathy Hochul has made promises that she is a true-blue supporter of workers, but we will see if that’s true,” said John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, which gave close to half a million dollars to Cuomo’s campaigns, according to public election records, before a bitter falling out.Cuomo was an extraordinarily fund-raiser — he took in more than $135 million in his three campaigns for governor and left office with $18 million in contributions. Hochul appears to be copying at least part of Cuomo’s approach, relying mainly on big-money donors rather than grass-roots contributors who chip in as little as $5.But her campaign has recently hired Authentic Campaigns, a consulting firm specializing in small-donor online donations that has worked for President Biden and other prominent Democrats, to change that.WeatherThe chilly (for fall) weather continues with a mostly sunny day in the low 60s. Expect a mostly clear evening, with temps dropping to the low 50s.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Oct. 11 (Columbus Day).The latest New York newsMary Bassett, who won acclaim for leading New York City through a series of health crises, was named as the state’s new health commissioner.Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who has led the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn for 18 years, is retiring weeks after a Vatican investigation cleared him of accusations of child sexual abuse. Bishop Robert Brennan, a Bronx native, will succeed him.On Tuesday, “Aladdin” held its first performance since Broadway closed for the pandemic. On Wednesday, the show was canceled because of several positive coronavirus tests.A rainy summer for the booksAlexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesA day of sunshine and patchy clouds like today is the perfect day to think about rain — specifically, a three-month data point that seemed to confirm what many New Yorkers sensed as summer dissolved into a memory and autumn seemed so inviting.For the first time, New York has had three consecutive months with more than 10 inches of umbrella weather. It didn’t just seem as if July, August and September were that wet — they were, as measured by the National Weather Service in Central Park, where it has tracked the weather since 1869.July, with 11.09 inches, was the third-wettest July on record. (Only July 1975 and July 1889 had more rain.) Last month, with 10.32 inches, was the fourth-wettest August. It trails the 19 inches of August 2011, the record-holder for precipitation in a single month, and the Augusts of 1990 and 1955. But thanks to Tropical Storm Henri, August 2021 is in the record books for the rainiest hour on record in the city — the 60 minutes between 10 and 11 p.m. on Aug. 21 — and two record-breaking days, Aug. 21 and Aug. 22.Unless there is an unexpected cloudburst today, September will end with 10.03 inches, making this the sixth-wettest September.There has been only one other time with even two consecutive 10-inch-plus months. That was in spring 1983, when a 10.54-inch March was followed by a 14.01-inch April.What carried this month past the 10-inch mark was a torrential rain that swept across the city like a storm on a tropic island on Tuesday — sudden, intense and then gone. It added 0.27 inch to the month’s total.Of course, September was rainy from the beginning. The remnants of Ida — no longer even a tropical depression by the time it swirled across New York — flooded an already-saturated city with 7.13 inches of precipitation. That fell short of the rainiest single day in the city’s history, Sept. 23, 1882, when 8.28 inches fell. (The Times credited — or blamed — “the heaviest and most drenching rainstorm which has visited this city and neighborhood within the memory of man.”)Since then, September has been relatively dry, with only 2.9 inches of rain from Sept. 2 through yesterday. The average monthly rainfall in September is 4.31 inches.Is the three-month record related to climate change?“Potentially yes and no,” said Brian Ciemnecki, a meteorologist with the Weather Service. “When we’re talking about climate change, you don’t look at any one specific event and say, ‘That was caused by climate change.’”“When we had Ida, people said, ‘This is all climate change.’ Weather is what we get day in and day out,” Ciemnecki continued. “The issue with climate change is we’re seeing more frequent weather events where we have heavier rainfall.”What we’re readingThere’s the Met Gala, and then there’s the Metro Gala. It’s at Union Square, amNewYork reports.Jon Stewart is again behind a faux anchor’s desk in a Manhattan television studio.Gothamist reported on a group of musicians in Harlem who found an unlikely stage for public performances: their fire escapes.METROPOLITAN diaryFinding ‘Fischer’Dear Diary:I recently retired with a yen to play chess again. I love the game but hadn’t played it in years.I remembered that Central Park has a lovely chess area perched on a shady hilltop where there is usually someone looking for a game — more often than not either a very strong player or what’s called a “patzer” (someone much weaker).I went there and was delighted to find it much the same as I recalled. I overheard a man giving an introductory lesson to a young boy. His instructions were clear and concise and peppered with interesting historical tidbits.When the boy left with his father, I asked the man if he’d like to play.“Sure,” he said.I introduced myself, and he said he was “Fischer.”“As in Bobby?”“Yes,” he said. “He was my favorite player.”Expecting to be routed, I was pleasantly surprised to find that our skills were about even. Plus, if one of us blundered in the middle of a close game, the other would offer a mulligan to take the move back.“Why let one small mistake spoil a good game for both of us?” he said when I thanked him for that courtesy.We meet regularly now. I still don’t know his real name.— John JaegerIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Jeffrey Furticella, Rick Martinez, Andy Newman and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected] up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

US Capitol attackOlympic gold medalist Klete Keller pleads guilty to 6 January riot felonyKeller wore his Team USA jacket when he entered the Capitol building where he shouted vulgarities at Democratic party leaders R More

US Capitol attackCapitol attack committee issues fresh subpoenas over pre-riot Trump rally Eleven people connected to Women for America First subpoenaed, including Trump 2016 campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson Hugo Lowell in WashingtonWed 29 Sep 2021 18.40 EDTLast modified on Wed 29 Sep 2021 19.03 EDTThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Wednesday issued a second tranche of subpoenas to individuals connected to the rally immediately preceding the 6 January riot, where Donald Trump incited his supporters to commit insurrection.The new subpoenas for people involved in the march and rally reflects the select committee’s far-reaching mandate to examine whether the attack on the Capitol was planned in advance, according to a source familiar with the matter.Trump plans to sue to keep White House records on Capitol attack secretRead moreHouse select committee investigators in total subpoenaed 11 individuals connected to the Trump-supporting organization Women for America First that organized the rally at the Ellipse, including its two co-founders, Amy Kremer and her daughter Kylie Jane Kremer.“The investigation has revealed credible evidence of your involvement in events within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in the subpoena letters.“Accordingly, the select committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” Thompson said.The select committee also subpoenaed other individuals linked to Women for America First: Caroline Wren, Cynthia Lee Chafian, Hannah Salem Stone, Justin Caporale, Katrina Pierson, Lyndon Brentnall, Maggie Mulvaney, Megan Powers, and Tim Unes.House select committee investigators are specifically questioning Pierson – a spokesperson for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – about a 4 January encounter with Trump where the former president asked about a separate event featuring Roger Stone and Ali Alexander.The select committee, in subpoenaing Pierson and investigating an additional event on the day before the Capitol attack organized by Chafian, is examining connections between the rally leaders and Trump, who helped drive attendance by elevating 6 January as a “wild” protest.House select committee investigators said in the subpoenas that they believed the 11 people assisted in organizing the rally in support of Trump and his lies about a stolen 2020 election, which incited his supporters to storm the Capitol in his name.But in a notable addition, the select committee added in the subpoenas that they had been identified as potential witnesses because they communicated with former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – as well as Trump himself.The select committee is expected in the coming weeks to authorize still further subpoenas to Trump officials and other individuals connected to the Capitol attack, which could ultimately number in the hundreds, according to a source familiar with internal deliberations.But it was not immediately clear whether the latest subpoena targets would comply with the orders that compelled them to produce documents by 13 October and appear for depositions in October and November before a select committee that has plainly enraged Trump.The Guardian first reported on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers are planning to sue to block the release of White House records from his presidency to House investigators over executive privilege claims, according to a source familiar with his planning.Trump also expects the four aides subpoenaed in the first tranche of orders last week – Meadows, deputy chief Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and department defense aide Kash Patel – to defy the orders, the source said.The former president’s efforts to resist the select committee on every front by claiming executive privilege faces steep obstacles, in part because the justice department declined to assert protection over prior testimony related to 6 January.But the plan to mount legal challenges could ensure the most sensitive Trump White House records are tied up in court for months, delaying the select committee as it aims to produce a final report before the 2022 midterms to shield it from accusations of partisanship.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Though Fumio Kishida, a ruling-party stalwart, has sought to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, he’s struggled to connect with the public.Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, addressed supporters after being elected as the Liberal Democratic Party’s choice for Japan’s next prime minister. Japan’s Parliament will hold a special session next week to officially select the new prime minster.Kyodo News, via Associated PressThe man all but assured of becoming Japan’s next prime minister, Fumio Kishida, is an establishment pick who has sought to portray himself as more than just another colorless bureaucrat.Mr. Kishida, 64, has called for economic policies that would distribute more wealth to the middle class, and written that spending part of his childhood in the United States instilled in him the ideals of justice and diversity.His message has not resonated with much of the Japanese public, but it was enough to win him leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday, virtually guaranteeing that he will become Japan’s next prime minister, a role for which he has been preparing for decades.Mr. Kishida’s father and grandfather both served as members of Japan’s House of Representatives. In 1993, he successfully ran for the parliamentary seat from Hiroshima that his father had held.Fumio Kishida at the headquarters of the Liberal Democratic Party. Next month, when Japan’s Parliament holds a special session to select the next prime minister, his appointment is essentially guaranteed.Pool photo by Du XiaoyiMr. Kishida would go on to become a stalwart of Japan’s ruling party and the longest-serving foreign minister in the country’s post-World War II history.He has been widely described as an uncontroversial moderate who holds the trust of party grandees. Still, in a political system that rewards conformity, Mr. Kishida has sought to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, Yoshihide Suga.On the campaign trail, Mr. Kishida carried around a series of notebooks in which he said he wrote down notes and observations from people he met while traveling the country, calling the notebooks “my biggest treasures.”He has said that he feels a strong sense of justice, developed in part during a childhood stay in the United States.In 1963, his father, then a government trade official, was appointed to a post in New York. The family relocated, and Mr. Kishida, at age 6, enrolled at public schools, including P.S. 13 in the Elmhurst section of Queens, where he attended second and third grade. In a 1965 class photo, he is seen wearing a bow tie, standing in front of a giant American flag.Fumio Kishida, second from the right in the back row, in a class photo at the elementary school he attended in Elmhurst, Queens.The Office of Fumio Kishida.His classmates included children of many backgrounds — white, Korean, Indian and Native American — but he sometimes felt the sting of racial discrimination. In his book “Kishida Vision,” published last year, Mr. Kishida described a time in 1965 when a white classmate refused to hold his hand as instructed by a teacher on a field trip.Still, he came to admire the United States, finding it remarkable that students of varied backgrounds “respected the national flag and sang the anthem together in the morning.”“The U.S. was an enemy of Japan during the war and the nation that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima,” he wrote. “But I was young, and to me, the U.S. was nothing but a country that was generous-hearted and filled with diversity.”A baseball fan — he supports the Hiroshima Carp, his hometown team — he was an infielder on his high school team and an average student, failing a law school entrance exam three times. When he said he was interested in politics, his father tried to push him down another path, warning that “there’s nothing sweet about the political world.” But after a stint in banking, Mr. Kishida got his first political job, as his father’s secretary.Once in office, Mr. Kishida rose steadily, eventually being appointed foreign minister by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2012. His term was defined by two notable achievements: helping to arrange then-President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima in 2016, and finalizing an agreement with South Korea in which Japan compensated “comfort women,” the term for those taken as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during World War II.He also courted his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, forging a bond over their shared fondness for whisky and sake as he sought to improve a relationship that has foundered on a territorial dispute over islands seized by the Soviet Union after World War II.Unlike the teetotal Mr. Abe, Mr. Kishida is known inside the party as an enthusiastic drinker. One year, Mr. Kishida wrote, he planned a birthday party for Mr. Lavrov and presented the Russian diplomat with a bottle of 21-year-old Hibiki whisky. In return, Mr. Lavrov gave Mr. Kishida an ornately bound book. Mr. Kishida opened it to find a bottle of vodka inside.“If we’re drinking, we’re friends,” Mr. Kishida wrote. “The relationship in which both sides can talk straightforwardly is the first step to international peace.”But Mr. Kishida has struggled to connect with voters. Last year, during the race to succeed Mr. Abe, Mr. Kishida suffered embarrassment when he tweeted a photo of his wife bringing him dinner at home. The image, which showed him seated in a suit and tie and his wife standing, wearing an apron, was widely mocked as out of touch and misogynistic.In this year’s race, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge public dissatisfaction as he promised to introduce a “new capitalism” and encourage companies to distribute more of their profits to middle-class workers. Neither the public nor rank-and-file party members had shown much support for Mr. Kishida. But the conservative wing of the party, which dominates Parliament, opted for a safe pair of hands.Makiko Inoue and Motoko Rich contributed reporting.Taro Kono, the cabinet minister in charge of vaccinations, left, with Mr. Kishida before a debate in Tokyo this month.Pool photo by Eugene Hoshiko More

Governor Hochul hopes to raise the sum for her primary campaign next year, but her recent — and unexpected — ascension has left her little time to hit that goal.Even for the governor of one of the nation’s largest states, it was a whirlwind few days. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York greeted President Biden, bumped fists with the prime minister of Ireland, shook hands with Jay-Z and escorted British royalty though the World Trade Center site.But perhaps the highest-stakes meeting for the governor’s political future last week took place not at the United Nations General Assembly or the State Capitol, but inside an imposing limestone mansion near Central Park after business hours last Wednesday.Assembled inside were nearly two dozen of New York’s best-connected real estate developers, businessmen and lobbyists — the kind of deep-pocketed donors whose support has been crucial to winning statewide campaigns.There was John Catsimatidis, the Republican grocery store and oil refining magnate; Scott Rechler, whose company owns iconic New York skyscrapers; Alfonse M. D’Amato, a former Republican senator turned lobbyist; and Dennis Mehiel, a cardboard baron who played host for the evening.Mr. Catsimatidis described the fund-raising dinner, where Ms. Hochul raised some $200,000, as a “high-end business get-together to discuss not losing any more people from New York.”But for the new governor and the attendees paying between $10,000 and $25,000 to dine on chicken and salmon with her, the evening also represented something else: the beginning of a delicate courtship that could have huge consequences in next year’s race for governor.Barely a month after she unexpectedly ascended to the governor’s office after Andrew M. Cuomo’s resignation, Ms. Hochul is quietly revving up an aggressive fund-raising apparatus, seeking to build a formidable financial advantage — at least $10 million in donations by year’s end and as much as $25 million by next summer, donors and advisers say — to discourage or defeat potential rivals in what may be a fierce Democratic primary next year.The governor’s political ramp-up, which has involved hiring a campaign manager and other senior aides, has not gone unnoticed. Several of her potential opponents have begun more assertively positioning themselves in recent days, with their allies acknowledging that the longer they wait, the stronger Ms. Hochul may be.John Catsimatidis was among nearly two dozen wealthy donors who recently attended a fund-raising dinner for Governor Hochul.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJumaane D. Williams, the left-wing New York City public advocate, made the first public move on Tuesday, launching an exploratory committee. Mayor Bill de Blasio has had conversations with allies about the race; his longtime pollster recently conducted a survey aiming to assess his appeal beyond New York City, and on Tuesday, he told reporters, “I intend to stay in public service” after his second term concludes at the end of the year. Representative Thomas Suozzi, who represents parts of Long Island and Queens, has maintained an active fund-raising schedule, and his team has begun to think through who could staff a potential campaign should he decide to run.But for donors, political consultants and some of the possible candidates, the biggest open question is whether Attorney General Letitia James will enter the contest.Ms. James, who has deep ties across New York City and the potential to forge a diverse coalition, has sounded out party donors and elected officials about the race in recent weeks, leaving the impression that she is gauging possible support for a bid. Some of her allies have begun to sound increasingly confident about the likelihood of a run.And in New York City on Wednesday, Ms. James addressed a room of powerful civic, business and political leaders. She vigorously defended her investigation into Mr. Cuomo, which led to his resignation; she described her career trajectory and her own vision for the state, and, to laughter and applause, dodged a question about her political future.Ms. James has not historically had a reputation as a prolific fund-raiser. But people close to her argue that the nature of her potential candidacy — she could become America’s first Black female governor — would generate national interest, as Stacey Abrams’s run for governor of Georgia did in 2018.“It would be the first time in the history of the United States that we would have an African American woman as a governor — that I think would be very valuable in this country,” said Alan Rubin, a lobbyist in New York City who knows Ms. James and would back her if she ran. “The people who like her would support her a great deal in that effort. So I don’t think there would be difficulty in raising money.”Ms. James is raising money for her re-election as attorney general, including from wealthy donors, but she could transfer that money to another statewide account. She reported having $1.6 million in cash on hand in her most recent campaign filing in July; Ms. Hochul reported having $1.75 million in early August.Some allies of the state attorney general, Letitia James, have been bullish about her potential candidacy for governor.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe uncertainty of Ms. James’s status has many of the state’s most prolific donors sitting on the sidelines, or hedging bets with smaller checks while they wait to get a better sense of the field and Ms. Hochul herself. Though she was widely respected as lieutenant governor, Ms. Hochul — a ubiquitous presence at groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings for almost a decade — has only now begun to wield decision-making power in Albany, where she has won praise for taking decisive steps to implement vaccine mandates announced by her predecessor and extend the state’s eviction moratorium.“We are absolutely waiting and seeing,” said John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, which gave close to half a million dollars to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns, according to public election records, before a bitter falling out. “When we talk about Tish, we are talking about someone who has a solid record of supporting the trade workers unions and the labor movement,” he said. “Kathy Hochul has made promises that she is a true blue supporter of workers, but we will see if that’s true.”Carlo A. Scissura, the head of the New York Building Congress, said after a recent Zoom meeting with Ms. Hochul that many of the large construction and development firms his organization represents would be inclined to support her if she maintained her predecessor’s focus on large capital projects, like the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan and Kennedy Airport in Queens.“If the commitment to all of these things continues, then I think she’s got an opportunity to be a great governor,” he said. “If she chooses to remove projects or change projects, then people will start questioning where the priorities are.”Ms. Hochul is trying to force their hands, planning a fund-raising blitz in the weeks ahead, part of an intense schedule that has also been packed with public events.Invitations have gone out for an October event hosted by the state and city chapters of the building and construction trades councils, with a minimum donation of $5,000 from a “supporter” and $25,000 from a “friend.”Mercury Public Affairs, a lobbying and public relations firm that has a large political practice, is planning another fund-raiser for Ms. Hochul in October. Tickets start at $15,000, and organizers are hopeful it will net a total in the six figures, according to people familiar with the planning. Other fund-raisers are in the works.Earlier stops in August took Ms. Hochul to the Hamptons and Buffalo, where she lives and where there was so much interest in the run-up to her swearing-in that organizers had to turn one fund-raiser into two: an invitation-only cocktail hour honoring her birthday that cost $2,500 to attend and a larger party at a picnic ground that drew hundreds paying $50 and up.The strategy certainly carries risk. Many of her donors have pressing business before the state as she nears her first budget cycle as governor, including union contract negotiations, the fate of large capital projects initiated by Mr. Cuomo and the looming expiration of a common subsidy for housing developers.Ms. Hochul, who took office pledging to prioritize “changing the culture of Albany,” could quickly expose herself to the kind of unseemly alliances and potential conflicts that alienate many voters and some leaders of her own party.“For her to maximize her revenue as quickly as possible means she will be dealing with and talking with all kinds of people who want something from her,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of the good governance group Reinvent Albany. “That is a very slippery slope and the time pressure makes it much harder for her to manage that kind of relationship.”Meredith Kelly, a campaign adviser to Ms. Hochul, said that the governor had spent most of her first month in office focused on policy and governance related to Covid-19 and the destruction caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.“Of course, Governor Hochul is also setting up a strong, well-funded campaign to win in 2022, and she is grateful for the outpouring of support she has received thus far,” Ms. Kelly said.Ms. Hochul greeted Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, at One World Observatory last week.Roy Rochlin/Getty ImagesMr. Cuomo set an extraordinary fund-raising standard for candidates running for governor, raising more than $135 million — most of it from large donors — in three campaigns. Even now, he is sitting on an $18 million war chest, according to the most recent filings, that he could deploy to meddle in the race or try to exact revenge on Ms. James for investigating his harassment and mistreatment of women, including some who worked for him.So far, Ms. Hochul appears to be emulating Mr. Cuomo’s fund-raising approach — though certainly not his domineering style — by primarily relying on donors with large checkbooks rather than the kind of grass-roots contributors who chip in $5 or $25. But her campaign has recently hired Authentic Campaigns, a consulting firm specializing in small-donor online donations that has worked for Mr. Biden and other prominent Democrats, to try to change that.“People gave Andrew money, but nobody liked him,” said Jeffrey Gural, chairman of a large real estate company who gave Mr. Cuomo more than $150,000 over the years before an acrimonious split. “You gave him money because you were afraid of him, as simple as that.”Ms. Hochul, Mr. Gural said, was much more accessible, professional and productive.He is not the only one of Mr. Cuomo’s major backers Ms. Hochul is courting. Among the guests Wednesday night at the 10,000-square-foot home of Mr. Mehiel, himself a former Cuomo donor, were a handful of the former governor’s biggest supporters, including Mr. Rechler and Lester Petracca, another real estate developer.The governor spoke in detail about reducing crime, increasing vaccination rates and restarting the city’s economy after 18 months of being rattled by the coronavirus, attendees said.She also made clear that she intended to work closely with Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee for New York City mayor who is virtually certain to win November’s general election, in what would be a major shift after years of an extraordinarily toxic relationship between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio.Some in the crowd appeared ready for a reset.“Let’s see her actions — she deserves a break to do the right job for all New Yorkers,” said Mr. Catsimatidis, before adding a dose of Empire State realpolitik: “You know why people do fund-raisers? When they call, they want their phone calls returned.”Dana Rubinstein More

As Trump rose to the presidency, one explanation that swept political science was the power of polarization, specifically a phenomenon known as affective polarization, but a keen group of scholars now suggests that this approach is inadequate.It would be hard to describe the state of political competition in America more accurately than as “a poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion and moralization” — the subtitle of an article, “Political Sectarianism in America,” published by 15 important scholars in Science magazine in November 2020, including Eli Finkel, Peter Ditto, Shanto Iyengar, Lilliana Mason, Brendan Nyhan and Linda Skitka.The Science essay argues thatThe political sectarianism of the public incentivizes politicians to adopt antidemocratic tactics when pursuing electoral or political victories. A recent experiment shows that, today, a majority-party candidate in most U.S. House districts — Democrat or Republican — could get elected despite openly violating democratic principles like electoral fairness, checks and balances, or civil liberties. Voters’ decisions to support such a candidate may seem sensible if they believe the harm to democracy from any such decision is small while the consequences of having the vile opposition win the election are catastrophic.The costs, the authors argue, are substantial:Sectarianism stimulates activism, but also a willingness to inflict collateral damage in pursuit of political goals and to view copartisans who compromise as apostates.Yphtach Lelkes, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, has his own description of the state of American politics:Affective polarization is the canary in the coal mine. That is, it tells us things are dysfunctional without causing the dysfunction. Affective polarization as an indicator of dysfunction rather than a cause doesn’t diminish its importance, I think.David E. Broockman, Joshua L. Kalla and Sean J. Westwood, political scientists at Berkeley, Yale and Dartmouth, challenge the Science magazine argument. Instead, they make the case in their December 2020 paper, “Does Affective Polarization Undermine Democratic Norms or Accountability? Maybe Not,” that partisan hostility may be destructive, but attempts to moderate it will not diminish party loyalty or tolerance for anti-democratic changes in election law or the decline in political accountability.Broockman and his co-authors agree with much prior research that has found, as they describe it:Affective polarization — citizens’ more negative sentiment towards opposing political parties than their own — has been growing worldwide. Research on this trend constitutes one of the most influential literatures in contemporary social science and has sown alarm across disciplines.Where Broockman, Kalla and Westwood differ is with those who take the growing partisan hostility argument a step further, to contend that “if citizens were less affectively polarized, they would be less likely to endorse norm violations, overlook co-partisan politicians’ shortcomings, oppose compromise, adopt their party’s views, or misperceive economic conditions.”“We find no evidence that an exogenous decrease in affective polarization causes a downstream decrease in opposition to democratic norms,” Broockman and his co-authors write, adding: “We investigate the causal effects of affective polarization on a variety of downstream outcomes,” in five political domains, “electoral accountability (measured by both levels of party loyalty and how individuals react to information about their actual representatives), adopting one’s party’s policy positions, support for legislative bipartisanship, support for democratic norms, and perceptions of objective conditions.”The Broockman argument has some strong supporters. Jan G. Voelkel, a sociologist at Stanford, and eight colleagues make a very similar case to Broockman’s in their May 2021 article, “Interventions Reducing Affective Polarization Do Not Improve Anti-Democratic Attitudes.”They write:There is widespread concern that rising affective polarization — dislike for members of the opposing party — is exacerbating a range of anti-democratic attitudes, such as support for undemocratic practices, undemocratic candidates, and partisan violence. Accordingly, scholars and practitioners alike have invested great effort in developing depolarization interventions, and several promising interventions have been identified that successfully reduce affective polarization.These efforts have mixed results:We find that the depolarization interventions reliably reduce affective polarization, but this reduction does not reliably translate into reduced support for undemocratic practices, undemocratic candidates, or partisan violence.“These findings,” they add, “call into question the previously assumed causal link of affective polarization on anti-democratic attitudes.”Voelkel and his co-authors conclude, “Our findings suggest that affective polarization may not be as problematic for democratic societies as is widely assumed.”Voelkel and his colleagues specifically tested whether a reduction in affective polarization has any impact on “the more societally-consequential outcomes of support for undemocratic practices, undemocratic candidates, and partisan violence.” They found that when they used a series of techniques to successfully lower affective polarization, it did not produce “significantly less support for partisan violence,” nor “significantly less support for undemocratic inparty candidates.”In sum, their research shows thatinterventions can reduce both attitudinal and behavioral indicators of affective polarization without reducing anti-democratic attitudes. This calls into question the commonly-held assumption that anti-democratic attitudes are downstream consequences of affective polarization.Cynthia Shih-Chia Wang, a professor of management and organization at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, agreed that the Broockman and Voelkel articles suggest that analystsproceed with caution with the amount of weight we have placed on affective polarization — while disdain for the other side has risen, there certainly needs to be a deeper analysis of the downstream consequences of affective polarization.But, she added, “it may be a bit early to dismiss affective polarization as a predictor of anti-democratic attitudes and other potentially pernicious outcomes.”I asked Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, about the Broockman and Voelkel articles, and he wrote back: “These papers are very important. Though more research is needed, I am convinced that we have potentially overstated the causal role of affective polarization in many negative phenomena in American politics.”The Broockman and Voelkel papers suggest, Nyhan continued, “that we should renew our scrutiny of the role of elites and political systems in fomenting illiberal behavior” and that the problem “is not affective polarization as such; it’s a political system that is failing to contain significant democratic erosion and illiberalism being driven by G.O.P. elites (though affective polarization may help encourage and enable such tactics).”Erik Peterson, a political scientist at Texas A&M University, elaborated in an email on the significance of the Broockman paper:Broockman, Kalla and Westwood’s paper convincingly shows a change in affective polarization does not immediately translate into some of the political repercussions researchers had previously suggested. Most importantly, they show those who move toward a more negative view of their political opponents do not become more partisan in their voting behavior or more accepting of cues from co-partisan politicians.Peterson cautioned, however, that research he and Westwood performed for an October 2020 article, “The Inseparability of Race and Partisanship in the United States,” found “that shifts in affective polarization do influence attitudes and behavior towards racial out-groups.”What this suggests, Peterson continued, is that affective polarizationcould still have plenty of indirect consequences for politics. At present, the evidence seems to point toward affective polarization as most closely related to the intrusion of partisanship into social and interpersonal settings.Asked what explains the “continued belief by Republicans in false allegations of widespread voter fraud in 2020” — if it isn’t affective polarization — Peterson emailed to say that he thinks thatthis is something that is best explained by Republicans taking cues from political leaders and partisan media expressing skepticism in election results. Even if affective polarization does not amplify this process, cues from co-partisan politicians are still an important part of how people form their opinions about politics.Mina Cikara, a professor of psychology at Harvard, replied to my inquiry by pointing out that there was reason to doubt some of the claimed consequences of affective polarization before the publication of the Broockman and Voelkel work:I’m not surprised that reducing affective polarization leaves anti-democratic preferences unaffected. The first piece of evidence is that we frequently see equivalent degrees of out-party dislike on both sides, but there’s only one party seeking to curb voting access and throw out election results. The second piece of the puzzle is that far more people dislike the other side than say they would take up arms against them. This suggests that while out-party dislike may be necessary for, for example, support for violence, it is clearly not sufficient. Other factors are doing the heavy lifting in correlating with support for and engagement in political violence, so we should be working to characterize and intervene on those.The publication in May 2019 of a seminal essay in the Annual Review of Political Science, “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States,” by Shanto Iyengar of Stanford, Lelkes, Matthew Levendusky of the University of Pennsylvania, Neil Malhotra of Stanford and Westwood, reflects the prominence of theory of affective polarization before the release of the Broockman and Voelkel papers.Iyengar and his colleagues wrote:While previously polarization was primarily seen only in issue-based terms, a new type of division has emerged in the mass public in recent years: Ordinary Americans increasingly dislike and distrust those from the other party. Democrats and Republicans both say that the other party’s members are hypocritical, selfish, and closed-minded, and they are unwilling to socialize across party lines. This phenomenon of animosity between the parties is known as affective polarization.Most recently, the issue of polarization and violence has become particularly salient. On Sept. 15, Westwood, along with Justin Grimmer of Stanford, Matthew Tyler Stanford and Clayton Nall University of California-Santa Barbara, published an essay, “American Support for Political Violence Is Low,” arguing that claims by sociologists and political science of a growing threat of political violence are exaggerated.They write:Political scientists, pundits, and citizens worry that America is entering a new period of violent partisan conflict. Provocative survey data show that up to 44 percent of the public support politically motivated violence in hypothetical scenarios.Careful examination of the data on which these claims are based, however, shows thatdepending on how the question is asked, existing estimates of support for partisan violence are 30-900 percent too large, and nearly all respondents support charging suspects who commit acts of political violence with a crime. These findings suggest that although recent acts of political violence dominate the news, they do not portend a new era of violent conflict.Insofar as there is a relatively small constituency that supports violence, the authors contend that this support is not directly linked to politics:Our results are robust to several other predicted causes of political violence. We find that several standard political measures, i.e., affective polarization and political engagement, are less predictive of support for political violence than are general measures of aggression, suggesting that tolerance for violence is a general human preference and not a specifically political preference.I asked Westwood and Broockman about what they think the cause of our political dysfunction is if, as they say, affective polarization is not the cause.Broockman wrote back:I see our paper as beginning an important conversation about rigorously measuring the political impacts of affective polarization, not representing the end of that conversation. I don’t see our paper as ruling out a possible role for affective polarization, but I do think our results should make scholars and activists pause before assuming that reducing affective polarization would automatically result in improvements to all aspects of democracy.There is, Broockman continued, “some other research out there that thinks carefully about the sources of support for democratic norms that is grounded in thinking more carefully about the theoretical mechanisms by which such reductions might occur.” He specifically cited “Biased and Inaccurate Meta-Perceptions About Out-Partisans’ Support for Democratic Principles May Erode Democratic Norms,” which argues that partisan misjudgments of their opponents exaggerates hostility.That paper, by Michael Pasek of The New School for Social Research, Lee-Or Ankori-Karlinsky of Brown, Alex Levy-Vene of the University of Bath and Samantha Moore-Berg of the University of Pennsylvania, makes the case that:Both Democrats and Republicans personally value core democratic characteristics but severely underestimate opposing party members’ support for those same characteristics. In turn, the tendency to believe that political in-group members value democratic characteristics more than political out-group members is associated with support for anti-democratic practices. Results suggest biased and inaccurate intergroup “meta-perceptions” — beliefs about what others believe — may contribute to democratic erosion in the United States.They continue:Individuals with more biased meta-perceptions — those who more strongly believed the average in-group member valued characteristics more than the average out-group member — were more willing to subvert democratic principles, in practice, to help their party.Westwood, in turn, replied to my inquiry:Affective polarization isn’t driving support for efforts to restrict democratic norms, which is reassuring insofar as affective polarization isn’t driving voters to call for limiting voter rights, but alarming because it means we don’t know what is causing the rise in support for anti-democratic legislation.In Westwood’s view,these efforts by elected officials are driven by self-interest in retaining power in a country experiencing rapid demographic change. It is also clear from opinion data that in many cases they are doing this against the wishes of voters. They seem to have calculated that the long-term strategic gains are worth short-term losses in public support. We don’t have clear evidence of this and there is much research to be done, but it is the most parsimonious answer.James Druckman, a political scientist at Northwestern and a co-author of the Voelkel paper, contended in an email that while the Broockman, Voelkel and Westwood papers may have diminished the salience of affective partisanship, at the same time the papers call for a wider-ranging search in the effort to figure out how and why American politics have gone so far off track in such a short time:The papers reveal that dynamics that may be imperiling democracy do not straightforwardly reduce to affective polarization. There are more nuanced dynamics to which we need to attend. For example, when it comes anti-democratic behaviors, other possible forces include racial/ethnic antagonism or partisan extremity. For violence, perhaps anti-establishment attitudes orientation matter. This is not to say affective polarization does not matter as I think there is sufficient evidence that it can under particular conditions. However, how it matters may be less than straightforward.Figuring out what is driving us apart and what we can do about it was never going to be easy.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