Elections

How Germans VotedThe Christian Democrats’ share of the vote collapsed on Sunday, driven by losses to Social Democrats and increasing political fragmentation. More

Ahora que la canciller se prepara para dejar su cargo tras 16 años al mando de Alemania, deja atrás un país que ha cambiado profundamente, y que está ansioso por cambiar aún más.STUTTGART, Alemania — La pequeña estrella plateada en la punta del Mercedes de Aleksandar Djordjevic brilla. La pule cada semana.Djordjevic fabrica motores de combustión para Daimler, uno de los principales fabricantes de automóviles de Alemania. Tiene un sueldo de unos 60.000 euros (alrededor de 70.000 dólares), ocho semanas de vacaciones y una garantía negociada por el sindicato de que no puede ser despedido hasta 2030. Tiene una casa de dos pisos y ese Mercedes clase E 250 en su entrada.Por todo eso, Djordjevic pule la estrella de su carro.“La estrella es algo estable y fuerte: significa Hecho en Alemania”, dijo.Pero en 2030 ya no habrá motores de combustión en Daimler, ni personas que fabriquen motores de combustión.“Estoy orgulloso de lo que hago”, dijo Djordjevic. “Es inquietante saber que dentro de diez años mi trabajo ya no existirá”.Djordjevic es la imagen de un nuevo orgullo y prosperidad alemanes. Y también de la ansiedad alemana.Mientras la canciller Angela Merkel se prepara para dejar su cargo después de 16 años, su país se encuentra entre los más ricos del mundo. Una clase media amplia y satisfecha es una de las facetas de la Alemania de Merkel que ha sido fundamental para su longevidad y su capacidad de cumplir una promesa fundamental de estabilidad. Pero su impacto ha sido mucho mayor.Viajar por el país que deja la canciller hace patente las profundas transformaciones que ha tenido.Trabajadores ensamblan baterías para carros eléctricos de Mercedes en Stuttgart.El puente transportador de la mina F60 en la mina de visitantes Lusatia, un punto de interés turístico en la región minera oriental de Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf.Ahí está el padre disfrutando de un permiso parental pagado en la católica Baviera. La pareja gay que cría a sus dos hijos en las afueras de Berlín. La mujer con hiyab que enseña matemáticas en una secundaria cerca de Fráncfort, donde la mayoría de los alumnos tienen pasaporte alemán, pero pocos tienen padres alemanes.El trabajador del carbón en el antiguo Este comunista que vota por un partido de extrema derecha que no existía cuando Merkel llegó al poder. Y unos hermanos jóvenes de una isla del Mar del Norte amenazada por la subida del nivel del mar que no recuerdan una época en la que Merkel no fuera canciller y no ven la hora de que se vaya.“Ella conoce el peligro del cambio climático desde antes de que nosotros naciéramos”, me dijo uno de los hermanos mientras se encontraba en el dique cubierto de hierba que protege la pequeña isla, Pellworm, de las inundaciones. “¿Por qué no hizo nada al respecto?”.Mientras Merkel dirigía su país a través de sucesivas crisis y dejaba otras sin atender, hubo cambios que lideró y cambios que permitió.Decidió eliminar gradualmente la energía nuclear en Alemania. Puso fin al servicio militar obligatorio. Fue la primera canciller en afirmar que el islam “pertenece” a Alemania. Cuando se trató de romper los paradigmas de los valores familiares conservadores de su país y de su partido, fue más tímida, pero finalmente no se interpuso.“Vio hacia dónde se dirigía el país y le permitió ir hacia ahí”, dijo Roland Mittermayer, un arquitecto que se casó con su esposo poco después de que Merkel invitara a los legisladores conservadores a aprobar una ley que permitiera el matrimonio igualitario, aunque ella misma votara en contra.Helmut y Stephanie Wendlinger con su hijo de 2 años, Xaver, y su hermana recién nacida, Leni, en Baviera.Un antiguo pozo minero convertido en lago cerca de la ciudad oriental de Forst. A medida que se va eliminando el uso del carbón, la población local espera que la industria turística ayude a compensar la pérdida de puestos de trabajo.Ningún otro líder democrático en Europa ha durado más tiempo. Y Merkel deja su cargo como la política más popular de Alemania.Muchos de sus predecesores de la posguerra tenían legados muy definidos. Konrad Adenauer ancló a Alemania en Occidente. Willy Brandt cruzó el Telón de Acero. Helmut Kohl, su antiguo mentor, se convirtió en el símbolo de la unidad alemana. Gerhard Schröder allanó el camino para el éxito económico del país.El legado de Merkel es menos tangible, pero igualmente transformador. Convirtió a Alemania en una sociedad moderna y en un país menos definido por su historia.Es posible que se la recuerde sobre todo por su decisión de acoger a más de un millón de refugiados en 2015-16, cuando la mayoría de las demás naciones occidentales los rechazaban. Fue un breve momento de redención para el país que había hecho el Holocausto y la convirtió en un ícono de la democracia liberal.“Fue una especie de curación”, dijo Karin Marré-Harrak, directora de una secundaria en la ciudad multicultural de Offenbach. “De alguna manera, nos hemos convertido en un país más normal”.Que te llamen un país normal puede parecer decepcionante en otros lugares. Pero para Alemania, una nación atormentada por su pasado nazi y cuatro décadas de división entre el Este y el Oeste, la normalidad era lo que todas las generaciones de la posguerra habían aspirado.Sin embargo, en casi todas partes existían también la persistente sensación de que la nueva normalidad se veía amenazada por desafíos épicos, que las cosas no podían seguir como estaban.El sueño alemánAleksandar Djordjevic, de 38 años, segundo desde la izquierda, y su esposa, Jasmina, jugando con su hija y unos amigos en Plochingen, cerca de Stuttgart.Djordjevic vive cerca de Stuttgart, la capital de la poderosa industria automovilística alemana. En 1886, en este lugar, Gottlieb Daimler inventó uno de los primeros automóviles en su jardín. En estos días, la ciudad es sede de Daimler, Porsche y Bosch, el mayor fabricante de piezas de carros del mundo.Al llegar a casa después de su turno una tarde reciente, Djordjevic todavía llevaba su uniforme de la fábrica, y junto al logotipo de Mercedes, el pin rojo del sindicato de obreros metalúrgicos.La mayoría de los empleados de Daimler pertenecen están sindicados. Los representantes de los trabajadores ocupan la mitad de los puestos en el consejo de administración de la empresa.“La historia del éxito de la industria alemana es también la historia de una fuerte representación de los trabajadores”, dijo. La estabilidad, los beneficios, las oportunidades para desarrollar habilidades, todo ello sustenta “la lealtad que los trabajadores sienten hacia el producto y la empresa”.Si el sueño americano es hacerse rico, el sueño alemán es la seguridad laboral de por vida.Djordjevic, de 38 años, siempre supo que quería trabajar para Daimler. Su padre trabajó allí hasta que murió. “Fue como una herencia”, dice.Cuando consiguió su primer trabajo, a los 16 años, pensó que lo había logrado. “Pensé: ‘Ya está’”, recuerda, “aquí me jubilaré”.Una fábrica de Daimler en Sindelfingen que producirá vehículos eléctricos.El montaje de un Mercedes-Benz Clase S en la fábricaAhora está menos seguro. Al igual que otros fabricantes de automóviles alemanes, Daimler tardó en iniciar su transición a los carros eléctricos. Su primer modelo puramente eléctrico se lanzó recién este año.El objetivo de Daimler es eliminar los motores de combustión antes de 2030. Nadie sabe lo que eso significa exactamente para los puestos de trabajo, pero Djordjevic hizo las cuentas.“Hay 1200 piezas en un motor de combustión”, dijo. “Solo hay 200 en un carro eléctrico”.“Los carros sostenibles son fantásticos, pero también necesitamos empleos sostenibles”, comentó.Daimler sigue creciendo. Pero gran parte del crecimiento del empleo está en China, dijo Michael Häberle, uno de los representantes de los trabajadores en el consejo de administración de la empresa.Häberle también ha estado en la empresa los 35 años de su vida laboral. Empezó como mecánico y fue ascendiendo hasta obtener un título en negocios y, finalmente, un puesto en el consejo de administración.De pie en una de las fábricas que ahora producen baterías para la nueva línea de carros eléctricos EQS, Häberle dijo que esperaba que la empresa no solo sobreviviera a esta transformación, sino que saliera fortalecida.La cuestión principal, dijo, es: ¿Alemania lo hará?Hubo un tiempo en el que daba por sentada la capacidad exportadora de su país. Pero ahora, dijo, “Alemania está a la defensiva”.Un hiyab alemánIkbal Soysal, de 30 años, da una clase de matemáticas de sexto grado en la secundaria Schiller de Offenbach.La industria automovilística alemana contribuyó a impulsar el milagro económico de la posguerra. Y los inmigrantes impulsaron la industria del automóvil. Pero no aparecen realmente en esa historia.Se les conocía como “trabajadores invitados” y se esperaba que vinieran, trabajaran y se fueran. Hasta hace dos décadas, no tenían un camino oficial hacia la ciudadanía.Entre ellos estaban los abuelos de Ikbal Soysal, una joven profesora de secundaria de la ciudad de Offenbach, cerca de Fráncfort, cuyo padre trabajó en una fábrica de piezas de automóvil para Mercedes.La generación de inmigrantes alemanes de Soysal sí figura en la historia de la Alemania actual. No solo tienen pasaporte alemán, sino que muchos tienen títulos universitarios. Son médicos, empresarios, periodistas y profesores.La población inmigrante de Alemania se ha convertido en la segunda mayor del mundo, por detrás de la de Estados Unidos. Cuando Merkel llegó al poder en 2005, el 18 por ciento de los alemanes tenía al menos un progenitor nacido fuera del país. Ahora es uno de cada cuatro. En la escuela de Soysal, en Offenbach, nueve de cada diez niños tienen al menos un progenitor que emigró a Alemania.Muchos de los profesores también.“Cuando empecé a dar clases aquí, todos los profesores eran alemanes con raíces alemanas”, dijo la directora, Karin Marré-Harrak. “Ahora, casi la mitad de ellos tienen raíces diversas”.Seis de cada diez habitantes de Offenbach tienen familias inmigrantes.Romaissa Elbaghdadi, de 15 años, entrenando con Angelo Raimon, de 13 años, en un club de boxeo en Offenbach.Soysal, musulmana, siempre quiso ser profesora, pero sabía que era un riesgo. En su estado, nunca había habido una profesora de secundaria que usara velo en la cabeza.Así que cuando la invitaron a su primera entrevista de trabajo, llamó con antelación para avisar a la escuela.Era 2018. Una persona lo consultó con la dirección, que rápidamente la tranquilizó: “Lo que importa es lo que tienes en la cabeza, no lo que tienes sobre la cabeza”.Consiguió ese trabajo y otros desde entonces.No siempre fue fácil. “Los alumnos se olvidan del velo en la cabeza muy rápido”, dijo Soysal. Pero algunos padres se quejaron con la dirección.Una vez, una alumna pidió consejo a Soysal. La niña llevaba un pañuelo en la cabeza, pero no estaba segura. “Si no te sientes bien, tienes que quitártelo”, le dijo Soysal.Para ella, en eso consiste la libertad de religión, consagrada en la Constitución alemana. “El asunto es que soy alemana”, dijo, “así que mi velo también es alemán”.La alternativa a MerkelMike Balzke junto con su esposa y sus dos hijas en Drewitz, donde su familia ha vivido por siete generaciones. “No queremos dinero, queremos un futuro”, dijo.Después de Offenbach, la siguiente parada es Hanau. Fue en este lugar donde, en febrero del año pasado, un atacante de extrema derecha entró en varios bares y disparó contra nueve personas, en su mayoría jóvenes, de origen migrante.La reacción contra la diversificación y modernización que ha sucedido bajo el mandato de Merkel se ha vuelto cada vez más violenta. Alemania sufrió tres ataques terroristas de extrema derecha en menos de tres años. El caldo de cultivo ideológico para esa violencia está encarnado en muchos sentidos por un partido que eligió su nombre en oposición a la canciller.A menudo, Merkel justificaba políticas impopulares llamándolas “alternativlos”, sin alternativa.La Alternativa para Alemania (AfD) se fundó en 2013 en oposición al rescate de Grecia que el gobierno de Merkel diseñó durante la crisis de la deuda soberana en Europa. Cuando el país recibió a más de un millón de refugiados en 2015 y 2016, el partido adoptó una postura antiinmigrante beligerante que le dio impulso y lo llevó al Parlamento alemán.La AfD está aislada en el oeste del país. Pero se ha convertido en el segundo partido más fuerte de la antigua Alemania del Este, que era comunista, el lugar donde creció Merkel.La Alemania de Merkel está más dividida entre el Este y el Oeste —al menos políticamente— que en cualquier otro momento desde la reunificación.En Forst, un centro textil en la frontera polaca que solía ser próspero pero perdió miles de puestos de trabajo y un tercio de su población después de la caída del Muro de Berlín, la AfD obtuvo el primer lugar en las últimas elecciones. El centro, las fábricas cerradas y las chimeneas aún salpican el horizonte.Una planta de energía de carbón que se cerrará en 2028, en el pueblo oriental de Jänschwalde.Una de las muchas fábricas abandonadas en Forst, un centro textil en la frontera polaca que alguna vez fue próspero. El nuevo propietario de esta antigua fábrica textil quiere transformarla en un espacio cultural.La desigualdad persistente entre el Este y Oeste sigue siendo evidente tres décadas después de la reunificación, a pesar de que el dinero de los contribuyentes ha fluido hacia el Este y su situación ha mejorado con el tiempo. Dado que el gobierno planea eliminar de manera gradual la producción de carbón para 2038, se prometen miles de millones de euros más en fondos para ayudar a compensar la pérdida de puestos de trabajo.Pero como dijo Mike Balzke, un trabajador de una planta de carbón cercana en Jänschwalde: “no queremos dinero, queremos un futuro”.Balzke recordó su optimismo cuando Merkel se convirtió en canciller por primera vez. Como era nativa del Este y científica, esperaba que fuera una embajadora de esa parte de Alemania y del carbón.En cambio, su aldea perdió una cuarta parte de su población durante su mandato. Nunca se construyó una línea de tren que había sido prometida de Forst a Berlín. La oficina de correos cerró.A Balzke, de 41 años, le preocupa que la región se convierta en un desierto.Esa ansiedad es honda. Y se profundizó con la llegada de refugiados en 2015.Dos padres y dos hijosRoland Mittermayer y Mathis Winkler con sus hijos Angelo, de 11 años, y Jason, de 6, cerca de Berlín. “Ella vio hacia dónde se dirigía el país y permitió que llegara allí”, dijo Mittermayer sobre la postura de Merkel sobre el matrimonio igualitario.La decisión de Merkel de dar la bienvenida a los refugiados fue una de las razones por las que Balzke dejó de votar por ella. Pero para muchas otras personas, sucedió lo contrario.Mathis Winkler, un trabajador de cooperación para el desarrollo en Berlín, nunca había votado por el partido de Merkel. Como hombre gay, estaba consternado por su definición conservadora y limitada de familia, que hasta hace solo unos años lo excluía a él, a su pareja de mucho tiempo y a los dos hijos que adoptaron.Pero después de que Merkel se convirtió en el objeto de la ira de la extrema derecha durante la crisis de refugiados, respaldó en solidaridad a su partido.Merkel impulsó su propia base en varios frentes. Durante su tiempo como canciller, se aprobó una legislación que permite a las madres y los padres compartir 14 meses de licencia parental remunerada. El ala conservadora de su partido se indignó, pero solo una década después se considera ya la nueva normalidad.Merkel nunca apoyó de manera decisiva el matrimonio igualitario, pero permitió que los legisladores votaran, sabiendo que se aprobaría.Jóvenes en un desfile del Día de Christopher Street en la ciudad de Cottbus, en el Este. Merkel nunca apoyó con firmeza el matrimonio igualitario, pero permitió que se votara.Helmut Wendlinger, un panadero en la zona rural de Baviera, aprovechó la legislación sobre licencia parental aprobada por el gobierno de Merkel. “Los hombres de la generación de mi padre no tuvieron esa oportunidad”, dijo.Winkler abandonó su apoyo al partido en 2019, después de que la sucesora de Merkel como líder conservadora, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, menospreciara el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo. Pero reconoció su deuda con la canciller.El 30 de junio de 2017, el día de la votación, le escribió una carta.“Es una pena que no pudieras apoyar con apertura el matrimonio entre parejas del mismo sexo”, escribió. “Aun así, te agradezco por haber hecho posible la decisión de hoy”.Luego la invitó a visitar a su familia “para verla por ti misma”.Ella nunca respondió. Pero él y su familia vivían a la vuelta de la esquina del domicilio de Merkel, quien nunca dejó su departamento en el centro de Berlín. La veían de vez en cuando en la fila para pagar en el supermercado.“Allí estaba ella, con papel higiénico en su canastilla de compras, yendo al supermercado como todos los demás”, recordó la pareja de Winkler, Roland Mittermayer. Incluso después de 16 años, todavía están tratando de descifrar a la canciller.“Es un enigma”, dijo Winkler. “Ella es un poco como la reina, alguien que ha existido durante mucho tiempo, pero nunca sientes que realmente la conoces”.La generación pos-MerkelLos hermanos Backsen: Sophie, de 23 años, Hannes, de 19, y Paul, de 21, en la isla de Pellworm. Su familia llevó al gobierno de Merkel a los tribunales por sus emisiones de dióxido de carbono.Seis horas al noroeste de Berlín, pasando por manchas interminables de campos verdes salpicados de parques eólicos y después de un viaje en ferry de 40 minutos desde la costa del Mar del Norte, se encuentra Pellworm, una isla tranquila donde la familia Backsen ha estado cultivando desde 1703.Hace dos años, llevaron al gobierno de Merkel a los tribunales por abandonar sus objetivos de emisión de dióxido de carbono establecidos en el Acuerdo de París. Perdieron, pero luego volvieron a intentarlo y presentaron una denuncia ante el tribunal constitucional.Esta vez ganaron.“Se trata de libertad”, dijo Sophie Backsen, de 23 años, a quien le gustaría hacerse cargo de la granja de su padre algún día.Los hermanos menores de Sophie, Hannes, de 19 años, y Paul, de 21, votaron por primera vez el domingo. Como el estimado del 42 por ciento de los votantes que lo harán por primera vez, votarán por los Verdes.“Si ves cómo vota nuestra generación, es lo contrario de lo que se percibe en las encuestas”, dijo Paul. “Los Verdes estarían gobernando el país”.Paul Backsen transporta granos para alimentar al ganado en la isla de Pellworm. Los Backsens han estado cultivando allí desde 1703.Sophie Backsen, de 23 años, alimenta a las vacas. “Tener una canciller toda mi vida significa que nunca ha tenido la menor duda de que las mujeres pueden hacer ese trabajo”, dijo sobre Merkel. “Pero en el tema climático, ella le ha fallado a mi generación”.Pellworm está al nivel del mar e incluso algunas partes están por debajo de él. Sin el dique que rodea la costa, se inundaría con regularidad.“Cuando hay lluvia constante durante tres semanas, la isla se llena de agua, como una bañera”, dijo Hannes.Aquí, la posibilidad de un aumento del nivel del mar es una amenaza existencial. “Esta es una de las elecciones más importantes”, dijo Hannes. “Es la última oportunidad de hacerlo bien”.“Si ni siquiera un país como Alemania puede manejar esto”, agregó, “¿qué posibilidades tenemos?”.La isla de Pellworm en el Mar del Norte está amenazada por el aumento del nivel del mar.Christopher F. Schuetze colaboró con reportería desde Berlín. More

The name “Tessa Ganserer” did not appear on the ballot in Sunday’s election, but Ms. Ganserer still won a seat representing a district of Nuremberg, making history as one of the first two openly transgender people to join the German Parliament.She had to run under the name her parents gave her at birth, because she refused to submit to the country’s 40-year-old law requiring a medical certificate before a person can legally change name and gender identity.Another trans woman, Nyke Slawik, 27, also won a seat. Both belong to the Greens Party, which stands a strong chance of entering into government as part of a coalition.“Crazy!” Ms. Slawik wrote on her Instagram page. “I still can’t really believe it, but after this historic election result I will definitely be part of the next German Parliament.”Ms. Ganserer, 44, wrote on her Facebook page: “It was the election campaign of our lives and it was worth it. The old, backward thinking was punished yesterday.”In 2017, Germany legalized same-sex marriage and adoption by gay parents, and passed a partial ban on conversion therapy, which aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.This year, the country banned operations intended to assign babies to particular sexes if they are born with sex characteristics. That means parents can no longer make that choice; the children get the right to decide for themselves later in life. But lawmakers rejected two bills proposed by the Greens and the Free Democrats that would more generally make it simpler for transgender people to self-identify.Currently they are required under the country’s Transsexuality Law, passed in 1981, to obtain a medical certificate, at the cost of hundreds to thousands of dollars. Working to change that requirement, which opponents describe as stigmatizing as well as costly, will be one of Ms. Ganserer’s priorities in Parliament, she said.Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic candidate who hopes to become chancellor, during the campaign blamed the Christian Democratic Union for the failure to change the medical certificate law under the previous government. Rights groups are hopeful that the combination of a Social Democrat-led government and two trans representatives will give an impetus to change. More

Known as Sissy, she was an advocate for racial parity and women’s rights, and her name was placed in nomination for the vice presidency in 1972. Tragedy trailed her.The year was 1968, the place Corpus Christi, Texas. The scene was a victory party for a Democratic candidate, elected to the Texas House of Representatives the night before.At the party, a man approached Frances T. Farenthold, a prominent local resident.“Mrs. Farenthold,” he said, “I had the pleasure of voting for your husband yesterday.”“Thank you very much,” she replied. “But I think you’ll discover that you voted for me.”“Well, hell,” the man said, “if I’d known that, I never would have voted for you.”Ms. Farenthold, a politician, feminist, lawyer and human-rights advocate who died at 94 on Sunday at her home in Houston, became quite accustomed to incredulity on her election and long afterward during her half-century on the national stage.The victory that night of Ms. Farenthold, widely known by the childhood nickname Sissy, had been no small trick. On her election, she became the only woman in the 150-member chamber and one of just two in the Texas legislature. (The other, in the State Senate, was the Democrat Barbara Jordan, the eloquent Black lawyer who went on to serve in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979.)Throughout her career, Ms. Farenthold met with casual condescension — the news media perennially described her as a mother of four — and overt discrimination: As a legislator she was shut out of committee meetings held at an all-male private club in Austin.Yet during her two terms in the Texas House, from 1969 to 1973, she helped improve legislative transparency in the wake of a government stock-fraud scandal and spearheaded the passage of a state equal rights amendment.Ms. Farenthold being applauded after she was voted the first chairwoman of the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1973. Associated PressShe would earn renown far beyond her state, becoming, The Texas Observer wrote in 2007, “a near-cult symbol of the Texas that might be.”Ms. Farenthold was a two-time candidate for the Texas governorship, the first chairwoman of the National Women’s Political Caucus, a college president and a nominee for the vice presidency of the United States a dozen years before Geraldine A. Ferraro became the first to be chosen for that office by a major party.In 1975, a Newspaper Enterprise Association panel named Ms. Farenthold one of the 50 most influential women in America, along with Coretta Scott King; Gloria Steinem; Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post; and the congresswomen Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm.“Even by Texas standards, she is something big,” the Washington Post columnist David S. Broder wrote in 1972.Ms. Farenthold’s characteristic self-confidence seemed born of charmed circumstance: A child of privilege, she was educated at an elite private high school and an elite college; flourished in law school, where she was one of three women in a class of 800; successfully resumed her legal career after rearing her children; and was long married to a European nobleman.But as news articles often noted, she also exuded an air of sorrow. A “melancholy rebel,” the Texas journalist Molly Ivins called her.She had reason to be. For all her advantages, Ms. Farenthold had also known repeated, almost unfathomable loss.Daughter of a ‘Southern Belle’Mary Frances Tarlton was born in Corpus Christi on Oct. 2, 1926, to an eminent Democratic family. Her paternal grandfather, Benjamin Dudley Tarlton, had been a member of the Texas House and chief justice of what was then the Second Court of Civil Appeals, in Fort Worth.Her father, Benjamin Dudley Jr., was a district attorney; her mother, the former Catherine Bluntzer, was, as Ms. Farenthold described her, a “Southern belle.”Owing to the efforts of a slightly older brother, Benjamin Dudley III, to pronounce the word “sister,” the infant Mary Frances would be known to the end of her life as Sissy.When Sissy was 2, and Benjamin 3, he died from complications of surgery to remove a swallowed coin. Her parents’ grief suffused the household ever after, she said.Sissy had her own childhood struggles: She suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia and did not learn to read until she was nearly 10. “I’ll never forget wearing the dunce cap in the corner of the classroom,” Ms. Farenthold told People magazine in 1976.But exercising the forward momentum that would be a hallmark of her adult life, she made herself into a scholar. After attending the Hockaday School, a girls’ preparatory academy in Dallas, she entered Vassar at 16.At 19, having earned a bachelor’s degree in political science there, she enrolled in law school at the University of Texas, where her eyes were opened to gender inequality.“I had never heard of differences in income between men and women for the same work, or of women having difficulty getting into grad school,” Ms. Farenthold told The Christian Science Monitor in 1973. “But there the students would make bets on how long it would be before I would be married, and whether I would make it for six weeks.”She received her law degree in 1949 and joined her father’s firm in Corpus Christi. The next year she married George Edward Farenthold, a Belgian-born baron who became a Texas oilman.She forsook the law for more than a decade to rear their five children. Her father, however, continued to pay her bar association dues: He knew she would be back.In 1960, Ms. Farenthold’s 3-year-old son Vincent bled to death after a nighttime fall that went unheeded. Like several of the Farenthold children, he suffered from von Willebrand disease, a clotting disorder.“For years after that, if I heard a child cry, it would just tear me up,” she told Texas Monthly in 1992. Yet she was determined, she said, not to reprise her parents’ perpetual mourning.She returned to work in 1965, becoming the director of legal aid for Nueces County, of which Corpus Christi is the seat. The class and racial inequities she encountered there, she said, would catalyze her political career.“In our society we believe in attacking the powerless — punishing people for being poor and dependent and having to be supported by public funds, while powerful men are embezzling public money to make themselves rich,” Ms. Farenthold told The Guardian in 1973. “I want equal justice.”Voters Sent a WomanHer first House campaign was run on the slimmest of budgets. She refused to advertise on billboards in any case, because she believed they ravaged the landscape. Instead, her supporters fashioned campaign signs from coffin lids and affixed them to the roofs of cars.An opponent’s sign, meanwhile, read “Send a man to do a man’s job.”“No race could be as difficult as the one in ’68 was,” Ms. Farenthold told The Chicago Tribune in 1973, “because I was breaking the ice. No woman had run before in the south of Texas.”Yet on the strength of her reformist populism — she decried the business interests that she felt were running state government — she wonMs. Farenthold in 2009. The Texas journalist Molly Ivins called her a “melancholy rebel.” She had reason to be.Matt Carr/Getty ImagesIn her second term, Ms. Farenthold became known as a member of the Dirty Thirty, a bipartisan reformist group of state legislators convened in response to the Sharpstown scandal of 1971-72. In that scandal, senior government officials — among them Gus F. Mutscher Jr., the Democratic speaker of the state House, and Governor Preston E. Smith, also a Democrat — were accused of being allowed to buy stock under highly favorable terms through a Houston banker, Frank Sharp, in exchange for political favors.The Dirty Thirty (the name, proudly adopted, was an epithet hurled by an opponent) helped bring about greater transparency in state government proceedings, which had often been held behind closed doors with capricious record-keeping and little formal debate.In 1971, with Ms. Jordan and a House colleague, Rex Braun, Ms. Farenthold sponsored the Texas Equal Rights Amendment. The bill, which prohibited discrimination based on “sex, race, color, creed or national origin,” passed in both chambers. It was approved by voters in 1972.Ms. Farenthold unsuccessfully sought the governorship in 1972 and again in 1974. (The first woman to hold that post in Texas was Miriam A. Ferguson, in the 1920s and ’30s; the second was Ann W. Richards, from 1991 to 1995.)Ms. Farenthold earned 28 percent of the vote in the 1972 Democratic gubernatorial primary, finishing second to Dolph Briscoe Jr., a wealthy rancher, who failed to earn a majority. He prevailed in a runoff, went on to win the governorship and was re-elected in 1974.Three days after Ms. Farenthold’s runoff defeat, the body of her 32-year-old stepson, Randy Farenthold, from her husband’s prior marriage, was found in the Gulf of Mexico near Corpus Christi. His hands were bound and a concrete block was chained round his neck.The younger Mr. Farenthold, described in the press as a millionaire playboy, had been scheduled to testify in the federal trial of four associates alleged to have defrauded him of $100,000 in a money-laundering scheme reported to involve organized crime. (One of them, Bruce Bass III, was indicted in the murder in 1976 and received a 16-year sentence in a plea agreement the next year.)Her Name in NominationIn July 1972, at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Ms. Farenthold’s name was placed in nomination for the vice presidency by Ms. Steinem. The nomination was seconded by Fannie Lou Hamer, the African-American civil-rights activist.It was not the first time that a woman had been nominated for the vice presidency by a major party: Lena Springs, a Democrat, had her name placed in nomination in 1924, as did the Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross four years later.But Ms. Farenthold was the first to garner significant support, earning votes from more than 400 delegates, enough to finish second, ahead of notables like Birch Bayh, Jimmy Carter, Edward M. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy.“That was the first time I was supported because I was a woman,” she later said. “I had always been supported despite the fact.”(The winner was Thomas F. Eagleton, who would step down as George S. McGovern’s running mate after it was learned that he had been treated for depression. He was replaced by R. Sargent Shriver Jr.)Ms. Farenthold left electoral politics after her 1974 gubernatorial loss.“What I discovered,” she told The Texas Observer in 2007, “was that political office was a life of constant moral compromise. And I didn’t enter politics with the purpose of compromising my morality.”In 1976 she became the first woman to serve as president of Wells College, a small liberal-arts college, then for women only, in Aurora, N.Y. During her four-year tenure, she balanced its budget, expanded student recruitment and founded the Public Leadership Education Network, a national organization that prepares women for vital public-policy roles.As if in fealty to her Texas roots, Ms. Farenthold also studied the feasibility of enriching Wells’s coffers by tapping the vast reserves of natural gas that lay beneath the campus. In late 1980, after she had left, Wells College heeded her recommendation: It drilled — and struck gas.Returning to Texas, she practiced law in Houston and taught at the University of Houston and at Texas Southern University, a historically Black institution in the city.In 1989, her youngest child, Jimmy, disappeared, at 33. Jimmy, who was Vincent’s identical twin, was said never to have gotten over his brother’s death; by the time he was a young man he was addicted to drugs and drifting around Texas. Despite extensive searches, he was never found and is presumed dead. (The family held a funeral for him in 2005.)Ms. Farenthold’s marriage ended in divorce. She is survived by her son George Farenthold II, who said the cause of death was Parkinson’s disease; another son, Dudley; a daughter, Emilie C. Farenthold; a sister, Genevieve Hearon; three grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a step-grandson, Blake, the son of Randy Farenthold. A younger brother, Dudley Tarlton, was killed in a helicopter crash in 2003.(Blake Farenthold is a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas who did not seek re-election in 2018 after it was revealed that he had paid $84,000 of taxpayers’ money to settle a sexual harassment suit against him.)Ms. Farenthold’s many laurels include a lifetime achievement award, named for Ms. Ivins, from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.Her work in later years included agitating for gay rights and against South African apartheid, the Iraq War and the torture of detainees at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay. She served as chair of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank in Washington, and as a human-rights observer in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq and elsewhere.There remained much to do — enough for a lifetime, as Ms. Farenthold made plain in a 2009 public-television interview.“I’ve always said,” she declared, “on the way to my funeral, if we passed a demonstration, I’ll probably jump out.” More

Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, is the former president’s choice to take on his leading G.O.P. critic. But five years ago, she tried to overturn his victory in the party’s primary race.Former President Donald J. Trump is leading an all-out war against Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming because of her perceived lack of loyalty: After voting to impeach him, she became the voice of Republican opposition to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.But his choice to replace her, Harriet Hageman, was not always a loyal soldier herself. She was part of the final Republican resistance to his ascent in 2016, backing doomed procedural measures at the party’s national convention aimed at stripping him of the presidential nomination he had clinched two months earlier.Ms. Hageman worked with fellow supporters of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in a failed effort to force a vote on the convention floor between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz, regardless of the results of the primaries and caucuses held across America. Calling Mr. Trump “the weakest candidate,” Ms. Hageman attributed his rise to Democrats who she claimed had voted in Republican primaries.She condemned Mr. Trump as a bigoted candidate who would repel voters Republicans needed to win a national election, warning that the G.O.P. would be saddled with “somebody who is racist and xenophobic.”Ms. Hageman’s yearslong journey from Never-Trumpism to declaring him the best president of her lifetime is one of the most striking illustrations yet of the political elasticity demonstrated both by ambitious Republicans in the Trump era and by the former president himself, who has relentlessly asserted his dominance over leaders of his party.Ms. Hageman is hardly the only Republican to vigorously oppose Mr. Trump and later back him when it proved politically advantageous. Mr. Cruz and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, along with Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who led the 2016 rebellion at the convention, all became enthusiastic Trump supporters.None of them, however, have quite achieved Ms. Hageman’s remarkable political transformation, which has not been previously reported. Five years ago, she was a passionate opponent of Mr. Trump who tried to stop him outside the normal electoral process; now, she is his champion in the Republican Party’s marquee showdown over fealty to the former president.Ms. Cheney’s vocal opposition to Mr. Trump has turned what might otherwise be a sleepy contest for a safely Republican Wyoming congressional seat into a high-profile test case of the former president’s dominance over the party. His obsession with removing Ms. Cheney from office — he has derided her in at least 16 statements since March, including one on Thursday that contained a doctored photo combining her hair, body and eyeglasses with former President George W. Bush’s face — has overshadowed nearly all of his other political efforts, aside from vying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.“It’s going to be the most important House race in the country in 2022,” Ms. Cheney said during a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast on Sunday. “It will be one where people do have the opportunity to say, ‘We want to stand for the Constitution.’”For Ms. Hageman, joining forces with Mr. Trump to attack an old ally — the two Wyoming women were once so close that Ms. Hageman served as an adviser to Ms. Cheney’s short-lived 2014 Senate campaign — presents an opportunity to accomplish something she has been unable to do without him: win a statewide race in Wyoming.Ms. Cheney has vocally opposed Mr. Trump, who has pushed his party to remove her from office.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Hageman has never spoken publicly about her effort to block Mr. Trump from the 2016 nomination. In a statement to The New York Times, she drew a tenuous connection between her actions and Ms. Cheney.“I heard and believed the lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media were telling at the time, but that is ancient history as I quickly realized that their allegations against President Trump were untrue,” Ms. Hageman said. “He was the greatest president of my lifetime, and I am proud to have been able to renominate him in 2020. And I’m proud to strongly support him today.”Ms. Cheney, who declined to comment or be interviewed for this article, supported Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. She endorsed him that May and, in October, issued a statement reiterating her support after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump bragged about groping women.The daughter of a longtime Wyoming state legislator, Ms. Hageman, 58, built her career as a water and natural resources lawyer fighting environmentalists and government regulations. She became known in Wyoming for her successful challenge of a Clinton-era prohibition on road construction on millions of acres of U.S. Forest Service land. In 2009, a headline in an environmentalist magazine called her “The Wicked Witch of the West.”In 2016, Ms. Hageman went to the Republican convention in Cleveland as a Cruz delegate after the Texas senator won Wyoming with 66 percent of the vote and 23 of 25 delegates at the state’s county conventions that March.She had been appointed by the Wyoming delegation to the national convention’s powerful Rules Committee. The big question facing the committee’s members that year was how much say delegates should have in choosing the party’s nominee.Leading up to the convention, Ms. Hageman joined a small group of Republicans who organized a last-ditch effort to “unbind” delegates. They hoped to insert a conscience provision freeing delegates to vote for whomever they wanted regardless of the results of state primaries and caucuses, a move concocted by supporters of Mr. Cruz to instigate a convention floor fight.That summer, Ms. Hageman was a regular participant in conference calls plotting the last-gasp opposition to Mr. Trump, long after he had won enough delegates to clinch the nomination. She and other delegates, many of them social conservatives from the West loyal to Mr. Cruz, argued that Mr. Trump was a cancer on the party, chosen by liberal voters in Democratic states to undermine Republicans nationwide.The Republican National Committee, working with the Trump campaign, did all it could to squash the rebellion.Ms. Hageman, center, holding a book; Senator Mike Lee, right; and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, behind Mr. Lee at back right, were among the Republicans who supported unbinding delegates at the party’s 2016 convention.Gina Blanchard-Reed“To vote to free the delegates at that time was considered a capital offense by the Trump campaign,” said Steve Duprey, then a Republican National Committee member from New Hampshire who was on the Rules Committee. “It was clearly an attempt to deny him the nomination, which he had won fair and square.”Reince Priebus, then the chairman of the R.N.C., held long meetings with Mr. Cuccinelli and Rules Committee members who were seeking to unbind delegates. Ms. Hageman, along with Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who was at the time the highest-profile Rules Committee member involved in the stop-Trump movement, was among the attendees. It soon became clear the Trump team had peeled away enough support from Mr. Cuccinelli that the vote would not be close. Mr. Trump’s allies forced a vote that would affirmatively declare delegates to be bound by the results of their state’s nominating contest.When it was time to vote, 87 stood in favor of binding delegates.Only 12, including Ms. Hageman and Mr. Lee, voted in opposition, far short of the 28 needed to put the question of unbinding delegates to a vote of the full convention, which would have been a potentially embarrassing spectacle for Mr. Trump. Though the fight was over, Ms. Hageman participated in meetings over the next few days in which Cruz delegates discussed whether they had any remaining options to stop Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump, who endorsed Ms. Hageman this month, is aware of her support for Mr. Cruz in 2016 and, during his interview with her this summer before he made his decision, briefly touched on her role in the effort to stop Mr. Trump from claiming the nomination, according to a person familiar with their talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the endorsement process. Mr. Trump, who has taken particular pleasure in collecting the support of converted never-Trumpers, worked to clear the Wyoming field for Ms. Hageman, sending a fleet of aides to work for her and asking other candidates to drop out of the race after he made the endorsement.The former president has for months focused on ousting Ms. Cheney. His aides and his son Donald Trump Jr. tried unsuccessfully in March to change Wyoming’s election law in a way that would have hurt the congresswoman’s re-election prospects. Ms. Hageman, Mr. Trump said in his endorsement, “is all in for America First.”It took years for Ms. Hageman to become an unabashed Trump supporter.When she ran for Wyoming governor in 2018, Mr. Trump endorsed Foster Friess, a billionaire conservative donor who had backed Mr. Trump’s 2016 effort. Mr. Friess, who died in May, finished second to Mark Gordon, who was the state treasurer and is now Wyoming’s governor. Ms. Hageman placed third.Ms. Hageman was known for her penchant to attack fellow Republican candidates in debates. She did not invoke Mr. Trump or his campaign themes in her television advertising.“She was talking about state issues then, not anything federal,” said Diemer True, a former Wyoming State Senate president who also served as chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party.In 2020, Ms. Hageman ran for office again, seeking one of Wyoming’s two posts as members of the Republican National Committee. This time, she aligned herself with Mr. Trump against Barbara Cubin, a former congresswoman backed by party moderates. Ms. Hageman prevailed at a virtual state party convention, 152 votes to 105.Kitty Bennett More

Preliminary results indicated an outcome so tight that it could take months of talks to form a new government at a critical moment for Europe.BERLIN — After 16 years of Angela Merkel as their chancellor, Germans scattered their votes across the political spectrum on Sunday in the election to replace her, a fractured return that heralds a messier political era in Germany and weaker German leadership in Europe.Preliminary official results gave the center-left Social Democrats a lead of 1.6 percentage points, an outcome so close that no one could yet say who the next chancellor would be nor what the next government would look like.The only thing that seemed clear was that it would take weeks if not months of haggling to form a coalition, leaving Europe’s biggest democracy suspended in a kind of limbo at a critical moment when the continent is still struggling to recover from the pandemic and France — Germany’s partner at the core of Europe — faces divisive elections of its own next spring.Sunday’s election signaled the end of an era for Germany and for Europe. For over a decade, Ms. Merkel was not just chancellor of Germany but effectively the leader of Europe. She steered her country and the continent through successive crises and in the process helped Germany become Europe’s leading power for the first time since two world wars.Her time in office was characterized above all by stability. Her center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union, has governed in Germany for 52 of the 72 postwar years, traditionally with one smaller party. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany clenching her hands as she listened to speeches on Sunday at her party headquarters in Berlin after parliamentary elections.Markus Schreiber/Associated PressBut the campaign proved to be the most volatile in decades. Armin Laschet, the candidate of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, was long seen as the front-runner until a series of blunders compounded by his own unpopularity eroded his party’s lead. Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic candidate, was counted out altogether before his steady persona led his party to a spectacular 10-point comeback. And the Greens, who briefly led the polls early on, fell short of expectations but recorded their best result ever.On Sunday, the Christian Democrats’ share of the vote collapsed well below 30 percent, heading toward the worst showing in their history. For the first time since the 1950s, at least three parties will be needed to form a coalition — and both main parties are planning to hold competing talks to do so.“It’s so unprecedented that it’s not even clear who talks with whom on whose invitation about what, because the Constitution does not have guardrails for a situation like that,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the Berlin-based vice president of the German Marshall Fund, a research group.Even before the first official returns were announced, the battle lines were drawn as both main contenders to succeed Ms. Merkel as chancellor announced their claims to the top job — and their intention to fight for it. A long tradition of deferential, consensus-driven politics was quickly evaporating, giving way to a more raucous tone.At the headquarters of the Social Democrats in Berlin, loud cheering erupted when the first exit polls were announced. “The S.P.D. is back!” Lars Klingbeil, the party’s general secretary, told the crowd of party members, before Mr. Scholz took the stage with his wife and insisted “that the next chancellor is called Olaf Scholz.”Across town, at the conservative headquarters, Mr. Laschet, the candidate of Ms. Merkel’s party, made clear who he thought the next chancellor should be, saying, “We will do everything to form a government.”The unpopularity of Armin Laschet, the Christian Democratic Union candidate, appears to have dragged the party down.Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersIt is a messy set of circumstances likely to complicate the negotiations to form a government. And whoever ends up being chancellor will have not just a weaker mandate — but less time to spend on leading in Europe, analysts said.“Germany will be absent in Europe for a while,” said Andrea Römmele, dean of the Hertie School in Berlin. “And whoever becomes chancellor is likely to be a lot more distracted by domestic politics.”The election’s outcome gives significant leverage to the two smaller parties that are almost certain to be part of any new government: the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. Courted by both Mr. Scholz and Mr. Laschet, they have signaled they will first talk among themselves.“Two Maybe-Chancellors and Two Kingmakers,” read one headline of the German public broadcaster ARD.The murky outcome made for a tense night of election-watching in the Pankow district of Berlin. Lena Mucha for The New York TimesIn one way Sunday’s returns were an expression of how disoriented voters are by the departure of Ms. Merkel, who is leaving office as the most popular politician in her country.The chancellor oversaw a golden decade for Europe’s largest economy, which expanded by more than a fifth, pushing unemployment to the lowest levels since the 1980s.As the United States was distracted by multiple wars, Britain gambled its future on a referendum to leave the European Union and France failed to reform itself, Ms. Merkel’s Germany was mostly a haven of stability.“She was the steady hand at the helm, the steady presence,” said Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund.“Now there is an uneasiness about what comes next,” he said. “The presence and reputation of this chancellor is outsized and very hard to emulate.”That explains why both main candidates to succeed her mostly ran on platforms of continuity rather than change, attempting where possible to signal they would be the one most like the departing chancellor.“This election campaign was basically a contest for who could be the most Merkel-like,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said.Even Mr. Scholz, whose center-left party is the traditional opposition party to Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, played up his role as finance minister in the departing government rather than his own party’s sensibilities, which are well to the left of his own.Inside a polling station, a gym at a secondary school in Berlin Neukölln on Sunday morning.Lena Mucha for The New York Times“Stability, not change, was his promise,” said Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff. The distinctive political tradition of the Federal Republic of Germany is change through consensus.In the four decades it was split from the Communist East, West Germany had strong governments, traditionally formed by one of the two larger parties teaming up with a smaller partner or, in rare circumstances, the two big parties forming a grand coalition. This tradition was continued after reunification in 1990, with far-reaching changes — like the labor market reforms of the early 2000s — often carried out with support from across the aisle.But four parties have become seven and the two traditional main parties have shrunk, changing the arithmetic of forming a government that represents more than 50 percent of the vote. In the future, analysts say, three or four, not two, parties, will have to find enough common ground to govern together.Some analysts say this increasing fragmentation of Germany’s political landscape has the potential to revitalize politics by bringing more voices into the public debate. But it will no doubt make governing harder, as Germany becomes more like other countries in Europe — among them, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands — that have seen a similar fracturing. And messier politics could make the next chancellor weaker.Ms. Merkel has embodied the tradition of consensus more than perhaps any of her predecessors. Of her four terms in office, she spent three in a grand coalition with her party’s traditional opponents, the Social Democrats. When he took the stage at S.P.D. headquarters on Sunday evening, Olaf Scholz insisted “that the next chancellor is called Olaf Scholz.” Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesGoverning as Ms. Merkel’s junior partners almost killed the Social Democrats, Germany’s oldest party, stripping it of its identity and its place as the leading voice of center-left opposition. But Mr. Scholz used his cozy relationship with the chancellor to his advantage, effectively running as an incumbent in a race without one.At party headquarters on Sunday night, he was being celebrated as a savior by party members who were adamant that the chancellery was theirs.“The S.P.D. is the winner here,” insisted Karsten Hayde, a longtime party member, while Ernst-Ingo Lind, who works for a parliamentarian, said that only a year ago, he would “not have dreamed of being here.”Among the parties represented in the next German Parliament is the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which shocked the nation four years ago by becoming the first far-right party to win seats there since World War II. Its vote share slipped to 10.5 percent from almost 13 percent in 2017 and it will no longer be the country’s main opposition party. But it solidified its status as a permanent force to be reckoned with. In two states in the former Communist East it came first.“We are here to stay, and we showed that today,” Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of the party, told party members gathered on the outskirts of Berlin.For all the messiness of this election and Merkel nostalgia, many Germans took heart from the fact that more than eight in 10 voters had cast their ballots for a centrist party and that turnout was high.Early-morning voters in Munich. In a sign that the closest election in years had mobilized voters, turnout was expected to surpass the 76 percent recorded in 2017, when the last national elections were held.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesThe mobilization was palpable outside several polling stations in Berlin, where families patiently waited their turn in long lines.“It’s the beginning of a new era,” said Ms. Römmele of the Hertie School. Christopher F. Schuetze, Jack Ewing and Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin. More

As Germany’s election results came into sharper focus on Monday, no party won decisive majority but the loser was clear: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.After 16 years in power under Ms. Merkel’s leadership, they saw their share of the vote collapse by nearly nine points, garnering only 24.1 percent of the vote. It was the party’s worst showing in its history, and the election signaled the end of an era for Germany and for Europe.The Social Democratic Party defeated Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union by 1.6 percentage points, according to preliminary official results reported early Monday. Their candidate, Olaf Scholz, insisted the party’s gain of five points from 2017 — giving them 25.7 percent of the vote — provided them a mandate to form the next government.It will likely take at least three parties to form a government and both the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats were planning to hold competing talks to do so.Already Monday, Germany saw the political posturing begin, as the two parties sought to woo partners for a potential government. But the most important potential partners, the environmentalist Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats, decided that they would first hold talks together.Christian Lindner, the head of the Free Democrats said his party and the Greens, which are the most polarized on key issues of taxes and renewable energy, needed to figure out whether the could find a “progressive center” on which to move ahead before holding talks with any further partners.The process of forming a new government could take weeks if not months of haggling. That would leave Europe’s biggest democracy suspended in a kind of limbo at a critical moment when the continent is still struggling to recover from the pandemic and France — Germany’s partner at the core of Europe — faces divisive elections of its own next spring.On Monday morning, Clément Beaune, France’s junior minister for European affairs, told France 2 television that Germany had prioritized “a form of moderation, of stability, of continuity.”“It is in the French interest to quickly have a strong German government in place,” he said, expressing confidence that France and Germany would remain close partners, regardless of which coalition emerges. He said he saw the main parties as “committed, comfortable pro-Europeans.”For over a decade, Ms. Merkel was not just chancellor of Germany but effectively the leader of Europe. She steered her country and the continent through successive crises and in the process helped Germany become Europe’s leading power for the first time since World War II.Cheers erupted at the Social Democratic Party’s headquarters when the exit polls were announced early Sunday evening. A short while later, supporters clapped and chanted “Olaf! Olaf!” as Olaf Scholz, their candidate, took the stage to address the crowd.“People checked the box for the S.P.D. because they want there to be a change of government in this country and because they want the next chancellor to be called Olaf Scholz,” he said.The campaign proved to be the most volatile in decades. Armin Laschet, the candidate of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, was long seen as the front-runner until a series of blunders compounded by his own unpopularity eroded his party’s lead. Mr. Scholz had been counted out altogether before his steady persona led his party to a spectacular 10-point comeback. And the Greens, who briefly led the polls early on, fell short of expectations but recorded their best result ever.Mr. Laschet appeared at his party headquarters an hour after the polls closed, declaring the outcome “unclear” and vowing to try to form a government even if his party came in second. Armin Laschet, center, the chancellor candidate for the Christian Democratic Union, spoke Sunday night in Berlin.Pool photo by Clemens BilanThe progressive, environmentalist Greens made significant gains as compared to the 2017 election but fell short of having a viable shot at the chancellery.On the outer edge of the political spectrum, support for the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, appeared roughly unchanged, while the Left party appeared to be hovering on the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in Parliament.Aurelien Breeden More

India Walton, the democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor, still faces a challenge from Mayor Byron Brown, who is running a write-in campaign against her.BUFFALO, N.Y. — In late June, India Walton shocked the political world by defeating the four-term incumbent mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, in the Democratic primary, seemingly guaranteeing her eventual election in November in a solidly Democratic city.Her win would be historic: She would be the first socialist to be elected mayor of a major American city in more than half a century, and the first woman — and first Black woman — to lead New York’s second-largest city.In recent months, however, Mr. Brown has also been trying to make some history, mounting a furious comeback campaign to hold on to his job as a write-in candidate after trying — in vain — to add his name to the ballot as an independent.While most write-in campaigns are quixotic, political observers in Buffalo believe that Mr. Brown’s widespread name recognition and ample campaign resources could actually make him a slight favorite, particularly if the city’s small cohort of Republicans votes for him.The unexpected battle for Buffalo reflects the defining tension within the national Democratic Party, pitting its new generation of left-wing politicians against its more moderate establishment, as represented by Mr. Brown.That battle played out in the Democratic presidential primary last year and again in the New York City mayoral primary this year — with more centrist candidates, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Eric Adams, winning both times. And it may well resume in next year’s primary for governor, when Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, is likely to face a challenge from the party’s left flank.Against that backdrop, the mayoral race in Democratic-dominated Buffalo has gained national attention, particularly on the left. With a little more than five weeks to go before the election, a roster of prominent liberal figures, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are pledging support for Ms. Walton.Liberal groups and downstate Democrats, including the New York City public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and the former candidate for governor, Cynthia Nixon, have also been rallying to Ms. Walton’s side, hoping to demonstrate that their insurgent energy flows all the way to the edge of Lake Erie, where Buffalo sits.“This has become a statewide, national and international priority,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of the New York Working Families Party, which has endorsed Ms. Walton and is offering strategic and fund-raising support. “People are calling from everywhere to make sure that India can come out ahead.”On paper that would seem like a fait accompli: Ms. Walton is the only person on the ballot. But Mr. Brown, a lifelong Democrat who is the city’s first Black mayor, seems to be banking on a coalition of business leaders and conservatives, some labor groups and loyal voters who approve of his 16 years in office to vault him to victory.Long known as a mild-mannered moderate, Mr. Brown has hardened his rhetoric in response to the threat of political oblivion, portraying Ms. Walton, a registered nurse making her first run for public office, as an inexperienced interloper.“I am convinced that she is unqualified for this position,” said Mr. Brown, 63, in a recent interview. “And if she became mayor of the city of Buffalo, it would be a disaster for this community.”Nor does he see any problem with accepting the support of Republicans.“The way I look at it, an election isn’t over until the general election has been held,” Mr. Brown said. “So I see no concerns with optics at all.”Such statements are galling to Ms. Walton, 39, who says the mayor’s intransigence is doing a disservice to the residents of the very city he says he loves.“I believe that if the mayor wants what’s best for Buffalo, he would have conceded, he would have helped with a productive transition, and gracefully bowed out,” said Ms. Walton, sitting in her single-room downtown campaign office. “But instead he’s throwing a tantrum.”Mr. Brown’s ongoing campaign has made some Democrats queasy, as well as put elected officials in an awkward political position. Among them are Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo native, who is faced with either abandoning Mr. Brown — a former head of the New York Democratic state party — or risking alienating the ascendant left wing.The governor’s office has said Ms. Hochul had no comment on the race, and her campaign office says she will not be making an endorsement, but instead will be “supporting county parties across New York to bolster their get-out-the-vote efforts.”Jeremy Zellner, the chairman of the Erie County Democratic Committee, said that Mr. Brown’s quest to upend a fellow Democrat was unsettling, noting that several prominent local conservatives, as well as outspoken fans of former President Donald J. Trump, have expressed support for Mr. Brown, and have been attacking Ms. Walton.“He’s openly taking the support of Republicans, and working with them,” said Mr. Zellner, who also serves on the Erie County Board of Elections and is backing Ms. Walton.Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, talked to Patrick Lett, a constituent, outside a workforce training center. He lost the primary, but has waged a write-in campaign.Libby March for The New York TimesMs. Walton’s primary victory came largely from the work of a volunteer staff and strong support from the city’s west side, a mix of middle-class neighborhoods, new immigrant communities and elegant homes.She has a compelling personal biography: She is a mother of four children, having had her first child at 14 and later living in a group home and earning a GED while pregnant with twins. Her path to politics was circuitous, including once working as a tattoo artist and later serving as a representative for the powerful health care union, SEIU 1199.Her message, during the primary and now, was one of sharing the wealth in Buffalo, which has seen a surprising uptick in population and pockets of economic vitality over the last decade. Her campaign promises, including reforming policing, addressing poverty and reducing economic and racial inequities, seemingly struck a chord with primary voters, after a year of Covid-19 and a national reckoning over race relations.Her general election campaign seems to be staying on that message, while also trying to play down any suggestion that — as a socialist — she is anti-growth.“I want to reduce poverty in my community,” Ms. Walton said, adding, “If people are less poor, they have more money to spend in businesses.”There are signs, however, that Ms. Walton is bulking up — and changing up — her staff, a possible indication of the seriousness of Mr. Brown’s challenge. Last week, she announced a new campaign manager, Drisana Hughes, who worked on Alvin Bragg’s successful primary run for Manhattan district attorney.She has also been welcoming downstate supporters, doing a swing of events over the weekend in New York City, including a fund-raiser with Mr. Williams, a potential candidate for governor next year, who has criticized Governor Hochul for not vocally backing Ms. Walton.“This should be a race where the governor is stumping for the first female mayor of Buffalo,” he said.Many local and state politicians have, in fact, scrupulously avoided making endorsements of either candidate. And last week, Jay Jacobs, the current chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and a moderate himself, confirmed that the party was not planning on making an endorsement in the race.“One way or another, a Democrat is going to be elected mayor of Buffalo,” Mr. Jacobs said.Mr. Brown was a trailblazer when he was elected the first Black mayor of Buffalo in 2005, after stints as a state senator and city councilman. He takes credit for a series of accomplishments, including tax cuts and increased property values, as well as gleaming new buildings along the city’s waterfront. At the same time, however, Buffalo remains home to one of the highest poverty rates in the country — more than 30 percent — a problem that is even worse for the city’s children. In mid-September, the mayor’s hopes suffered a setback, when judges in both federal and state court ruled that Mr. Brown’s name — and a newly created party he had called the Buffalo Party — should be removed from the official ballot, reversing lower court decisions.Mr. Brown’s write-in campaign’s slogan — “Write Down Byron Brown” — is found on red-white-and-blue campaign signs peppered throughout the city and has been echoed by the Twitter hashtag #writedownbyronbrown.Last week, that hashtag was used by a curious ally: Carl Paladino, the Buffalo developer, former Republican candidate for governor and staunch supporter of Mr. Trump. Mr. Paladino tweeted his support for Mr. Brown, and circulated an emailed invitation for a fund-raiser for him.Jacob Neiheisel, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, said Mr. Brown erred in refusing to debate Ms. Walton before the primary or regularly acknowledge her candidacy.“Frankly I think he just didn’t take it seriously enough,” said Mr. Neiheisel. Since deciding to pursue a write-in campaign, Mr. Brown has been aggressively attacking Ms. Walton; in an early September debate, he accused her of wanting to “defund the police” and cut police jobs, echoing a recent ad.Ms. Walton denied this, saying that she wants the police to concentrate on stopping and investigating crime, not handling social services like homeless outreach and mental health calls.“There’s one person up here that’s been defunding our community,” she said in a reference to her opponent, mentioning his administration’s cuts to community centers and swimming pools. “And that’s caused crime to run rampant.”Later, sitting in a gleaming new workplace training center on the city’s hardscrabble east side, Mr. Brown pressed his case that he was running to safeguard “the future of my city.”“I think I’m the best equipped person to do the work that needs to do done,” he said.He was blunt in response to accusations that he is meanspirited in not accepting the outcome of the primary.“I never cry and whine about what people do who are running for office,” he said, adding, “So I think that notion of ‘sore loser’ that some of her supporters are trying to push is just a false notion.”For her part, Ms. Walton seems confident, saying she and her team are working the phones, knocking on doors and raising money every day.Still, there is a small sense of frustration that Mr. Brown’s general election campaign has prevented her from concentrating on a potential move to City Hall. She noted that “for the last 50 years, the Democratic primary has decided who the presumptive mayor is.”Her responsibility, Ms. Walton said, is to the city’s voters. “I have to deliver for them,” she said. “I shouldn’t be spending all this time justifying a solid win.” More