Elections

In an echo of 2020, Republicans are pushing baseless allegations of cheating in the state’s recall race even before Election Day.The results of the California recall election won’t be known until Tuesday night. But some Republicans are already predicting victory for the Democrat, Gov. Gavin Newsom, for a reason that should sound familiar.Voter fraud.Soon after the recall race was announced in early July, the embers of 2020 election denialism ignited into new false claims on right-wing news sites and social media channels. This vote, too, would supposedly be “stolen,” with malfeasance ranging from deceptively designed ballots to nefariousness by corrupt postal workers.As a wave of recent polling indicated that Mr. Newsom was likely to brush off his Republican challengers, the baseless allegations accelerated. Larry Elder, a leading Republican candidate, said he was “concerned” about election fraud. The Fox News commentators Tomi Lahren and Tucker Carlson suggested that wrongdoing was the only way Mr. Newsom could win. And former President Donald J. Trump predicted that it would be “a rigged election.”This swift embrace of false allegations of cheating in the California recall reflects a growing instinct on the right to argue that any lost election, or any ongoing race that might result in defeat, must be marred by fraud. The relentless falsehoods spread by Mr. Trump and his allies about the 2020 election have only fueled such fears.“I very honestly believe there were irregularities and fraudulent activity,” Elena Johnson, 65, a teacher in Los Angeles County who was in the crowd at a rally for Mr. Elder last week in Ventura County, said of the presidential contest last year. “It was stolen.”Because of her concerns about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Ms. Johnson said, she would be casting her ballot in person on Tuesday instead of by mail. She said she was supporting the Republican because she thought California, her adopted home after immigrating from the Philippines 40 years ago, was on the brink. “California is where I came, and California is where I want to stay,” she said.Since the start of the recall, allegations of election fraud have been simmering on social media in California, with daily mentions in the low thousands, according to a review by Zignal Labs, a media tracking agency.But singular claims or conspiracy theories, such as a selectively edited video purporting to show that people with a post office “master key” could steal ballots, have quickly ricocheted around the broader conservative ecosystem. The post office video surpassed one million views, amplified by high-profile Trump allies and members of the conservative news media.Nationally, Republican candidates who deny the outcomes of their elections remain outliers. Hundreds of G.O.P. candidates up and down the ballot in 2020 accepted their defeats. But at the same time, many of them joined Mr. Trump in the assault on the presidential race’s outcome, and in other recent election cycles, candidates, their allies and the conservative news media have increasingly expressed doubts about the validity of the electoral process.And while false claims of wrongdoing have long emerged in the days and weeks after elections, Republicans’ quick turn in advance of the California recall — a race that was always going to be a long shot for them in a deep-blue state — signals the growing normalization of crying fraud.“This is baked into the playbook now,” said Michael Latner, an associate professor of political science at California Polytechnic Institute. As soon as the recall was official, he added, “you already started to see stories and individuals on social media claiming that, you know, they received five ballots or their uncle received five ballots.”Some Republican leaders and strategists around the country worry that it is a losing message. While such claims may stoke up the base, leaders fear that repeatedly telling voters that the election is rigged and their votes will not count could have a suppressive effect, leading some potential Republican voters to stay home.Republican officials have tried to encourage their voters to vote by mail while also acknowledging their worries about fraud.Rich Pedroncelli/Associated PressThey point to the Senate runoff elections early this year in Georgia, where two Republican incumbents, Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, were ousted by first-time Democratic challengers. Though the state had just voted Democratic in the presidential election for the first time in decades, the Senate races were seen as an even taller task for Democrats.But in the months after the November general election, Mr. Trump fired off countless attacks against the legitimacy of the Georgia contests, floating conspiracy theories and castigating the Republican secretary of state and governor for not acquiescing to his desire to subvert the presidential election. When the runoffs came, more than 752,000 Georgians who had voted in November did not cast ballots, according to a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. More than half of those voters were from constituencies that lean toward Republican candidates, the review found.“The person that they most admired in their conservative beliefs was telling them that their vote didn’t count,” said Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan of Georgia, a Republican, referring to Mr. Trump. “And then the next day he would tell him that the election was rigged, and then the next day he would tell them, ‘Why even show up?’ And they didn’t. And that alone was enough to swing the election to the Democrat side.”“This whole notion about fraud and elections,” Mr. Duncan continued, “it’s a shiny object that quite honestly is about trying to save face and not own reality.”Republican officials in California have performed a balancing act, trying to acknowledge their voters’ worries about fraud while ensuring that the same voters trust the state’s vote-by-mail system enough to cast a ballot. Party officials have promoted mail voting on social media, and have leaned on popular members of Republican leadership, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, to cut videos preaching the security of voting by mail.But some leading Republicans in the state have simultaneously denounced a bill passed by the State Legislature this month that would permanently enact a mail voting expansion that was introduced as an emergency measure in 2020. Republicans in the Legislature have continued to baselessly claim that mail voting invites fraud and that drop boxes remain unsecure.“I can tell you story after story in my district,” State Senator Shannon Grove, a Republican from Bakersfield, said during a floor debate this month. She added that the Democrats who dominate the chamber would admit they had also heard complaints “if you guys were honest.”The state Republican Party has also ramped up what it calls an election integrity operation, which aims to recruit more poll watchers and is directing voters to a hotline to send in complaints of fraud. The program, according to Jessica Millan Patterson, the chair of the state party, was designed to assure voters that the California election would be secure.Larry Elder has changed his position on whether he thought President Biden won the election fairly.Allison Zaucha for The New York Times“My entire focus,” Ms. Patterson said in an interview, “is to build trust and faith within our process and make sure people are confident.” She added that she was not paying attention to the national conversation about voter fraud and that she was not worried about the Republican effort hurting turnout because “our No. 1 turnout operation is having Gavin Newsom as our governor every day.”“I’ve always focused on California; everything outside of that is noise,” Ms. Patterson said. “We have to fix our own house before we can worry about what’s going on at the national level.”Mr. Elder, the Republican challenger to Mr. Newsom who has claimed without evidence that there will be “shenanigans” in the voting process, has also set up a tip line for voters to offer evidence of fraud.Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 4A monthslong campaign. 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Despite a concerted effort from conservatives to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, most newspaper editorials in the state continue to endorse him and are strongly recommending not to vote him out of office. Many publications across the state are asking readers to overlook Mr. Newsom’s shortcomings and focus on his legislative agenda and his overall leadership during the pandemic.The editorial board of The Los Angeles Times, the largest newspaper in the state, said that replacing Mr. Newsom with “an untested and unprepared alternative who wouldn’t represent the values of most Californians” would be disastrous.The paper acknowledged Newsom’s “missteps” — including issuing rigid public health mandates during the pandemic but then being photographed dining unmasked with a large group — but called these minor compared with “the good he has done for California as one of the nation’s strongest leaders on the COVID-19 pandemic.”The San Francisco Chronicle similarly urged its readers to vote on the recall “with a resounding no.” The editorial board echoed a similar argument that, while he has not been perfect, Mr. Newsom is better than the alternative.“It’s true that the governor managed the pandemic unevenly and imposed precautions inconsistently even as he violated their spirit with his infamous French Laundry soiree,” its editorial board wrote, referring to the restaurant where the governor dined unmasked. The board added that the state still “has weathered the crisis better than the nation.”In San Jose, the editorial board of The Mercury News slammed Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host who is running, stating that he “has zero experience in elected office and is a Donald Trump clone who would impose his right-wing, extremist views on California in every way possible.”The Sacramento Bee, in also discouraging Mr. Newsom’s removal, stated that the governor’s three strongest potential replacements: Mr. Elder, along with Kevin Faulconer, a former mayor of San Diego, and the businessman John Cox are all “shamefully uninformed and unqualified.”The Orange County Register, one of the few conservative-leaning publications in the state with an editorial board, came out in support of the recall, questioning Mr. Newsom’s management of issues like wildfires and education.The paper championed Mr. Elder as the obvious pick — and said that its stance on a recall was less about the governor’s handling of the pandemic and more about a series of concerns including increased rates of homelessness, crime and poverty.“Our problem with Newsom’s leadership is more fundamental,” it wrote. “Pick an issue and the state’s failures are obvious.” More

While all eyes were on Gov. Gavin Newsom, a developer in Sonoma County was charging forward with an effort to recall the district attorney who had sued his company.All around California, other officials were facing recall campaigns, too. A member of the Fallbrook Union High School District board of trustees. A councilwoman in Kingsburg. A councilman in Morgan Hill. The mayors of Huntington Beach and Placerville, council members in Huntington Beach and Placerville, school board or board of education members in Chico, Santa Monica, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Elk Grove and oh my goodness, are you tired yet?Recalls are a dime a dozen in California, and to read through the rationales for them is to confront a deluge of grievances, some serious and others remarkably petty.The recall efforts are because she voted against resuming full-time in-person schooling. Because of zoning disputes. Because she “has demonstrated a Marxist/socialist agenda.” Because of his homelessness policies. Because she declined to prosecute a police brutality case. Because he ostensibly “lacks mental competence.” Because she was convicted of welfare fraud several years before she was elected.If history is a guide, most of these campaigns will never come to a vote. But two, in addition to Mr. Newsom’s, will be on the ballot on Tuesday.The first is in wine country north of San Francisco, and its target is Jill Ravitch, the Sonoma County district attorney. The campaign is led by a local developer, Bill Gallaher, whose company was sued by her office in connection with the abandonment of residents of an assisted-living facility during a 2017 wildfire. (The case was ultimately settled.) Mr. Gallaher, who has said the recall is in service of “steady, competent leadership overseeing public safety in our county,” has bankrolled the campaign himself.The second is a convoluted saga concerning William Davis and Melissa Ybarra, who are on the City Council in Vernon and had backed a successful recall campaign this year against two other council members who had supported a solar and wind energy project whose developer was involved in an embezzlement investigation.Now those recalled council members, Diana Gonzales and Carol Menke, are supporting the new recall campaign, alleging — according to The Los Angeles Daily News — that Ms. Ybarra engaged in nepotism as the city’s housing commissioner and that Mr. Davis is mentally incompetent. Ms. Ybarra and Mr. Davis say the campaign is just retaliation.Before this year of two recall elections, Vernon — a city just southeast of Los Angeles that has a mere 108 residents — had never had one. More

US Capitol attackSix US Capitol police officers could face discipline for 6 January actionsInternal investigation recommends disciplinary measures against officers but none will face criminal charges Richard Luscombe@ More

Conforme se acerca la votación en la que podría ser destituido, el gobernador invoca a una figura familiar de la política estadounidense: el expresidente Donald Trump.SACRAMENTO — A medida que la campaña para destituirlo llega a su último fin de semana, el gobernador de California, Gavin Newsom, está insistiendo en la opción que ha presentado a los votantes desde el comienzo del proceso para la revocatoria: o Donald Trump o él.“Derrotamos a Trump el año pasado, y gracias, pero no hemos derrotado al trumpismo”, ha repetido el gobernador durante las dos últimas semanas en un bombardeo de recorridos de campaña y llamadas por Zoom. Desde la resistencia a las vacunas hasta el negacionismo climático, dice, todo lo que aterrorizaba a los liberales californianos sobre el último presidente está en la papeleta. Y mucho más que su propio futuro personal pende de un hilo: “Es una cuestión de vida o muerte”.Sus oponentes lo cuestionan. El gobernador, dicen, es el problema, y la destitución nunca habría llegado a unas elecciones si una masa crítica del estado no se hubiera resentido por sus restricciones pandémicas a las empresas y las aulas, incluso cuando sus propias finanzas estaban seguras y sus hijos recibían instrucción en persona. El expresidente, señalan, no es candidato. “Newsom es un alarmista”, tuiteó recientemente David Sacks, un capitalista de riesgo de Silicon Valley que apoya la destitución.Solo tres gobernadores se han enfrentado a votaciones de destitución en Estados Unidos antes que Newsom, y él —y el poder demócrata— está haciendo todo lo posible por presentar el esfuerzo como una toma de poder radical, con algunos partidarios incluso comparándolo en un momento dado con el violento intento del 6 de enero de bloquear la elección del presidente Joe Biden.Al invocar a Trump como su oponente de elección, Newsom está retomando un mensaje que ha usado en el pasado para mitigar las críticas de manera efectiva, mientras que también está probando una estrategia que es probable que se replique entre los demócratas que buscan movilizar a los votantes en las elecciones intermedias en todo el país el próximo año.En efecto, el líder que los californianos eligieron por abrumadora mayoría en 2018 no se postula siguiendo las políticas demócratas de un demócrata que busca reelegirse tanto como atendiendo un llamado a la acción urgente, aunque conocido, contra una amenaza existencial a los valores del estado azul.Las encuestas sugieren que Newsom está siendo convincente, y se ha adelantado a sus oponentes, un súbito enfoque de las mentes demócratas después de que los probables votantes indicaron a principios de este verano que la carrera se podría estar apretando. Una encuesta publicada la semana pasada por el Instituto de Políticas Públicas de California reveló que solo el 39 por ciento de los posibles votantes, en su mayoría republicanos, apoyan la destitución, mientras que el 58 por ciento piensa votar en contra.Su ventaja entre las votantes ha sido especialmente sólida, reforzada en los últimos días por las apariciones de la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y las senadoras Elizabeth Warren y Amy Klobuchar. El presidente Biden hará campaña con él el lunes y el expresidente Barack Obama y el senador Bernie Sanders aparecen en sus anuncios de campaña.Ha acumulado unos 70 millones de dólares en contribuciones contra la revocatoria. Eso es menos que los cientos de millones de dólares que se gastaron el año pasado, por ejemplo, en la lucha por una iniciativa sobre la protección laboral de los trabajadores por obra, pero aún así es mucho más que el dinero acumulado por los otros 46 aspirantes en la votación. Además, su equipo ha movilizado un enorme esfuerzo de captación de votos con decenas de miles de voluntarios que envían mensajes de texto a decenas de millones de votantes y hacen campaña por él en siete idiomas.El gobernador también ha tenido avances en la lucha contra el coronavirus, ya que los nuevos casos se han estabilizado en todo el estado y el 80 por ciento de los californianos que cumplen los requisitos han recibido al menos una dosis de la vacuna. Por el contrario, Orrin Heatlie, un republicano que es sargento jubilado de la oficina del alguacil de la zona rural del norte de California y principal promotor de la revocatoria, no ha podido hacer campaña últimamente por la iniciativa que él mismo puso en marcha. En una entrevista por mensaje de texto, Heatlie dijo que estaba enfermo en casa con COVID-19.El panorama ha reforzado la afirmación del gobernador de que su destitución socavaría la voluntad de la mayoría de los californianos, y ha recordado a los votantes que la destitución era una posibilidad remota hasta la pandemia. Los californianos, que al principio apoyaban las órdenes sanitarias de Newsom, se cansaron de las complicadas órdenes sanitarias del gobernador. El descontento llegó a su punto álgido en noviembre, cuando Newsom fue visto sin mascarilla en un exclusivo restaurante de la región vitivinícola después de instar al público a evitar reunirse. Una orden judicial que ampliaba el plazo para la recogida de firmas debido a los cierres por la pandemia permitió a los partidarios de la revocación aprovechar el malestar.La vicepresidenta Kamala Harris en un mitin a favor del gobernador Gavin Newsom en San Leandro, California, el miércoles.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesEn California hay 5,3 millones de republicanos, y aunque el estado no hace pública la afiliación partidista de las personas que firman las peticiones, los demócratas señalan que solo se necesitaban 1,5 millones de firmas de votantes para llevar la revocatoria a una elección especial. La mayor parte de la energía y el financiamiento iniciales llegaron de la extrema derecha: los habituales de Fox News, como Newt Gingrich y Mike Huckabee, promovieron la destitución. Los primeros mítines contaron con la presencia de activistas antivacunas, devotos de QAnon y manifestantes vestidos con el eslogan ‘Hacer grande a Estados Unidos de nuevo’.Y, según los demócratas, la derecha ganará a nivel nacional si Newsom es destituido. Si el escaño de la senadora Dianne Feinstein se abre prematuramente, el gobernador de California nombrará a su sustituto, y un republicano cambiaría el control de la cámara al Partido Republicano.Sin embargo, los observadores más veteranos señalan que el enfoque del gobernador también está probado en el tiempo.“La estrategia de Newsom ha consistido en recordar a los votantes lo que se le quitaría si se fuera, en lugar de lo que ha dado mientras está aquí”, escribió recientemente Joe Eskenazi, escritor político de San Francisco, en el sitio de noticias Mission Local, al señalar que el gobernador retrató de forma similar a un oponente progresista como “Gavin Newsom contra el abismo” en su campaña a la alcaldía de San Francisco en 2003.También es una variación de una estrategia desplegada en 2012 por Scott Walker, el exgobernador de Wisconsin y el único gobernador en la historia de Estados Unidos que ha vencido una revocatoria. Walker, un republicano del Tea Party, se enfrentó a una reacción adversa por sus esfuerzos para reducir los derechos de negociación colectiva de la mayoría de los trabajadores públicos. En lugar de adoptar una postura defensiva, Walker describió el intento de destitución como una toma de poder de los sindicatos de empleados públicos.Esta imagen sobrecargó la base republicana del estado y desató un torrente de dinero de donantes conservadores de fuera del estado. La victoria no solo salvó el puesto de Walker, sino que también impulsó su perfil político nacional.El futuro político de Newsom depende ahora de ese tipo de movilización. Las matemáticas están de su lado.Los demócratas superan en número a los republicanos casi dos a uno en California. Su campaña ha actuado con antelación para disuadir a cualquier aspirante demócrata fuerte. E incluso con sus críticos, Newsom parece tener más apoyo que cuando los californianos destituyeron al exgobernador Gray Davis y lo sustituyeron por Arnold Schwarzenegger en 2003. En aquel momento, siete de cada diez votantes desaprobaban la actuación de Davis.Las reglas de votación pandémica que impulsaron la participación a un récord de 81 por ciento de los votantes registrados en 2020 siguen vigentes, lo que permite que los más de 22 millones de votantes registrados del estado voten gratis por correo.Paul Mitchell, vicepresidente de Political Data Inc., un proveedor de información sobre los votantes que no se inclina por ningún partido, dijo que casi el 30 por ciento del electorado ya ha votado, con la participación de los votantes independientes significativamente retrasada y con muchas más boletas demócratas que republicanas hasta ahora.“Si llegan al 60 por ciento de participación”, dijo Mitchell, “es casi matemáticamente imposible que Newsom pierda”.Orrin Heatlie, la figura más visible a favor de la revocatoria, en su casa en Folsom, California, en febreroMax Whittaker para The New York TimesPero no hay garantía de que lleguen a esa “cifra dorada”. La participación entre los votantes jóvenes y latinos ha sido “ínfima”, dijo. Hasta hace poco, las encuestas mostraban que muchos demócratas no sabían que había una revocatoria.Y Newsom, a pesar del 53 por ciento de aprobación de su trabajo, no ha tenido la popularidad personal de, por ejemplo, el exgobernador Jerry Brown, su predecesor. El gobernador debe rechazar la destitución con decisión, dijo Steve Maviglio, un consultor político demócrata de California, “porque si el margen es estrecho, habrá sangre en el agua”, lo que podría complicar la reelección de Newsom en 2022.La papeleta de votación pide a los californianos que respondan a dos preguntas: ¿debería Newsom ser destituido, y si es así, quién debería reemplazarlo? Si una mayoría simple vota no a la primera pregunta, la segunda es discutible. Pero si se aprueba la destitución, el puesto de gobernador será para el aspirante más votado, aunque solo una pequeña parte del electorado lo elija, una característica que ha provocado pedidos de reforma por parte de los críticos.Nathan Click, antiguo portavoz del gobernador que ahora trabaja en contra de la destitución, dijo que el equipo de Newsom comprendió desde el principio que tendría que presentar sus argumentos con rapidez. Ya en diciembre —seis meses antes de que la revocatoria estuviera oficialmente calificada para la votación— los partidarios del gobernador hicieron eco del lenguaje de sus respuestas a la petición oficial, denunciando a los proponentes como “extremistas antivacunas pro-Trump”.En enero, el presidente del Partido Demócrata del estado llamó a la destitución “un golpe de estado en California”, comparándolo con la insurrección del 6 de enero. Y en marzo, Newsom utilizó su discurso sobre el “estado del estado” para denunciar a los “críticos de California que están promoviendo una toma de poder político partidista”.Ahora, el nombre de la campaña de Newsom —“Paren la revocatoria republicana”— pretende movilizar al partido dominante del estado. Sus anuncios de televisión y las redes sociales imploran a los votantes que detengan la “descarada toma de poder republicana”.En sus discursos, Newsom ataca al aspirante principal, el locutor conservador Larry Elder, como un clon de Trump que deshará imprudentemente los avances del estado en la lucha contra las infecciones por COVID-19 y “vandalizará” la identidad de California.Larry Elder, el aspirante principal en contra del gobernador Newsom, en un evento de campaña en Thousand Oaks, el lunesAllison Zaucha para The New York TimesAl igual que en el caso de Walker, la estrategia ha inspirado la recaudación de fondos. La ley estatal de financiación de campañas limita las donaciones a los aspirantes individuales, pero trata las revocatorias como iniciativas de los votantes, permitiendo contribuciones ilimitadas. Elder —cuya retórica trumpista ha sido descrita como un regalo para Newsom— ha recaudado hasta ahora unos 13 millones de dólares; los cheques para el esfuerzo antirevocatoria de más de 100.000 dólares han sumado por sí solos más de 50 millones de dólares. Los sindicatos de empleados públicos y los progresistas han sido especialmente generosos con el gobernador.Los defensores de la revocación predicen un final más reñido de lo esperado, pero en cualquier caso, dicen, han tenido éxito. Mike Netter, quien ayudó a lanzar la petición de Heatlie, dijo que su grupo de base ha crecido hasta unos 400.000 californianos que ya están organizando medidas de votación sobre la elección de la escuela y otras causas conservadoras.“Nadie creía en nosotros, pero nos hemos metido en la boleta, tenemos a toda esta gente y no vamos a desaparecer”, dijo Netter. “No creo que nadie esperara que Gavin Newsom tuviera que gastar 68 millones de dólares para que la carrera estuviera tan reñida”.Shawn Hubler es corresponsal de California radicada en Sacramento. Antes de unirse al Times en 2020, pasó casi dos décadas cubriendo el estado para Los Angeles Times como reportera itinerante, columnista y escritora de la revista. Ha compartido tres premios Pulitzer. @ShawnHubler More

Armin Laschet, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, is flagging in the polls, and he seems to be dragging the party down with him.FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany — His party is the biggest in Germany. It has won all but three elections since 1950, including the past four. Its departing chancellor is more popular than any politician in the country. And German voters crave stability and continuity.Armin Laschet, the conservative Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, should be riding high. The race to replace Angela Merkel was his to lose.So far, he appears to be doing just that.Weeks before Germans vote on Sept. 26 in their most important election in a generation — one that will produce a chancellor who is not Ms. Merkel for the first time in 16 years — Mr. Laschet is sinking, and he is pulling his party down with him.The race is still close enough, and Germany’s coalition politics so unpredictable, that it would be dangerous to dismiss the conservative candidate. But after recent polls showed Mr. Laschet’s party dropping to record lows — of 20 percent to 22 percent support — his position is so dire that even some Christian Democrats have wondered aloud whether they picked the wrong candidate.More broadly, Mr. Laschet’s campaign has prompted queasiness among conservatives who fear they could be seeing a weakness in the party’s appeal that has been disguised for years by Ms. Merkel’s own popularity and is now exacerbated by her inability to groom a replacement.In 2018, she announced her personally chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a moderate centrist. But even with Ms. Merkel’s support, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer had trouble stepping out of the chancellor’s shadow and building her own base. She quit in 2020 as leader of the conservatives, leaving the door open for Mr. Laschet.Mr. Laschet had long boasted that if he could run Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, where he has been governor since 2017, he could run the country. But then extraordinary flooding this summer called even that credential into question, exposing flaws in his environmental policies and disaster management.Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr. Laschet visited the flood-ravaged district of Iversheim in July.Pool photo by Wolfgang Rattay“The biggest problem for Laschet is that he has not been able to convince voters that he can do the job like Merkel,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the University of Bonn.She cited images of him laughing as the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, made a somber speech after devastating flash floods that killed 180 people, and posing before a mound of trash to make a statement of his own. “He comes across as uncertain, flippant and unprofessional,” Ms. Reuschenbach said.In recent weeks, Mr. Laschet has seen his individual popularity drop below that of his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Scholz, while support for Mr. Laschet’s party has been in a free fall since late July. The situation is so dire that Ms. Merkel, who had said she wanted to stay out of the race, is now intervening and trying to rally voters for Mr. Laschet.“Let’s be honest: It is tight. It will be very tight in the coming weeks,” Markus Söder, the head of the conservatives’ Bavarian branch, the Christian Social Union, and an erstwhile rival, said at an election rally on Aug. 20 that was meant to propel Mr. Laschet’s campaign into a final, intense stretch. “It is no longer a question of how we could govern, but possibly of whether.”Mr. Söder openly challenged Mr. Laschet this year for the chance to succeed the chancellor, and he still enjoys a higher individual popularity rating among Germans than Mr. Laschet’s.Germans elect parties, not a chancellor candidate. But over the course of Ms. Merkel’s four terms in office, her party has enjoyed the so-called chancellor bonus, meaning the willingness of voters to effectively cast a ballot for consistency.Although Ms. Merkel remains Germany’s most popular politician, her recent attempts to drum up support for Mr. Laschet have failed to turn his fortunes around, partly because they have appeared last-minute and halfhearted.Election campaign billboards featuring Mr. Laschet, left, and his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Schoz.John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesInstead, Mr. Scholz now appears to be reaping the incumbent benefit, playing up his closeness to Ms. Merkel to become the second most popular politician in the country.“Even conservative voters tend to approve of Mr. Scholz,” said Ursula Münch, the director of the Academy for Political Education in Tützing.Yet Mr. Laschet is known for comebacks, for surviving blunders — including making up grades for exam papers when he was lecturing — and for his ability to turn around a sagging campaign in the final stretch. In the weeks before the 2017 vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, he focused on the need to increase security against a backdrop of record break-ins, to better integrate migrants and to reposition the state’s industry to focus on the future. The strategy worked and he defeated the incumbent Social Democratic governor, whom he had trailed in the polls for most of the race.Among Mr. Laschet’s influences is his faith. At a time when more and more Germans are quitting the Roman Catholic Church, Mr. Laschet is a proud member. “I am not someone who uses Bible verses in my politics,” he said. “But of course it has influenced me.” And Ms. Merkel has praised his Christianity as a guiding moral compass.Mr. Laschet noted that his faith was something he had in common with President Biden, adding that the last time the leaders of the United States and Germany shared that faith was in the 1960s, with President John F. Kennedy and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer — also a Christian Democrat.Mr. Laschet talking with residents of Frankfurt an der Oder, in eastern Germany, last month.Jens Schlueter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnother influence for Mr. Laschet is Aachen, Germany’s westernmost city, where he was born and raised. Growing up in a place with deep ties to Belgium and the Netherlands, Mr. Laschet has been integrated into the larger European ideal all of his life. He still maintains a home in Aachen with his wife, Susanne, whom he met through their church choir and youth group. Together they have three grown children, including, Joe Laschet, a social media influencer and fashionista for classic men’s wear.Mr. Laschet’s first political post was as a municipal official in 1979. He was elected to the German Parliament in 1994, and then, five years later, he was elected to represent his home region as a member of the European Parliament. He entered state government in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005, as Germany’s first minister for integration — a role focused on migrants and their descendants that earned him nationwide recognition.After the Christian Democrats suffered a stinging defeat in the 2012 state elections, Mr. Laschet helped rebuild the party. He supported Ms. Merkel’s decision to welcome more than a million migrants in 2015, and two years later, he became the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia.This January, he fought to become the leader of the Christian Democrats, beating Mr. Söder, who remains a more popular politician with many Germans, but whether Mr. Laschet can save himself remains to be seen.He has had some minor successes, including a feisty appearance in the first televised debate and deftly dealing with an angry vaccination opponent who stormed the stage during a campaign stop. Mr. Laschet has also assembled a team of experts, including former rivals, like Friedrich Merz, who is well liked among the party’s conservative wing, in an effort to show his bridge-building skills. But none of these things have made a dent in the widening gap with the Social Democrats.At a campaign stop in Frankfurt an der Oder, a woman wielding a cellphone pushed her way toward the candidate as he stood on a bridge overlooking the Polish border, making a statement to reporters about Germany’s role in Europe.Asked if she intended to vote for Mr. Laschet, she demurred. “I don’t know yet who I will vote for,” said the woman, Elisabeth Pillep, 44. “But I don’t think it will be him.” More

Kathy Schwartz, a retired health care analyst living in Los Angeles, had been following the news about the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom with increasing concern.Ms. Schwartz, 65, initially believed that the recall was a waste of time and money. But she got frightened late last month as Larry Elder, the conservative radio host, vaulted into the top spot to replace the governor, propelled by promises to immediately remove all pandemic health mandates.Then a question occurred to her: Why couldn’t Mr. Newsom resign and allow Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a fellow Democrat, to take over, rendering the recall moot?“Larry Elder is scary, the guy with the bear and the guy in San Diego are scary,” she said, referring to the Republican candidates John Cox and Kevin Faulconer. “So I wondered, ‘Why don’t you just resign to be safe?’”Ms. Schwartz, who recently emailed The New York Times her query, unwittingly stumbled across a kind of thought experiment that has been percolating on social media, and among some Democrats who fear even a brief period of Republican rule in the nation’s most populous state. Earlier in the year, Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, floated the idea to Politico as what the publication called a kind of “nuclear option.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Newsom declined to comment on whether he would step down, and Ms. Kounalakis said she was not considering the possibility.“That is a highly unlikely scenario, so right now my main focus is on keeping Gavin Newsom in office, where he has been doing so much good for Californians,” she said.There has been some ambiguity about what would happen if for Ms. Kounalakis were forced to take over in the next couple of days.The California Secretary of State’s office, which runs elections, said in a statement that “we can’t at this point confirm that it would render the recall moot,” adding that “it would require more extensive research in the matter.”The relevant section of the state’s elections code says, “If a vacancy occurs in an office after a recall petition is filed against the vacating officer, the recall election shall nevertheless proceed.”But just because state law requires the recall election to go forward would not necessarily mean its results matter, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert in constitutional law.In the scenario where the governor resigns just ahead of a recall election, “there’s no one to recall,” he said. In his reading, it would take another recall petition to trigger another recall election targeting the lieutenant governor once she took over.Mr. Chemerinsky said there was even less indication in the State Constitution that the recall election’s results would hold if Mr. Newsom was no longer governor.One thing Mr. Chemerinsky is certain about, though, is that if Mr. Newsom were to be replaced by Ms. Kounalakis in the coming days, there would be a lot of litigation.“It would be a mess,” he said.Ms. Schwartz said she did not take any chances, quickly mailing in her ballot with a “no” vote on the first question, about whether the governor should be removed. On the second question — who should replace Mr. Newsom if he is recalled? — she selected Angelyne, the pink-Corvette-driving Hollywood enigma.If Mr. Elder wins, she said, she and her husband might move abroad. More

More than a third of California’s active registered voters had cast their ballots in the recall election by Saturday, several days before polls close.That hints not only at a fundamental shift in how Californians are casting their ballots, but when they are doing so, said Paul Mitchell, a vice president of Political Data Inc., a Sacramento-based supplier of election data.“There will come a day where the highest voter turnout is not on Election Day,” he said.That may not be this election, for which all of the state’s roughly 22 million active registered voters were mailed ballots. But trends suggest that the proportion of ballots cast on Tuesday, the last day of roughly a month of voting, will be much lower than in the past, Mr. Mitchell said.“If only 15 to 20 percent of people vote on the last Monday to Tuesday, that’s pretty crazy,” he said.Throughout the campaign, experts have said that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to hang on to his job leading the nation’s most-populous state would hinge on whether California’s enormous Democratic base would show up in significant enough numbers to counteract enthusiasm among Republicans. Polling has consistently shown that approval of Mr. Newsom’s performance has split largely along party lines.As of Wednesday, the Political Data Inc. election tracker showed that they have so far: Of those who received ballots, 34 percent of registered Democrats and 30 percent of registered Republicans have returned them, meaning that more than twice as many Democratic ballots have been cast.That, of course, does not include ballots that are in the mail, or those of voters who are waiting to hit the polls in person in the next several days.But Mr. Mitchell noted that the early votes have also come largely from older voters. Nearly half of voters 65 and older have returned their ballots, compared with 23 percent of voters 35 to 49 and 16 percent of voters 18 to 34.Historically, he said, early voting and voting by mail were dominated by older, whiter Republicans. But that flipped in 2020 as misinformation about ballot fraud took hold, and the data in this election suggests that the trend of voting early or by mail among older Democrats has continued.Despite the number of early votes, both campaigns have hewed to a traditional schedule by ramping up in the final week of the election.“We still want that last closing message,” Mr. Mitchell said. “It’s this romantic idea of a campaign arc that doesn’t exist anymore.”In this election, he said, the last-ditch efforts could pay off by turning out young people and Latinos whose votes may still be up for grabs. More