Elections

There is growing anti-China sentiment in South Korea, particularly among young voters. Conservative politicians are eager to turn the antipathy into a presidential election issue.SEOUL — The list of election issues set to define South Korea’s presidential race next year is long. The runaway housing prices, the pandemic, North Korea and gender inequality are a start. But an unlikely addition has also emerged in recent weeks: China.South Korea’s decision ​​to let the American military deploy a powerful antimissile radar system on its soil​ in 2017 has been the subject of frequent criticism from China. And last month, a presidential hopeful, Yoon Seok-youl, told the country to stop complaining, unless it wanted to remove its own ​radar systems near the Korean Peninsula.Political elites here are usually careful not to antagonize China, the country’s largest trading partner. But Mr. Yoon’s blunt rhetoric reflected a new phenomenon: a growing antipathy toward Beijing among South Koreans, particularly young voters whom conservative politicians are eager to win over.Anti-Chinese sentiment has grown so much this year that China has replaced Japan — the former colonial ruler — as the country regarded most unfavorably in South Korea, according to a ​joint ​survey by ​the polling company ​Hankook Research​ and the Korean newsmagazine SisaIN. In the same survey, South Koreans said they favored the United States over China six to one.Over 58 percent of the 1,000 respondents called China “close to evil” while only 4.5 percent said that it was “close to good.”Yoon Seok-youl, a conservative politician, on television during a press conference in Seoul in June. He has been openly critical of China.Ahn Young-Joon/Associated PressNegative views of China have deepened in other advanced countries as well, but among the 14 nations surveyed last year by Pew Research Center, South Korea was the only one in which younger people held more unfavorable views toward China than previous generations.“Until now, hating Japan was such a part of Korean national identity that we have a common saying: You know you are a real Korean when you ​feel hateful toward Japan for no particular reason,” said Jeong Han-wool, a chief analyst at Hankook Research​. “In our survey, people in their 40s and older still disliked Japan more than China. But those in their 20s and 30s, the generation who will lead South Korea in the coming decades, tipped the scale against China.”South Korea elects its next president in March, and observers are watching closely to see how younger people vote on the country’s policy toward Beijing.Conservatives in South Korea have called anything less than full-throated support of the alliance with Washington “pro-North Korean” and “pro-Chinese.” Progressives usually support reconciliation with North Korea and calls for diplomatic “autonomy” between the United States and China. Younger South Koreans have traditionally voted progressive, but millennials are breaking that pattern, and possibly turning into swing voters.An American military vehicle that was part of an antimissile radar system arriving in Seongju, South Korea, in 2017. China railed against South Korea over the deployment of the system.Reuters“We feel frustrated when we see our government act spineless while Beijing behaves like a bully,” said Chang Jae-min, a 29-year-old voter in Seoul. “But we also don’t want too much tension with China or North Korea.”For decades, South Korea has benefited from a military alliance with the United States while cultivating trade ties with China to fuel economic growth. But that balance has become increasingly difficult to maintain as relations between Washington and Beijing deteriorate.President Moon Jae-in’s conservative rivals, like Mr. Yoon, have complained that South Korea’s ambiguous policy on the United States and China made the country the “weakest link” in the American-led coalition of democracies working to confront Chinese aggression.“We cannot remain ambiguous,” Mr. Yoon told JoongAng Ilbo, a South Korean daily, last month during an interview in which he made his critical remarks about China.The conservative opposition has long accused Mr. Moon of being “pro-China.” His government has maintained that South Korea — like other American allies, including those in Europe — should avoid alienating either power. While South Koreans overwhelmingly support the alliance with Washington, the country’s trade with China is almost as big as its trade with the United States, Japan and the European Union combined.Chinese tourists in a shopping district in Seoul last year.Jean Chung for The New York Times“We cannot pick sides,” Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong has said.Yet when Mr. Moon met with President Biden in Washington in May, the two leaders emphasized the importance of preserving “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” and vowed to make their alliance “a linchpin for the regional and global order.” Many analysts saw the statement as a sign that South Korea was aligning itself more closely with Washington at the risk of irritating China, which has called Taiwan a red line.The main conservative opposition, the People Power Party, has already begun harnessing young voters’ anti-China sentiment to secure electoral wins.In April, young voters helped deliver landslide victories for the party in the mayoral races in South Korea’s two largest cities. Last month, the party’s young leader, Lee Jun-seok, 36, said his fellow South Korean millennials would fight against Chinese “cruelty” in places like Hong Kong and Xinjiang, where China has been accused of genocide.Older Koreans, while often anti-Communist, tend to respect Chinese culture, which influenced the Korean Peninsula for millenniums. They have also looked upon the country as a benign giant whose rapid economic growth was a boon for South Korean exporters. Younger South Koreans tend not to share that perspective.President Moon Jae-in of South Korea with President Biden during a press conference at the White House in May.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMost of them grew up proud of their homegrown economic and cultural successes. And as China’s foreign policy became more assertive under President Xi Jinping, they began to see the country’s authoritarianism as a threat to free society. They have also been critical of China’s handling of the coronavirus, its expansionism in the South China Sea and fine-dust pollution from China that regularly blankets Seoul.“They have grown up in a liberal environment the earlier generations built through sweat and blood, so they hold an inherent antipathy toward illiberal countries,” said Ahn Byong-jin, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. “They root for politicians who criticize China.”Nowhere has South Korea’s dilemma between Washington and Beijing been magnified more dramatically than over the deployment of the American antimissile radar, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD.When South Korean officials agreed to the deployment, they called it a necessity in defending against North Korea. China saw it as part of a continuing threat from the United States military presence in the region, and retaliated by curbing tourism to South Korea and boycotting the country’s cars, smartphones, shopping malls and TV shows.South Korean students demonstrated in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, outside the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, in 2019.Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHa Nam-suk, a professor of Chinese politics and economy at the University of Seoul, has monitored how deepening animosity toward Beijing has played out on and off campuses in recent years, as cash-starved South Korean universities began accepting more Chinese students.South Korean and Chinese students clashed over whether to support young pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, he said. They have also gotten into spats online over K-pop and kimchi. In March, many young South Koreans forced a TV station to cancel a drama series after it showed an ancient Korean king dining on Chinese dumplings.“As they watched what China did in places like Hong Kong,” Mr. Ha said, “Koreans began asking themselves what it would be like to live under a greater sphere of Chinese influence.” More

For days now, the news media has likened the chaotic end of our misadventure in Afghanistan, and the awful images of terrified people scrambling onto planes at the Kabul airport, to the final exit from South Vietnam. The comparison is overdrawn; the last American combat troops left Indochina two years before the collapse of the Saigon government.But there is at least one potential parallel between the two conflicts that should have President Biden worried: The last time a war blew up in the face of a Democratic president, it derailed his domestic agenda and stalled the most ambitious social reforms of a generation.To be sure, domestic political concerns should not overshadow the immediate urgency of getting all Americans and the Afghans who worked for them out of Afghanistan. But history shows how adversity abroad has often led to trouble for the governing party back home. Mr. Biden may not be able to save his ambitious legislative agenda unless he understands that lesson from the past.In 1964, Lyndon Johnson and his fellow Democrats secured crushing majorities that enabled them to enact a flurry of landmark legislation: the Voting Rights Act, the bill establishing Medicare and Medicaid, an overhaul of immigration law. It is a feat Mr. Biden and progressive Democrats in Congress today would dearly like to emulate.But Johnson’s decision early in 1965 to send thousands of troops to combat the Vietcong soon halted the momentum of his Great Society agenda and put Democrats on the defensive. A year later, as the war dragged on and protests mounted, Johnson’s approval rating dipped below 50 percent. In the midterm contests of 1966, the Republican Party picked up 47 seats in the House, and Democratic governors in eight states were replaced by Republicans — one of them a former actor in California named Ronald Reagan. By 1968, Republicans had taken back the White House, and Democrats never achieved a progressive policy agenda as far-reaching again.Joe Biden bears far less responsibility for the defeat in Afghanistan than Lyndon Johnson did for the debacle in Indochina. As Mr. Biden mentioned in his address to the nation on Monday, as vice president, he opposed the troop surge ordered by Barack Obama in 2009. He can also claim that he was merely carrying out an agreement Donald Trump signed last year.Furthermore, unlike the Vietnam War, which provoked a long, scorching debate that divided the country far more bitterly and profoundly than the more limited, if longer, battle with the Taliban ever did, this conflict could soon be forgotten. As the public’s attention shifts away from Afghanistan, Mr. Biden’s decision may seem less like a failure and more like a sober, even necessary end to a policy that was doomed from the start.Yet the president and his fellow Democrats face a political environment so daunting that even the slightest disruption could derail their domestic agenda. Even before the Afghan crisis, they needed the vote of every senator from their party to enact their budget blueprint, and Mr. Biden has never had the sky-high approval ratings that allowed Johnson to rule Congress with an iron fist. This week, for the first time, his rating dipped into the 40s. Whatever they manage to accomplish in Congress, Democrats could easily lose their narrow control of both houses in the next midterm elections, especially if Republicans effectively inflame fears about Afghan refugees being resettled in this country.The United States has not had a true majority party for 50 years, and that stalemate, with the enduringly fierce partisanship it engenders, is unlikely to end soon. To pass the big reforms he wants, Mr. Biden will need to describe what he did to end this war better than Johnson explained why he dispatched troops to meddle in another civil conflict in a nation thousands of miles from their homeland.President Lyndon Johnson with Gen. William Westmoreland in South Vietnam in 1967. The Vietnam War derailed Johnson’s domestic agenda.Yoichi Okamoto/LBJ LibraryTwo lessons from Johnson’s downfall are paramount. First, tell the truth, even if it makes you look bad, temporarily. The 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers demonstrated that Johnson lied continually when he lauded the progress the United States and its South Vietnamese allies were supposedly making. By 1966, the press was accusing the administration of creating a credibility gap that only yawned wider as the conflict escalated.All presidents lie at times, but those who admit mistakes, particularly obvious ones, can retain their popularity. This happened to John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 and to Bill Clinton when he acknowledged his affair with Monica Lewinsky in 1998 (although he benefited more from the Republicans’ failed attempt to throw him out of office).Mr. Biden made a decent start at such truth-telling during his speech this week. But he should give a fuller explanation of why his administration failed to prepare for a Taliban victory that, according to years of intelligence reports, was quite likely.Second, keep the coalition that elected you united in its response to the crisis. Though Johnson had a reputation as a masterful politician, he became despised by millions of his fellow Democrats because of his Vietnam policy. If Democrats in Congress follow through on their vows to carry out extensive hearings into the collapse of the Afghan government, they could provoke a similar intraparty battle.But the president may be able to stave off that kind of public bickering. If he chooses to declassify whatever vital documents exist, in an attempt to convince his Democratic critics that he is serious about revealing why his exit strategy went wrong, it may dissuade them from engaging in their own lengthy investigation.The defeat in Afghanistan, like the one in Vietnam, was a long time coming. Democrats can take steps to prevent such interventions. But if they repeat the errors of their predecessors in the 1960s, they may secure the triumph of an opposition party whose leaders have not stopped lying about the election that drove them from power.Michael Kazin (@mkazin), a professor of history at Georgetown University, is the author of the forthcoming book “What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Social media has felt quieter without the constant ALL CAPS fury of Donald Trump, but Jason Miller is trying to change that.Miller, who was the former president’s longtime aide and spokesman, recently took a new gig running a social media platform called Gettr, which claims to be a haven from censorship and cancel culture. It may sound a little like Parler 2.0, but the game-changer for Gettr — which has a little under two million users — would be if Miller can get Trump to create an account and get back online.[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Miller how he intends to get Trump to log on. She challenges him on his claims that Twitter and Facebook are out to censor conservatives and presses him about how content moderation works on his platform. They also discuss the question on everyone’s mind: Is Trump likely to run again in 2024?(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Joe RachaThoughts? Email us at [email protected].“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Matt Kwong Daphne Chen and Caitlin O’Keefe, and edited by Nayeema Raza ; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris and Kristin Lin; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Liriel Higa. More

Republicans in Georgia took a step toward gaining control over elections in Fulton County, a Democratic bastion.The Georgia State Election Board on Wednesday appointed a majority-Republican panel to review the performance of the Fulton County board of elections, another step toward a potential Republican takeover of the election system in the biggest Democratic county in the state.The three-person panel will include two Republicans and one Democrat: Rickey Kittle, a Republican member of the Catoosa County election board; Stephen Day, a Democratic member of the Gwinnett County election board; and Ryan Germany, a lawyer for the office of Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state.The moves surrounding the Fulton County election board have come as Republican-controlled legislatures across the country angle for greater power over election administration, often seeking to strip it from election officials and give it to partisan lawmakers. Those efforts come as former President Donald J. Trump continues to spread lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Republicans have also pushed to restructure many county election boards in Georgia, potentially allowing more local G.O.P. officials to take over positions.The State Election Board was required to appoint the panel reviewing Fulton County under the Georgia voting law that Republicans passed in March. Republican state lawmakers who represent the county requested the review last month.Fulton County, which is the largest in the state and includes much of Atlanta, has a long history of struggles with elections, including a disastrous primary in June 2020 in which voting lines lasted for hours.But Democrats across the state have denounced the push for a performance review there, noting that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud last year and that the election results were affirmed by three recounts and audits. Democrats view the request as a political stunt at best, and at worst a partisan takeover in the most consequential county for their party in Georgia.President Biden carried Fulton County in November with 73 percent of the vote and more than 380,000 votes. It is home to the largest number of voters of color in the state. Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have falsely denied Mr. Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia, which has long been solidly Republican but last year tilted to the Democrats in the presidential election and two Senate runoffs.Voting rights groups criticized the review panel — all white and predominantly Republican — as unrepresentative of Fulton County.“Fulton County voters deserve better than this,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, the chief executive of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group in Georgia founded by Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic candidate for governor.The review panel is one of several provisions in Georgia’s new voting law that lay the groundwork for the takeover of election administration by partisan lawmakers.But any potential change in control of the Fulton County election board would be a drawn-out process, most likely taking months given the many steps required by the voting law.Mr. Raffensperger, the secretary of state, indicated his support for the panel, writing on Twitter, “I have been saying for a long time that the state needs the authority to step in when counties have consistently failed their voters.”“I’m confident that the performance review team will do a good job, and I hope Fulton will cooperate with this process,” he said. More

The populist politics that may eject Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, from office before his term is out are more than a century old. Progressive reformers took power in California in 1911 promising, in the words of then newly elected Gov. Hiram Johnson, to restore “the people’s rule” and destroy “the former political master of this state,” the Southern Pacific Railroad.As part of their program, the progressives convinced voters to enact the initiative and referendum, promising that those electoral tools would prevent private interests from ever again subverting the people’s will. They also enshrined in the state Constitution “an admonitory and precautionary measure which will ever be present before weak officials,”: the recall.Though they worked to strengthen democracy, the well-meaning reformers created a weapon that, one hundred years later, could be wielded by an aggrieved minority to thwart the will of the people whom turn-of-the-century progressives aimed to protect. The relative ease of California’s recall process is just one of many long-term factors that, combined with Mr. Newsom’s inconsistent leadership, has created the possibility that California, one of the bluest states in the nation, may soon find itself with an extremely conservative Republican governor. A recent poll gives Mr. Newsom only a 3 percent edge among likely voters in the recall election, scheduled for Sept. 14. If he gets anything less than 50 percent, then the top vote-getter among his opponents — at this point, the Trump-backing, mask- mandate-opposing radio host Larry Elder, with only about 20 percent support among likely voters polled — would replace him.America’s constitutional landscape, at both state and federal scale, contain provisions that can be bent to fulfill anti-majoritarian agendas. Like the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, the Senate itself and the Electoral College, California’s recall process allows a determined minority to overrule the will of the voters. The state constitutional amendment promoted by Governor Johnson that established the recall set a relatively low bar for its use. Recall proponents need attain the signatures of only 12 percent of voters in the most recent election for governor. (Many other states set the minimum at 25 percent.) Still, despite dozens of attempts, recall organizers almost always failed to get enough signatures within the 160 days prescribed by law. The one exception occurred in 2003, when voter anger over rolling electrical blackouts led to the successful recall of another Democrat, Gov. Gray Davis and his replacement by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Hollywood celebrity and a Republican. The recall proponents of 2021 would have failed as well, but a judge agreed to give them an additional 120 days because the pandemic made it difficult to obtain signatures in person.The extension gave recall proponents enough time to target right-wing voters and encourage them to send in their petitions. Partisan polarization, as pronounced in California as in the rest of the nation, is another long-term reason for Mr. Newsom’s current state of political peril. California is a deep blue state: Joe Biden won 64 percent of the presidential vote in 2020, Mr. Newsom won 62 percent of the vote for governor in 2018, and the Republican Party claims only 24 percent of registered voters. But some areas of the state, particularly the Sierra Nevada foothills and the sparsely populated counties in the state’s Far North, are home to right-wing activists who abhor Mr. Newsom’s liberal policies on immigration, marriage equality, gun control and income taxes.Living in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, these conservative residents feel angry, alienated and powerless. Some even want to secede and form a new state with like-minded rural conservatives in southern Oregon. Residents of California’ northernmost counties, whose hand-painted signs proclaim that drivers on Interstate 5 north of Redding are entering the “State of Jefferson,” signed the recall petition in astonishing numbers. In Lassen County, more than 18 percent of registered voters signed, as opposed to less than 2 percent in San Francisco County. These conservative voters are more likely to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from the Republicans and that mask and vaccine mandates are examples of tyranny. Some of them believe that any Democratic executive is by definition illegitimate.Mr. Newsom was the first governor in the nation to issue a mask mandate, and his early pandemic response won him high approval ratings from most Californians. But the state’s shifting guidance on masks, as well as on business and school reopenings, caused some of those early supporters to change their minds. The governor made his biggest personal mistake last November, when he and his wife joined other guests without masks to celebrate the birthday of a lobbyist friend. Not only did the governor violate his own face-covering policy, he did so at one of Northern California’s most expensive restaurants, the French Laundry, in Napa Valley. The pictures of the event crystallized an image of him as an elitist and a hypocrite, and helped the recall campaign surge to more than 442,000 signatures in just one month from a little more than 55,000. Though Republicans see Mr. Newsom as the worst kind of tax-and-spend, gay-friendly, immigrant-loving liberal, many left-leaning Californians find him to be ineffectual at solving the structural problems of the state. Income inequality, they note, is increasing, despite some redistributive efforts by the governor and the state Legislature, and the number of homeless residents has reached historic levels. Fires destroy the homes of thousands of Californians every year, and make the air unbreathable for tens of millions more.Yet Mr. Newsom has accomplished a great deal, especially given the size of the various crises — involving the climate, the economy and public health — that he faces. He has pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to prevent future wildfires, and forced the private utility PG&E, which has admitted blame for starting some of the worst blazes, to spend billions to compensate victims and to forgo dividend payments to shareholders for three years. He’s also signed the largest funding package for affordable housing and aid to the homeless in state history. Hiram Johnson and the progressives wanted to empower the voters to recall corrupt public officials, not punish those who struggled because they faced enormous public health and environmental emergencies.If liberal Californians cannot muster enough enthusiasm to send in their ballots against the recall, they might wake up on Sept. 15 to find themselves with a new governor-elect who has just a sliver of voter support. Such a result would almost certainly prompt a movement to change or even abolish the recall. To achieve Hiram Johnson’s stated goal of “the return of popular government in California,” its voters might need to consider getting rid of one of his signature reforms.Kathyrn Olmsted is a professor of history and the interim chair of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author, most recently, of “Right Out of California: The Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Morgan Harper, 38, ran a high-profile primary challenge last year for a congressional seat with the backing of national progressive groups.While Republicans are running a hotly competitive primary race for Ohio’s open Senate seat next year, the Democratic side had been owned by a single candidate: Representative Tim Ryan from the Youngstown area.But that equation changed on Wednesday with the entry into the race of a second viable Democrat, Morgan Harper, who ran a high-profile primary challenge last year for a congressional seat with the backing of national progressive groups.Ms. Harper, a former adviser at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said in an interview she would run a campaign aimed at turning out Black voters, women and young people with a populist message of getting “the economy on the side of working people.’’The Democratic brand has been badly tarnished in Ohio since President Barack Obama twice carried the state. In contests as recently as this summer, Ms. Harper’s left-wing vision of her party has failed to revive it. College-educated suburban voters in Ohio may have swung to Democrats in the Trump era, but Republicans more than made up the difference by winning legions of white working-class voters.Earlier this month, Shontel Brown, a moderate who embraced President Biden, won a special election primary for an Ohio congressional seat against Nina Turner, a nationally known surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders in his presidential races.The election was the latest in a series of contests this year pitting Democrats’ ideological wings against one another, including New York City, Virginia and Louisiana, and in all cases, the moderates prevailed.Ms. Harper, 38, canvassed for Ms. Turner in the Cleveland-based special election. She said that contest should not be seen as a forerunner of a statewide Democratic Senate primary in 2022.“I respect and endorsed Nina Turner, but that race is very different from this one,’’ she said. Democrats “are losing a lot of people” in Ohio, she added, noting that to win them back, she would run as a candidate “with a track record of standing up to corporate interests.”A native of Columbus, Ms. Harper was raised by a single mother and earned a master’s degree from Princeton and a law degree from Stanford. She co-founded a group to drive voters to the polls, which this year offered rides to vaccination sites.She lost her April 2020 primary challenge to Representative Joyce Beatty, now the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Ms. Harper, who was endorsed in the race by Justice Democrats, raised an impressive $858,000 for her race and hoped to follow in the footsteps of left-wing populists like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who knocked out incumbent Democrats.But Ms. Beatty easily won. This month, she endorsed Mr. Ryan, who at the end of June had $2.6 million on hand for his Senate race. “I’ve seen firsthand how he shows up every day to fight for working people,’’ Ms. Beatty said in a statement. More

The vote is expected to come down to whether Democrats can mobilize enough of the state’s enormous base to counteract Republican enthusiasm for Gavin Newsom’s ouster.President Biden sent an urgent message last week to the most populous state in the nation: Keep Gov. Gavin Newsom “on the job.” On the airwaves, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the prominent progressive from Massachusetts, has been repeatedly warning that “Trump Republicans” are “coming to grab power in California.”Text messages — a half-million a day — are spreading the word on cellphones. Canvassers are making their case at suburban front doors. As some 22 million ballots land in the mailboxes of active registered voters this week in anticipation of the Sept. 14 recall election, Mr. Newsom — a Democrat elected in a 2018 landslide — has been pulling out all the stops just to hold on to his post.The vote is expected to come down to whether Democrats can mobilize enough of the state’s enormous base to counteract Republican enthusiasm for Mr. Newsom’s ouster. Recent polls of likely voters show a dead heat, despite math that suggests the governor should ultimately prevail.Less than a quarter of the electorate is Republican. Mr. Newsom has raised more campaign cash than all four dozen or so of his challengers put together. And the governor’s most serious rival is the talk radio host Larry Elder, who has called global warming “a crock,” says the minimum wage should be “zero-point-zero-zero,” and gave Stephen Miller, the hard-line Trump administration immigration adviser, his first big public platform.But the coronavirus pandemic has not been particularly governor-friendly. Polls this month show that approval for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is sagging as the state writhes under spiking deaths and hospitalizations. And Mr. Newsom’s supporters are encountering a striking degree of ambivalence and distraction.“I think he has done as well in the job as any governor could have, given the last year of the pandemic, but I’m not a fan,” Anamaria Young, 53, said recently in El Dorado Hills, east of Sacramento. Removing the governor more than a year before the end of his first term feels undemocratic, Ms. Young, a Democrat, said, but she also dislikes his lack of progress on homelessness and his deference to teachers’ unions.“When my ballot comes,” she said, “I really don’t know how — or if — I am going to vote.”Only one other attempt to recall a California governor has come to a vote, when Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced Gray Davis in 2003.Mike Blake/ReutersInitiated by Republicans who took issue with Mr. Newsom on the death penalty and immigration, the once long-shot effort to recall the governor gained improbable traction as the coronavirus persisted. First, pandemic-related shutdowns prompted a judge to extend the measure’s signature-gathering deadline, and then word leaked that the governor had dined unmasked with lobbyists at an exclusive restaurant after imploring Californians to cover their faces and stay home.If a majority of voters decide to recall Mr. Newsom, the new governor will be whoever among his 46 challengers gets the most votes, even if no rival gets a majority.Critics of the state’s recall rules have long worried that 49 percent of the electorate could vote to keep an incumbent, only for a tiny plurality of voters to choose a replacement. On Friday, a lawsuit was filed in federal court challenging the recall’s constitutionality, based on that argument. Mr. Newsom has been urging Democrats to vote no on the recall and not even bother to answer the second question, which asks who should replace him. Among likely voters, recent polls show support for Mr. Elder, the current front-runner, at around 20 percent..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“No intellectually honest analysis” would predict the governor’s defeat, said Paul Mitchell, vice president of the bipartisan data firm Political Data Inc. in Sacramento. But state lawmakers in February extended pandemic-related accommodations to voters through the year, dealing a wild card.The rules allow voting by mail at a scale comparable only to the 2020 presidential election — which is seemingly a Democratic advantage, although off-year participation is harder to forecast. Only one other attempt to recall a California governor has come to a vote, and 18 years have passed since the state replaced Gray Davis with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Mitchell noted.“The swing voters in this campaign are not the usual ones choosing which party to vote for,” agreed Nathan Click, a former spokesman for the governor who is now campaigning to defend him. “They’re Democrats who are choosing whether to vote.”Mr. Elder, 69, a Black “small-l libertarian” lawyer who rose to national stature from Los Angeles, where he has been a talk radio fixture for decades, said in an interview that he was not “some wild-eyed radical,” and that he entered the race at the behest of “normal people” such as his barber and dry cleaner as well as like-minded friends such as Dennis Prager, his right-wing broadcast mentor. His priorities — public school choice, high housing costs and rising crime — transcend party labels, he said.Larry Elder, who has been a talk radio fixture in Los Angeles for decades, is the leading Republican candidate in the recall election.Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressHe said his opposition to abortion was irrelevant in a state that supports abortion rights as much as California, and his view that a minimum wage deters job creation is mainstream economics. Remarks such as the one he made in 2008 on “Larry King Live” discounting global warming were merely to criticize “alarmism,” he said, acknowledging that climate change is happening but adding, falsely, that “nobody really knows to what degree” it is caused by humans.He said he has voted for every Republican presidential candidate since the 1970s, not just Donald J. Trump.“Why bring up Stephen Miller? Why bring up abortion? Why bring up minimum wage?” Mr. Elder said. “Because Gavin Newsom cannot defend his record.”Polls indicate that majorities of Californians approve of Mr. Newsom’s policies, but when surveys are narrowed to the most likely voters, his margin thins.A statewide poll in mid-July by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, found that likely voters were almost evenly split over whether to oust the governor, with 47 percent saying they would vote to recall him and 50 percent saying they would retain him, an edge that just barely exceeded the poll’s margin of error. Subsequent polls have affirmed those results.So Mr. Newsom has spent big to turn out his party’s 46 percent share of the voters. His recall defense campaign received some $46 million in contributions through July, far more than Mr. Elder ($4.5 million); Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego ($2.1 million); John Cox, the businessman campaigning with a bear ($9.4 million, mostly self-funded); the reality television figure and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner ($750,000); or any other candidate.Canvassers for an immigrant advocacy group pitched Mr. Newsom to voters in Palmdale, Calif., last month.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesThe mere reminder that ballots are heading for mailboxes should turn many tuned-out Democrats into likely voters, Mr. Click said, and teams of supporters have been texting some 500,000 Democrats daily. Representative Barbara Lee, co-founder and the co-chair of the group Women Against the Recall, said the national Democratic Party is looking to such grass-roots efforts as a potential model for future campaigns.But Sonja Diaz, the director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Democrats seemed to be playing catch-up as the Delta variant preoccupied voters.“People have been procrastinating,” she said, comparing the governor’s team to overconfident students failing to study for a final. “Delta has made it clear you’re not prepared for the exam.”Northeast of Los Angeles, in Palmdale, canvassers for an immigrant advocacy group pitched the governor to voters last week.Ashley Reyes, 27, a registered Democrat who was watching her toddler and his cousins play in her gated driveway, said she did not realize the recall had qualified for the ballot. Her parents and in-laws were immigrants, she said, adding that she would vote to keep the governor.Ashley Reyes, a registered Democrat, said she would vote to keep the governor.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesPeering into 101-degree heat through his metal screen door, Edgar Robleto, 62, a Republican, replied “I want him gone” when the canvassers mentioned Mr. Newsom. The state G.O.P., which represents 24 candidates, voted last weekend against endorsing one contender, lest any Republican opt not to vote.Experts predict a slugfest. “Negative partisanship is the biggest driver of political decision-making right now,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican adviser.David Townsend, a Democratic consultant, agreed: “This is going to be totally tribal.”“This is not going to be about Newsom,” he said. “It’s going to be about whether Democrats want Trump to have a governor in California.” More

A western New Yorker with centrist Democratic roots, she is described as both tough and disarming. She is also relatively untested.As Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo barreled into the 2018 primary season, buffeted by criticisms from the increasingly powerful left wing of the Democratic Party, his team privately worried that he needed a more progressive running mate or a person of color with deeper ties downstate.Publicly, he suggested that Kathy Hochul, his moderate lieutenant from Buffalo, might be better suited running for Congress. His camp floated potential replacements, including the current state attorney general, Letitia James.Those efforts were not lost on Ms. Hochul — indeed, his allies asked her multiple times if she would consider pulling out of the race, an adviser to Ms. Hochul said. But she ran and won re-election anyway, giving no public indication of any daylight with the governor.Three years later, it is Mr. Cuomo who is being replaced by Ms. Hochul, as she moves to become New York’s first female governor after he resigned in disgrace. But the tensions over the 2018 Democratic ticket remain a revealing episode, illustrating both Ms. Hochul’s strengths and vulnerabilities as she takes on one of the most consequential and challenging jobs in American politics.Behind her mild-mannered style, zeal for meeting voters and earnest tweets in support of “#BicycleDay” and “#NationalCerealDay,” she is a shrewd politician who has been underestimated at pivotal moments, her allies say.“No one will ever describe my administration as a toxic work environment,” Ms. Hochul said during her first news conference after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesBut when she takes office on Aug. 24, she will also be the first governor in more than a century to have deep roots in western New York, in a state where the political center of gravity is the more liberal environs of New York City. Cognizant of that, Ms. Hochul on Sunday said she wants her lieutenant governor to be from New York City.And while she championed the Cuomo administration’s record — which included some major progressive achievements despite Mr. Cuomo’s frequent clashes with the left — earlier in her career she was a relatively conservative Democrat. More