Elections

Progressives are holding their own with moderates in fights over policy. But off-year elections suggest they need a new strategy for critiquing President Biden without seeming disloyal.Nina Turner, the hard-punching Bernie Sanders ally who lost a special election for Congress in Ohio this week, had unique political flaws from the start. A far-left former state legislator, Ms. Turner declined to endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald J. Trump in 2016. Last year, she described voting for President Biden as a grossly unpalatable option.There were obvious reasons Democratic voters might view her with distrust.Yet Ms. Turner’s unexpectedly wide defeat on Tuesday marked more than the demise of a social-media flamethrower who had hurled one belittling insult too many. Instead, it was an exclamation mark in a season of electoral setbacks for the left and victories for traditional Democratic Party leaders.In the most important elections of 2021, the center-left Democratic establishment has enjoyed an unbroken string of triumphs, besting the party’s activist wing from New York to New Orleans and from the Virginia coastline to the banks of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. It is a winning streak that has shown the institutional Democratic Party to be more united than at any other point since the end of the Obama administration — and bonded tightly with the bulk of its electoral base.These more moderate Democrats have mobilized an increasingly confident alliance of senior Black and Hispanic politicians, moderate older voters, white centrists and labor unions, in many ways mirroring the coalition Mr. Biden assembled in 2020.In Ohio, it was a coalition strong enough to fell Ms. Turner, who entered the race to succeed Marcia Fudge, the federal housing secretary, in Congress as a well-known, well-funded favorite with a huge lead in the polls. She drew ferocious opposition from local and national Democrats, including leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus who campaigned for her opponent, Shontel Brown, and a pro-Israel super PAC that ran advertisements reminding voters about Ms. Turner’s hostility toward Mr. Biden.Ms. Brown, a Cuyahoga County official, surged to win by nearly six percentage points.Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a top member of House leadership, said in an interview Wednesday that Democratic voters were clearly rejecting candidates from the party’s most strident and ideological flank.Where some primary voters welcomed an angrier message during the Trump years, Mr. Jeffries said, there is less appetite now for revolutionary rhetoric casting the Democratic Party as a broken institution.“The extreme left is obsessed with talking trash about mainstream Democrats on Twitter, when the majority of the electorate constitute mainstream Democrats at the polls,” Mr. Jeffries said. “In the post-Trump era, the anti-establishment line of attack is lame — when President Biden and Democratic legislators are delivering millions of good-paying jobs, the fastest-growing economy in 40 years and a massive child tax cut.”Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe won every city and county of Virginia in the Democratic primary to seek a new term in office.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesIn Washington, Democrats have worked to keep a delicate peace between the party’s centrist and left-wing factions, viewing collaboration as vital to enacting any kind of ambitious legislative agenda. The tense give-and-take has yielded victories for both sides: This week, a group of insurgent House progressives, led by Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, pressured Mr. Biden into issuing a revised eviction moratorium even after he had questioned his power to do so.But moderate party leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House are greeting the results from the off-year elections with undisguised glee, viewing them as a long-awaited reality check on the progressive wing’s claims to ascendancy. Mr. Biden’s advisers have regarded the off-year results as a validation of his success in 2020 — further proof, they believe, that the Democratic Party is defined by his diverse, middle-of-the-road supporters.Top lawmakers have also grown more willing to wade into contested races after the Democrats’ unexpected losses in the House in 2020, which many of them blamed on a proliferation of hard-left language around policing and socialism.Earlier this year, Representative James E. Clyburn, the majority whip, and Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, rallied behind a centrist Democrat, Troy Carter, in a special election for Congress in Louisiana, helping him defeat a more liberal candidate. Both endorsed Ms. Brown and campaigned for her in Ohio, with Mr. Clyburn accusing the far left of intemperate sloganeering that “cuts the party’s throat.”The Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, too, yielded a moderate winner this summer: The Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, who campaigned on an anti-crime message, rolled up endorsements from organized labor and won immense support from working-class voters of color. Visiting the White House, Mr. Adams branded himself “the Biden of Brooklyn.”In Virginia, Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond said the trend in Democratic politics this year was unmistakable. A former aide to former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Mr. Stoney endorsed his old boss’s comeback bid this year, backing him over several candidates running to the left. Mr. McAuliffe, a white centrist who used to lead the Democratic National Committee, won the primary in a landslide, carrying every city and county in the state.“When you look at Ohio, New York City and Virginia — voters, and particularly Democratic voters, are looking for effective problem solvers,” Mr. Stoney said. “I know Democrats want to win, but more than anything they want to elect people who are going to get things done.”Doug Thornell, a Democratic strategist who advised Ms. Brown in Ohio and Mr. Carter in Louisiana, said both candidates had won majority support in their races from demographic groups that also make up the core of Mr. Biden’s base. Those voters, he said, represent a strong electoral bloc for a candidate seen as “a Biden Democrat.”“You had older African American voters, suburban voters; there was a significant turnout of Jewish voters in Ohio,” Mr. Thornell said. “These tend to be more moderate voters, on issues. They’re a bit more practical.”Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, campaigned on an anti-crime message to win the Democratic primary for mayor of New York.Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesThe left has not gone without its own modest electoral victories this year, and progressive strategists are quick to dispute the notion that 2021 has been a wholesale shutout. Activists scored upsets in several lower-profile mayoral primaries, in midsize cities like Buffalo and Pittsburgh. They have also helped a few prized progressive incumbents, like Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney, stave off challenges from other Democrats.Nelini Stamp, the national organizing director of the progressive Working Families Party, predicted the 2022 elections would be more representative of the overall trajectory of Democratic politics. She acknowledged that Ms. Turner’s defeat was a significant disappointment.“There have been some tough losses, and this is one,” she said, “but I also believe there have been a lot more wins, from where we’ve come from, in the last five years.”Yet the off-year elections suggest that the Democratic left urgently needs to update its political playbook before the 2022 midterm campaign, refining a clearer strategy for winning over moderate voters of color and for critiquing Mr. Biden without being seen as disloyal. Progressive groups are already mobilizing primary challenges against Democratic House incumbents in New York, Nashville and Chicago, among other cities, in a renewed test of their intraparty clout.Waleed Shahid, a strategist for Justice Democrats, a key group that organizes primary challenges from the left, said it was clear that the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party had changed with Mr. Biden in the White House. Intraparty conflict, he said, is “harder when you have an incumbent president.”“There is a tension between presenting yourself as a yes-man or a yes-woman for Biden, versus pushing the administration like what Cori Bush just did,” Mr. Shahid said, suggesting centrist Democrats might now have a lower bar to clear. “It’s a much easier argument to make: ‘I’m for the status quo and I’m with the president.’”Democratic Party leaders counter that for the past few election cycles, it is left-wing candidates who have had a comparatively easy run, feasting on older or complacent incumbents who simply did not take their re-election campaigns seriously. They vow that is not going to happen again in 2022, and point to the races this year as proof.Mainstream Democrats, Mr. Jeffries said, are not “going to act like punching bags for the extreme left.”“Let me put it this way: The majority of Democratic voters recognize that Trumpism and the radical right is the real enemy, not us,” Mr. Jeffries said. “Apparently the extreme left hasn’t figured that out.” More

The first seven months of the Biden presidency have been easy compared with what’s coming down the pike.Key provisions of Covid relief legislation came to an end on Aug. 1, with more set to follow — including a cessation of moratoriums on evictions and mortgage foreclosures, termination of extended unemployment benefits (which carried $300-a-week supplemental payments) and a stop to enhanced food stamp subsidies and student loan forbearance.The prospect of millions of families forced from their homes as Covid variants infect growing numbers of people provoked frenzied attempts by the White House and congressional Democrats to take emergency steps to halt or ameliorate the potential chaos and a possible tragedy of national proportions.On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered a 60-day freeze on evictions — although the order faces possible rejection by the courts.“Any call for a moratorium, based on the Supreme Court’s recent decision, is likely to face obstacles,” Biden told reporters, adding that the “bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.”In a June report, the Census Bureau found that 1,401,801 people 18 and older living in rental housing were “very likely” to be evicted and 2,248,120 were “somewhat likely.” In addition, 345,556 people were “very likely” to lose their homes through mortgage foreclosure, and 746,030 were “somewhat likely” to face foreclosure and the loss of their homes. The combined total was 4.7 million adults.The eviction crisis has come at a time when an additional series of potentially damaging developments have come to the fore.The rate of inflation has been rising at its fastest pace in over a decade — to 5.4 percent in June, from 1.4 percent in January when Biden took office, with no end in sight. The number of homicides grew by 25 percent from 2019 to 2020, and the 2021 rate, 6.2 homicides per 100,000 residents, is on track to become, according to The Washington Post, “the highest recorded in the United States in more than 20 years.”The number of illegal border crossings has more than doubled during Biden’s seven months in office, raising the potential for immigration to become a central campaign issue once again, both next year and in 2024.U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that in June of this year the enforcement agency “encountered 188,829 persons attempting entry along the Southwest Border,” a 142 percent increase from the 78,000 in January 2021 when Biden assumed the presidency.As the 2022 and 2024 elections get closer, Biden is in a race to keep public attention on policies and initiatives favorable to the Democratic Party and its candidates against the continuing threat that inflation, crime, urban disorder and illegal immigration — all issues that favor the Republican Party — take center stage.The danger for Biden if crime and immigration become a primary focus of public attention is clear in polling data. The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent polls shows Biden’s favorability at plus 7.5 points (51.1 positive and 43.6 negative) and that the public generally approves of his handling of the Covid pandemic, of jobs, of the economy and of the environment.Regarding Biden’s handling of crime and immigration, however, the numbers go negative. In the July 17-20 Economist/YouGov Poll, 38 percent of voters approved of his handling of crime, and 45 percent disapproved. In the Economist/YouGov poll taken a week later, Biden’s numbers on immigration were worse: 35 approving, 50 disapproving.The Biden administration has initiated a set of programs designed to “stem the flow of guns into the hands of those responsible for violence” — the centerpiece of its anti-crime program — but the Economist/YouGov poll found in its July 24-27 survey that 30 percent of voters approve of Biden’s handling of gun issues while 48 percent disapproveWhat does this all portend? Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, replied by email to my inquiry:The Biden administration has done a good job so far avoiding hard-to-defend, controversial positions on Republican hot button issues. That is really all they need to do. It is more likely that Covid and economic conditions will matter more in determining the Democratic Party’s fate in November.Cain argues thatthe best defense for the Democrats is to go on the offense in 2022 and remind voters about who Trump is and what the Republican Party has become. The resistance to supporting vaccination among Trumpist Republican officials could hurt the party’s national image substantially in 2022 if the unvaccinated are to blame for our inability to put this issue behind us.Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, has a very different take. In an email he wrote:The Democrats have lost a great deal of credibility when it comes to crime and policing by thoughtlessly adopting slogans like ‘defund the police’ without considering what the phrase means, how policies based on the idea might lead to surges in crime, or how the slogan might backfire in the face of rising crime and lawlessness.Biden, Westwood continued,was smart to distance himself from these factions, but many of those he needs in Congress and in state houses have been much less careful. Without a serious repositioning on criminal justice policies, the Democrats face the midterms with a gaping self-inflicted wound.Biden received a lift last week in keeping a bread-and-butter agenda front and center from an unexpected source, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. McConnell abandoned his Dr. No stance toward all things Democratic and joined 16 fellow Republicans in support of a key motion to take up a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill. If enacted into law, the measure would legitimize Biden’s claim that he is capable of restoring a semblance of bipartisanship in the nation’s capital.McConnell has not fully explained his political reasoning, but his tactical shift suggests that he thinks the wind remains at Biden’s back, making the Republican strategy of destruction a much riskier proposition, at least for the moment.Early indicators suggest that in some ways Biden has yet to face the kind of voter opposition that characterized the administrations of his predecessors from both parties at this stage in their presidencies.Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, tweeted on Aug. 2:Still no sign of strong grassroots or conservative media opposition focused on Biden or congressional agenda At this point in Obama admin, it was clear August congressional recess would be full of boisterous town halls. Infrastructure doesn’t get base animated.Similarly, G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for The Economist, wrote on Aug. 1 that there is a long-term “trend by which the people react in a thermostatic manner against the party in power,” with the public mood shifting to the right during Democratic presidencies and to the left during Republican presidencies.So far during the Biden presidency, Morris wrote, the expected tilt toward conservatism has not materialized:Where we go from here is a big question. As stated, the thermostatic model would predict a reversion in 2021 in the conservative direction. But the issue remains open; the public has not appeared very thermostatic on, say, immigration policy over the last year, and their demand for public spending is still very high.The trickiest issues facing the Biden administration are crime and urban disorder because these are issues that play to the advantage of conservatives, who have demonstrated expertise in weaponizing them.The June 29-July 6 USA Today/Ipsos poll found that “concerns about crime and gun violence have surged to the top of issues that worry Americans” and, in an ominous note for the Biden administration,Crime and public safety is the issue on which the Republican Party now holds its strongest advantage. By 32 percent to 24 percent, those polled said the G.O.P. was better at handling crime.There is considerable disagreement over the optimal strategy for Democrats to adopt when addressing crime — along with widespread concern over the party’s credibility on the issue itself.Rebecca Goldstein, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, emailed to say that she believes “the Biden Administration has correctly read the political winds by doubling the amount they are requesting for police hiring grants in 2022 compared to the 2021 appropriation, and also requesting eight-figure sums for police training and body-worn cameras.”These initiatives, Goldstein continued, are “not the outcome that any of last summer’s activists would have wanted. But the Biden Administration has realized that some of those proposals, particularly defunding or abolishing police agencies, were politically dead on arrival.”The crucial question, in Goldstein’s view, iswhether the administration will be able to convincingly advertise its support for police, and for police oversight and reform, while neither alienating some of the activists who mobilized to help Biden win in 2020 and might be put off from putting in the same sweat equity in 2022 or 2024, nor succumbing to the longstanding critique from the right that Democrats are “soft on crime.” This is a tightrope that even the most skilled politician might not be able to walk.Stanley Feldman, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, argued in an email that trying to engage voters on crime and other issues that have worked to the advantage of the Republican Party in the past is a fool’s errand:The Democratic Party has been losing voters who want economic benefits from the federal government but who are supporting Republican candidates because of their conservative positions on social and cultural issues. Biden can’t win back voters by engaging on these issues. Any positions he takes will raise the salience of these issues and that’s not helpful for him.Crime and policing, Feldman noted,are largely local concerns. Immigration is a potential minefield so the best he can do is to try to keep it from becoming a major media story. Given his limited options, any attempt to address these concerns would just give Republicans an opportunity to portray him in an unfavorable light. Providing concrete economic benefits to people while reducing the volume on social/cultural issues is the best way forward in 2022 and 2024.Aaron Chalfin, a professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees that engaging the debate over crime is inherently risky for Democrats:In my view, the political liabilities for the Democrats are probably fairly substantial. The surge in violence is rapid and has reversed 20 years of progress in just 18 short months. While I think the cause of the violence has little to do with Democratic political priorities at the national level, it seems likely that the Democrats will be held to account given the rhetoric around “Defund” that is associated with the left wing of the party.Lawrence Sherman, director of the Cambridge Center for Evidence-Based Policing at the University of Cambridge, agrees that “the greatest threat to Biden on policing and disorder comes from the left,” but he differs from some of his colleagues in arguing that Biden should take the issues of crime and urban dysfunction head on.Sherman contends that public anxieties over crime are just one part of a larger, more comprehensive “fear of chaos.” In that more expansive context, Sherman continued, Biden has strengthened his credentials as an adversary of disorder through his workon Covid and the economy, for which his competence grows more impressive daily in comparison to Trump’s. Climate change will also become a bigger issue (favoring Biden) for the swing vote, with smoke, heat and floods proving more scary than an unprecedented spike in murders. In a politics of fear, the targets of fear become identified with different candidates, and Biden’s fears now seem paramount: Covid, Climate and Chaos.Trump’s actions leading up to and during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump loyalists seeking to disrupt the vote count have opened the door for Biden to take the initiative on law and order and, in doing so, to counter the image of the Democratic Party as soft on crime, Sherman argued:“After what Trump did on Jan. 6, Biden has been able to stress his own historic support for the police as emblematic of his opposition to chaos,” Sherman wrote in an email:The “defund the police” movement probably did help to lose Dem seats in the House in 2020, and may increasingly be blamed for the huge spike in violent crime. But as long as Biden remains strong in his position that policing “works” to prevent crime, and that it is essential to saving Black lives, he will attract the suburban swing vote.Biden should take the initiative, Sherman argues, with “a major policing initiative,” and that initiative should stress “hot spots policing,” the focusing of police resources on small sections of urban areas, “under 5 percent of land in most cities,” while “pulling way back on stop and frisk everywhere else, especially suburban traffic stops, like the late Sandra Bland.”Biden goes into battle with one crucial advantage: He, his appointees and his advisers have more experience in the trenches of elections, legislative fights and bureaucratic maneuvering than the top personnel of any recent administration.On the other hand, if what his voters need is equality — that is, resource redistribution — experienced advisers may not be enough.Mart Trasberg and Hector Bahamonde, of Wake Forest University and the Universidad de O’Higgins in Chile, authors of “Inclusive institutions, unequal outcomes: Democracy, state capacity, and income inequality,” pointed out in an email that redistribution is exceptionally hard to achieve in an advanced democracy like the one in operation in the United States:The increase in inequality through market processes puts pressure on fiscal policy, making it difficult to increase redistribution via taxes and transfers. With increasing foreign investment flows and more developed financial sectors, domestic and international corporate and financial elites become stronger actors in domestic politics. Given that these changes are slow-moving and incremental, disorganized voters are not able to vote for a higher taxation of income-concentrating elites. Of course, other mechanisms are likely at play: political elites trick voters to vote on identity issues that do not concern socio-economic redistribution.In the end, much of the dynamism that powers today’s political competition comes back to — or down to — racial and cultural conflict. Can Biden find a redistributive workaround — and protect voting rights at the same time? The fate of the Democratic Party depends on it.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

Prime Minister Ariel Henry says he believes that none of the more than 40 people detained in the killing of President Jovenel Moïse have the capacity to organize the complex plot.PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The mastermind behind the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti is most likely still at large, the country’s caretaker leader says. He remains baffled by the motive, he says, and he doubts that the conspirators accused of plotting the killing had the ability to pull it off on their own.“I think there were a lot of people involved; there were people with access to a lot of money,” Prime Minister Ariel Henry said in an interview on Tuesday at his residence in the capital, Port-au-Prince. “The people they have accused up until now, I don’t see that they have the capacity, the web, to do it.”More than 40 people have been detained after Mr. Moïse was shot 12 times and his wife seriously injured on July 7 by a group of assailants who stormed into their bedroom. The police and the prosecutor’s office continue to issue warrants for new suspects on a near daily basis. Some of the detainees have been charged, but none have been brought to court.Few in Haiti believe the authorities have yet closed in on the people who organized and financed the complex plot. It appears to have been planned for months in Florida and Haiti and involved flying in two dozen Colombian ex-commandos to the country.Although the president had many enemies, Mr. Henry, who was appointed by Mr. Moïse shortly before his death, said he remained baffled by the crime’s ultimate motive.“Maybe I’m at risk, too, from the people who killed him,” Mr. Henry said. “Could they do it again? I don’t know.”The opposition had said that Mr. Moïse’s five-year term should have ended on Feb. 7, five years to the day since his predecessor, Michel Martelly, stepped down. But Mr. Moïse had clung to power, ruling by decree. He argued that an interim government had occupied the first year of his term. Protesters took to the streets of Haiti demanding his removal.But Mr. Moïse had said he would not seek another term in the general elections scheduled for Sept. 26 and had been expected to step down seven months before the killing.Claude Joseph, then the prime minister, took control of Haiti’s government immediately after the assassination, but pressure from foreign powers led to an agreement to let Mr. Henry, 71, take office on July 21.On Monday, Port-au-Prince’s chief prosecutor began issuing the first charges in the assassination investigation. The arrested suspects — who include Mr. Moïse’s security chiefs, the Colombian ex-commandos and Haitian businessmen — have been moved to a jail in preparation for trial. But despite some progress, the investigation has been mired from the start in irregularities and attempts at subversion.At least three judicial officials who compiled evidence and conducted initial interviews with key suspects are now in hiding after receiving numerous death threats.Mr. Henry said his main goal now was to hold free and fair elections to stabilize the country. He said he was in talks with political parties and civil leaders to appoint a new electoral board and draft a new Constitution that will be presented to voters for approval.He promised to improve Haiti’s dire security crisis before the vote; swaths of the capital remain in the control of the gangs. He also ruled out requesting troop assistance in preparation for the vote from allies, including the United States, saying that the task would be handed by the national police..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;}Mr. Henry said he would not run for office in the elections. Despite the challenges of guiding the country through a political and security crisis, he said, he continues to practice his main profession, as a neurosurgeon. He will perform his next surgery on Thursday.“My mission is to set an environment for elections with a large participation,” he said, adding that he hoped the vote would help to break Haiti’s chronic political instability. “If we can have one, two democratic transfers of power, Haiti will be fine.”But, raising a note of uncertainty, the caretaker prime minister said Haiti’s security and political challenges made the expected election date, Sept. 26, unlikely. He declined to provide a new time frame.His ambivalence on keeping the election date has been criticized by some Haitian politicians, who say the country needs a road map to a new government to avoid mass unrest in the aftermath of Mr. Moïse’s murder.“If they don’t hold the elections before 2022, this country will explode,” said Mathias Pierre, Mr. Moïse’s minister of elections, who had organized this year’s vote until the president’s death. “It’s a volcano burning inside.”Richard Miguel contributed reporting. More

The special election to replace Marcia Fudge, who joined President Biden’s cabinet as housing secretary, is a contest largely between two Black women who represent divergent views of the future of the Democratic Party. It will pit the establishment favorite, Shontel Brown, who has the endorsement of Hillary Clinton, against the left’s favored candidate, Nina Turner, who has the backing of Senator Bernie Sanders. More

The victories by Shontel Brown, a Democrat supported by the national establishment, and Mike Carey, a Republican endorsed by Donald Trump, provided a lift to the leadership of both parties.A Democratic candidate backed by the party establishment and a Republican endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump won two primary races for open House seats in Ohio on Tuesday, an assertion of dominance for the leadership of both political parties as they face questions over unity in their ranks.In a Democratic primary in northern Ohio, Shontel Brown, who vowed to be “a partner” with the Biden administration and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, prevailed over Nina Turner, a party outsider who openly rejected the idea that Democrats are more effective through conciliation and compromise. Late Tuesday, Ms. Brown was leading by over five percentage points, and Ms. Turner conceded the race. And in a Republican primary near Columbus, Mike Carey, a newcomer to elected office who was largely unknown before being endorsed by Mr. Trump, easily beat out 11 rivals, many of them with much longer records in Ohio politics.Between the two races, the Democratic fight for the deep-blue 11th District around Cleveland and Akron was the most closely watched as a national bellwether. Prominent Democratic politicians and money from national interest groups cascaded into the district over the past several weeks, leaving a trail of ill will and weariness in their wake. Though Ms. Turner was helped on the ground by hundreds of organizers and volunteers from left-leaning organizations and outspent Ms. Brown in the early phase of the race, it was not enough in the end to overcome the onslaught of advertising against her, or the unified wall of resistance to her candidacy from pillars of the Democratic establishment.“I am going to work hard to ensure that something like this never happens to a progressive candidate again,” Ms. Turner said in her concession speech. “We didn’t lose this race. Evil money manipulated and maligned this election.” Ms. Brown, 45, a county Democratic Party chair, was endorsed by an array of local, state and federal officials who prided themselves on their ties to leadership in Washington. That coalition rallied against Ms. Turner, an unapologetically sharp-tongued progressive activist and former state senator who campaigned as a disrupter of the political status quo.Nina Turner was backed by several progressives in Congress, including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe race was not as much emblematic of a liberal-moderate divide among Democrats as it was a clash between an insider who rose fast in local party circles and an agitator who thrived on alienating party leaders by questioning their commitment to liberal ideals. Both candidates were solidly liberal in their views on a range of issues, including legalizing marijuana and making college more affordable or free in some cases. Outside political groups from different corners of the Democratic coalition invested heavily in the race. Backing Ms. Turner were left-wing environmental interests supporting the Green New Deal; the political group founded by Senator Bernie Sanders that she once ran, Our Revolution; and two progressive groups, the Working Families Party and Justice Democrats.Supporting Ms. Brown were more institutional players and politicians like the political committee of the Congressional Black Caucus; several senior members of the caucus; Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the Democratic House whip; Hillary Clinton; Jewish Democrats; Cleveland-area Black churches; and, unofficially, Marcia Fudge, who vacated the seat this year to become Mr. Biden’s secretary of housing and urban development and consented to have her mother appear in an ad endorsing Ms. Brown because she had to remain neutral as a government official.Democratic leaders in Washington and groups that are often at odds with the progressive left were worried that a victory by Ms. Turner, who led by double digits in early polls and initially raised more money than Ms. Brown, could presage a new round of intraparty hostilities for Democrats.And the establishment hit back hard — to a degree it had not in previous battles when candidates with the support of the party’s activist left, like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman of New York, took out veteran politicians with little pushback. This time, while Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other stars of the left campaigned in Ohio for Ms. Turner, prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus like Mr. Clyburn visited the district and implored people to vote for Ms. Brown as someone who was respectful and willing to work with other Democrats — an implicit criticism of Ms. Turner’s more confrontational style. Many criticized her openly, like Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who referred to Ms. Turner as “a single solitary know-it-all.”Advertising attacking Ms. Turner’s professionalism and character was ubiquitous in the district during the final days of the campaign. One ad from the centrist group Third Way compared Ms. Turner’s political style and tone to Mr. Trump’s, and replayed an on-camera moment she has struggled to live down throughout the campaign in which she made a crude analogy to the choice between Mr. Biden, whom she did not support, and Mr. Trump.Matt Bennett, an executive vice president at Third Way, said Ms. Brown’s victory represented a resounding defeat of “the candidate ordained by the far left” by everyday Democrats.“These voters went overwhelmingly for Joe Biden in the 2020 primary, and they want their member of Congress to work with him and Speaker Pelosi on a mainstream Democratic agenda. They are not interested in bomb-throwers,” Mr. Bennett added.Ms. Turner’s allies did not read much into her defeat as a sign that the progressive movement was struggling to connect with voters. Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution, which sent hundreds of volunteers into the district, said progressives needed to “invest more in building the organizing infrastructure we need to reach every voter.” “I think there’s more people who are aligned with our values,” he added, “and the question is organizing and motivating them to turn out.”Mike Carey, an energy lobbyist, campaigning in Grove City, Ohio, last month. He was largely unknown until former President Donald J. Trump endorsed him.Barbara J. Perenic/The Columbus Dispatch, via Associated PressIn the election in the Republican-leaning 15th Congressional District near Columbus on Tuesday, Mr. Carey, an energy lobbyist, handily prevailed over a crowded field after the former president endorsed him and elevated him from virtual anonymity. Late Tuesday, Mr. Carey was leading his nearest opponents by more than 20 percentage points.Mr. Trump’s credibility as the gatekeeper for the Republican Party had been dented somewhat after the candidate he endorsed in a special House election in Texas lost last week. In that race, a state representative, Jake Ellzey, beat Susan Wright, the widow of the former congressman who held the seat until he died in February after battling lung cancer and being hospitalized for Covid-19. “Great Republican win for Mike Carey,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Tuesday night. “Big numbers! Thank you to Ohio and all of our wonderful American patriots.”Last week, the pro-Trump group Make America Great Again Action made a last-minute purchase of nearly $350,000 in text messages, digital ads and television commercials in support of Mr. Carey. Throughout the race, Mr. Carey pointed to a singular selling point as he campaigned: the Trump seal of approval. More

Ms. Brown, who defeated the progressive activist Nina Turner in a bitter Democratic primary for an Ohio House seat, is all but assured of heading to Congress in the fall.Shontel Brown campaigned for an open House seat in the Cleveland area declaring that she would be “a partner,” not an adversary, of President Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And now that she is almost guaranteed to join them in Washington after her victory on Tuesday in a contentious Democratic primary, Ms. Brown’s history suggests that party leaders will be adding a loyal political insider to their team.Ms. Brown’s triumph on Tuesday night over Nina Turner, a former state senator who had broad support from national progressive leaders and activists, was in no small part thanks to her receiving the same kind of institutional support from her party that elevated her as a rising star in Cleveland politics in recent years.She started about as small as it gets in politics, winning a seat on the City Council in Warrensville Heights, a small suburb of Cleveland, in 2012. From there she won election to the Cuyahoga County Council, the legislative body for Ohio’s second-most-populous county.Her ascent continued in 2017 after Cleveland-area Democratic leaders rallied behind her push to lead the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, which had been troubled by endemic corruption that ultimately led to a 28-year prison sentence for its former chairman. A federal investigation swept up dozens of other county officials and contractors.Ms. Brown won the bid, becoming the first woman and the first Black person to hold the position. She was only 42 at the time. She enjoyed the backing of Representative Marcia Fudge, whom she has described as her mentor and whose former seat she is poised to fill after the November election. The district is heavily Democratic, virtually assuring Ms. Brown’s victory.Ms. Brown is no stranger to the kind of pressure that the left flank of her party mustered to try to defeat her on Tuesday. In 2018, she survived an attempt by progressive activists to take control of the Cuyahoga County party committee and unseat her as chair. She easily won re-election by a 2-to-1 margin. She characterized her victory at the time as a sign that the party’s internal political differences were settling down, saying, “We have stability in our leadership.”The kind of stability that she was seeking has been tenuous, however, as her hard-fought race against Ms. Turner, a party outsider and liberal activist, showed. Ms. Brown has pitched herself as the kind of politician “who can work with the administration” and Democratic leaders in Congress. More

Investigators said they corroborated the claims of 11 women who accused Mr. Cuomo of inappropriate behavior, from suggestive comments to instances of groping.Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, including current and former government workers, whose accounts of unwanted touching and inappropriate comments were corroborated in a damning report released on Tuesday by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James.The 165-page report prompted multiple calls for Mr. Cuomo to resign, including from President Biden, a longtime ally of the governor, and it cast doubt on Mr. Cuomo’s political future. The Democratic speaker of the State Assembly said on Tuesday that he intended to quicken the pace of a separate impeachment inquiry, adding that Mr. Cuomo “can no longer remain in office.”The report, the culmination of a five-month investigation, included at least three previously unreported allegations of sexual harassment from women who accused Mr. Cuomo of improperly touching them, including a state trooper assigned to the governor’s security detail. It also highlighted far-reaching efforts by the governor, his staff and close associates to disparage and retaliate against one woman who made her allegations public.All told, the investigators said they corroborated the claims of 11 women, nine of whom are current or former state employees, who accused Mr. Cuomo of a range of inappropriate behavior, from suggestive comments to instances of groping, through interviews with 179 witnesses and tens of thousands of documents.The report described in stunning detail how Mr. Cuomo’s behavior and actions by his top officials violated both state and federal law, offering a look at the inner workings of the governor’s office and how it failed to properly handle some of the women’s allegations. It also shed a light on a sprawling network of associates, including former aides and close allies, enlisted by Mr. Cuomo and his staff to aggressively fight the allegations on behalf of the governor.Investigators said that Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, and his aides fostered a toxic work culture that was rife with fear and intimidation, and helped enable “harassment to occur and created a hostile work environment.”“The independent investigation found that Governor Cuomo harassed multiple women, many of whom were young women, by engaging in unwanted groping, kisses, hugging, and by making inappropriate comments,” Ms. James, a Democrat, said during a news conference in Manhattan, adding, “I believe these women.”Mr. Cuomo responded to the findings in a 14-minute prerecorded statement delivered from Albany. In a sweeping, slightly disjointed soliloquy, the governor denied most of the report’s serious findings, reiterating his contention that he had never touched anyone inappropriately. He suggested the report was politically motivated and declared that “the facts are much different from what has been portrayed.”Mr. Cuomo denied any wrongdoing following the release of a report by the state’s attorney general into allegations of sexual harassment against him. Office of the New York Governor“I never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances,” he said. “I am 63 years old. I have lived my entire adult life in public view. That is just not who I am, and that’s not who I have ever been.”In defending his behavior, Mr. Cuomo mentioned that one of his relatives was sexually assaulted in high school and suggested it was sexist to accuse his female supervisors of creating a hostile workplace. His speech was even interlaced with a slide show of photographs of him kissing public officials on the cheek, gestures he said were “meant to convey warmth, nothing more.”The political fallout from the report was swift: It prompted Mr. Biden, a longtime friend of the governor, to call on Mr. Cuomo to resign on Tuesday, months after stopping short of asking the governor to step down because the investigation was ongoing.“What I said was if the investigation by the attorney general concluded that the allegations were correct, back in March, I would recommend he resign,” said Mr. Biden, who had not spoken with Mr. Cuomo. “That is what I’m doing today.”“I think he should resign,” the president said.Representative Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, joined the existing and ever-growing chorus of calls for Mr. Cuomo to resign, as did three House Democrats from New York who originally said they wanted to wait on the report before weighing in on Mr. Cuomo’s fate.Even Mr. Cuomo’s fellow Democratic governors in nearby Northeastern states joined the chorus. In a joint statement, the governors of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey said that they were appalled at the investigation’s findings and that Mr. Cuomo should step down.The contents of the report, and the subsequent backlash, would seem to limit Mr. Cuomo’s political future, and serve as a serious obstacle to being re-elected to a fourth term — once regarded as a near certainty for a governor previously hailed a national leader during the coronavirus pandemic.The Democratic-controlled State Assembly, which could impeach Mr. Cuomo with a simple majority vote, has been conducting a broad impeachment investigation into the governor, examining a series of scandals with a common theme:whether or not Mr. Cuomo abused his power while in office.Democrats in the Assembly held a closed-door emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss whether to draft articles of impeachment based solely on the findings of the attorney general report, a move that appeared to have support among many of the 50 or 60 lawmakers who spoke, according to four people with knowledge of the meeting.After the meeting, Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker, said his chamber would “move expeditiously and look to conclude our impeachment investigation as quickly as possible.” It could take a month to complete the existing inquiry and draw up the articles of impeachment, according to a person familiar with the process.A trial in the State Senate could commence as soon as September or early October, the person said. If Mr. Cuomo were to resign or be removed from office, Kathleen C. Hochul, the state’s lieutenant governor, would succeed him, making her the first woman to become governor in the state’s history.On Tuesday, Ms. Hochul said she believed the governor’s accusers, describing Mr. Cuomo’s documented behavior as “repulsive and unlawful.” She said that it was up to the Assembly to determine the next steps, adding that “it would not be appropriate to comment further on the process at this moment” because she is next in the line of succession.The attorney general’s investigation was spearheaded by two outside lawyers: Joon H. Kim, a former federal prosecutor who once served as acting U.S. attorney of Manhattan, and Anne L. Clark, a well-known employment lawyer.On Tuesday, Mr. Kim said their investigation revealed a pattern of troubling behavior from Mr. Cuomo and found that the culture within the executive chamber “contributed to conditions that allowed the governor’s sexually harassing conduct to occur and to persist.”“It was a culture where you could not say no to the governor, and if you upset him, or his senior staff, you would be written off, cast aside or worse,” Mr. Kim said. “But at the same time, the witnesses described a culture that normalized and overlooked everyday flirtations, physical intimacy and inappropriate comments by the governor.”Ms. Clark said that the governor’s conduct detailed in the report “clearly meets, and far exceeds” the legal standard used to determine gender-based harassment in the workplace.“Women also described to us having the governor seek them out, stare intently at them, look them up and down or gaze at their chest or butt,” she said. “The governor routinely interacted with women in ways that focused on their gender, sometimes in explicitly sexualized manner in ways that women found deeply humiliating and offensive.”Understand the Scandals Challenging Gov. Cuomo’s LeadershipCard 1 of 5Multiple claims of sexual harassment. More

Should Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resign, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul would replace him and would become New York State’s first female governor.A former congresswoman from the Buffalo region and a lawyer, Ms. Hochul has won two elections for lieutenant governor. She is not considered particularly close to Mr. Cuomo.In a statement, she suggested she retained no allegiance to him, after the release of the state attorney general’s report on Tuesday, which found evidence that Mr. Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women, most of them state employees.“Sexual harassment is unacceptable in any workplace, and certainly not in public service,” Ms. Hochul said. “The attorney general’s investigation has documented repulsive and unlawful behavior by the governor towards multiple women. I believe these brave women and admire their courage coming forward.”“No one is above the law,” she said. “Under the New York Constitution, the Assembly will now determine the next steps. Because lieutenant governors stand next in the line of succession, it would not be appropriate to comment further on the process at this moment.”Ms. Hochul is considered a moderate Democrat, known for her skill in retail politics and her frequent travels around the state. She earned her law degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., then started her political career working as an aide to Representative John J. LaFalce and, later, to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.Returning to upstate New York, Ms. Hochul won a 2011 special election for Congress, but lost her bid for re-election the next year after reapportionment made her district more Republican. She first won election as lieutenant governor in 2014, running with Mr. Cuomo’s support. She won re-election in 2018, fighting off a primary challenge from a more progressive candidate, Jumaane D. Williams, now the New York City public advocate. More