Elections

Jasiel F. Correia II, who at 24 was the Massachusetts city’s youngest mayor, was convicted of charges related to extorting marijuana vendors and defrauding investors.The former mayor of Fall River, Mass., who was elected at 23 after pitching himself as an ambitious entrepreneur and product of the city, was convicted by a federal jury on Friday of defrauding investors of more than $200,000 and extorting marijuana vendors.The former mayor, Jasiel F. Correia II, 29, used investor money from his tech start-up to pay for lavish goods, trips and clothing, according to an indictment. After becoming mayor of Fall River, which is about 50 miles south of Boston, in 2016, Mr. Correia used his position to gain bribes from marijuana vendors looking to establish their businesses in the city.When he was in college, Mr. Correia founded an app called SnoOwl, which was designed to help local businesses connect with a network of customers. Seven people invested about $360,000 in the app, of which Mr. Correia spent about $230,000 on designer clothing, jewelry, travel, “adult entertainment,” and a Mercedes, according to the indictment.Mr. Correia also used about $10,000 of investor money to pay down his student debt and to fund his political campaign.To conceal the theft, Mr. Correia denied investors access to financial records, lied to them with false updates and also lied to his then-girlfriend, on whom he spent thousands of dollars, telling her that he made his money from the sale of a different app, according to the indictment.After Mr. Correia became Fall River’s mayor, he took bribes from marijuana vendors in exchange for nonopposition letters, which are required in Massachusetts to obtain a license to operate a marijuana business in the state.Bribes from four vendors ranged from more than $75,000 to $250,000 in cash, campaign contributions and other payments, according to court documents.Mr. Correia was convicted on charges of wire fraud, falsifying tax returns and related counts of extortion. Mr. Correia, who is set to be sentenced in September, could face up to 20 years in prison for the wire fraud charges and up to 20 years for the extortion charges.The acting U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Nathaniel R. Mendell, told reporters on Friday that the verdict was “a fitting end to this saga.”“He sold his office, and he sold out the people of Fall River,” Mr. Mendell said.Mr. Correia told reporters that he would appeal.“Eventually, the real truth will come out,” Mr. Correia said. “I will be vindicated, and my future will be very long and great.”Mr. Correia’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, who did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday, told reporters outside the courthouse on Friday that an appeal would most likely come after the sentencing, the television station WPRI reported.“We respect the jury’s verdict, but that’s what we have appeals courts for,” he said.Mr. Correia was indicted in October 2018 for wire fraud and falsifying tax returns, and then again in September 2019 in a superseding indictment for extortion conspiracy and extortion, in addition to other crimes.Mr. Correia, who was 23 when he was elected in 2015, became the city’s youngest mayor and promised to revitalize Fall River, a city that was once home to a booming textile industry but declined as manufacturing went overseas.Mr. Correia, the son of Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants, was born and raised in Fall River and impressed voters with his ambition, confidence and loyalty to the city. In 2008, Fall River named him “Youth of the Year” for his work with teenagers addicted to drugs.By 22, Correia was a self-described entrepreneur with his app SnoOwl, which was released in 2015. He returned to Fall River after college, determined to expand the business there and run for local office.“I’m a product of Fall River,” Mr. Correia told The Herald News in Fall River in 2014. “I’m young, I’m ambitious and I’m a hard worker. I want to see myself and Fall River succeed.”In a special election in March 2019, Mr. Correia was voted out of office but then voted back in on the same ballot. In a general election in November 2019, he ran for re-election and lost.Maria Cramer contributed reporting. More

Heavy fines, felony charges and jail sentences: Republicans seeking to restrict voting are proposing strict punishments for election officials and workers who make errors or violate the rules.AUSTIN, Texas — Anita Phillips has been an election judge in Texas for 17 years, responsible for managing a precinct in Waco, a city of roughly 135,000 people. But over the last four years, the civic duty she prized has become arduous. Harassment by partisan poll watchers has grown increasingly caustic, she has found, and helping voters is ever more treacherous amid a thicket of new rules.Those regulations are likely to grow stricter: Republican lawmakers in Texas, following in the footsteps of their counterparts across the country, are pressing forward with a voting bill that could impose harsh penalties on election officials or poll workers who are thought to have committed errors or violations. And the nationwide effort may be pushing people like Ms. Phillips to reconsider serving their communities.“It’s just so taxing,” Ms. Phillips said. “And if me — I’m in my 40s, and I’m having this much stress — imagine every election worker and election judge that is 65 and over with severe health issues. This is supposed to be a way for them to give back. And it’s supposed to be something that makes them feel good about what they’re doing, but now they’re starting to feel like, ‘Are we going to be safe?’”Ms. Phillips is one of millions of citizens who act as foot soldiers of the American democratic system, working long hours for low pay to administer the country’s elections. Yet this often thankless task has quickly become a key target of Republicans who are propagating former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. In their hunt for nonexistent fraud, they have turned on those who work the polls as somehow suspect.That attitude has seeped into new voting laws and bills put forward by Republican-controlled legislatures across the country. More than two dozen bills in nine states, either still making their way through legislatures or signed into law, have sought to establish a rash of harsh new penalties, elevated criminal classifications and five-figure fines for state and local election officials who are found to have made mistakes, errors, oversteps and other violations of election code, according to a review of voting legislation by The New York Times.The infractions that could draw more severe punishment run the gamut from seemingly minor lapses in attention or innocent mistakes to more clearly willful actions in defiance of regulations. In Texas, taking any action that “would make observation not reasonably effective” for a poll watcher would carry new penalties. In Florida, failing to have an election worker continuously supervise a drop box would result in major fines. Willfully flouting new laws, like ones in states including Iowa and Texas that ban sending absentee ballots to voters who have not requested them, would also lead to tougher penalties.“The default assumption that county election officials are bad actors is problematic,” said Chris Davis, the county election administrator in Williamson County, Texas, north of Austin. “There’s so many moving parts and things happening at a given polling place, and innocent mistakes, though infrequent, can happen. And to assign criminal liability or civil liability to some of these things is problematic. It’s a big-time issue that we have.”“These poll workers don’t ever, in our experience, intend to count invalid votes, or let somebody who’s not eligible vote, or prevent somebody who’s eligible from voting,” said Mr. Davis, whose role is nonpartisan. “Yet we’re seeing that as a baseline, kind of a fundamental principle in some of the bills that are being drafted. And I don’t know where it’s coming from, because it’s not based on reality.”With the threat of felonies, jail time and fines as large as $25,000 hanging over their heads, election officials, as well as voting rights groups, are growing increasingly worried that the new penalties will not only limit the work of election administrators but also have a chilling effect on their willingness to do the job.Part of why last year’s voting unfolded so smoothly, without any major hiccups or reports of significant fraud, was a huge effort to recruit more poll workers, who were needed to buttress an aging election work force that was more vulnerable to the coronavirus. Secretaries of state in major battlegrounds like Michigan pleaded for thousands of additional workers as the election drew near. Philadelphia offered a raise in daily pay. And celebrities like LeBron James carried out major poll worker recruitment campaigns.But with heavy fines or even time behind bars increasingly a possibility, election officials fear some of that work could be undone.“The nit-picking by poll watchers and the penalizing of even the smallest of innocent mistakes is going to, over time, drive our most experienced election workers away,” said Isabel Longoria, the nonpartisan election administrator for Harris County, which is home to Houston and the largest county in Texas. “And I think a better solution is to provide more resources for training and education to our election workers, rather than put more bullies in the polls.”Isabel Longoria, the nonpartisan election administrator for Harris County, at a warehouse for election equipment storage.Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesRepublicans in the Texas Legislature say the new penalties are necessary to force prosecutors to punish those who break the law and to ensure that election law is known and followed.“There’s an indication that sometimes lower-level offenses do not get the attention that high-level offenses do,” said State Senator Bryan Hughes, who sponsored one of the Texas voting bills. “And so if there’s a crime, it’s a problem and it’s not being prosecuted, one approach is to raise the level of offense so that the prosecutors know this is a big deal and you should take this seriously.”Mr. Hughes added that he was trying to take into account election officials’ worries of overly harsh penalties. “It’s always going to be balanced,” he said. “But people have to follow the law, and if I’m going to work for the government and I’m going to promise to follow the law and to serve the people of Texas, I’ve got to follow the law.”Some of the penalties that could affect election workers have been wrapped up in other Republican priorities as they overhaul state election codes. In bills across the country, G.O.P.-controlled legislatures have sought to limit the use of drop boxes, which are secure locations where voters can drop off their absentee ballots, rather than relying on the Postal Service.In Florida, the Legislature has mandated that each drop box be continuously staffed and monitored by an election worker. Failure to monitor a box in person carries a $25,000 fine for the election supervisor. The bill met strong opposition from election administrators in Florida, who testified against it and issued a statement criticizing the effort when it became law.“I happen to be a Democrat, but an overwhelming majority of the supervisors of elections in Florida are Republicans, and everybody opposes this law,” said Joe Scott, the supervisor in Broward County. “Because, as an elections administrator, you see that there’s just provisions in this law that are not needed.” Mr. Scott noted that video surveillance of drop boxes in 2020 had been sufficient, with no problems arising, so “having to expand additional resources in order to staff those boxes just feels very unnecessary to us.”.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 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(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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Pat Gill, the county auditor in charge of elections in Woodbury County, Iowa, felt a similar pang. “Now you have 99 auditors that are being treated like potential criminals,” he said, referring to the number of counties in the state. “And that’s starting to feel very personal.”This year, Mr. Gill testified against Republicans’ voting bill in the state, which has since been signed into law. The legislation significantly limits the autonomy of auditors to run elections in their counties, particularly their ability to establish satellite in-person early voting centers and mail absentee ballot application forms to voters who haven’t requested them. It also adds new felony punishments for infringements of state law and creates fines of up to $10,000 for “technical infractions.”Part of the success of last year’s election was a huge effort to recruit more poll workers, who were needed to buttress an aging election work force that was more vulnerable to the coronavirus.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe new law, Mr. Gill said, has created tension between Paul Pate, the Republican secretary of state, and county auditors, a relationship that was once more harmonious and is important for election administration to function smoothly.And, Mr. Gill said, the law could make it harder to staff polling sites around the state.One of Mr. Gill’s poll workers is Richard Pope, who has been up early to work on Election Days in Iowa for “30 to 40 years,” most recently in Sloan, a rural town of about 1,200 people on the western border of Iowa.“I’ve never run into an experience where we haven’t had people all of the same mind, and that’s to apply the law equally and fairly,” Mr. Pope said. “I do not believe that there is major wide-scale fraud. If people make mistakes at the polls, they’re honest mistakes. If somebody comes in the wrong polling place, we direct them somewhere else.”Despite the new potential punishments he could face, Mr. Pope said he didn’t currently expect fellow poll workers to quit because of the law. But he added that all it would take was one publicized incident.“If we get in the news — somebody, somewhere gets punished for being a poll worker — then it’s off to the races,” he said.In Arizona, two bills that are stalled in the State Legislature would make it a felony for election officials to violate either of two existing laws. The first bill would bring felony charges against any official who sends early ballots to voters who had not requested them. (The Maricopa County recorder did so last year after the courts allowed an exception to be made because of the coronavirus pandemic.) The second bill would make it a felony to modify any deadline set by the state or federal government in the election calendar.As election officials and workers confront a future fraught with new legal exposure and doubts about their ability to oversee safe and secure voting, many continue to suspect the Republican motivation behind the bills, and the necessity for the measures.“My question as an election worker is, you know: Why?” Ms. Longoria said. “What is the problem that happened in Texas that would have led to that kind of response? And I can’t get an answer to that.”Jennifer Medina More

Some journalists are happy to knock on the doors of strangers. I was never one of them, but Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy behind the infamous Trump dossier, left me no choice. More

The party’s cancel mob runs wild on Capitol Hill.Mr. Potato Head is under siege.So are the Muppets, baseball and Coca-Cola.Even a horse fell victim. “It was like a cancel culture kind of thing,” the trainer of Medina Spirit told Fox News after the Kentucky Derby-winning horse failed a drug test.In the Biden era, wailing about cancel culture has emerged as a major tenet of Trumpism, a defining principle of a Republican Party far more focused on fighting culture wars than promoting any kind of policy platform.Yet in recent weeks, it has been Republicans who seem most focused on canceling ideas they don’t like. And on Wednesday morning, the G.O.P. cancel mob came for Liz Cheney.After a defiant speech on Tuesday evening, she was purged from House Republican leadership for refusing to echo Donald Trump’s lies about the election and holding him responsible for the deadly riot on Jan. 6 at the Capitol.Her extraordinary address on the House floor came immediately after Republicans finished a series of remarks condemning the cancellation of a long list of characters that included Pepé Le Pew, J.K. Rowling, Miss Piggy, Goya Foods, George Washington, “the My Pillow guy” and kids wearing MAGA hats.Ms. Cheney made only a sly reference to the irony of the moment.“I know the topic, Mr. Speaker, is cancel culture,” she said, taking her place at the lectern. “I have some thoughts about that. But tonight, I rise to discuss freedom and our constitutional duty to protect it.”Republicans were left tying themselves into knots over whether Ms. Cheney had, in fact, been canceled.“Liz Cheney was canceled today for speaking her mind and disagreeing with the narrative that President Trump has put forth,” Representative Ken Buck of Colorado said on Wednesday after her ouster.Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator who built his postelection brand by casting himself in his media appearances as a victim of cancellation, disagreed.“It’ll give her, certainly, a media platform,” he said. “I don’t think it’s being canceled in terms of she’s being silenced.”Republican cancel culture isn’t limited to Ms. Cheney. At times, the party seems to be trying to cancel the truth entirely.When Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, was asked about Ms. Cheney’s replacement — Representative Elise Stefanik of New York — and her vote to object to the 2020 election results, he gave a head-spinning answer.“I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election,” Mr. McCarthy replied after leaving a meeting at the White House with President Biden on Wednesday. “I think that is all over with, sitting here with the president today.”Six days earlier, Ms. Stefanik had raised doubts about the integrity of the election in interviews with Trump allies that helped cement her status as the front-runner for Ms. Cheney’s post.In Florida and Texas, Republican officials who once praised the handling of the 2020 election in their states now argue that a widespread lack of faith in the electoral system necessitates broadly restrictive voting laws. That justification is widespread: Lawmakers in at least 33 states have cited low public confidence in election integrity in their public comments as a reason to pass bills that restrict voting.It’s also slightly dizzying: As election experts told my colleague Maggie Astor for an article this week, it was the “fear of fraud” stoked by Republicans with their false claims of voter malfeasance that eroded public trust in the 2020 results.And in a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Republicans cast the riot at the Capitol in January as little more than a normal day, rewriting what many of them personally witnessed while huddling for safety on the House floor. Several downplayed the violence of the day, describing the Trump supporters who attacked the complex as “peaceful patriots.”“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall, showed people in an orderly fashion in between the stanchions and ropes taking pictures,” Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia said. “If you didn’t know the footage was from Jan. 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”Sure, an average tourist stop that involved violently crushing police officers, stealing historic property and urinating in Nancy Pelosi’s office.There are plenty of reasons to believe that despite this effort to rewrite history, voters will not cancel Republicans at the polls in 2022. The party out of power typically picks up seats in a new president’s first midterm elections. Redistricting favors Republicans. And a number of House Democrats are opting against re-election bids, a sign of anxiety about their political prospects.But internal strife is never good for a party’s re-election chances. Nor is staking your political brand on the pet issues of a former president whose never-all-that-healthy favorability ratings have slipped further since leaving office. Voters generally don’t respond well to lies that are easily disproved by video footage and their own memories of a national trauma.The question that worries some Republican strategists as they look toward next year’s midterm elections is not whether the country agrees with their fears of cancellation.It’s whether voters still believe in consequences.Drop us a line!We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at [email protected] or message me on Twitter at @llerer.By the numbers: 1.7 million… That’s the number of people who traveled through airports on Sunday, the most since the start of the pandemic.… SeriouslyYou’re all invited to my mask burning party. Just let me dig out my lipstick first.Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

Billions of Brood X cicadas are emerging from their underground tunnels for the first time since 2004. You would think that, between noisy mating rituals and shedding their exoskeletons, they would have a lot to catch up on after 17 years. But imagine a curious Brood Xer scanning this year’s headlines: Another Super Bowl for Tom Brady. The Summer Olympics fast approaching. Two new NASA vehicles exploring Mars. And Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez reportedly dating again … all straight out of 2004 (when “Bennifer” broke up in January).
OK, so news of politics and the pandemic would definitely raise some insect antennae — and maybe send them burrowing back underground. But to a pop-culture-obsessed nymph, would 2004 and 2021 really seem that different?
Here’s a chance to see how much you recall about the last time the Bennicadas were buzzing. More

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission removed Gov. Kevin Stitt from the panel just days after he had signed a bill that banned the teaching of certain concepts about race.Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma has been ousted from a commission set up to commemorate the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, just days after he signed legislation that commission members said would undermine their goal of teaching the state’s painful history of racial discrimination.In a statement on Friday, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission said its members had met on Tuesday and had “agreed through consensus to part ways” with Mr. Stitt, a Republican. The statement did not offer a reason but said that no elected officials or representatives of elected officials had been involved in the decision.“While the Commission is disheartened to part ways with Governor Stitt, we are thankful for the things accomplished together,” the statement said. “The Commission remains focused on lifting up the story of Black Wall Street and commemorating the Centennial.”Carly Atchison, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stitt, did not immediately respond to an email message on Friday seeking comment. She told The Associated Press that the governor had learned of his removal from the commission only when the panel issued its statement. She said that the governor’s role had been “purely ceremonial, and he had not been invited to attend a meeting until this week.”Mr. Stitt was removed from the commission after he signed legislation on May 7 that would ban the teaching of certain concepts about race in Oklahoma schools, a measure that was seen as part of a larger conservative backlash to the teaching of “critical race theory.”Commission members had vocally opposed the legislation, and one of them, State Representative Monroe Nichols, resigned from the panel on Tuesday, saying the governor’s signing of the bill had “cast an ugly shadow on the phenomenal work done during the last five years.”“Governor Stitt has chosen to align himself with folks who want to rewrite or prohibit the full intellectual exploration of our history, which is in direct conflict with the spirit of the commission I joined several years ago,” Mr. Nichols, a Democrat, wrote in his resignation letter.Phil Armstrong, the project director of the Centennial Commission, had also criticized the legislation, writing in a letter to Mr. Stitt that it “chills the ability of educators to teach students, of any age, and will only serve to intimidate educators who seek to reveal and process our hidden history.”“How do you reconcile your membership on the Centennial Commission with your support of a law that is fundamentally contrary to the mission of reconciliation and restoration?” Mr. Armstrong wrote in the letter, dated Tuesday.The law bans Oklahoma teachers and school administrators from requiring or making part of a course a number of concepts about race. The banned concepts include the notion that any person “by virtue of his or her race or sex is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”It also bans teaching of the concepts that a person, “by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex” and that “meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race.”The law also says that students in Oklahoma’s public higher education system cannot be required to engage “in any form of mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling.”“Now, more than ever, we need policies that bring us together — not rip us apart,” Mr. Stitt said in a videotaped statement explaining his signing of the bill. “As governor, I firmly believe that not one cent of taxpayer money should be used to define and divide young Oklahomans about their race or sex.”He added that the bill endorsed the teaching of the state’s academic standards, which were written by Oklahoma educators, and include events like the Tulsa race massacre, the emergence of Black Wall Street, Oklahoma City lunch counter sit-ins and the Trail of Tears.“We can and should teach this history without labeling a young child as an oppressor or requiring he or she feel guilt or shame, based on their race or sex,” Mr. Stitt said.The Centennial Commission was formed in 2015 to commemorate and educate residents about the 1921 massacre, in which white mobs slaughtered Black residents in Tulsa and destroyed a prosperous Black business district, known as Black Wall Street.As many as 300 Black people were killed and more than 1,200 homes were destroyed. Members of the Oklahoma National Guard arrested Black victims instead of white looters. Photos taken at the time show Black people being marched down the street at gunpoint, their arms raised over their heads. More

The slanted text in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s logo, and its break from the traditional red, white and blue color palette, has formed a new graphical language for progressivism. Imitators abound.In her three years in the national spotlight, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the undisputed face of unabashed progressivism. But there is another hidden-in-plain-sight legacy of her 2018 primary victory: Her campaign logo and poster have reshaped the visual branding of the left. More

Back on the campaign trail, the leading Democrats traded barbs over their competing visions for public safety.On the day after the leading Democratic candidates for mayor faced off in the first major debate of the election season, Andrew Yang attended a conference on the future of the waterfront. Scott M. Stringer went to a vacant lot in Brooklyn to talk about affordable housing. Maya Wiley toured a Puerto Rican cultural center on the Lower East Side. Eric Adams attended fund-raisers, and Raymond J. McGuire greeted business owners on Staten Island.But whatever the candidates’ ostensible agendas, public safety — which spurred some of the hottest exchanges during the debate — remained the topic of the day, after yet another rash of attacks in the subway kept the city’s focus on its shaken sense of order.And so there was Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, reminding New Yorkers in a statement Friday morning that he stood with transit workers in their demands for more officers in the subway. There was Mr. Yang on “Good Morning New York,” opining that the police “are going to drive our ability to improve what’s going on our streets, in the subway.”There, on the other side of the divide, was Ms. Wiley, at the Clemente Cultural and Educational Center in Manhattan, urging that more social service workers for people with mental illness, not more police officers, be sent underground.And there was Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller, sounding a similar note in front of the vacant lot in Brownsville, saying that without a comprehensive prescription that included social services and supportive housing, “We will be cycling people from the subways to Rikers,” the city’s jail complex, “back and forth and at a tremendous financial cost.”With less than six weeks left before the June 22 primary and a crowded field of contenders struggling to define themselves to a distracted electorate, crime, and how to stop it, has emerged as both a dominant public concern and a way for the candidates to score points against each other.Each day seems to bring a fresh cause for alarm. On Friday, a group of men slashed or punched commuters aboard a moving subway train. The attacks came at the end of a one-week stretch that included the shooting of three bystanders in Times Square, a police officer being shot three times while responding to another shooting and at least a half-dozen other seemingly random subway attacks.The candidates have clearly felt pressure to address the violence. After the Times Square shooting last Saturday, Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuire held news conferences there, even as the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, stayed away.At the debate, Mr. Adams took Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, to task for holding a news conference “blocks from your home” in Times Square but not responding to recent shootings in neighborhoods with large Black populations, like Brownsville. Two other candidates, Shaun Donovan and Kathryn Garcia, responded to the Times Square shooting with plans to get guns off the streets.In many ways, the campaigning on Friday was a continuation of the previous night’s debate, where the candidates leaned into their sharply different approaches to law enforcement and to the question of whether the city can police its way out of a spike in gun violence.Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio and civil-rights lawyer, said at the debate that she would take $1 billion from the Police Department and use the money “to create trauma-informed care in our schools, because when we do that violence goes down and graduation rates go up.”Another candidate, Dianne Morales, who has called for cutting the $6 billion police budget in half, said that “safety is not synonymous with police.” Mr. Stringer and Mr. Donovan have also called for shifting at least $1 billion from the police budget to social services.Ms. Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, staked out a middle ground on Thursday, saying, “We do need to respond when the M.T.A. says we need more cops in the subway. That does not mean we’re not sending mental health professionals into the subway as well.”Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang have opposed “defunding” the police, and on Thursday night Mr. Adams repeated his call for a reinstituted unit of plainclothes police officers to target gang activity in the city.“​We have to deal with intervention,” he said, “and stop the flow of guns into the city,” adding, “We have to deal with this real, pervasive handgun problem.”In one of the debate’s fiercer exchanges, Ms. Wiley called Mr. Adams an apologist for stop-and-frisk policing. That prompted him to counter that he was actually a “leading voice against the abuse of stop-and-frisk” and that Ms. Wiley had showed a “failure of understanding law enforcement.”Ms. Wiley retorted that as the former head of the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, “I certainly understand misconduct.” Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, hit back, saying that under her, the board was “a failure.”.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-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Ms. Wiley picked up the thread on Friday, reminding a reporter at her tour outside the Clemente Center that Mr. Adams had called stop-and-frisk a “great tool” just last year. (She called the policy “lazy,” “ineffective” and “traumatizing.”)Mr. Adams also took flak from Mr. Donovan at the debate for having said that as mayor he would carry a gun.“As a New Yorker but also as a parent, I’m deeply concerned about the idea of a mayor who carries a gun at a time where gun violence is spiking,” Mr. Donovan, a former city and federal housing official, said.Mr. Adams replied that he would do so only if the police’s threat assessment unit found that he was the target of “a credible threat.”On Friday, Ms. Wiley spoke about there being a “false choice between either being safe from crime and being safe from police violence” and promised, “We can have both.”In an ad released on Friday by a political action committee that supports Mr. Adams, Strong Leadership NYC, Mr. Adams used similar words.“We can have justice and public safety at the same time,” he says in the ad, adding that after being assaulted by the police as a young man, he became an officer with the goal of reforming the department from within. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Adams called not only for more officers in the subway but for “serious mental health resources.”Still, there was no question where his emphasis lay: He also called for better monitoring of security cameras and closer coordination between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway, and the police.“Progress cannot be derailed by crime,” Mr. Adams wrote. “If New Yorkers themselves cannot rely on our public transportation to keep them safe, then tourists will not return and not the businesses that depend on them.” More