Elections

The New York City mayor’s race has eight weeks to go before the June 22 primary, and endorsements and donations are beginning to help it take shape.Raymond J. McGuire, a trailblazing Black businessman who is trying to parlay his decades of success on Wall Street into a successful run for mayor of New York City, has tried to discourage comparisons to Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire ex-mayor who won office in 2001 as a Republican.His efforts to do so will not be helped by the latest financial disclosure statements, which cement the notion that he will be the wealthiest mayor, if elected, since Mr. Bloomberg.He will also have one more competitor in the June 22 Democratic primary than originally thought. Here’s what you need to know about the race:Women for WileyOf the four women trying to become New York City’s first female mayor, Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, may have the best shot: She is consistently in third or fourth place in early polling and was endorsed by the city’s largest union.Now several women’s groups are beginning to coalesce behind her.Amplify Her, a group that works to elect women in New York City, will announce its endorsement of Ms. Wiley this week. Marti Speranza Wong, the group’s executive director, said members liked some of Ms. Wiley’s proposals, including cutting $1 billion per year from the police budget and addressing the Black maternal mortality rate.“It’s not just about electing any woman — it’s about sending a woman to City Hall who won’t shy away from tackling the deep inequities in our city,” she said.Ms. Wiley was also recently endorsed by Emily’s List, which aims to elect Democratic women who are in favor of abortion rights, and by the Higher Heights for America PAC, which supports progressive Black women.Emily’s List said Ms. Wiley would prioritize the city’s most vulnerable residents during the recovery from the pandemic and noted that New York City is behind other major cities like Atlanta, Boston and Chicago that have female mayors.Interestingly, the chairwoman of the Higher Heights PAC, L. Joy Williams, is working for Mr. McGuire’s campaign. And Kimberly Peeler-Allen, one of the co-founders of Higher Heights, is the treasurer of New York for Ray, a super PAC supporting Mr. McGuire’s campaign.Ray McGuire will work for $1 a yearMr. McGuire, who left his position as a vice chairman at Citigroup to run for mayor, will still receive payouts from his former employer over the next four years, and has numerous investments in securities and various businesses, according to a financial disclosure report from the Conflicts of Interest Board.According to the report, Mr. McGuire will receive a total of $5.8 million from Citi, distributed over four equal payments starting next year.The disclosure report also revealed that Mr. McGuire received $500,000 in deferred compensation from Citi and that he also earned a minimum of $1 million in dividends, interest and capital gains from the company in 2020.Mr. McGuire has business investments valued at anywhere from $3 million to $5.4 million; stocks and bonds in more than 130 companies valued at a minimum of $9 million and a maximum of $22 million; and owns three properties in Ohio with a minimum value of $850,000 to at least $1.3 million or more.Mr. Bloomberg took $1 per year in salary, and Mr. McGuire said he planned to do the same.Other candidates also reported their earnings.Andrew Yang, the ex-2020 presidential candidate, reported earning between $677,000 and $2.5 million from book royalties, his former job as a commentator on CNN and speaking fees. Mr. Yang also expects to earn a minimum of $600,000 in future book royalties.Chris Coffey, Mr. Yang’s co-campaign manager, said that Mr. Yang will take a salary if elected.The former federal housing secretary Shaun Donovan reported no income; a spokesman said that he and his family “made a decision to dip into savings so that he could dedicate himself full time to running for mayor.” Donovan gets his public fundsOn Thursday, the New York City Campaign Finance Board gave Mr. Donovan’s campaign $1.5 million in matching public funds. But it had to overcome some initial hesitation before doing so.The week before, the board withheld the funds, because it wanted to ensure that there had been no improper coordination between the former federal housing secretary’s campaign and the super PAC supporting him — which is almost entirely funded by Mr. Donovan’s father.As of Sunday, the super PAC had reported raising $3.1 million, $3 million of it from Michael Donovan, Mr. Donovan’s father and an ad-tech executive. Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with campaigns, and both Mr. Donovan’s super PAC and his campaign asserted there had been no coordination whatsoever. Mr. Donovan’s father, Michael, said he and his son kept their conversations to personal matters.“We are following the law,” said the younger Mr. Donovan in an interview last week.Coordination is notoriously difficult to prove. Even so, the campaign finance board wanted to do its due diligence and noted some displeasure even as it gave Mr. Donovan the matching funds.“In this election cycle, several single-candidate super PACs have been established, particularly in connection with the race for mayor, and a significant level of contributions and expenditures is occurring to and by these PACs,” said board chair Frederick Schaffer in a statement. “This development poses a particular challenge to the goals of the city’s system of public campaign financing.”Mr. Schaffer said that the board might look into amending the law and its regulations once the election is complete.Earth Day endorsements and a composting kerfuffleHe might not be leading in the polls, but Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, seems to have cornered the market on support from climate activists.Earth Day brought Mr. Stringer an endorsement from Mark Ruffalo, the actor and anti-fracking activist. Sunrise Movement NYC, a group of young activists fighting climate change, announced that it was endorsing both Mr. Stringer and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive.Sunrise cited Mr. Stringer’s work to divest city pensions from fossil fuel, while Mr. Ruffalo credited Mr. Stringer’s opposition to hydrofracking and his governmental experience.New York City is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, and several other candidates used Earth Day to tout their own big green ideas.Mr. Yang revealed his favorite park on Twitter and traveled to a former landfill in the Rockaways, which he said should be used for solar power generation.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said he would create a school focused on preparing students for green careers and would make New York “the wind power hub of the Eastern Seaboard.”Earth Day, like any other day on Earth, was also the setting for a political scuffle.After Mayor de Blasio announced that he would partially resurrect the city’s curbside composting program — whose demise was a byproduct of the pandemic — his former sanitation commissioner, Kathryn Garcia, issued a withering statement saying his plan would render composting a “luxury” product available only to those with the wherewithal to wade through the paperwork.“If New York City is going to lead on climate and sustainability, we need to go bigger and bolder,” she said. “We need to make the curbside organics program mandatory, permanent, and ensure equity in its design by leaving no neighborhood behind. There is no halfway on an issue as important as the fight against climate change.”A 13th Democrat makes the ballotThe field of 12 Democrats to appear on the ballot in the primary for mayor on June 22 had appeared to be set, but it will now be a baker’s dozen, after Joycelyn Taylor, the chief executive of a general contracting firm, earned a late spot.Ms. Taylor, who challenged a decision by the New York City Board of Elections that she did not receive enough signatures, will appear last on the ballot after Mr. Yang. Ms. Taylor’s campaign celebrated on Twitter, saying that she was “lucky 13!”She is running as a working-class New Yorker who grew up in public housing and is calling for ownership rights for longtime residents of public housing and for the City University of New York to be free, among other proposals.At the same time, several candidates might not appear on the Working Families Party ballot line after there was a snafu over new filing rules during the pandemic.The Board of Elections had rejected some notarized forms with electronic signatures that could affect Tiffany Cabán, a City Council candidate, and Brad Lander, who is running for city comptroller, among others, and it us unclear whether they might be reinstated.A spokeswoman for Mr. Lander, Naomi Dann, said that he was “proud to be supported by the Working Families Party,” and was focused on winning the primary. More

The endorsement from Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, could help Mr. Adams reach Latino and Bronx voters in the New York City mayor’s race.When Ruben Diaz Jr. dropped out of the New York City mayor’s race last year, his decision surprised many. He had the support of the powerful Bronx Democratic Party, an alliance with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and strong ties to Latino voters.But Mr. Diaz, the Bronx borough president, still can influence the race: His endorsement became one of the most coveted in the contest — potentially carrying weight in the Bronx and among Latino voters, who make up roughly one-fifth of Democratic primary voters.On Monday, Mr. Diaz will announce that he is endorsing Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, boosting Mr. Adams’s hopes of trying to assemble a diverse coalition to defeat Andrew Yang, the former presidential hopeful.“There have been so many issues where I witnessed firsthand how much Eric loves New York, but also how critical it is to have someone who has the life experience of a New Yorker to help inform them about how to fight for all New Yorkers,” Mr. Diaz said in an interview.Mr. Diaz, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said that his trust in Mr. Adams was built over a two-decade relationship, and recalled how they met in 1999 at a rally in the Bronx after the police killing of Amadou Diallo, a young Black man whose death became a rallying cry for changes to the Police Department.His endorsement follows other prominent Latino leaders who have backed Mr. Adams: Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president who twice ran for mayor, and Francisco Moya, a city councilman from Queens. None of the leading Democratic mayoral candidates is Latino or has strong roots in the Bronx.Latino voters could be a major factor in the Democratic primary and Mr. Diaz’s endorsement could be significant, said Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist who published a lengthy piece this month examining the demographics in the race.“If you take that endorsement and put resources and energy and outreach behind it, it could become an inflection point for reaching that fifth of the vote that is Hispanic,” he said.With Mr. Yang leading in the limited polling available, Mr. Adams has tried to consolidate support beyond his base in Brooklyn. Mr. Adams was endorsed by six elected officials in Queens last week, and declared himself the “King of Queens.”Mr. Adams said in an interview that Mr. Diaz’s endorsement was important for the coalition he was building in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. He said he believed his campaign would speak to Latino voters.“Public safety, employment, and having affordable housing and a solid school system — these are my messages I’ve been saying for the last 35 years,” he said.Mr. Adams said he would get that message out through ads and mailers in the coming weeks. Mr. Adams had the most money on hand of any candidate as of the last filing date: more than $7.5 million. He has not yet bought any advertising time on television, but was shooting an ad on Saturday.All of the mayoral front-runners have been courting Latino leaders. Mr. Yang was endorsed by Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, the first openly gay Afro-Latino member of Congress.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, has ties to the Latino community through his stepfather and was endorsed by Representative Adriano D. Espaillat, the first Dominican immigrant to be elected to Congress. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was endorsed by Representative Nydia Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in Congress.Asked if Mr. Adams was the strongest candidate to beat Mr. Yang, Mr. Diaz said Mr. Adams was the best person to be mayor, but still chided Mr. Yang for leaving the city during the pandemic for his second home in New Paltz, N.Y.“This is the time when New York needs someone to run the city, not run from the city,” Mr. Diaz said.County party leaders are not officially endorsing in the Democratic primary. The Bronx Democratic Party, which is led by Jamaal Bailey, a state senator, has not made an endorsement, and neither has the Brooklyn Democratic Party, though its leader, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, a state assemblywoman, endorsed Mr. Adams.The city has never had a Latino or Hispanic mayor — except for John Purroy Mitchel, who served a century ago and whom some consider the first Hispanic mayor because he descended from Spanish nobility.In the mayor’s race this year, Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive who is of Puerto Rican descent, is running as a Democrat. Fernando Mateo, a restaurant operator and advocate for livery drivers who was born in the Dominican Republic, is running as a Republican. More

Tensions had been rising since the president, a former American citizen, failed to hold scheduled elections, then extended his term in office by two years.NAIROBI, Kenya — Gunfire erupted across the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday as security forces loyal to the president clashed with units that appeared to have sided with his rivals, stoking fears that Somalia’s simmering political crisis is spilling over into violence.The fighting, some of the worst in the Somali capital for years, followed months of tense talks between President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and opponents who accuse him of making an unconstitutional power grab.The talks collapsed after Mr. Mohamed failed to hold presidential and parliamentary elections by February, as scheduled, and then two months later signed a law extending his term in office by two years. His actions have drawn criticism from the United States and other Western allies.The moves effectively ended United Nations-mediated negotiations backed by the United States and added fuel to an already combustible political situation.The shooting started Sunday afternoon after soldiers aligned with the opposition took positions at several strategic locations in Mogadishu, drawing fire from pro-government forces. Analysts said the rift was influenced by the powerful clan divisions that have often been at the center of the turmoil Somalia has faced since its central government collapsed in 1991.As rival factions traded fire late into Sunday evening, alarmed Western officials appealed for a halt to fighting they feared might spiral into a wider confrontation that could unravel years of modest yet steady progress toward turning Somalia into a functioning state.Anti-government military forces in Mogadishu.Farah Abdi Warsameh/Associated PressThe European Union ambassador to Somalia, Nicolas Berlanga, appealed on Twitter for “maximum restraint” on all sides. “Violence is unacceptable,” he said. “Those responsible will be held accountable.”The fighting also raised the possibility of dangerous fissures along clan lines inside the Somali military, and the worry that powerful foreign-trained units, including an elite American-funded commando squad, could get sucked in.Videos posted online by Somali reporters and news outlets Sunday night depicted long bursts of gunfire around Kilometer 4, a major junction in the city. Some of fighting occurred near Villa Somalia, as the presidential palace is known.Foreigners living in the highly protected zone around Mogadishu’s international airport said they had retreated into bunkers to avoid being hit by stray gunfire.The main clashes occurred outside the homes of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a former president of Somalia, and Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the leader of a major opposition party. In statements, both men laid blame for the attacks on President Mohamed, who is popularly known by the nickname “Formaajo.”At a hastily convened news conference, Hassan Hundubey Jimale, Somalia’s minister of internal security, denied that the government had attacked the former president’s home and blamed unspecified foreign countries for the clashes.Mr. Jimale gave no details about how many people had been killed or injured.Critics said Mr. Mohamed was making a high-stakes bid to stay in power.“It seems Formaajo has decided his final suicidal attack by attacking every opposition figure in town,” said Hussein Sheikh Ali, a former national security adviser who once worked under Mr. Mohamed.American officials said they had privately warned Mr. Mohamed, a one-time American citizen, against using the Danab, an American-trained commando force of about 900 soldiers, to crack down on his opponents. But they acknowledged that Mr. Mohamed has other options, including Turkish-trained troops estimated to number at least 2,600 men.Demonstrators burned photographs of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed in Mogadishu.Farah Abdi Warsameh/Associated PressA contingent of troops trained in Eritrea, whose authoritarian leader, Isaias Afwerki, is a key ally of Mr. Mohamed, are reported to have returned to Somalia in recent weeks.The election in 2017 of Mr. Mohamed, a former New York State official with a home in Buffalo, raised hopes he could set the country on a less corrupt and dysfunctional track. But disillusionment set in as Mr. Mohamed’s government silenced critics, expelled the top U.N. official and, last year, dragged its feet over scheduled elections.The opposition has refused to recognize Mr. Mohamed’s authority since his four-year term expired on Feb. 8 without planned presidential and parliamentary elections taking place.Talks between the two sides over the terms of any elections have been deadlocked since the fall. Opponents accused Mr. Mohamed and his powerful spy chief, Fahad Yasin, of attempting to rig the system by stuffing regional electoral boards with their supporters.Mr. Mohamed claimed his enemies were trying to shy away from an election, and now says he needs two years to bring forward plans for universal suffrage in Somalia. Under the current system, the president is chosen through an indirect, clan-based vote.Mr. Mohamed’s move to extend his term by two years on April 14, which some analysts called a “constitutional coup,” met with fierce criticism from the United States and other Western allies.In Mogadishu, the move caused some opposition leaders to retreat into their clan strongholds.Among those embroiled in the fighting on Sunday was Sadek John, a former police chief of Mogadishu who was dismissed in mid-April after he opposed Mr. Mohamed, according to a Somali police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.Declan Walsh reported from Nairobi, Kenya and Hussein Mohamed from Mogadishu, Somalia. More

But Mr. McCarthy, the House Republican leader who could become speaker after 2022, says he needs to work with Donald Trump, who “goes up and down with his anger.’’BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, was in an uncharacteristically dark place.It was after the Capitol siege of Jan. 6, and he was getting pounded from all sides. He was being accused, accurately, of promoting President Donald J. Trump’s stolen-election lies. But Mr. Trump was still enraged at him for not doing more, and his supporters had just ransacked Mr. McCarthy’s office.“This is the first time I think I’ve ever been depressed in this job,” Mr. McCarthy confided to his friend, Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina. “Patrick, man, I’m down, I’m just really down.”Mr. McHenry told him to gather himself. “You’re dazed,” Mr. McHenry said, recounting the exchange. “You have to try to think clearly.”As the end of the Trump presidency devolved into turmoil and violence, Mr. McCarthy faced a dilemma, one that has bedeviled his party for nearly five years: Should he cut Mr. Trump loose, as many Republicans were urging. Or should he keep trying to make it work with an ousted president who remains the most popular and motivating force inside the G.O.P.?Mr. McCarthy chose the latter, and not for the first time. His extravagant efforts to ingratiate himself with Mr. Trump have earned him a reputation for being an alpha lap-dog inside Mr. Trump’s kennel of acolytes. Nine days after Mr. Trump departed Washington, there was Mr. McCarthy paying a visit to Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Florida estate, in an effort to “keep up a dialogue” with the volatile former president.“He goes up and down with his anger,” Mr. McCarthy said of Mr. Trump in a series of interviews during a recent 48-hour swing through Indiana and Iowa, and home to Bakersfield, Calif., which he has represented in Congress since 2007. “He’s mad at everybody one day. He’s mad at me one day.”Now, nearly four months after Jan. 6, Mr. McCarthy continues to defend his support for Mr. Trump’s bogus assertions that the election was stolen from him. Friends say that he knows better and is as exasperated by Mr. Trump’s behavior as other top Republicans, but that he has made the calculation that the former president’s support is essential for his ambitions to become speaker after the 2022 elections, when Republicans have a decent chance to win back the House.Pressed on whether he regretted working to overturn President Biden’s 2020 victory, Mr. McCarthy took the position that he did no such thing.“We voted not to certify two states,” he said, referring to Arizona and Pennsylvania, whose slates of electoral votes Mr. McCarthy and fellow Republicans voted to challenge, despite offering no proof of fraud that would have altered the final tallies. But even if the Republicans’ challenge had been successful in those states, Mr. McCarthy argued, the electoral votes would not have been enough to tip the nationwide vote away from Mr. Biden. “And Joe Biden would still be sitting in the White House right now,” he said.So what exactly was he trying to accomplish with his votes against certification on Jan. 6? “That was the only time that we could raise the issue that there was a question in the activities in those states,” Mr. McCarthy said.On Sunday, Mr. McCarthy was further pressed by the “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, who asked whether Mr. Trump had sided with the Jan. 6 rioters when the president told Mr. McCarthy in a phone call that day, according to a claim by another Republican House member, that the mob was “more upset by the election” than Mr. McCarthy. Mr. McCarthy had called Mr. Trump to tell him the mob had to stop.Mr. McCarthy sidestepped, saying Mr. Trump told him that he would “put something out to make sure to stop this. And that’s what he did, he put a video out later.”“Quite a lot later,” Mr. Wallace replied. “And it was a pretty weak video.”Mr. McCarthy’s dodge speaks to his role as Mr. Trump’s chief envoy to Republicans in power. At 56, he is perhaps the most consequential member of his party in post-Trump Washington in large part because of his chance of becoming the next speaker of the House. Republicans need to win roughly five more seats to reclaim a majority in 2022, a viable prospect given that congressional districts are set to be redrawn and precedent favors nonpresidential parties in midterm elections. In contrast, Senate Republicans — deadlocked 50 to 50 with Democrats — face a treacherous map, with analysts viewing Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, as less likely to command a majority after 2022.Mr. McCarthy knows the surest way to blow up his speakership plans would be to alienate Mr. Trump, who relishes being both a potential kingmaker to his favored candidates and saboteur of those he is determined to punish.“He could change the whole course of history,” Mr. McCarthy said, referring to the prospect that Mr. Trump could undermine Republican campaigns, or leave the party entirely. “This is the tightest tightrope anyone has to walk.”Mr. McCarthy’s current role has positioned him as perhaps the most consequential Republican in post-Trump Washington.Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times‘Like Your Older Brother’Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump share some essential traits. Both men are more transactional than ideological, possess a healthy belief in their own abilities to charm and tend to be hyper-focused on the zero sum of politics (i.e., winning and losing). As the leader of a minority caucus, Mr. McCarthy has been less concerned with passing signature legislation or advancing any transformational policy initiatives.His main preoccupation has been doing what it takes to win a majority and become speaker. He has worked feverishly to that end by recruiting candidates, formulating campaign strategies and raising huge sums ($27.1 million in the first quarter of 2021, spread over four targeted funding entities), much of which he has distributed to his members, earning himself the vital currency of their devotion.“Kevin has unified the Republican conference more than John Boehner or Paul Ryan ever did,” said Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, referring to Mr. McCarthy’s leadership predecessors. “He’s been to my district four times. My donors know him. They have his cell number. Kevin’s capacity to build and maintain relationships is not normal.”As the leader of a historically fractious caucus, Mr. McCarthy’s most effective unifying tactic has been through common opposition to the “radical socialist agenda” of Democrats, particularly Republicans’ designated time-honored scoundrels like Representative Maxine Waters of California, after she said protesters should “get more confrontational” in the event Derek Chauvin was acquitted in the killing of George Floyd.Mr. McCarthy moved quickly to call a House vote to censure Ms. Waters. The measure promptly failed as Democrats charged hypocrisy over Mr. McCarthy’s unwillingness to condemn worse in his own ranks, among them Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida (possible sex trafficking) and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia (support in 2019 for assassinating Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among other incendiary stances on social media).Friends say Mr. McCarthy has little stomach for playing the heavy. “Look, I work with people I don’t get to hire,” Mr. McCarthy said. He shrugs off the presence of “problematic” members as a phenomenon of both sides. “I’m just a simple person,” Mr. McCarthy likes to say, a standard line in his stump speech. “The Senate is like a country club. The House is like a truck stop.” He prefers eating at a truck stop, he said, “a freewheeling microcosm of society” where he would much rather fit in than try to impose order.“Kevin is a little like your older brother,” Mr. McHenry said. “He doesn’t want to be your parent.”Mr. McCarthy knows the surest way to blow up his plans of becoming speaker would be to alienate Mr. Trump.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesWho’s in Charge?Mr. McCarthy took a seat at a family restaurant in Davenport, Iowa, during a recent visit to highlight a disputed congressional race left over from 2020. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican, had prevailed by six votes over Rita Hart, a Democrat who was appealing the matter to a House committee. Mr. McCarthy accused Democrats of trying to steal the seat, which invited immediate charges of a yawning double standard given how Mr. McCarthy had supported Mr. Trump’s efforts on a much grander scale.Later that day, Ms. Hart conceded defeat, and the dispute was resolved without riots. “This is a good day,” Mr. McCarthy said. But that morning, Mr. Biden had unveiled his infrastructure bill and had called Mr. McConnell, and not Mr. McCarthy, to brief him ahead of time. Mr. McCarthy volunteered that he had not once spoken to Mr. Biden since Inauguration Day, a slight he maintained did not bother him, although the pique in his voice suggested otherwise.“When he was vice president, we would do stuff together,” Mr. McCarthy said. “He would have me up to eat breakfast at his residence.”Mr. McCarthy flashed a photo of himself from his phone with the vice president at the time, separated by tall glasses of orange juice and plates of freshly cut melon and blueberries. Mr. McCarthy, who likes to attend Hollywood award shows and big-ticket galas, brandished phone photos of himself over two days with other eminences, including Mr. Trump, Pope Francis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kobe Bryant. There was also one of himself in high school with majestically feathered hair.But he is also a small-town guy who keeps up with old boyhood pals and still seems enamored of having been popular at Bakersfield High School, where he played tight end on the football team. He travels home often to his district lined with swaying oil jacks, spread across California’s agricultural interior, two hours north and a world removed from Los Angeles, not to mention Washington 2,700 miles away.The son of a firefighter, Mr. McCarthy has a shorthand bio that’s well-worn: He won $5,000 in a lottery, left community college to open a deli, learned firsthand the havoc government intrusion can inflict on business owners, sold the deli, earned a marketing degree and M.B.A. at California State University, Bakersfield, and was elected to the California Legislature in 2002.The waitress came over, and Mr. McCarthy ordered fried chicken and chunky apple sauce.The meal landed while he was on hold waiting to be interviewed by Sean Hannity, giving Mr. McCarthy the chance to methodically rip apart his fried chicken. He separated the batter and meat from the bone with savage gusto, and shoveled as much as possible into his mouth before the interview began. His fingers grew greasy, as did his phone.The gist of the Hannity interview was consistent with one of Mr. McCarthy’s recurring themes of late: Democrats are acting in a heavy-handed manner antithetical to Mr. Biden’s conciliatory impulses. This therefore proved that Mr. Biden was not really in charge of his own government, a familiar Republican trope since the popular-so-far Mr. Biden took over.Republicans need to win roughly five House seats next year to reclaim a majority.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times‘That’s My Job’Mr. McCarthy became the House Republican leader after his party lost its majority in 2018 and Mr. Ryan retired. Republicans came shockingly close to winning back the majority in 2020, despite predictions they would lose seats in a coronavirus-ravaged economy and with an unpopular president leading the ticket. Instead, the party netted about a dozen seats, leaving it only five short. Mr. McCarthy’s colleagues began referring to him as “speaker in waiting.”After the House chamber was evacuated on Jan. 6, Mr. McCarthy retreated to his Capitol office with a colleague, Representative Bruce Westerman, Republican of Arkansas. When it became evident the rioters were breaking in, Mr. McCarthy’s security detail insisted he leave. But Mr. Westerman was left behind in Mr. McCarthy’s inner work area, he said in a recent interview.For protection, Mr. Westerman said he commandeered a Civil War sword from an office display, barricaded himself in Mr. McCarthy’s private bathroom and waited out the siege while crouched on the toilet.Friends describe the postelection period as traumatic for Mr. McCarthy, who publicly perpetuated the fiction that Mr. Trump had won while privately asking him to stop.“Every day seemed worse than the day before,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and frequent McCarthy sidekick. “He knew the impossible position he was in.”Still, the turmoil never brought Mr. McCarthy to a breaking point with Mr. Trump. “Look, I didn’t want him to leave the party,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Mitch had stopped talking to him a number of months before. People criticize me for having a relationship with the president. That’s my job.”Whenever the former president’s name came up in these interviews, Mr. McCarthy would lower his voice and speak haltingly, wary of not casting Mr. Trump in a way that might upset him. “Is this story going to be all about Trump?” Mr. McCarthy asked, after back-to-back questions on him. He then paused, seemingly bracing for a ceiling fan to drop on his head.Catie Edmondson More

An audit of the vote in Arizona’s most populous county was meant to mollify angry Trump voters. But it is being criticized as a partisan exercise more than a fact-finding one.PHOENIX — It seemed so simple back in December.Responding to angry voters who echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, Arizona Republicans promised a detailed review of the vote that showed Mr. Trump to have been the first Republican presidential nominee to lose the state since 1996. “We hold an audit,” State Senator Eddie Farnsworth said at a Judiciary Committee hearing. “And then we can put this to rest.”But when a parade of flatbed trucks last week hauled boxes of voting equipment and 78 pallets containing the 2.1 million ballots of Arizona’s largest county to a decrepit local coliseum, it kicked off a seat-of-the-pants audit process that seemed more likely to amplify Republican grievances than to put them to rest.Almost half a year after the election Mr. Trump lost, the promised audit has become a snipe hunt for skulduggery that has spanned a court battle, death threats and calls to arrest the elected leadership of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.The head of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm that Republican senators hired to oversee the audit, has embraced Mr. Trump’s baseless theories of election theft and has suggested, contrary to available evidence, that Mr. Trump actually won Arizona by 200,000 votes. The pro-Trump cable channel One America News Network has started a fund-raiser to finance the venture and has been named one of the nonpartisan observers that will keep the audit on the straight and narrow.In fact, three previous reviews showed no sign of significant fraud or any reason to doubt President Biden’s victory. But the senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide.Critics in both parties charge that an effort that began as a way to placate angry Trump voters has become a political embarrassment and another blow to the once-inviolable democratic norm that losers and winners alike honor the results of elections.“You know the dog that caught the car?” said Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the Republican-dominated Maricopa Board of Supervisors. “The dog doesn’t know what to do with it.”After a brief pause on Friday ordered by a state court judge, the audit continues without clarity on who will do the counting, what it will cost and who will pay for the process, which is expected to last into mid-May. The One America network is livestreaming it, and Mr. Trump is cheering from the sidelines.In an email statement on Saturday, he praised the “brave American Patriots” behind the effort and demanded that Gov. Doug Ducey, a frequent target of his displeasure, dispatch the state police or National Guard for their protection.Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, a Democrat, was less enthused.“My concern grows deeper by the hour,” she said in an email on Friday. “It is clear that no one involved in this process knows what they are doing, and they are making it up as they go along.”The Senate president, Karen Fann, said in December that the audit had no hidden agenda and could not change the settled election results in Arizona, regardless of what it showed.“A lot of our constituents have a lot of questions about how the voting, the electoral system works, the security of it, the validity of it,” she said, and so the senators needed experts to examine voting processes and determine “what else could we do to verify the votes were correct and accurate.”Officials unloaded election equipment at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the state fairgrounds in Phoenix on Wednesday.Matt York/Associated PressOther state legislatures have looked into bogus claims of election fraud. But the Arizona audit, driven in part by conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, is in a league of its own. Experts say it underscores the sharp rightward shift of the Legislature and the state Republican Party even as the state edges toward the political center.“I get why they’re doing it, because half of the G.O.P. believes there was widespread fraud,” said Mike Noble, a Phoenix pollster who got his start in Republican politics. “The only problem is, a majority of the electorate doesn’t believe there was widespread fraud.“The longer they push this,” he said, “the more they’re alienating people in the middle.”In Arizona, the state party is headed by Kelli Ward, a former state senator who has rejected Mr. Biden’s victory and supports the audit. Under her leadership, the party in January censured Mr. Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain for being insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.The 16 Republicans in the State Senate reflect the party’s lurch to the right. November’s elections ousted the Senate’s two most moderate Republicans, replacing one with a Democrat and another with a Republican who claims lifetime membership in the Oath Keepers, the extremist group that helped lead the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.Another self-proclaimed Oath Keeper, State Representative Mark Finchem, proposed in January to give the Legislature the power to reject presidential election results and choose new electors by a majority vote. (The proposal went nowhere). Mr. Finchem since has become a vocal backer of the audit.“The people in the Legislature are more prone to believe in the conspiracy theories and are more prone to espouse them” than in the past, said Barrett Marson, a Phoenix campaign consultant and a former Republican spokesman for the Arizona State House.Kelli Ward, the staunchly conservative chair of the Arizona Republican Party, is a strong supporter of the Maricopa County audit. Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressMs. Fann, Mr. Farnsworth and Mr. Finchem did not respond to requests for interviews.The Senate’s rightward drift is simply explained, political analysts say. Most of the 30 Senate districts are so uncompetitive that the Democratic and Republican primaries effectively choose who will serve as senators. Because most voters sit out primary elections, the ones who do show up — for Republicans, that often means far-right Trump supporters — are the key to getting elected.Responding to stolen-election claims, through tougher voting laws or inquiries, is by far those voters’ top issue, said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican campaign strategist in Phoenix.“They’re representing their constituency,” he said. “The whole process was built to produce this.” The senators warmed to the notion of a Maricopa County audit from the first mention of it in early December.Before long, they sent subpoenas to the county seeking the 2.1 million ballots, access to 385 voting machines and other equipment like check-in poll books, voting machine passwords and personal details on everyone who voted. The supervisors resisted, calling the election fraud-free, and said they wanted a court ruling on the subpoenas’ legality.The reaction was immediate: The four Republicans and one Democrat on the Board of Supervisors were deluged with thousands of telephone calls and emails from Trump supporters, many from out of state, some promising violence.“All five supervisors were receiving death threats,” said Mr. Gallardo, the Democratic supervisor. Two police officers were posted outside his home.Though three previous checks showed no sign of cheating, Arizona senators now plan to recount — by hand — all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, two-thirds of the entire vote statewide. Pool photo by Ross D. FranklinHoping to head off a dispute, the supervisors hired two federally approved firms to conduct a forensic audit of the county’s voting machines. The audit concluded that the equipment had performed flawlessly.Ms. Fann, who in the past had been seen as a moderate conservative, said the Senate wanted a stricter review. Senators said they had hired “an independent, qualified forensic auditing firm” for the task.Then it developed that their selection, Allied Security Operations Group, had asserted that Arizona voting machines had been hacked in an “insidious and egregious ploy” to elect Mr. Biden.The senators backtracked, but Jack Sellers, the chairman of the Maricopa County supervisors, charged in a Facebook post that they had chosen “a debunked conspiracy theorist” for the audit.Tempers flared, and all 16 Republican senators proposed to hold the supervisors in contempt, potentially sending them to jail.But that fell apart after Senator Paul Boyer, a Phoenix Republican, backed out after deciding he could not jail the supervisors for disobeying a subpoena they considered illegal.As he stood on the Senate floor explaining his stance, his cellphone began buzzing with furious texts and emails. Some were threatening; some mentioned his wife’s workplace and their toddler son.“It was like, ‘You’d better watch your back — we’re coming for you,’” Mr. Boyer said. The family spent days in hiding before returning home with a 24-hour police guard.Just two weeks later, on Feb. 27, a county court ruled the Senate subpoenas legal.Workers tabulating ballot results at the Maricopa County recorder’s office in Phoenix on Nov. 5.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesThe Senate, seemingly caught unawares, initially refused to accept delivery of the subpoenaed material for lack of a secure place to store it. Officials rented a local coliseum, but the county sheriff’s office refused to provide security, calling the job outside its scope. The second firm hired to analyze the audit results, Cyber Ninjas, says it is an industry leader. But The Arizona Republic soon reported that the company’s chief executive, Doug Logan, had posted a litany of stolen-election conspiracy theories on a Twitter account that he had deleted in January.Among them was a retweeted post suggesting that Dominion Voting Systems, a favorite target of the right, had robbed Mr. Trump of 200,000 votes in Arizona. Dominion says Cyber Ninjas is “led by conspiracy theorists and QAnon supporters who have helped spread the “Big Lie” of a rigged election.Mr. Logan, at a news conference last week said the company was committed to a fair, transparent process. “It’s really, really important to us that we have integrity in the way we do this count and in the results that come out of it,” he told reporters. Ms. Fann has said that the firm and others it will oversee are “well qualified and well experienced.”But unease about the audit has continued to mushroom. Ms. Hobbs, the secretary of state, asked the state attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican, to investigate the Senate’s handling of the procedure, citing a lack of transparency about security of ballots. She noted that some of the Legislature’s furthest-right firebrands have had free access to the coliseum even as it remained unclear whether reporters and impartial election experts would be allowed to observe the proceedings.He declined.Greg Burton, the executive editor of The Arizona Republic, said in a statement on Friday that “Senate leaders have throttled legitimate press access and handed Arizona’s votes to conspiracy theorists.”Amid the growing uproar, the Republican senators who have approved and stood behind the audit since its beginning have largely been silent about concerns over its integrity.Alain Delaquérière and Susan Beachy contributed research. More

Mr. Carter, a state senator from New Orleans, defeated State Senator Karen Carter Peterson in a race to succeed former Representative Cedric Richmond, who left Congress to become an adviser to President Biden. WASHINGTON — State Senator Troy Carter won a special U.S. House election Saturday in Louisiana, a triumph for the pragmatic wing of the Democratic Party.Mr. Carter defeated State Senator Karen Carter Peterson, who ran to the left, capturing 55 percent to her 45 percent with about 80 percent of precincts reporting in a Black-majority district that stretches from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.His victory represents a vote of confidence in the previous occupant of the seat, former Representative Cedric Richmond, who endorsed Mr. Carter before resigning to become a senior adviser to President Biden.Ms. Peterson and Mr. Carter, both veteran Democrats, positioned themselves in very different ways.Winning the support of an array of progressives, Ms. Peterson sought to link Mr. Carter to former President Donald J. Trump, a deeply unpopular figure in Louisiana’s only majority-minority district.“There will be times when I can work with Republicans, but I am not going to compromise my values on Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, criminal justice reform, passing the George Floyd Act,” Ms. Peterson said in the race’s final debate this week.A former state Democratic Party chair and vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ms. Peterson is rooted in her party’s establishment wing. Yet she sought to outflank Mr. Carter in the runoff, in part by trying to appeal to the Louisianans who supported the third-place finisher in the first round of voting last month, the Baton Rouge activist Gary Chambers Jr. However, she was not able to consolidate support from many of the white liberals in New Orleans who rallied to Mr. Chambers in March. In mailers, Ms. Peterson placed images of Mr. Carter and Mr. Trump side by side. “Troy Carter & his Trump supporters, Not for Us!” one of them read.Mr. Carter rejected the suggestion, calling it “foolishness” and noting in an interview with The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that he is the chairman of his party’s State Senate caucus.However, he countered Ms. Peterson’s support from Mr. Chambers and other left-leaning groups by trying to win over Republicans and independents, who appeared to play a pivotal role in a low-turnout election.Mr. Carter, for example, trumpeted his endorsement from Cynthia Lee Sheng, a Republican who is the president of Jefferson Parish, in the New Orleans suburbs. He routed Ms. Peterson there on Saturday.“Listen, when you’re elected, you’re elected to represent the entire district — Republicans, Democrats, independents and others,” Mr. Carter said at the debate this week. “I will stand for those Democratic ideals that I believe in. I will fight for them until the end. But I will also come to the table to compromise to make sure that I bring resources home for the people of Louisiana.” With his win on Saturday, Mr. Carter became Louisiana’s sole Democratic lawmaker in Congress, a position that can confer outsize influence on patronage when a Democrat is in the White House.While both candidates supported abortion rights and gun control, they had differences on how aggressively they would pursue some of their policy objectives.Ms. Peterson, for example, offered more full-throated opposition to the oil and gas industry, while Mr. Carter called for a more incremental approach toward weaning people off the products of one of the state’s largest industries.Ms. Peterson enjoyed a financial advantage thanks to spending by outside groups such as Emily’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights. However, the race has also become something of a local proxy war between competing Democratic factions in New Orleans. The mayor, LaToya Cantrell, endorsed Ms. Peterson, while Mr. Richmond and Jason Williams, the New Orleans district attorney, supported Mr. Carter. More

Louisiana Special Election Results 2021 – The New York Times

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Karen Carter Peterson and Troy Carter are hoping to succeed former Representative Cedric Richmond, who left Congress to become an adviser to President Biden.WASHINGTON — A pair of state senators from New Orleans are competing Saturday in a special House election that could offer some early insights about the Democratic Party under President Biden.Karen Carter Peterson and Troy Carter, both veteran Democrats, are positioning themselves in very different ways in the runoff to succeed former Representative Cedric Richmond, who left Congress to become an adviser to Mr. Biden.Winning the support of an array of progressives, Ms. Peterson ran to the left and sought to link Mr. Carter to former President Donald J. Trump, a deeply unpopular figure in the Black-majority district stretching from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.“There will be times when I can work with Republicans, but I am not going to compromise my values on Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, criminal justice reform, passing the George Floyd Act,” Ms. Peterson said in the race’s final debate this week.Louisiana Special Election Results 2021See full results and maps from the Louisiana special election.A former state Democratic Party chair and vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ms. Peterson is rooted in her party’s establishment wing. Yet she has sought to outflank Mr. Carter in the runoff, in part because she is hoping to appeal to the Louisianans who supported the third-place finisher in the first round of voting last month, the Baton Rouge activist Gary Chambers Jr.In mailers, Ms. Peterson has placed images of Mr. Carter and Mr. Trump side by side. “Troy Carter & his Trump supporters,” one of them read. “Not for Us!”Mr. Carter has rejected the suggestion, calling it “foolishness” and noting in an interview with The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that he is the chairman of his party’s State Senate caucus.He has, however, sought to counter Ms. Peterson’s support from Mr. Chambers and other left-leaning groups by trying to win over Republicans and independents who could play a pivotal role in what is expected to be a low-turnout election.Mr. Carter, for example, trumpeted his endorsement from Cynthia Lee Sheng, a Republican who is the president of Jefferson Parish, a New Orleans suburb.“Listen, when you’re elected, you’re elected to represent the entire district, Republicans, Democrats, independents and others,” Mr. Carter said at the debate this week. “I will stand for those Democratic ideals that I believe in. I will fight for them until the end. But I will also come to the table to compromise to make sure that I bring resources home for the people of Louisiana.”Whoever wins on Saturday will become Louisiana’s sole Democratic lawmaker in Congress, a position that can confer outsize influence on patronage when a Democrat is in the White House.While both candidates support abortion rights and gun control, they have differences on how aggressively they would pursue some of their policy objectives.Ms. Peterson, for example, has offered more full-throated opposition to the oil and gas industry while Mr. Carter has called for a more incremental approach toward weaning people off what is one of the state’s largest industries.This test between progressivism and pragmatism has national implications, which in the run-up to the vote has benefited primarily Ms. Peterson.She has enjoyed a financial advantage thanks to spending by outside groups such as Emily’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights. However, the race has also become something of a local proxy war between competing Democratic factions in New Orleans. The mayor, LaToya Cantrell, has endorsed Ms. Peterson while Mr. Richmond is supporting Mr. Carter. More