Elections

The election technology company Smartmatic pushed back on Monday against Fox News’s argument that it had covered the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election responsibly, stating that Fox anchors had played along as guests pushed election-related conspiracy theories.“The First Amendment does not provide the Fox defendants a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Smartmatic’s lawyer, J. Erik Connolly, wrote in a brief filed in New York State Supreme Court. “The Fox defendants do not get a do-over with their reporting now that they have been sued.”The brief came in response to motions filed by Fox Corporation and three current and former Fox hosts — Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs — to dismiss a Smartmatic lawsuit accusing them of defamation.Smartmatic and another company, Dominion Voting Systems, became the focus of baseless conspiracy theories after the Nov. 4 election that they had manipulated vote totals in contested states. Those conspiracy theories were pushed by Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, serving as personal lawyers to former President Donald J. Trump, on Fox News, Mr. Trump’s longtime network of choice. Smartmatic, which says that the conspiracy theories destroyed its reputation and its business, provided election technology in only one county during the election.Last month, Dominion also sued Fox News. Together, the two suits represent a billion-dollar challenge to the Fox empire, which, after Smartmatic filed its lawsuit, canceled the Fox Business program hosted by Mr. Dobbs.“The filing only confirms our view that the suit is meritless and Fox News covered the election in the highest tradition of the First Amendment,” the network said in a statement late Monday.Fox’s motion, as well as those of its anchors, argued that the mentions of Smartmatic were part of its reporting on a newsworthy event that it was duty-bound to cover: A president’s refusal to concede an election and his insistence that his opponent’s victory was not legitimate.But the response Smartmatic filed on Monday, which runs for 120 pages, said that argument amounted to wishful thinking and that Fox had not covered the claims about Smartmatic objectively or fairly.“The Fox defendants wedded themselves to Giuliani and Powell during their programs,” the brief said. “They cannot distance themselves now.”Fox will have several weeks to respond to the brief, and a judge will eventually consider whether to allow Smartmatic’s case to proceed. More

Pedro Castillo, a far-left former union activist and teacher, is leading, according to election officials.LIMA, Peru — Peru’s presidential election is headed for a runoff, with Pedro Castillo, a far-left former union activist and teacher, in the lead, according to data released Monday by the country’s electoral body.He will likely face a right-wing candidate in a second round of voting in June.Mr. Castillo, a social conservative, was one of 18 candidates, and tapped into a wave of anti-establishment sentiment in an election characterized by widespread frustration with the political system.He is likely headed into a runoff with Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the jailed former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori, according to a survey of electoral tallies by the firm Ipsos for a local television channel. Trailing behind Ms. Fujimori is an ultraconservative, Rafael López Aliaga.Either pairing would set the stage for a highly polarized second-round election, the results of which could steer the country in radically different directions.“This is the vote of a country tired, depressed, frustrated, and also fed up,” Fernando Tuesta, a Peruvian political analyst, said in a statement on Monday. The election comes at a low point for Peru. Over the last five years, the country cycled through four presidents and two Congresses and witnessed repeated clashes between the legislative and executive branches.Keiko Fujimori speaking at her party’s headquarters in Lima, Peru, on Sunday.John Reyes/EPA, via ShutterstockThree former presidents have spent time in jail during bribery investigations, including one candidate in this year’s election; a fourth killed himself to avoid arrest; and a fifth, Martín Vizcarra, one of the most popular recent leaders, was impeached in November.His replacement, who lasted less than a week in office, is under investigation in connection with the fatal shootings of two young men at protests, which led to his resignation.With 84 percent of the votes tallied, Mr. Castillo was leading with 18.5 percent of the vote on Monday afternoon, more than five points ahead of his closest rival.Mr. Castillo, 51, wants to nationalize the country’s natural resources to help pay for investments in health care and education; promises to have a top court elected by popular mandate; and is proposing a new constitution to favor ordinary Peruvians and not business interests.In the run-up to the election, Mr. Castillo drew large crowds in rural towns, but did not receive broad coverage in national media until polls showed him surging to around 6 percent a week before the election.He celebrated his surprise victory from the poverty-stricken highland region of Cajamarca, where as a youth he was part of the peasant security patrol that enforces local laws and customs.“The blindfold has just been taken off the eyes of the Peruvian people,” Mr. Castillo told throngs of supporters in Cajamarca on Sunday night, wearing the wide-brimmed hat of farmers in the region.“We’re often told that only political scientists, constitutionalists, erudite politicians, those with grand degrees can govern a country,” he said. “They’ve had time enough.”A polling place in Recuay, Peru, on Sunday. A record 18 candidates participated in the presidential race, which is headed to a runoff.Ricardo Moreira/Getty ImagesMs. Fujimori, who is making her third bid for president, has been jailed three times in recent years in connection with an ongoing money laundering probe. In this election, she vowed to stop pandemic lockdowns and crack down on crime.On Sunday, Marianela Linares, 43, a Castillo supporter, said he represented “the big change” voters have been looking for but have thus far failed to find in traditional politicians.“We’ve always been deceived by high-level people who always said they’d help us get ahead but have lied to us,” said Ms. Linares, a public-school teacher in the Amazonian town of Puerto Maldonado. “He knows what need is. He knows what hunger is, and what it means to live in misery.” More

The special counsel scrutinizing the Russia inquiry, a Trump-era leftover, appears to be retreading ground that an inspector general explored in 2019.WASHINGTON — Exiled from Twitter, former President Donald J. Trump issued a sarcastic statement recently inquiring about the ongoing public silence from John H. Durham, the special counsel who has been investigating the Trump-Russia inquiry since May 2019.“Where’s Durham?” said Mr. Trump, who repeatedly predicted before last year’s election that Mr. Durham’s investigation would prove a deep-state conspiracy against him. “Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?”Mr. Durham ignored the complaint publicly, and the scope of his inquiry remains opaque. But one aspect has come into focus recently, according to people familiar with the investigation: Mr. Durham has keyed in on the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2017 and questioned witnesses who may have insight into the matter.In particular, Mr. Durham has obtained documents from the Brookings Institution related to Igor Danchenko, a Russia researcher who worked there a decade ago and later helped gather rumors about Mr. Trump and Russia for that research, known as the Steele dossier, according to people familiar with the request.By asking about the dossier, Mr. Durham has come to focus at least in part on re-scrutinizing an aspect of the investigation that was already exposed as problematic by a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report and led to reforms by the F.B.I. and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.A spokesman for Mr. Durham declined to comment.Asked whether the special counsel had briefed his new supervisor — Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — a Justice Department spokesman would only point to a statement by Mr. Garland as a nominee. “If confirmed,” he said, “one of the first things I am going to do is speak with Mr. Durham and learn the status of his investigation.”In February, several weeks before the Senate confirmed Mr. Garland, Mr. Durham obtained old personnel files and other documents related to Mr. Danchenko from the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington think tank, using a subpoena. Mr. Danchenko had worked there from 2005 until 2010.Mr. Danchenko traveled to Russia in 2016 and gathered rumors about Mr. Trump and his associates on behalf of Christopher Steele, who produced the dossier as a subcontractor for an investigative firm being indirectly paid by Democrats to look into any Trump-Russia ties.Michael Cavadel, the general counsel of Brookings, confirmed the subpoena for records and other materials about Mr. Danchenko, saying that it was received on Dec. 31 and that the think tank had taken until February to gather the files and turn them over to Mr. Durham’s team in part because its office is closed during the pandemic.“Consistent with its practices in such matters, Brookings provided the responsive documents, none of which contained information associated with the reports known as the Steele dossier,” Mr. Cavadel said.Last September, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, made public that from 2009 to 2011 Mr. Danchenko had been the subject of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation assessing his contacts with several suspected Russian intelligence officials, including at the Russian Embassy.(Skeptics of the Steele dossier have raised the prospect that Russian intelligence may have used Mr. Danchenko or his sources to seed it with disinformation, in order to further sow chaos. Mr. Danchenko was never charged and has denied ever being a Russian agent. He has also noted that during his time at Brookings he put forward analysis embarrassing to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: evidence that Mr. Putin plagiarized parts of his dissertation.)Igor Danchenko worked for the Brookings Institution from 2005 to 2010.Jonah M. Kessel/The New York TimesMr. Durham has also asked questions that suggested a focus on skepticism about how the F.B.I. approached issues that might have undermined the dossier’s credibility as a basis for wiretap applications, people familiar with the inquiry said.For example, Mr. Durham’s team is said to have asked why the F.B.I., after identifying Mr. Danchenko as a major source for the dossier and interviewing him in early 2017, did not tell the surveillance court that he had once been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.Mr. Durham is also said to be interested in a meeting between the F.B.I. and Mr. Steele in Rome in early October 2016, shortly before the bureau submitted the first wiretap application that used information from his dossier.The previous month, Yahoo News had published an article that contained information that overlapped with claims in the dossier, and the F.B.I. later learned that Mr. Steele had been a source for it, prompting the bureau to sever its relationship with him. At the time, as the bureau told the court in its wiretap application, it assumed the source had been someone else who had received a copy of the dossier.Mr. Durham is said to have asked why F.B.I. officials at that October meeting apparently did not ask Mr. Steele whether he was the article’s source — before using his information to apply for permission to wiretap the former Trump adviser, Carter Page.The focus raised the possibility that Mr. Durham has been exploring whether F.B.I. officials knowingly misled the surveillance court. But if Mr. Durham has found credible evidence of such a crime — as opposed to sloppy investigative work — he has yet to file any such charges.Mr. Durham interviewed the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan in August, but told him he was not the target of any criminal inquiry. But he has yet to interview former F.B.I. officials who held senior roles in 2016 and have been demonized by Trump supporters, including the former director James B. Comey; his former deputy Andrew G. McCabe; and a former senior counterintelligence agent, Peter Strzok, according to people familiar with the matter.To the extent any eventual Durham report focuses on criticizing the F.B.I.’s handling of issues related to the Steele dossier, it would risk largely retreading ground already covered by the 2019 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz.Mr. Horowitz has already brought to light the fact that the F.B.I. botched its wiretap applications in numerous ways, including uncovering numerous material facts that law enforcement officials failed to tell the court and that might have undermined their case for receiving wiretap authorization or renewals — including about the dossier.Mr. Horowitz’s report also already unearthed the fact that Mr. Danchenko had been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation when he worked at Brookings, in a footnote that was initially classified before Mr. Barr decided to make it public.The report also already focused criticism on the F.B.I.’s failure to ask Mr. Steele in October 2016 whether he played a role in the Yahoo News article.And the misconduct by the only person Mr. Durham has charged to date — Kevin Clinesmith, a former F.B.I. lawyer who altered an email shown to a colleague during preparations to seek a renewal of the wiretap, preventing another problem from coming to light internally — was uncovered by Mr. Horowitz’s investigation. (Mr. Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to falsifying the email but insisted that he did not deliberately mislead his colleague, was sentenced to probation.)Mr. Barr assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for any potential wrongdoing by the Trump-Russia investigators in spring 2019, at a time when Mr. Trump and his supporters were pushing the notion that the inquiry had been a “deep state” plot against him. While Mr. Durham’s work has been opaque, accounts by people familiar with his investigation have made clear that he has pursued various Trumpian conspiracy theories and grievances.In seeking to discredit the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump and his allies have frequently conflated it with the flawed Steele dossier. In fact, the Page wiretaps were a minor part of the overall effort, and Mr. Horowitz’s report showed that it played no role in the F.B.I. decision to open the counterintelligence investigation in July 2016.While uncovering numerous ways the F.B.I. had botched those wiretap applications, Mr. Horowitz’s report also concluded that it had lawfully opened the overall investigation on an adequate basis. When the inspector general delivered the report, Mr. Durham intervened with an unusual public statement saying he disagreed with Mr. Horowitz that the investigation’s opening was properly predicated.Mr. Durham provided no details, but Mr. Horowitz later told Congress that Mr. Durham had told him he thought that the F.B.I. should have opened the inquiry as a “preliminary” investigation rather than going straight to a “full” one. More

Candidates vied for the backing of the influential teachers’ union and other players, and one contender made a journey to Minneapolis.New York City’s mayoral contest is indeed beginning to pick up steam.A handful of endorsements were issued, and two more influential ones — from the United Federation of Teachers and the Working Families Party — may soon follow.Candidates also fanned out across the city and beyond. Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, appeared with the city’s celebrity-of-the-moment: Huge Ma, the creator of the TurboVax website that makes it easier to schedule a vaccine appointment.Maya Wiley, the former MSNBC analyst and counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, did a sprightly double Dutch jig on a sunny day in the Bronx. And Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citigroup executive, visited Minneapolis to pray for justice outside the courthouse where the former police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial in the killing of George Floyd.Here’s what you need to know about the race:Blue-collar support vs. a ‘change-maker’Maya Wiley, left, was endorsed by Representative Yvette Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat, who said that Ms. Wiley was the “change-maker this moment calls for.”Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesTwo Democratic members of Congress made mayoral endorsements last week: Tom Suozzi, a moderate who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, and Yvette Clarke from Brooklyn, who has one of the most liberal voting records in Congress.Mr. Suozzi backed Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Ms. Clarke supported Ms. Wiley.Mr. Suozzi emphasized Mr. Adams’s focus on “blue-collar workers” and the fact that Mr. Adams “led while others fled” — a reference to Mr. Yang, who spent portions of the pandemic at a second home in the Hudson Valley with his family, leaving his apartment in Manhattan.Ms. Clarke said Ms. Wiley is “the change-maker this moment calls for” and would bring “competence and compassion to City Hall.” She said Ms. Wiley was one of the first top-tier mayoral candidates who “embodies the feminine” — apparently ignoring or discounting past Democratic hopefuls like Ruth Messinger, the first woman to win the party’s mayoral nomination, or Christine Quinn and Bella Abzug, who both lost primary elections for the Democratic nomination, as well as a Republican candidate, Nicole Malliotakis, now a member of Congress.Ms. Clarke later clarified that she did not intend to “diminish or erase” other women running for mayor this year or in past elections.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, received an endorsement from the union that represents public school principals. Mr. Yang received support from Matthew W. Daus, the city’s former taxi commissioner whose role in the current taxi crisis has been scrutinized.Mr. Yang also landed an appearance, but not quite an endorsement, from Mr. Ma, sometimes known as “Vax Daddy,” at a news conference outside a vaccination site in Washington Heights, and said he wanted to hire him in a Yang administration. Mr. Ma said he was not ready to back a candidate quite yet.“The only thing I am ready to endorse is more protected bike lanes,” he said.An unorthodox way to seek an endorsementOne of the last major unclaimed endorsements should be decided this month, and the top four candidates — Mr. Stringer, Ms. Wiley, Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang — made their cases on Wednesday at a forum hosted by the United Federation of Teachers.Of the four, Mr. Yang seemed to be the most willing to diverge from union orthodoxy, seemingly hurting his chances for the endorsement.He was the only candidate to unequivocally say he wanted to retain mayoral control of city schools as is, contrary to union efforts to weaken mayoral control. He was also the only candidate to admit to not reading the union’s five-point plan for reopening schools in September.But Mr. Yang, who has one son in public school and another in private school, said that he no longer entirely blames the union for reopening delays during the pandemic.He said he now understood that Mayor Bill de Blasio was to blame, too, relating a conversation he had with Michael Mulgrew, the union’s president and the forum’s moderator.“You conveyed to me that it’s been a failure of leadership on the part of the mayor and that the teachers need a partner who’s committed to reopening the schools in a responsible way that protects teachers and makes everyone feel safe and secure,” Mr. Yang said. “I agree that the mayor has failed the teachers and public school parents like me.”The comments represented a departure from what he told Politico in March, when he said that “the U.F.T. has been a significant reason why our schools have been slow to open.”They also seemed to offend the current mayor.“I don’t know what Andrew Yang is talking about now,” said Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for the mayor. “Mayor de Blasio was the only big-city mayor to open up schools.”Campaign trail extends to MinneapolisRaymond J. McGuire visited Minneapolis to attend a prayer service outside the courthouse where the former police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial in the death of George Floyd.Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesMr. McGuire is a moderate on policing. He served on the New York City Police Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money for the Police Department, and has not called for police to be defunded as some of his fellow candidates have.So his decision to travel last week to Minneapolis, where the officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes is on trial for murder and manslaughter, seemed to convey a political message.Mr. McGuire was there with Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died after a New York Police Department officer placed him in a chokehold in 2014 on Staten Island; the Rev. Al Sharpton; and a former New York State governor, David Paterson. The group met privately with Mr. Floyd’s family.Mr. Sharpton said that Mr. McGuire called and asked if he could join him in Minneapolis, where he has traveled regularly to support Mr. Floyd’s family. He said Mr. Garner’s death showed New York is not immune from such tragedies.“This is not an isolated issue or a question or whether it could happen here; it did happen here,” Mr. Sharpton said.Mr. Sharpton has yet to endorse in the race for mayor, but said that he viewed Mr. McGuire’s interest in Mr. Floyd’s trial as a good sign. “He was the only one who asked to go, and that speaks for itself,” he said.Candidates for mayor should take note of the Minneapolis police chief’s testimony that his officer had violated departmental rules in Mr. Floyd’s death, Mr. Sharpton said, adding that the next mayor should dismantle the so-called blue wall of silence.Mr. McGuire, who said that the “evidence is incontrovertible” that Mr. Floyd’s death was a criminal act, said that policing in New York could be “fixed with the right leadership.”“We want better policing,” Mr. McGuire said. “You go to the neighborhood, and people aren’t talking about defund.”70 plans in 70 daysShaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, will announce a “70 Plans in 70 Days” campaign, highlighting one idea every day until Primary Day.David Dee Delgado/Getty ImagesShaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary, is trying to distinguish himself in the crowded field as the policy wonk who has the best proposals to improve the city.Mr. Donovan will announce his “70 Plans in 70 Days” campaign this week and highlight one idea every day until Primary Day.“By June 22, I am confident that every New York City voter will know who the most qualified person is to lead our city through this crisis, and who has the actual plans to get the job done,” Mr. Donovan said.His proposals include equity bonds, a government-funded savings account for every child; 15-minute neighborhoods, where every resident has access to a good school, rapid transit and a beautiful park within 15 minutes of their home; and allowing noncitizens to vote in city elections.Mr. Donovan has a pile of cash to help get the word out: His father, Michael Donovan, has given $2 million to a super PAC for his son.Mr. Donovan has been lagging in the polls, and his campaign took aim at Mr. Yang last week. It joked that Mr. Donovan would not climb atop salt piles when visiting a sanitation facility like Mr. Yang did.One of Mr. Yang’s campaign managers hit back on Twitter: “Will his dad not let him climb on the salt?”Andrew Yang is writing a bookIn February, Mr. Yang made headlines for skipping a forum with Muslim groups on the same day that he spoke on a podcast hosted by Sam Harris, who has made incendiary remarks about Islam.Less noticed at the time: At the conclusion of Mr. Yang’s nearly hourlong appearance on the podcast, he indicated that he was writing a book — one that apparently deals in part with the new system that will be used in the mayoral election, ranked-choice voting.He said on the podcast that the book was slated to come out in the late summer.On Sunday, Mr. Yang’s campaign confirmed that Mr. Yang, already an author, indeed had another book coming, to be published by Random House, and that he finished a draft at the end of last year.“Andrew is solely focused on the mayoral campaign and will not be publishing this book until afterwards,” said Eric Soufer, a spokesman for Mr. Yang. “The book will be about Andrew’s experience in the presidential campaign, along with his vision for decreasing polarization, increasing turnout and improving the health of our democracy.”The book, he said, ends before Mr. Yang’s run for mayor. More

[Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Monday. Weather: Showers are likely both today and this evening. Temperatures will hover in the low 50s this afternoon and dip to the mid-40s tonight. Alternate-side parking: In effect until April 29 (Holy Thursday, Orthodox). Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesAs New York City slowly comes back to life amid warmer weather and coronavirus vaccinations, the most consequential contest in at least two decades is heating up.About 10 weeks before the June 22 Democratic primary that is likely to determine the next mayor, four candidates currently make up the top tier of contenders: Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate and the undisputed poll leader; Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller; and Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and a former MSNBC analyst.Still, the race appears fluid enough for someone to break out late, with many undecided voters only now beginning to consider their choices.[Read more about the candidates and how they are looking ahead in the race.]Here are three things to know about the contest:The stakesNew York faces immense challenges on the road to recovery from the pandemic: thousands of deaths, economic devastation, a rise in shootings, and deep racial and socioeconomic inequalities.The next mayor will also be responsible for a 300,000-person city work force.The open questionsIt remains to be seen if voters want someone who represents managerial competence, ambitious ideas, enthusiasm for New York’s comeback — or the best mix of all three.The field includes several candidates of color, including Mr. Yang, who has worked intensely to engage Asian-American voters. Another major question is who will resonate with the largest number of Black voters in the city.Mr. Stringer, Ms. Wiley and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, are all also competing for the city’s most progressive voters.The upcoming monthsCandidates are now ramping up in-person campaigning. Many campaigns expect that the race will fully kick into gear in May, when unions will accelerate in-person pushes and a series of official debates will begin.Several organizations, including the Working Families Party and United Federation of Teachers, are in the midst of endorsement processes, which could help voters narrow down the field.The race still may evolve. Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, is deeply respected by some of those who know City Hall best. Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citigroup executive, and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, have spent money on television ads and have super PACs aiding them — which could boost their ability to compete.From The TimesIndian Point Is Shutting Down. That Means More Fossil Fuel.This Heroin-Using Professor Wants to Change How We Think About DrugsThey Are Not Alone: U.F.O. Reports Surged in the PandemicWant more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingWith New Yorkers re-emerging as the city reopens, rat complaints surged last month — higher than the same period in 2019 and 2020. [Bloomberg]How one of the last remaining lesbian bars in Manhattan survived the worst months of the pandemic and reopened. [Eater New York]A look at the new network of small free book kiosks across the city that are exclusively stocking authors of color. [Curbed]And finally: From food pantry to ‘mini-Costco’Kaya Laterman writes:As the sun set on a recent Saturday afternoon, Joel Matos fist-bumped and thanked the dozen or so volunteers who were leaving the outdoor food pantry he runs out of a church parking lot on the border of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn.Then Mr. Matos, the founder and director of Holding Hands Ministries, quietly gazed at the pallets of canned goods and produce, and the mound of cardboard boxes that still needed to be cleared. Only five volunteers remained, including him and his wife.There’s plenty of food being distributed to the city’s hungry, about 1.6 million people, according to the Food Bank for New York City, a nonprofit that does much of the distributing. That means that smaller pantries on the receiving end are bursting at the seams with products but struggling without the infrastructure to store and share them.St. John’s Bread and Life, an emergency food service nonprofit in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, for example, has spent about $250,000 to increase capacity.At the height of the pandemic, about 40 percent of the city’s 800 or so soup kitchens and pantries closed permanently, according to Leslie Gordon, the Food Bank’s president. The places that remained open became de facto hubs, expanding their hours and receiving larger and more frequent deliveries, practically becoming “mini-Costcos” overnight, said Mariana Silfa of City Harvest, another nonprofit that distributes goods to locations across New York.Mr. Matos is concerned about mounting costs. “I try not to show how worried I get about the operational side of things,” he said.It’s Monday — help out.Metropolitan Diary: ‘What’s going on?’Dear Diary:It was a mundane Thursday that was melting into all the other look-alike workdays.I went to the bodega to get my morning coffee as usual.“What’s going on?” I asked the guy there.“Nothing,” he said. “But what’s yet to come is incredible.”— Julia LansfordNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.What would you like to see more (or less) of? Email us: [email protected]. More

With the primary weeks away, candidates are sharpening their attacks, ramping up in-person events and preparing to spend the millions of dollars that they have stockpiled.It was opening day for Coney Island’s famed amusement parks, long shuttered during the pandemic, and Andrew Yang — the 2020 presidential candidate who has shifted his personality-driven campaign to the New York City mayoral race — was in his element.“Coney Island is open for business!” he declared on Friday, pumping his fists as he made his way down a windswept boardwalk. “New York City! Can you feel it?”What it felt like was a campaign event, and Mr. Yang was not the only mayoral candidate to take advantage. Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, mingled along the midway, playing games with his family; Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, rode bumper cars and visited small businesses.New York faces immense challenges on the road to recovery from the pandemic. Thousands of deaths, economic devastation, rising violent crime and deep racial and socioeconomic inequality complicate the city’s path forward at every turn, making the upcoming mayor’s race the most consequential city contest in at least two decades. Now, as the city slowly comes back to life amid warmer weather and coronavirus vaccinations, the race is entering a new, increasingly vigorous phase.After months of conducting virtual fund-raisers and participating in an endless round of online mayoral forums, candidates are sharpening their attacks, ramping up their in-person campaign schedules and preparing to spend the millions of dollars that several contenders have stockpiled but few have spent on public advertising.About 10 weeks before the June 22 Democratic primary that is likely to determine the next mayor, four candidates currently make up the top tier of contenders, according to available polling and interviews with elected officials and party strategists. There is Mr. Yang, the undisputed poll leader; Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Mr. Stringer; and Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and a former MSNBC analyst.But the race appears fluid enough for a candidate to break out late like Mr. de Blasio did in 2013, with many undecided voters only now beginning to consider the race, according to interviews with New York Democrats across the city and some polling data.A confluence of factors — focus on vaccination efforts and debates over reopening, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s crises in Albany, and political burnout following the presidential campaign — have overshadowed civic discussion on a range of issues that will shape the city’s post-pandemic recovery.The candidates are racing to change that.“You can feel it beginning to really heat up,” said Representative Greg Meeks, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Queens Democrats, saying he believed the race would intensify further as the month goes on.The next mayor, who will assume responsibility for a 300,000-person city work force, will inherit a series of staggering challenges. The race will test whether voters are in the mood for a candidate who exudes managerial competence, one who is a booster for the city, someone with the most boldly ambitious ideas, or the contender who best offers a mix of all three approaches.The arrival of ranked-choice voting in New York City, in which voters can support up to five candidates in order of preference, has added another layer of unpredictability into the contest.Many of the campaigns expect that the race will kick into high gear in May, when more contenders are expected to buy television ads and unions will accelerate in-person pushes. A series of official debates will also begin next month, and some campaigns are starting to think about debate preparations. Mr. Yang knows he is likely to be a focal point of that strategizing.Indeed, a number of Mr. Yang’s opponents are intensifying their attacks on his candidacy.Mr. Stringer has sought to brand Mr. Yang as a politically inexperienced promoter of ill-conceived ideas, like a casino on Governors Island. Mr. Adams has ripped into Mr. Yang for leaving the city during the pandemic. And Ms. Wiley has criticized how Mr. Yang has discussed issues like stimulus spending, while a Wiley campaign aide compared him to a “mini-Trump,” a serious accusation in Democratic politics.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, has a significant war chest and a roster of prominent endorsements.James Estrin/The New York TimesMr. Yang’s advisers — along with an aggressive group of “Yang Gang” supporters active online — have defended him at every turn, arguing that the attacks simply illustrate his standing in the race, and cast him as a proud political outsider with fresh ideas.The field includes several candidates of color, and Mr. Yang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants, has worked intensely to engage Asian-American voters. Another significant question in coming weeks will be which candidate resonates with the largest number of Black voters. Mr. Adams, a Black former police officer and a veteran Brooklyn official, is well positioned to make his case, but he is not alone.Raymond J. McGuire, a Black former Citigroup executive who has campaigned heavily in vote-rich southeast Queens, went to Minneapolis this past week with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, to attend the trial over George Floyd’s death.And on Friday, Ms. Wiley — a Black woman who already had the backing of the powerful Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union — was endorsed by Representative Yvette Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat and member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Dianne Morales, the most progressive candidate in the race, identifies as Afro-Latina and has sparked intense interest among left-wing grass-roots activists.Mr. Stringer, with his significant war chest and roster of prominent endorsements, is competing for the city’s most progressive voters along with Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales. Left-wing activists, alarmed by the perceived strength of Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams — two more centrist candidates — are strategizing about how to elevate a contender or group of contenders more aligned with their vision.A number of organizations, from the left-wing Working Families Party to the United Federation of Teachers, are in the midst of endorsement processes, which could help voters narrow down their preferred candidates. Decisions may come as soon as this week.There is still time for the race to evolve. Ms. Garcia is deeply respected by some of the people who know City Hall best. Mr. McGuire and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, have aired television ads and have super PACs aiding them, a dynamic that could boost their ability to compete, though neither has yet caught fire.Mr. McGuire, in particular, was embraced as a favorite of the business community early on — with the fund-raising to prove it — but there are growing signs that other candidates may also be acceptable to the city’s donor class.Mr. Yang has been courting Mr. McGuire’s donors, encouraging them to take something of a portfolio management approach by investing in multiple candidates who are supportive of the business community, according to someone with direct knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. The Yang campaign declined to comment.Lupe Todd-Medina, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGuire, suggested there had been such “rumors” before, but pointed to his significant past fund-raising hauls despite that chatter.“Ray is a serious candidate who has built and led the kind of teams New York will need for an inclusive comeback,” she said.In contrast to his energetic but failed presidential bid, which was centered in part on a pitch for universal basic income, Mr. Yang’s mayoral race is defined less by any particular policy platform and more by a political idea. He wants to be the chief cheerleader for the city’s comeback, a message that his team believes cuts a sharp contrast with the current mayoral administration. Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and a former MSNBC analyst, has the backing of the powerful Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.Mark Lennihan/Associated PressFrom the beginning of Mr. Yang’s campaign, he has pursued perhaps the most aggressive in-person schedule of anyone in the race, contracting Covid and a kidney stone along the way. He has commanded attention at ready-made campaign events that other candidates have not matched.When the movies reopened, he and his wife caught a film. He was at Yankee Stadium on opening day, and at Citi Field for the Mets’ home opener. Last week he appeared with Huge Ma — better known online as “TurboVax” — who is beloved by some New Yorkers for his Twitter feed and a website that helps people find vaccine appointments.The question for Mr. Yang is whether that attention translates into votes — and rivals are aware that it could. Mr. Yang has no government experience, he has never voted for mayor and his record of business success is uneven. Many New Yorkers — elected officials, voters and party leaders — have serious questions about his managerial capabilities and the depth of his city knowledge.Some left-wing leaders are beginning to discuss what it would take to stop him. So far, no serious anti-Yang effort from them or from unions supporting other candidates has materialized.Then there is Mr. Adams, who has secured several major union endorsements and has worked to build ties to a range of key constituencies across the city. Mr. Adams, who has long pushed for meaningful policing changes, has been notably outspoken about the rise in shootings, an approach that may resonate with voters who are especially attuned to the spike in violent crime.“I would like to see the actual mayoral candidates begin to talk more about how they’re going to address the gun violence,” said Jumaane D. Williams, the city public advocate, who has not endorsed a contender. “Out of everyone, he may have been talking about it the most. My hope is that we see more and more folks talk about it.”Representative Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat whose district includes a slice of Queens, cited Mr. Adams’s work on both police reform and public safety in explaining why he endorsed him last week.Back at Coney Island, Mr. Yang declared victory after procuring a hot dog from Nathan’s: ketchup and mustard, no relish or sauerkraut.“Delicious,” he proclaimed. As he chewed, the conversation turned to campaign strategy in the weeks ahead.“I feel a little bit bad for the TV watchers of New York City because they’re about to be bombarded by a bunch of political ads,” he laughed. “I think my campaign will, for better or for worse, be part of that.” More

Local officials nationwide are announcing plans to step back from elected office. Many offer the same explanation: Covid burnout.NEWBURYPORT, Mass. — Donna Holaday is the kind of mayor who does not say no to an invitation.She shows up for lesser ribbon cuttings, at Radiant U Esthetics and the Angry Donut. She is there for the dinky parades, three or four blocks to the waterfront and back. Funerals, fund-raisers, National Honor Society inductions, she does them all.Over four terms as mayor of Newburyport, a coastal city of around 17,000, she learned that she could always perk herself up by getting up on a podium, reflecting back the energy of a roomful of people. Not this past year.“There is nothing. Nothing on my calendar. It’s just the way it has been for a year,” said Ms. Holaday, 66. Through the shutdown, she made a point of spending the day in her empty City Hall, if only so people could see the light on in her office.But they were long days she described as “Whac-a-Mole, you take care of one thing and 15 things pop up.” And the calls she fielded were not about normal problems, like trash collection or snow removal, but matters of profound suffering: a loved one forced to die in solitude, or families running out of food.“It was so traumatic, with people calling us crying, distressed,” said Ms. Holaday, who has announced she will not run for a fifth term. “I was sitting in my corner office feeling quite alone, there is no question about it.”Though coronavirus cases are down from their winter peak and several states are well into the reopening process, many mayors are leaving their posts because of burnout.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York TimesIt has been an exhausting season for America’s mayors.Mayors are hands-on officials in the best of times, barraged with criticism and individual pleas for help. Over the last year, they found themselves weighing matters of life or death — devastating local businesses by prolonging shutdowns, canceling gatherings treasured by voters, unable to provide comfort by being there in person.And this spring, many American mayors are explaining their decision to leave office with the same reason: that the pandemic response demanded so much that they could not both campaign and perform their duties; or that the work had become so stressful that their families had recommended that they step away.“They are just spent,” said Katharine Lusk, executive director of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities, which carries out an annual survey of mayors. Mayors surveyed last summer expressed deep anxiety about the effects of lost tax revenue on their budgets, as they juggled the pandemic, economic recovery and their core responsibilities.Meanwhile, Ms. Lusk said, the positive aspects of the job were stripped away.“They will tell you it’s the most personal job in politics,” she said. “If you can’t interact with the community, all of the things that sort of fuel mayors — the inputs that build up that reservoir of energy — that aspect of the job has been taken from them.”There is little national data on local elections, so it is impossible to say whether this year’s turnover of mayors is unusual. In Massachusetts, nearly a fifth of the state’s mayors have announced they will not run again, as CommonWealth, a politics journal, reported, but that is not an unusual portion, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association.Decisions to step down are rarely made for one reason, and the year has increased pressure on leaders on many fronts, including conflicts over policing and racial justice. Among those who have offered an explanation, however, Covid fatigue comes up a lot. Michelle De La Isla, the mayor of Topeka, Kan., told The Topeka Capital-Journal that campaigning would make her workload unmanageable, and there “there was no way I was going to be able to do this at the same time” as heading coronavirus response.Mayor Grover C. Robinson IV, of Pensacola, Fla., said he decided not to run out of frustration with the politicized reaction to health directives, after returning from a vacation and attending yet another contentious meeting. Similar explanations have come from the mayors of Highland, Ill., Pascagoula, Miss., and Seattle, among others.Thomas M. McGee, the mayor of Lynn, Mass., a large, blue-collar city north of Boston, described parts of last year as “a blur,” as the virus raced through crowded neighborhoods that were home to multiple generations of families.Lynn was classified as a high-risk zone for all but two weeks of the past year, and the sense of crisis has never abated, even now that the vaccination drive is underway.“Do you remember the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Thailand? I feel like we’re running on the beach, up to a higher ground, and the tsunami is behind us,” he said. “Are we going to get to higher ground before the pandemic comes rushing back in and surges over us?”Mayor Thomas McGee of Lynn, Mass., is also stepping down. He described parts of last year as a blur and said the sense of crisis never abated.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York TimesMr. McGee, a Democrat, ran for mayor of Lynn, his hometown, in 2016, after 22 years in the State Legislature. But nothing, he said, prepared him for the intensity of being a mayor last year.“After 27 years and this, in some ways, lost year,” he said, “my family was like: ‘You’re stressed. It’s really had a substantial impact on you. And we’ll support you 100 percent whatever you want to do. But we think you should consider making a step back.’”Mr. McGee’s account of the past year is laced with frustration at the federal government, which he said left local officials to cope with a fast-moving public health emergency, while former President Donald J. Trump contradicted basic messaging about safety.“It became apparent, and I’d say it on calls, and while we were making decisions, ‘You know, we’re on our own here,’” he said. “They left a lot of us in the lurch, and we were left to really kind of navigate this on our own.”His frustration was echoed by Joseph A. Curtatone, 54, the mayor of Somerville, Mass., a city of 81,000, who is leaving office after nearly 18 years, amid speculation that he will run for governor.“We’re the first to hear if someone has lost a loved one, we’re the first to hear if someone is being evicted and has no place to live,” he said, joking that his brief moments of relief came when he was allowed to talk about snowstorms.Mayors, Mr. Curtatone said, were forced to coordinate policies on such grave matters as shutdowns and school closings among themselves, putting collective pressure on the state government to follow their lead.“Trump pushed it onto the states, and they pushed it onto the cities and towns,” he said.Nearly two-thirds of big-city mayors are Democrats, many in Republican-controlled states whose leaders were more skeptical of shutdowns and mask mandates.That tension has exacerbated mayors’ “sense of being embattled,” even as coronavirus case numbers decline, said Ms. Lusk, of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities.Jospeh Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, Mass., is leaving office after four terms.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York Times“I think the cyclicality of the pandemic meant they’ve never been able to let their guard down, they’ve never been out of the woods,” she said.Thomas Bernard, the mayor of North Adams, a city of about 14,000 in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, said he desperately missed ordinary interactions, like reading picture books to schoolchildren.He recalled the holiday season as a difficult time, as he was forced to make decisions that, as he put it, “really strike at the spirit of the community.”“I was the person who stole fun from North Adams for a year,” he said. “It feels that way sometimes. I was making the decisions, like other mayors, that led to the cancellation of the things we all love.”He announced in February that he would not run for re-election — the second time in nearly 40 years that an incumbent mayor will not appear on the ballot — so that he could focus on containing the virus and rebuilding the economy.“I feel behind the curve on the recovery, and adding the campaign, it didn’t feel tenable,” he said. “It didn’t feel like I could bring the best of myself to all three of those things.”Mr. Bernard, who recently turned 50, is unsure what he will do after he steps down.“There will be days, as it gets more toward election season, and I’m not doing a spaghetti dinner, you know, I’m probably going to have a twinge,” he said. “There are going to be days — the last holiday tree-lighting as mayor, the last high school graduation — those are the moments I’m going to feel most emotional about.”“I wear my heart on my sleeve as it is,” he said, “but it’s going to be a complex flood.” More

Peruvians head to the polls at a moment that many are calling one of the lowest points in the country’s young democracy, and many plan to cast empty ballots.LIMA, Peru — Vicenta Escobar, 62, sells fruit from a stand on the streets in Peru’s capital, Lima. In every presidential election over the last four decades, she has chosen a candidate she believed in, in the hope that he or she would deliver change.Not this time, though. This Sunday, she plans to arrive at her polling station to vote — as is required by Peruvian law. But she will cast her ballot without making a single mark.“I’m planning on leaving it blank,” she said on Thursday afternoon. She was fed up, she said, with “all the lies and robberies.”Peruvians are voting on Sunday at a moment many are calling one of the lowest points in the country’s young democracy. Eighteen candidates are on the ballot, but about 15 percent of voters are expected to cast a blank vote, according to several recent polls, and no candidate has been able to garner much more than 10 percent support. The leading two candidates will advance to a runoff if no one captures more than half the vote.The election follows a tumultuous five-year period in which the country cycled through four presidents and two Congresses, and it comes amid growing frustration over corruption, the pandemic and a political system that many say has served the interests of corporations and officials — but not of regular people.Whoever is sworn in later this year is likely to have the weakest mandate of any elected president in recent history, and will be forced to deal with dual economic and health crises likely to shape the country for years to come.Peru has one of the highest coronavirus death rates in the world, and daily deaths climbed to new highs this month as the Brazilian variant of the virus spread through the country. Many Covid patients have died amid lack of access to oxygen or ventilators, working-class families are struggling to secure enough food, and school closures have pushed children into the labor force.The economy shrank 12 percent last year in the country’s worst recession in three decades — the second-worst downturn in Latin America, after Venezuela’s.Voters interviewed this month in Lima, the capital, appeared to coalesce around their shared frustration with the system.“We used to trust our leaders somewhat. But now no one believes any of them,” said Teresa Vásquez, 49, a housekeeper.Ms. Vásquez had supported one of the recent presidents, Martín Vizcarra, even as legislators impeached him amid corruption charges.Then she learned he had been secretly vaccinated last year with extra doses from a clinical trial in Peru that researchers distributed among political elites.This year, she had narrowed her options to two candidates who seemed clean. But with less than a week to go before the election, was still struggling to decide.“It’s the same with my whole family,” she said. “No one knows who to trust.”Opinion polls released before Sunday’s vote showed that any two of half a dozen candidates might move on to a likely June runoff.Among the candidates pulling in about 10 percent of the vote in recent polls are Pedro Castillo, a socially conservative union activist who has surged in the last week on promises to invest heavily in health care and education, and Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing opposition leader and the daughter of the former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori, who has said she would end Covid lockdowns and crack down on crime with an “iron fist.”Residents of the Villa El Salvador neighborhood in Lima observed a campaign rally last week.Sebastian Castaneda/ReutersThis year’s election coincides with the 200th anniversary of Peru’s independence. But instead of celebrating, many Peruvians are questioning the validity of their democracy and their free-market economic model.Even before the pandemic threw the country into disarray, support for democracy in Peru had slipped to one of the lowest levels in the region, according to a 2018-2019 survey by the Latin American Public Opinion Project, with the military seen as the most trustworthy institution.Since the last general election produced a divided government five years ago, Peru has seen constant clashes between the legislative and executive branches, as opposition lawmakers have sought to impeach two presidents and Mr. Vizcarra dissolved Congress, calling new legislative elections to push through reforms.Three former presidents have spent time in jail during bribery investigations, including one candidate in this year’s election; a fourth killed himself to avoid arrest; and a fifth, Mr. Vizcarra, one of the most popular recent leaders, was impeached in November.His replacement, who lasted less than a week in office, is under investigation in connection with the fatal shootings of two young men at protests, which led to his resignation.One reason for the country’s endemic corruption is that political parties often barter their loyalties to presidential candidates in back-room deals, and are often captive to special interests.A soldier stands guard near voting booths in Lima, Peru on Saturday.Sebastian Castaneda/Reuters“Political parties are no longer a vehicle for representation of the citizenry,” said Adriana Urrutia, a political scientist who leads the pro-democracy organization Transparencia.“There are parties in the current Parliament that represent the interests of private universities facing penalties for failing to fulfill minimum requirements,” she added. “There are parties that represent the interests of illegal economies, like illegal logging and illegal mining.”Some candidates are tailoring their messages to appeal to the growing skepticism about democracy.Mr. Castillo, the union activist, has promised to replace the Constitutional Tribunal with a court elected “by popular mandate,” and said he would dissolve Congress if it blocked a proposal to replace the Constitution. Rafael López Aliaga, a businessman and a member of the ultraconservative Catholic group Opus Dei, has said Peru must stop a leftist “dictatorship” from consolidating power and has promised to jail corrupt officials for life.Ms. Fujimori has abandoned efforts to moderate her platform in her third presidential bid. She has promised to pardon her father, who is serving a sentence for human rights abuses and graft.The constant political turmoil has analysts worried for the country’s future.“I think the scenario that’s coming is really frightening,” said Patricia Zárate, the lead researcher for the Institute of Peruvian Studies, a polling organization. “Congress knows they can impeach the president easily and it’s also easy for the president to close Congress. Now it will be easier to do again. It’s dispiriting.”Reporting was contributed by More