Elections

Donald Trump devoted part of a speech to Republican donors on Saturday night to insulting the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. According to multiple reports of the $400,000-a-ticket, closed-press event, the former president called the Kentucky senator “a dumb son of a bitch”.Trump also said Mike Pence, his vice-president, should have had the “courage” to object to the certification of electoral college results at the US Capitol on 6 January. Trump claims his defeat by Joe Biden, by 306-232 in the electoral college and more than 7m votes, was the result of electoral fraud. It was not and the lie was repeatedly thrown out of court.Earlier, the Associated Press reported that it obtained a Pentagon timeline of events on 6 January, which showed Pence demanding military leadership “clear the Capitol” of rioters sent by Trump.Trump did nothing and around six hours passed between Pence’s order and the Capitol being cleared. Five people including a police officer died and some in the mob were recorded chanting “hang Mike Pence”. More than 400 face charges.In his remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday, amid a weekend of Republican events in Florida, some at Trump properties, the former president also mocked Dr Anthony Fauci.“Have you ever seen somebody who is so full of crap?“ Trump reportedly said about the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Joe Biden’s top medical adviser who was a key member of Trump’s coronavirus taskforce.Trump also said Covid-19 vaccines should be renamed “Trumpcines” in his honour.According to Politico, the attack on McConnell concerned the senator’s perceived failure to defend Trump with sufficient zeal in the impeachment trial which followed the Capitol riot.Trump, who told supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell”, was charged with inciting an insurrection. He was acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted to convict, not enough to reach the super-majority needed. McConnell voted to acquit, then excoriated Trump on the Senate floor.Of the certification of the election result on 6 January, according to the Washington Post, Trump said: “If that were [Chuck] Schumer [the Democratic Senate leader] instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell, they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it.”Trump also attacked McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who was transportation secretary until she resigned over the Capitol riot, just before the end of Trump’s term.“I hired his wife,” Trump said, according to the Post. “Did he ever say thank you?”He also ridiculed her decision to resign – “She suffered so greatly,” the Post reported him saying, his “voice dripping with sarcasm” – and said he had won her husband’s Senate seat for him.Trump has attacked McConnell before, in February calling him a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack”. On Saturday night he also reportedly called him a “stone cold loser”. McConnell did not immediately comment.The former president remains barred from social media over the Capitol riot but he retains influence and has begun to issue endorsements for the 2022 midterms. Most have been in line with the party hierarchy, including backing Marco Rubio, a Florida senator and former presidential rival many expected would attract a challenge from Trump’s daughter Ivanka.Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment left him free to run for the White House. He regularly tops polls of Republican voters regarding possible candidates for 2024. On Saturday night, he reportedly left that possibility undiscussed.On Sunday morning, the Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson was asked if Trump’s remarks – and their reported enthusiastic reception by party donors and leaders – helped or hindered the Republican cause.“Anything that’s divisive is a concern,” Hutchinson told CNN’s State of the Union, “and is not helpful for us fighting the battles in Washington and at the state level.“In some ways it’s not a big deal what he said. But at the same time whenever it draws attention, we don’t need that. We need unity, we need to be focused together, we have … slim numbers in Washington and we got battles to fight, so we need to get beyond that.”At Mar-a-Lago, the Post said, the former president told Republicans to stick together.“We can’t have these guys that like publicity,” he said. More

Los peruanos votarán en lo que muchos califican como el peor momento de su joven democracia. Numerosos electores se inclinan por el voto en blanco.LIMA, Perú — Vicenta Escobar, de 62 años, vende fruta en un puesto de las calles de Lima, la capital de Perú. En todas las elecciones presidenciales de las últimas cuatro décadas, ella ha votado a un candidato en el que creía, con la esperanza de que esa persona fuera a cambiar las cosas.Pero no en esta ocasión. Este domingo, piensa llegar a la casilla para votar, como lo exige la ley peruana. Pero dejará la boleta sin poner una sola marca.“Esta vez pienso marcar blanco”, comentó el jueves por la tarde. Dijo que estaba harta de “todos los engaños, los robos”.Los peruanos votan este domingo en un momento que muchos consideran uno de los peores en su joven democracia. En la boleta hay 18 candidatos, pero se calcula que el 15 por ciento de los electores anularán su voto, según diversas encuestas recientes; además, ningún candidato ha logrado reunir un apoyo de más del 10 por ciento. Los dos candidatos con más votos pasarán a una segunda vuelta si ninguno obtiene más de la mitad de los votos.Las elecciones se dan tras cinco años tumultuosos en los que el país pasó por cuatro presidentes y dos congresos, y en medio de una frustración creciente debido a la corrupción, la pandemia y un sistema político que muchos afirman que ha estado al servicio de los funcionarios y las corporaciones, pero no del pueblo.Es probable que cualquiera que asuma el cargo este año tenga el mandato más débil que ningún otro presidente electo en la historia reciente, y tendrá que lidiar con crisis en materia de salud y economía que muy probablemente afectarán al país en los años venideros.Perú tiene una de las tasas de muerte por coronavirus más altas del mundo, y las muertes diarias alcanzaron nuevos máximos este mes a medida que la variante brasileña del virus se extendía por el país. Muchos pacientes de COVID-19 han muerto por falta de acceso a oxígeno o respiradores, las familias de clase trabajadora luchan por conseguir alimentos y el cierre de escuelas ha provocado que los niños tengan que trabajar.El año pasado la economía se contrajo un 12 por ciento en la peor recesión del país en tres décadas, la segunda peor contracción en América Latina después de la de Venezuela.Los votantes a los que se entrevistó este mes en Lima, la capital del país, parecían coincidir en su frustración con el sistema.“Antes confiábamos algo en nuestros líderes, pero ya nadie confía en nadie”, expresó Teresa Vásquez, de 49 años, un ama de casa.Vásquez había apoyado a uno de los últimos presidentes, a Martín Vizcarra, incluso cuando los legisladores emprendían un juicio político contra él bajo cargos de corrupción.Pero se enteró de que el entonces presidente se había vacunado en secreto el año pasado con dosis extras de un ensayo clínico realizado en Perú, las cuales los investigadores distribuyeron entre las élites políticas.Este año, ya redujo sus opciones a dos candidatos que parecen impolutos, pero seguía teniendo dificultades para decidirse a menos de una semana de las elecciones.“Toda la familia está igual”, continuó. “Nadie sabe a quién creer”.Las encuestas de opinión publicadas antes de la votación del domingo mostraban que había seis candidatos con posibilidad de pasar a una probable segunda vuelta en junio.Entre los candidatos que obtienen alrededor del 10 por ciento de los votos en los últimos sondeos se encuentran Pedro Castillo, un activista sindical socialmente conservador que ha repuntado en la última semana gracias a sus promesas de invertir grandes cantidades de dinero en sanidad y educación, y Keiko Fujimori, una líder de la oposición de derecha e hija del antiguo líder autoritario Alberto Fujimori, la cual ha dicho que pondría fin a los confinamientos por la COVID-19 y reprimiría la delincuencia con “mano dura”.Vecinos de Villa el Salvador, un barrio de Lima, observaban un mitin electoral la semana pasada. Sebastián Castañeda/ReutersLa votación de este año cae en el 200.º aniversario de la independencia de Perú. Pero, en lugar de celebrar, muchos peruanos están cuestionando la validez de su democracia y su modelo económico de libre mercado.Incluso antes de que la pandemia sumiera al país en el caos, el apoyo a la democracia en Perú había caído a uno de los niveles más bajos de la región, según una encuesta de 2018-2019 realizada por el Proyecto de Opinión Pública de América Latina; los militares se consideraban la institución más confiable.Desde que la última elección general hace cinco años produjo un gobierno dividido, Perú ha tenido enfrentamientos constantes entre la rama legislativa y el poder ejecutivo, pues los legisladores de la oposición han intentado someter a juicio político a dos presidentes; asimismo, Vizcarra disolvió el Congreso y convocó nuevas elecciones legislativas para llevar a cabo reformas.Tres expresidentes han estado en la cárcel debido a investigaciones de cohecho en su contra, incluido uno que postula para las elecciones de este año; un cuarto se suicidó para evitar ser detenido; un quinto, Vizcarra, uno de los líderes más populares de los últimos años, fue destituido en noviembre.Su remplazo, que estuvo menos de una semana en el cargo, se encuentra bajo investigación debido a la muerte de dos jóvenes durante unas protestas, por lo cual tuvo que dimitir.Una de las razones que explica la corrupción endémica del país es que los partidos políticos suelen alquilar su apoyo a los candidatos presidenciales en acuerdos a puerta cerrada, y a menudo son presa de intereses particulares.Un soldado resguardaba las casetas de votación en Lima, la capital peruana el sábado.Sebastián Castañeda/Reuters“Los partidos políticos han dejado de ser un vehículo de representación ciudadana”, sostuvo Adriana Urrutia, politóloga que está a cargo de la organización prodemocrática Transparencia.“Hay partidos en el actual parlamento que representan intereses de las universidades privadas que están siendo sancionadas por no cumplir con los requisitos mínimos”, añadió. También “hay partidos que representan los intereses de las economías ilegales, como la tala ilegal o minería ilegal”.Algunos candidatos están apelando con sus mensajes al creciente escepticismo hacia la democracia.Castillo, el activista sindical, ha prometido remplazar el Tribunal Constitucional por un tribunal elegido “por mandato popular”, y ha dicho que disolverá el Congreso si este bloquea una propuesta para cambiar de Constitución. Rafael López Aliaga, empresario y miembro del grupo católico ultraconservador Opus Dei, ha dicho que Perú debe impedir que una “dictadura” de izquierda se consolide en el poder y ha prometido encarcelar de por vida a los funcionarios corruptos.Fujimori ha dejado de lado todo esfuerzo por moderar su plataforma en su tercera candidatura presidencial y ha prometido indultar a su padre, que cumple una condena por violaciones de los derechos humanos y corrupción.La turbulencia política incesante tiene a los analistas preocupados por el futuro del país.“El escenario que se nos viene es de verdad de terror”, dijo Patricia Zárate, investigadora principal de la organización de encuestas Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. “El Congreso sabe que puede vacar al presidente y es muy fácil y también es muy fácil cerrar el Congreso. Entonces ya vieron que se puede hacer y no hay problema”, añadió. “Es desesperanzador”.Julie Turkewitz More

Su candidato no llegó a la segunda vuelta del domingo, pero el avance del partido indígena Pachakutik en la primera ronda de votación ha transformado la agenda política nacional.TARQUI, Ecuador — Aunque su candidato no está en la boleta electoral, el gran ganador de la segunda vuelta presidencial del domingo en Ecuador estaba claro antes de que se emitiera el primer voto: el movimiento indígena del país que ha sido marginado durante mucho tiempo.El partido indígena y sus aliados sacudieron la nación en la primera ronda electoral en febrero, al ganar la mitad de todos los estados, con lo que se convirtieron en la segunda presencia más grande en el Congreso y transformaron la agenda de los finalistas de la contienda presidencial del domingo: el izquierdista Andrés Arauz y el conservador Guillermo Lasso.“La política ecuatoriana nunca será la misma”, aseveró Farith Simon, profesor de Derecho y columnista ecuatoriano. “Todavía hay racismo, pero también hay una reivindicación del valor de la cultura indígena, del orgullo en su papel nacional”.Ansiosos por atraer a los votantes indígenas y conscientes de la necesidad de trabajar con el nuevo y poderoso bloque indígena en el Congreso, Arauz y Lasso renovaron sus mensajes y desplazaron la contienda de la discusión polarizadora centrada en el socialismo versus el conservadurismo que ha definido la política nacional durante años. En vez de eso, los debates giran en torno a la desigualdad tan arraigada en Ecuador y a un modelo económico que depende de la exportación de petróleo y la extracción minera en las tierras indígenas.Ambos candidatos han prometido promulgar mayores protecciones medioambientales y conceder a las comunidades indígenas más poder de decisión sobre la extracción de recursos. Lasso, un banquero de 66 años, se comprometió a mejorar las oportunidades económicas de los indígenas que, a pesar de décadas de progreso, están muy por debajo del promedio nacional en el acceso a la educación, la atención sanitaria y el empleo.Ambos candidatos han prometido más salvaguardas ambientales y otorgar a las comunidades indígenas participación en las decisiones de extracción de recursos.Johanna Alarcón para The New York TimesArauz, de 36 años, un economista que lideró la contienda durante la primera ronda electoral, prometió gobernar Ecuador como un verdadero país “plurinacional” en reconocimiento de sus 15 naciones indígenas. La designación, aunque más bien simbólica, había sido solicitada durante décadas por Pachakutik, el partido indígena del país, como un poderoso reconocimiento del lugar central que ocupa su pueblo en Ecuador.El ascenso de Pachakutik en la escena nacional no solo llamó la atención de la minoría indígena del país, sino que también planteó cuestiones de identidad más profundas para todo el electorado. Aunque solo el ocho por ciento de los ecuatorianos se identificó como indígena en el último censo, gran parte de la población es mestiza.“Esta es una conversación difícil para nosotros como nación, pero no hay vuelta atrás”, afirmó Simon.El principal responsable del cambio político es el activista medioambiental Yaku Pérez, el candidato presidencial de Pachakutik en la primera ronda electoral de febrero.Pérez, de 52 años, se quedó fuera de la segunda ronda por muy poco, pero amplió en gran medida el atractivo histórico de Pachakutik con su apoyo a los derechos de la mujer, la igualdad de las personas que pertenecen a la comunidad LGBTQ y los esfuerzos para luchar contra el cambio climático. Pérez también apoyó el derecho al aborto y el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, lo que creó tensiones dentro de su electorado indígena, socialmente conservador.Partidarios de Pachakutik en febrero. Yaku Pérez, el candidato a la presidencia de Pachakutik, por poco se perdió la segunda vuelta, pero amplió enormemente el atractivo de su partido.Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Yaku Pérez tuvo una enorme capacidad para abrir sus horizontes, su discurso, para incorporar otros temas que no habían estado ahí” en la política ecuatoriana, comentó Alberto Acosta, excandidato presidencial de Pachakutik.El ascenso de Pérez forma parte de un cambio generacional más extenso en los movimientos de izquierda de Latinoamérica. Impulsados en parte por las redes sociales y las protestas políticas en Estados Unidos, donde la mayoría de los países latinoamericanos cuentan con grandes diásporas, los políticos más jóvenes de la izquierda están dando prioridad a los temas relacionados con el medioambiente, el género y las minorías frente a la doctrina marxista de sus mentores.En el vecino Perú, Verónika Mendoza, de 40 años, figura entre los principales contendientes a la presidencia en las elecciones del domingo, y como parte de su plataforma promete conceder títulos de propiedad a las comunidades indígenas y proteger el medioambiente. En Bolivia, la lideresa indígena Eva Copa, de 34 años, ganó hace poco la alcaldía de El Alto, una ciudad que es un crisol de culturas y que se considera un referente.Esta nueva generación de líderes va más allá de la tradicional división izquierda-derecha y desafía la dependencia histórica que tienen sus países en los grandes proyectos mineros, petroleros y agroindustriales para el crecimiento económico, afirmó Carwil Bjork-James, antropólogo de la Universidad de Vanderbilt en Tennessee.“Se trata de grandes cuestiones continentales que los movimientos indígenas han planteado desde hace mucho tiempo”, señaló Bjork-James. “Ver que estas preguntas se plantean en la esfera política es un nuevo nivel”.Sus rivales afirman que este marco de referencia es corto de miras. Las naciones sudamericanas no tienen otra alternativa que depender de los ingresos procedentes de las materias primas para recuperarse de la pandemia. Y solo a través del desarrollo económico, dicen, se pueden abordar plenamente las desigualdades.En Ecuador, Pérez consiguió casi el veinte por ciento de los votos en febrero, pero su partido, Pachakutik, y sus aliados pasaron de nueve a 43 escaños en el Congreso, con lo que se convirtieron en los líderes de la fracturada legislatura de 137 escaños.En un principio, la campaña se centró en el legado de Rafael Correa, el presidente democrático que más tiempo ocupó el cargo en Ecuador. Durante el auge de las materias primas en la década de 2000 sacó a millones de personas de la pobreza, pero su estilo autoritario y las acusaciones de corrupción en su contra dejaron a la nación sumida en una amarga división.Andrés Arauz, candidato de izquierda, en un acto de campaña en Quito la semana pasada. Presentó un mensaje especial para los votantes indígenas. Cristina Vega Rhor/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCorrea, quien dejó el cargo en 2017, eligió a Arauz para que representara su movimiento de izquierda este año, lo cual catapultó a este hombre de 36 años a la cima de las encuestas a pesar de su limitada experiencia y reconocimiento nacional. Lasso centró su mensaje de campaña inicial en el temor de que Correa siguiera ejerciendo su influencia.Sin embargo, los resultados de la primera vuelta demostraron “que gran parte de la población no se deja encasillar en aquel enfrentamiento de correístas y anticorreístas, que es muy simple y limita los problemas ecuatorianos a una visión binaria”, comentó Acosta, el excandidato.El éxito electoral de Pachakutik se deriva de una ola de protestas nacionales en octubre de 2019, cuando el movimiento indígena marchó en Quito, la capital, para exigir la derogación de un muy impopular recorte del subsidio a la gasolina. Las protestas se tornaron violentas y en ellas murieron al menos ocho personas, pero el gobierno retiró el recorte del subsidio tras doce días de disturbios.“Eso ha demostrado que los pueblos indígenas estamos buscando la transformación de este sistema dominante, capitalista que busca solamente atender a los sectores más pudientes”, declaró Diocelinda Iza, lideresa de la nación quichua en la provincia central de Cotopaxi.La vida de Pérez, candidato a la presidencia, refleja las penurias del movimiento indígena. Nació en un valle alto de los Andes, en el sur de Ecuador, en una familia de campesinos empobrecidos. Su padre era quichua y su madre cañari.Guillermo Lasso, el candidato conservador, en campaña en Guayaquil. También ha ampliado su plataforma.Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSus padres trabajaban en la finca de un terrateniente local sin remuneración, a cambio de vivir en su propiedad, un acuerdo rural que ha cambiado poco desde la época colonial.De su infancia, Pérez dice que recuerda el trabajo aparentemente interminable en el campo, las punzadas de hambre y la humillación que sentía en la escuela cuando su madre acudía a las reuniones de padres vestida con faldas tradicionales.“Yo sentía mucha vergüenza de ser indígena, de venir del campo, de ser campesino, de mi padre ser chacarero”, declaró Pérez en una entrevista en marzo. Para tener éxito en la escuela, “uno terminaba blanqueándose, colonizándose, renegando de nuestra identidad”.Pérez acabó estudiando en una universidad local, ejerciendo el derecho e involucrándose en la política a través de asociaciones locales que defienden los derechos comunales del agua. Ascendió hasta convertirse en gobernador de la región ecuatoriana de Azuay, la quinta más poblada del país, antes de renunciar para presentarse a la presidencia.Su historia resuena en otros indígenas, muchos de los cuales ven los esfuerzos políticos actuales en el contexto de los cinco siglos transcurridos desde la conquista colonial de Ecuador.“No lo hacemos por una persona”, dijo la dirigente indígena, Luz Namicela Contento, “sino por un proyecto político”.José María León Cabrera More

Its candidate didn’t reach Sunday’s presidential runoff, but the party’s powerful showing in the first round of voting has transformed the national agenda.TARQUI, Ecuador — Though its candidate is not on the ballot, one big winner in Sunday’s presidential runoff in Ecuador was clear before the first vote was cast: the nation’s long-marginalized Indigenous movement.The Indigenous party and its allies jolted the nation in the first round of voting in February, winning half of all states, becoming the second-largest presence in Congress and transforming the agenda of the finalists in Sunday’s presidential race, the leftist Andrés Arauz and the conservative Guillermo Lasso.“The politics of Ecuador will never be the same,” said Farith Simon, an Ecuadorean law professor and columnist. “There’s still racism, but there’s also a re-vindication of the value of Indigenous culture, of pride in their national role.”Eager to court Indigenous voters and mindful of the need to work with the newly powerful Indigenous bloc in Congress, Mr. Arauz and Mr. Lasso have revamped their messages and shifted the contest from the polarizing socialist-versus-conservative ground that has defined national politics for years. Debates are emerging instead on Ecuador’s deep-seated inequality and on an economic model reliant on the export of oil and metals extracted from Indigenous lands.Both candidates have promised to enact greater environmental safeguards and to grant Indigenous communities more say over the extraction of resources. Mr. Lasso, 66, a banker, has vowed to improve economic opportunities for Indigenous people, who, despite decades of progress, lag far behind national averages in access to education, health care and jobs.Both candidates have promised to enact greater environmental safeguards and to grant Indigenous communities more say over the extraction of resources. Johanna Alarcon for The New York TimesMr. Arauz, 36, an economist who led in the first round of voting, has promised to lead Ecuador as a true “plurinational” country in recognition of its 15 Indigenous nations. Though largely symbolic, the designation had been sought for decades by the country’s Indigenous party, Pachakutik, as a powerful acknowledgment of its people’s central place in Ecuador.The rise of Pachakutik on the national stage has not only brought attention to the country’s Indigenous minority, it has posed deeper questions of identity for the entire electorate. Though just 8 percent of Ecuadoreans identified themselves as Indigenous in the last census, much of the population is ethnically mixed.“This is a difficult conversation for us as a nation, but there’s no turning back,” Mr. Simon said.The man most responsible for the political sea change has been the environmental activist Yaku Pérez, the Pachakutik presidential candidate in February’s first round of voting.Mr. Pérez, 52, narrowly missed the runoff, but he greatly broadened Pachakutik’s historic single-digit appeal with his support for women’s rights, equality for L.G.B.T.Q. people and efforts to fight climate change. Mr. Pérez also backed abortion rights and same-sex marriage, creating tensions inside his socially conservative Indigenous constituency.Pachakutik supporters in February. Yaku Pérez, the Pachakutik presidential candidate, narrowly missed the runoff, but he greatly broadened the party’s appeal.Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Pérez had an enormous capacity to open his horizons, his discourse, to incorporate themes that weren’t there” in Ecuadorean politics, said Alberto Acosta, a former Pachakutik presidential candidate.Mr. Pérez’s rise is part of a larger generational shift in Latin America’s leftist movements. Partly driven by social media and political protests in the United States, where most Latin American nations have large diasporas, younger left-leaning politicians are prioritizing environment, gender and minority issues over the Marxist doctrine of their mentors.In neighboring Peru, Verónika Mendoza, 40, is among the top contenders in Sunday’s presidential election, promising to grant land titles to Indigenous communities and protect the environment. In Bolivia, the 34-year-old Indigenous leader Eva Copa recently won a mayor’s race in El Alto, a melting-pot city considered a bellwether.This new generation of leaders is going beyond the traditional left-right divide, challenging their countries’ historic reliance on large mining, oil and agribusiness projects for economic growth, said Carwil Bjork-James, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.“These are big continental questions that the Indigenous movements have been asking for a long time,” Mr. Bjork-James said. “To see these questions being asked politically is a new level.”Such a framework is shortsighted, their rivals say. South American nations have no alternative but to rely on revenue from raw materials to recover from the pandemic. And only through economic development, they say, can inequalities be fully addressed.In Ecuador, Mr. Pérez managed to win nearly 20 percent of February’s vote, but his party and its allies soared from nine to 43 congressional seats in the election, becoming kingmakers in the country’s fractured 137-seat legislature.The campaign had initially focused on the legacy of Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s longest-serving democratic president. He had lifted millions from poverty during a commodities boom in the 2000s, but his authoritarian style and the corruption allegations that trailed him had left the nation bitterly divided.Andrés Arauz, a leftist candidate for president, campaigning in Quito last week. He has tailored a message for Indigenous voters.Cristina Vega Rhor/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Correa, who left office in 2017, picked Mr. Arauz to represent his leftist movement this year, catapulting the 36-year-old to the top of the polls despite his limited experience and national recognition. Mr. Lasso centered his early campaign message on fears that Mr. Correa would continue to exert influence.But the first-round results “showed that a great part of the population doesn’t want to be boxed into this conflict between Correa’s supporters and opponents, which reduces Ecuadoreans’ problems to a binary vision,” said Mr. Acosta, the former candidate.Pachakutik’s electoral success this year traces to a wave of national protests in October 2019, when the Indigenous movement marched on the capital, Quito, to demand the repeal of a deeply unpopular cut in gasoline subsidies. The protests turned violent, claiming at least eight lives, but the government withdrew the subsidy cut after 12 days of unrest.“We showed the country that the Indigenous people are looking for a transformation of this dominant system that only serves the most affluent,” said Diocelinda Iza, a leader of the Kichwa nation in the central province of Cotopaxi.The life of Mr. Pérez, the presidential candidate, embodies the travails of the Indigenous movement. He was born in a high Andean valley in southern Ecuador to a family of impoverished farmers. His father was Kichwa, his mother Kañari.Guillermo Lasso, the conservative, campaigning in Guayaquil. He, too, is broadening his platform.Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHis parents worked on the estate of a local landowner without pay in return for living on his property, a rural arrangement that has changed little since colonial times.From his childhood, Mr. Pérez said he remembers the seemingly endless toil in the fields, the pangs of hunger, and the humiliation he felt at school when his mother came to parent meetings dressed in traditional skirts.“I felt a lot of shame to be Indigenous, to come from the field, to be a farmer, to have a sharecropper father,” Mr. Pérez said in an interview in March. To succeed at school, he said, “I ended up whitening myself, colonizing myself, rejecting our identity.”Mr. Pérez ended up studying at a local university, practicing law and becoming involved in politics through local associations defending communal water rights. He rose to become the governor of Ecuador’s Azuay region, the country’s fifth-most populous, before quitting to run for president.His story has resonated with other Indigenous people, many of whom see the political efforts of today in the context of the five centuries since Ecuador’s colonial conquest.“We’re not campaigning for a person,” said one Indigenous leader, Luz Namicela Contento, “but for a political project.”Jose María León Cabrera reported from Tarqui, Ecuador, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Moscow. Mitra Taj contributed reporting from Lima, Peru. More

Hundreds have been detained, many brutalized, after a bloody, contested election. The government of Yoweri Museveni appears intent on breaking the back of the opposition.KAMPALA, Uganda — Armed men in white minivans without license plates picked up people off the streets or from their homes.Those snatched were taken to prisons, police stations and military barracks where they say they were hooded, drugged and beaten — some left to stand in cellars filled with water up to their chests.The fear is still so palpable in the capital, Kampala, that many others have gone into hiding or left the country.Three months after Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, won a sixth five-year term in office in the most fiercely contested election in years, his government appears to be intent on breaking the back of the political opposition. The president of Uganda, a strategically located country in East Africa, is a longtime U.S. military ally and major recipient of American aid.His principal challenger, Bobi Wine, a magnetic musician-turned-lawmaker who galvanized youthful crowds of supporters, is now largely confined to his house in Kampala. Mr. Wine’s party said on Friday that 623 members, supporters and elected officials have been seized from the streets and arrested in recent weeks, many of them tortured.The musician-turned-oppostion politician Bobi Wine is now largely confined to his home, his party members and supporters arrested.Esther Ruth Mbabazi for The New York TimesFor many Ugandans, the enforced disappearances suggest a slide toward the repressive policies of dictators such as Idi Amin and Milton Obote — who was ousted by Mr. Museveni. Ugandans now say they worry that President Museveni, after 35 years in power, is adopting some of the harsh tactics used by the autocrats he railed against decades ago.“I didn’t know if I was going to make it out dead or alive,” said Cyrus Sambwa Kasato, his eyes darting as he spoke, his hand tugging at the rosary around his neck. A district councilor with Mr. Wine’s opposition party, he said he was held at military intelligence headquarters, his hands chained to the ceiling, whipped by several men at once.President Museveni has acknowledged arresting 242 people, branding them “terrorists” and “lawbreakers,” and admitted that an elite commando unit had “killed a few.” But he denied that his government was disappearing its own citizens.Cyrus Sambwa Kasato, a district councilor with the opposition party,  said he was held at military intelligence headquarters, chained to the ceiling and whipped.Esther Ruth Mbabazi for The New York TimesA military spokesman, Lt. Col. Deo Akiiki, said in an email, “Terrorism has changed the modus operandi of some security operations across the world.”He defended the use of the unmarked white vans, saying that using “unidentifiable means of transport” was not unique to Uganda and that other countries — including the United States and Britain — have deployed similar methods to deal with “hard-core criminals.” He added that military officers are well trained in upholding human rights.The detentions and disappearances, in Uganda’s central region and elsewhere in the country, have targeted both young and middle-aged men and women.Some of those detained say they had collected evidence of vote tampering to present to the Supreme Court to challenge the official election results — which gave Mr. Museveni 59 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Mr. Wine. Mr. Wine has since dropped his challenge.Many of those who agreed to be interviewed were initially afraid to meet, fearing that journalists were actually government operatives. They asked to meet in public spaces or in party offices. Most did not want their names used for fear of retribution.They said uniformed soldiers or plainclothes gunmen whisked them away in unmarked minivans, known as “drones,” and shuffled them between prisons, police stations and military barracks — making it hard for their families and lawyers to find them.Campaign billboards for President Museveni, who was elected to his sixth five-year term.Esther Ruth Mbabazi for The New York TimesThey were ordered to turn over evidence of vote-rigging, accused of orchestrating violence and participating in an American plot to start a “revolution.” Mr. Museveni has claimed that the opposition was receiving support from “outsiders” and “homosexuals” who don’t like the “stability of Uganda.”Some said they were charged in a military court with possessing “military stores,” including the red berets worn by supporters of Mr. Wine, which the government banned in 2019.David Musiri, a member of Mr. Wine’s National Unity Platform Party, said he was shopping at a supermarket in Kampala on Jan. 18 when six gunmen in plainclothes assaulted him and injected him twice with a substance that made him lose consciousness.Mr. Musiri, 30, said he was placed in solitary confinement with his hands and feet tied together. Like most of those arrested, he said that his jailers interrogated him about what they called “Plan B” — Mr. Wine’s postelection strategy.Soldiers made him listen to recordings of his own phone calls with party officials, and kicked and hit him so much that he started urinating blood, he said. When he was released four days later, he couldn’t walk.“We are the very people funding the dictator to do this to us,” he said.David Musiri, a member of the opposition party, said soldiers beat him so badly he couldn’t walk, and interrogated him about a suspected “Plan B.”Esther Ruth Mbabazi for The New York TimesMr. Kasato, the district councilor, said that plainclothes officers picked him up from a church meeting on Feb. 8, threw him, hooded, into a car and clobbered him.He said the men asked him for the evidence of election rigging he’d collected, and whether he had sent it to Mr. Wine’s party. He said, yes, he had.Mr. Kasato, a 47-year-old father of 11, said that while he was chained to the ceiling, his feet barely touching the ground, military officers whipped him with a wire and pulled at his skin with pliers. “It was a big shock,” he said. “I was praying deeply that I really survive that torture.”In late February, Mr. Kasato was charged with inciting violence during the November protests in which security forces killed dozens of people — accusations he denies. He has been released on bail, but said he was still in intense physical pain, and that his doctors advised he seek medical attention abroad.Analysts say that Mr. Museveni, 76, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, is trying to avoid history repeating itself. He himself was a charismatic young upstart who accused his predecessor, Mr. Obote, of rigging an election, and led an armed rebellion that after five years managed to take power.Mr. Wine, 39, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, has become the face of this young movement, promising to shake up the country’s stifled politics. As his campaign gained ground last year, he was arrested and beaten and placed under de facto house arrest.“We are seeing a movement toward full totalitarianism in this country,” said Nicholas Opiyo, a leading human rights lawyer. He was abducted last December and released, charged with money laundering after his legal advocacy group received a grant from American Jewish World Service, a New York-based nonprofit.“I have never felt as restricted and constrained as I am today,” said Nicholas Opiyo, a human rights lawyer, who was detained.Esther Ruth Mbabazi for The New York TimesAfter years of working to defend civil liberties in Uganda, Mr. Opiyo said, “I have never felt as restricted and constrained as I am today,” adding, “It feels like the noose is tightening on our neck.”Authorities have started releasing some of those forcibly disappeared following weeks of public outcry.On a March morning in Kyotera, a town 110 miles southwest of the Ugandan capital, news spread that 18 of the 19 local people who went missing had been returned.One was Lukyamuzi Kiwanuka Yuda, a 30-year-old trader who was taken from his home on the night of Jan. 8. Mr. Yuda said that 15 to 20 men in black counterterrorism police uniforms broke down his door, beat him and asked whether he was training “the rebels.”Lukyamuzi Kiwanuka Yuda, embraced by friends upon his release, said he was detained for more than 70 days in a hood and shackles.Esther Ruth Mbabazi for The New York TimesFor more than 70 days, he said, he and others detained with him remained hooded and shackled, allowed to lift their hoods only up to their lips when eating their one meal a day.“We would count the days based on when the meal for the day arrived,” he said, while continuously gazing at the sky. When asked why he kept looking up, he said, “I miss the sun.”In the hours after the reunion, neighbors and local officials gathered, cheering, ululating and hugging the returnees. A tent was pitched, and soon families arrived dressed in their best as a pastor delivered a prayer of thanks.But one resident quietly slipped out.After rushing over, Jane Kyomugisha did not find her brother among those released. Her brother, who is 28, had run in the local council election as an independent. He was taken away on Jan. 19 and has not been seen since. Ms. Kyomugisha said she has asked about him at numerous police stations, but in vain.“I feel a lot of pain that others have come back and my brother is not here,” she said in an interview at her convenience store in town. With each passing day, she feels more hopeless.“They should tell us if he’s dead,” she said. “Give us back the body and let our hope end there.”Jane Kyomugisha said that her brother, who ran as an independent in a local council election, was abducted in January and has not been seen since.Esther Ruth Mbabazi for The New York Times More

Florida’s governor has elbowed his way to the front of the line of 2024 Republican hopefuls by leveraging a brand of “competent Trumpism” (as one ally put it) and hitting back at critics of his pandemic leadership.MIAMI — No one had to tell Ron DeSantis that his mock debates had bordered on disastrous. His answers rambled. He seemed uninspired.By the time he got to the greenroom of the biggest political stage of his career, a Republican primary debate for Florida governor in June 2018, he had made a risky decision.“I thought about everything we did in debate practice,” his campaign manager, Brad Herold, recalled Mr. DeSantis’s telling him. “I’m going to throw it out and do my own thing.”At the debate’s start, the audience applauded louder for his better-known opponent, Adam Putnam. By its end — after he had cast Mr. Putnam as a vestige of old Republicanism and delivered a rat-a-tat of one-liners — Mr. DeSantis had taken command of the crowd.Nearly three years and a pandemic later, Mr. DeSantis’s inclination to keep his own counsel and drive hard at reopening Florida has made him perhaps the most recognizable Republican governor in the country and a favorite of the party faithful. In turn, he has become a polarizing leader in the resistance to lengthy pandemic lockdowns, ignoring the advice of some public health experts in ways that have left his state’s residents bitterly divided over the costs and benefits of his actions.Now, with Florida defying many of the gloomy projections of early 2020 and feeling closer to normal as the pandemic continues to dictate daily life in many other big states, Mr. DeSantis, 42, has positioned himself as the head of “the free state of Florida” and as a political heir to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. DeSantis owes a mightier debt than most in his party to Mr. Trump, who blessed his candidacy when he was a nobody congressman taking on the staid Florida Republican Party.Mr. DeSantis’s political maneuvering and extensive national donor network have allowed him to emerge as a top Republican candidate to succeed Mr. Trump on the ballot in 2024 if the former president does not run again. The governor’s brand of libertarianism — or “competent Trumpism,” as one ally called it — is on the ascent. Seizing on conservative issues du jour like opposition to social media “censorship” and vaccine passports, he has forged strong connections with his party’s base.In February, Mr. DeSantis had a prominent speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, another high-profile gathering of Republicans in his home state. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAnd his bonds with Republican leaders may be deepening: Mr. DeSantis has a plum speaking spot on Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort and political base in Palm Beach, Fla., for the Republican National Committee’s spring retreat. Other possible 2024 rivals, like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Senator Marco Rubio, were relegated to appearances a night earlier.The governor has also taken steps to shore up his political standing around his handling of the pandemic, summoning reporters to the State Capitol on Wednesday to blast — complete with a slide-show presentation titled “FACTS VS. SMEARS” — a report in CBS News’s “60 Minutes” that did not have sufficient evidence to prove a pay-to-play dynamic between Mr. DeSantis’s administration and Covid-19 vaccine distribution for white and wealthy Floridians.His record on the virus is, in fact, mixed. By some measures, Florida has had an average performance in a pandemic that is not yet over. Yet his decisions helped keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. He highlights that he helped businesses survive and allowed children to go to school.What his critics cannot forget, however, is how he resisted some key public health guidelines. An op-ed article endorsing masks that his staff drafted under his name in mid-July was never approved by the governor for publication. The restrictions he now dismisses as ineffective, such as local mask mandates and curfews, which experts say in fact worked, were imposed in most cases by Democratic mayors with whom he hardly speaks.Given the ways people admire or despise him, however, the nuances seem beside the point.He infuriates passionate critics who believe he operates shrewdly to tend to his own interests. They fear that approach contributed to confusing public health messages, vaccine favoritism for the wealthy and the deaths of about 34,000 Floridians. “DeathSantis,” they call him. (Mr. DeSantis declined repeated interview requests for this article.)But at almost every turn, Mr. DeSantis has seized the criticism as an opportunity to become an avatar for national conservatives who relish the governor’s combativeness. He can score points that his potential Republican rivals in the minority in Washington, including Mr. Rubio and Senator Rick Scott, his predecessor as governor, cannot.“He’s taken the wrong approach on some of our most critical issues, Covid being first and foremost, yet within Republican political circles, he is considered to be the front-runner for the White House,” said former Representative David Jolly, an ex-Republican who is flirting with a possible run for governor. “He’s worked his hand perfectly.”Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump appeared together at a campaign rally in Tampa in 2018. The former president’s endorsement of Mr. DeSantis helped him win the Republican primary in the governor’s race that year.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has raised his profile despite lacking the gregarious personality that might be associated with an aspiring Trump successor. Unlike the former president, no one would describe the publicly unemotional and not especially eloquent Mr. DeSantis as a showman. (After a record day of coronavirus deaths in July, he offered, “These are tough, tough things to see.”) People close to him describe an un-Trump-like fondness for poring over articles in scientific journals.And, they say, do not underestimate the intellect and instinct that have repeatedly defied expectations and propelled Mr. DeSantis from Little Leaguer in middle-class Dunedin, Fla., to potential presidential contender.“He has a set of skills and traits that are ideal for the times,” said former Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Republican who served in the House with Mr. DeSantis. “Today, it would be very difficult to defeat him.”A long athletic, military and political résuméHe pronounces his last name “DEE-san-tis.” On the baseball field, he went simply by “D.”His team from Dunedin, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, made it to the Little League World Series in 1991. He was a 12-year-old known to be serious and competitive.Mr. DeSantis playing for Yale’s baseball team.Yale Athletics His father installed Nielsen TV-ratings boxes. His mother was a nurse. When he went to Yale, the Florida native — he was born in Jacksonville — arrived on campus in cutoff denim shorts.“One of the reasons we got along is we weren’t the traditional, Ivy-League-mold students,” said Nick Sinatra, a former Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity housemate. “He always talked politics. I’m a conservative, and at a place like that, that’s not common.”A history major, Mr. DeSantis lugged around a backpack full of books. He studied for both academics and athletics, scrutinizing ballplayers on TV. The Yale baseball team elected him captain.His résumé got only more sterling. He spent a year teaching history at a Georgia prep school before landing at Harvard Law. He received a commission in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served at Guantánamo Bay (“not as a detainee, as an officer,” he has quipped) and in Iraq. For two years, he worked as a federal prosecutor before winning a congressional seat near Jacksonville in 2012. His 2011 book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” which laid out a stridently conservative ideology, made him popular among Florida Tea Party Republicans.Mr. DeSantis and his wife greeted supporters after he won Florida’s election for governor in 2018, narrowly defeating Andrew Gillum, then considered a Democratic rising star.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesTwo years earlier, he had married Casey Black, a local television anchor he met on a driving range. Ms. DeSantis would become one of her husband’s closest advisers and biggest political assets, with an office at the State Capitol. They have three children under the age of 5; the youngest was born in March 2020. Mr. DeSantis said he was not in the delivery room so as to avoid using up precious personal protective equipment.The most memorable part of Mr. DeSantis’s six years in Congress might be the platform they gave him to heighten his profile on Fox News, where he frequently represented the hard-line Freedom Caucus. Later, he would staunchly defend Mr. Trump over the Russia investigation.“He was a policy wonk with an ability to really identify a few areas within his committees, responsibilities which he knew would give him the political opportunity to get on television,” said Scott Parkinson, who was Mr. DeSantis’s chief of staff in 2018. Mr. DeSantis was appearing on cable TV multiple times a day, Mr. Parkinson recalled.Mr. DeSantis often slept in his office and walked the Capitol halls wearing headphones, avoiding unwanted interactions. He made few friends and struck other lawmakers as aloof.A brief Senate run in 2016 proved critical: It exposed him to a national network of wealthy donors he would later tap in his long-shot bid for governor.Mr. DeSantis speaking at a rally in Orlando in 2018. After winning the governor’s office, he pursued a broadly conservative agenda but made moves to appeal to moderates, and his approval ratings rose.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis barely defeated Andrew Gillum, at the time considered one of the Democrats’ brightest stars, after a bruising campaign laced with accusations of racism. Determined to show his independence in his first months in office, he appointed a chief science officer and pledged billions for the Everglades. He pardoned four wrongfully accused Black men. He lifted a ban on medical marijuana in smokable form.He was hardly a moderate: Mr. DeSantis also gutted a voter-approved measure meant to restore felons’ right to vote. He allowed some teachers to carry guns in schools. He banned so-called sanctuary cities in a state where there were none.But the mix pleased voters, and his approval ratings surged. Might the man who had shown his diaper-age daughter building a wall in a campaign ad actually be a pragmatist?Then came the pandemic.Defiant leadership during a crisisIn a state where political consultants often become synonymous with their clients over time, Mr. DeSantis has cycled quickly through advisers. A close friend and transition deputy was Representative Matt Gaetz, who is now embroiled in a scandalous federal investigation.Mr. DeSantis centralized power in his office early in the pandemic, ceding little of the spotlight to public health officials. The state Department of Health’s weekly Covid-19 recaps are titled “Updates on Florida’s Vaccination Efforts Under Governor DeSantis’ Leadership.”Mr. DeSantis’s slowness in locking down the state last year hurt his approval ratings. So did a deadly summer surge of the virus. But then, far earlier than most other governors, he pledged that schools would open in the fall and life would start returning to normal.Young people crowded the beaches in Fort Lauderdale on March 11 last year, as the coronavirus spread rapidly throughout the United States. Mr. DeSantis was slow to lock down Florida, which had a deadly summer surge.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“His policies were contrarian, and he was defiant,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster who has tracked Mr. DeSantis’s popularity and saw it rebound beginning last summer. “The more he stands his ground, the more he speaks his mind, the more the affinity grows for him.”His critics see the governor as stubborn and unwilling to hear dissent.“The governor we have today is the governor we anticipated after the election,” said Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner and the only Democrat elected statewide, who looks likely to run against Mr. DeSantis.“He surprised everybody in 2019,” she added, “but obviously that is not truly who he is.”In some ways, Mr. DeSantis has filled the void left by Mr. Trump, minus the tweets. He remains a Fox News regular. He counts among his scientific advisers Dr. Scott W. Atlas, the former Trump adviser who has promoted dubious theories. Mr. DeSantis’s office said he had received a vaccine last week but not in public, reminiscent of Mr. Trump, who was given the shot behind closed doors.Mr. DeSantis spoke at a news conference in January about the opening of a coronavirus vaccination site at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. Vaccine access in the state has been slower for Black, Latino and poorer communities.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesAnd the governor’s favorite foes are the “corporate media,” against whom he has scored political points.His recent tangle with “60 Minutes” centered on the extent to which political connections have helped white, wealthy Floridians get vaccinated.Local news outlets have chronicled how vaccine access has been slower for Black, Latino and poorer communities. Some pop-up vaccination sites were opened in neighborhoods that had many older residents — and that also had ties to DeSantis campaign donors.But “60 Minutes” focused on how Publix supermarket pharmacies received doses and left out relevant details, including an extended response from the governor at a news conference.On Wednesday, in Mr. DeSantis’s words, he “hit them back right between the eyes,” accusing “60 Minutes” of pursuing a malicious narrative.He left without taking questions.Research was contributed by More

A gathering of Republican leaders and top donors in Florida this weekend is less a reset of priorities and more a reminder of the tensions that Donald J. Trump instills in his party.The first spring donor retreat after a defeat for a political party is typically a moment of reflection and renewal as officials chart a new direction forward.But with former President Donald J. Trump determined to keep his grip on the Republican Party and the party’s base as adhered to him as ever, the coming together of the Republican National Committee’s top donors in South Florida this weekend is less a moment of reset and more a reminder of the continuing tensions and schisms roiling the G.O.P.The same former president who last month sent the R.N.C. a cease-and-desist letter demanding they stop using his likeness to raise money will on Saturday evening serve as the party’s fund-raising headliner.“A tremendous complication” was how Fred Zeidman, a veteran Republican fund-raiser in Texas, described Mr. Trump’s lingering presence on the political scene.The delicate dance between Mr. Trump and the party — after losing the House, the Senate and the White House on his watch — will manifest in some actual shuttle bus diplomacy on Saturday, as the party’s top donors attend a series of receptions and panels at the Four Seasons Resort before traveling to Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club, to hear Mr. Trump speak.Mr. Trump’s insistence on leading the party “affects every member,” Mr. Zeidman said, as lawmakers and would-be elected officials jockey for a Trump endorsement that is as powerful in a Republican primary as it can be problematic in a general election.“He’s already proven that he wants to have a major say or keep control of the party, and he’s already shown every sign that he’s going to primary everybody that has not been supportive of him,” Mr. Zeidman said. “He complicates everything so much.”Among other things, Mr. Trump is considering running again in 2024. Though few of his allies believe he will follow through, his presence could have a chilling effect on other potential candidates.“The party is still very much revolving around” Mr. Trump, said Andrea Catsimatidis, chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party and a donor who will be at the retreat. “He was the one who very much revived the party when we weren’t winning.”Also inescapable is the fact that Mr. Trump has quickly built a political war chest that rivals that of the R.N.C. An adviser to Mr. Trump said he currently had about $85 million on hand, compared with nearly $84 million for the R.N.C.“Send your donation to Save America PAC,” Mr. Trump urged supporters last month, not to “RINOS,” the derisive acronym for “Republicans in Name Only.” Mr. Trump has appeared as passionate about punishing Republicans who crossed him, especially those who supported his second impeachment, as he has about taking back the House and Senate in 2022.For party officials, the goal is keeping the energy that has propelled Mr. Trump to success inside the Republican tent while not entirely allowing the former president to dominate it. Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C. chairwoman whom Mr. Trump supported for a second term, has vowed to remain neutral in a potential 2024 primary should Mr. Trump run again.“It is a difficult balancing act,” said Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committeeman from New Jersey who has been critical of Mr. Trump.“The president certainly has devoted followers,” Mr. Palatucci said, “but he also more than offended a lot of people with his conduct since the November election, which culminated in his helping to incite the riot on Jan. 6.”Organizers moved the final Saturday evening events to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, meaning the party will again be paying the former president’s private club to use its space.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesSeveral Republicans who are considered likely to run for president in 2024 — including Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota — were scheduled to speak to the R.N.C.’s donors at the Four Seasons. Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state and C.I.A. director who served under Mr. Trump, had been scheduled to speak on Friday but did not attend the gathering.Notably absent are two leading Republican figures who also skipped the last big Republican gathering, the Conservative Political Action Conference, that Mr. Trump attended: former Vice President Mike Pence, who is starting his own political advocacy group, and Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador.Some donors are hoping to quickly move past Mr. Trump, but they are also focused on the current Oval Office occupant.“It is very important the Republican Party puts Donald Trump as far into the past as possible,” said William Oberndorf, an investor in California who has given millions to G.O.P. candidates but fiercely opposes the former president.“However, if Joe Biden does not ensure that major pieces of legislation have bipartisan support, it is he who will bear more responsibility than any group of Republican donors ever could for resurrecting Mr. Trump’s political future and fortunes,” he added.Among donors, the jockeying for favor and financing extends beyond Mr. Trump and the R.N.C.On Thursday and Friday, a separate but overlapping gathering for Republican contributors was held at Mr. Trump’s private club: an “investors meeting” of the Conservative Partnership Institute (C.P.I.), a nonprofit organization. Mark Meadows, who served as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, is now a senior adviser for the group, and Caroline Wren, who used to fund-raise for the former president, is raising money for it.Donors are being pitched on a dizzying array of Trump-adjacent projects, including Mr. Pence’s group and new entities being started by Ben Carson, Mr. Trump’s former housing secretary; Stephen Miller, his former White House adviser; and Russell Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget.Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s first campaign manager in 2016, is said to be involved with efforts to start a Trump-aligned super PAC, as well.Mr. Trump, who continues to talk privately about a future campaign of his own in 2024, spoke to donors for the Meadows-linked group for more than an hour on Thursday, also at his private club.“All Republican roads lead to Mar-a-Lago,” said Jason Miller, an adviser to Mr. Trump. “Trump is still the straw that stirs the news cycle. His influence will be central to every speech and story line this week.”Those who have trekked there to meet Mr. Trump in recent months include Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary and a candidate for governor of Arkansas; Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee; and Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the House minority leader.The R.N.C. had initially planned for its entire retreat to be held nearby in Palm Beach, but organizers moved the final Saturday evening events to Mr. Trump’s resort, meaning the party will again be paying the former president’s private club to use its space.During Mr. Trump’s White House tenure, his political campaign, the R.N.C. and his allies spent millions of dollars at Trump businesses, including his hotel in Washington near the White House and a resort property in Miami, where yet another pro-Trump group also held a conference this week.Party officials maintained that donors and a number of party activists were happier being at Trump-branded properties than they were anywhere else.Still, the Trump branding of official Republican events had alienated what was once the Republican establishment.“This is all about the Trump circle of grift,” said former Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia, who is close to another high-profile Republican — and a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s — who was also notably absent: Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.Ms. Comstock said that the Republicans keeping their distance were wise to “build their own coalitions” and “not get sucked into Trumpism, which has a limited and short-term appeal with demographics dying in this country.”Henry Barbour, an influential R.N.C. member from Mississippi, said that the party was still in a transitional phase since Mr. Trump’s loss.“When you lose the White House, you kind of figure it’s going to take a little bit of healing, and I think probably first quarter has hopefully got us moving on a better path,” Mr. Barbour said. Mr. Trump, he said, is a “big force in the party, but the party is bigger than any one candidate including Donald Trump.”With Mr. Trump’s priorities differing from those of other party leaders, the tension remains palpable. On Friday, the super PAC for Senate Republicans, which is aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, announced its backing of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who infuriated Mr. Trump by voting to impeach him. (Some Trump 2020 advisers are working for Ms. Murkowski’s Republican challenger, Kelly Tshibaka.)Last month, Mr. McConnell privately boasted of the super PAC’s fund-raising in a meeting with Senate Republicans, bragging that it had raised more than Mr. Trump’s super PAC had in 2020. He even distributed a card to hammer home the point: “In three cycles: nearly $1 billion,” the card said. Below that were Mr. Trump’s super PAC statistics: “Trump: $148+ million,” referring to the group America First.But the Republican small donor base remains very much enamored with Mr. Trump.“He’ll still be the most significant figure in the party in November 2022,” predicted Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party and former chairman of the American Conservative Union. “Everybody has a shelf life and Donald Trump has lost a bit of his shelf life.”“It could be two years,” Mr. Cardenas added. “It could be 10.” More

Even as New York has veered toward the left, two more-moderate candidates, Andrew Yang and Eric Adams, lead the mayoral race.Over the last year, New York politics have appeared to lurch ever leftward. First came the primary victories last summer in a series of House and state legislative races, then the legalization of recreational marijuana, and just this week, a state budget agreement that would raise taxes on the wealthy and create a $2.1 billion fund to aid undocumented workers.But in the New York City mayor’s race, the two candidates who have most consistently shown strength are among the most moderate in the field.The sustained polling leads of Andrew Yang followed often by Eric Adams have made some left-wing activists and leaders increasingly alarmed about the trajectory of the race, leaving them divided over how to use their considerable influence to shape its outcome before the June 22 primary.“From my perspective on the left in New York, there’s definitely a little sense of disappointment around how the race is shaping up right now,” said Matthew Miles Goodrich, who is involved with the Sunrise Movement, an organization of young climate activists. “There seems to be a mismatch between who is leading in the New York City mayoral race and the tenor of the times that we’re supposed to be living in.”The mayoral field still reflects the leftward shift of many Democrats in the city, with many voters just beginning to tune into the race. Scott M. Stringer and Maya Wiley, two of the most progressive candidates in the race, are generally discussed as part of the field’s top tier, with the expected resources to be competitive through the end, and perhaps to break out in a meaningful way. Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, has undeniably captured real grass-roots energy.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, is one of the most left-wing candidates in New York’s mayoral race.David Dee Delgado/Getty ImagesBut for now, no one doubts that Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate, and Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, are in especially strong positions, with Mr. Yang in particular consistently topping polls.That emerged as a significant concern at a private meeting on Wednesday of representatives from several prominent left-wing organizations, including Our City, Democratic Socialists of America, Sunrise and other groups, according to two people familiar with the meeting. A consensus emerged that the left needed to mobilize urgently around the city elections, according to one of those people.Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang embrace progressive positions on a wide range of issues, and their allies say that they are well within the mainstream of the Democratic Party — far more so, they argue, than some left-wing activists are. And on Friday afternoon, as he campaigned in Coney Island, Mr. Yang heaped praise on the new state budget as well as marijuana legalization.But it is also true that they are relatively friendly toward the business and real estate communities. And on the spectrum of mayoral candidates, they are also more moderate on policing matters, even as they promote criminal justice reform. (Indeed, Mr. Adams, a Black former police officer who says he has experienced police brutality himself, spent much of his career urging changes in the system, but he is also a onetime Republican who speaks often about the constructive role he believes policing can play in promoting public safety.)Those stances are sharply at odds with the anti-real estate, anti-corporate and “defund the police” rhetoric that has animated the left-wing New York scene in recent years — and in particular after the killing of George Floyd last May — but that has largely been untested in a citywide race.As more voters tune in, the contest will offer the clearest picture yet of the political mood of a large, racially diverse city on issues surrounding economic recovery, a rise in violent crime and deep inequality that the coronavirus pandemic has only worsened.Across the city, younger left-wing activists have been part of a coalition that has shaped legislative and House races. But that contingent has not been determinative in statewide races for governor or, at a national level, in the presidential campaign, where moderate Black voters and other older, more centrist voters played a decisive role in giving President Biden the nomination.Even as some activists worry about the state of the mayor’s race, many are struggling to coalesce behind one of three candidates most consistently mentioned as progressive contenders: Mr. Stringer, the well-funded city comptroller who boasts a raft of endorsements from left-wing lawmakers; Ms. Morales, who is perhaps the most left-wing candidate in the race; and Ms. Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who on Friday was endorsed by Representative Yvette Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat.Maya Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was endorsed on Friday by Representative Yvette Clarke of New York, a Brooklyn Democrat.Eduardo Munoz/Reuters“The progressive community in New York is divided,” said Mr. Goodrich, who favors Mr. Stringer. “No one has emerged as the clear, viable progressive hero, progressive champion. That’s made it tough for anyone to break out.”The race for city comptroller offers a sharp contrast: Some of the nation’s most prominent progressives, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have lined up behind City Councilman Brad Lander. They have not yet engaged in the mayor’s race, and it is not clear that they will.To many on the left wing of the New York political spectrum, the victory of either Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams would represent a loss for a movement that has gathered strength since Ms. Ocasio-Cortez toppled Representative Joseph Crowley, the Queens County Democratic leader, in the 2018 primary.Certainly, there is still plenty of time for the most liberal voters in New York to unite around a candidate or slate of candidates; under the city’s new ranked-choice system, voters rank up to five candidates in order of preference. If a candidate garners more than 50 percent of the vote, that candidate wins. If not, the last-place candidate falls out of the race, and the voters who made that candidate their first choice get their second-choice votes counted instead. The runoff continues until there is a winner.A number of lawmakers and other Democrats have offered ranked-choice endorsements — especially of Mr. Stringer and Ms. Morales — and organizations that are currently weighing endorsement decisions could make the same call or support a slate of candidates.Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, is perhaps the most leftward leaning Democrat among the leading mayoral candidates.Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesThe Working Families Party is in the process of deciding its endorsement, which could be influential and come as soon as next week. Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams are among the candidates participating in that process along with other more left-wing contenders, according to some familiar with the conversations.Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams each claim to be the most attuned to New Yorkers’ concerns around the economy, reopening the city and the balance of public safety and police reform.Mr. Adams has also cast himself as a business-friendly candidate who sees no need to demonize real estate. “I am real estate,” Mr. Adams, who owns a multifamily property in Brooklyn, has said. Mr. Adams also previously led an organization that advocated criminal justice reforms within the New York Police Department.“It seems like he’s happy to tinker around the edges and continue to play the inside game with the N.Y.P.D., and I just don’t think that that has been effective,” said Charles Khan, the organizing director for the Strong Economy for All Coalition.Mr. Adams’s team argues that substantively, on issues from housing to taxes, he has many of the same goals as the most deeply progressive activists. The difference, the team says, is a matter of tone. Advisers also argue that he has done more than any other candidate to personally press for police reform.“Eric is not new to this, he has been in the fight for police reform for over 30 years and has the know-how to reform the N.Y.P.D. the right way and keep New York City safe,” said Madia Coleman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams. “No one in this race has fought harder or delivered more for people of color than Eric Adams.”Mr. Yang, for his part, has floated the idea of giving tax incentives to corporations and individuals who return to the office five days a week and has suggested he feels the needs of businesses in his “bones.” He has also been a proponent of having more police patrolling the subways and, like Mr. Adams, is comfortable emphasizing the role he sees for the police in public safety“We’re proud to be leading among progressive voters,” Sasha Neha Ahuja, a campaign manager, said in reference to internal polling. “Clearly Andrew’s message of cash relief, job creation and rebuilding a safe and vibrant city is resonating deeply within the base and across the city.”Mr. Yang is also being advised by Tusk Strategies, which has emerged as an issue for some progressives. The consultancy has worked closely with Uber and the Police Benevolent Association, the union that endorsed President Donald J. Trump for re-election.A spokesman for Tusk said the consultancy hasn’t worked for either organization in over a year.“As an advocate and as a Black man, why the hell would I want to trust Andrew Yang after that?” said Stanley Fritz, the state political director for Citizen Action of New York.It is unclear how the talk among progressives about mounting a campaign to stymie the rise of two well-funded candidates will manifest itself. So far, it has been just talk.“I do think there is an effort congealing to not only push back on Yang but to push back on Eric Adams as well,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, which is supporting Mr. Stringer. “Both of them are not really aligned with the progressive movement.” More