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Elecciones EE. UU.: la desinformación en español y otros idiomas
by Aurelia Butler 12 October 2022, 14:53
Cada vez más grupos de verificación de datos multilingües combaten traducciones engañosas, imágenes manipuladas y mentiras que atraviesan plataformas y fronteras.Los rumores sin corroborar y las falsedades se propagaron ampliamente entre las comunidades de migrantes antes de las elecciones presidenciales de 2020. Según los investigadores, mientras se aproximan las elecciones de mitad de mandato este fenómeno ha vuelto a presentarse, pero con un giro insidioso: ahora las cuentas de redes sociales que propagan desinformación están dirigidas a audiencias en más idiomas, en más temas y en más plataformas digitales, con poca resistencia por parte de las empresas tecnológicas.En semanas recientes, las publicaciones que exageran los efectos colaterales de la inflación se han dirigido a los estadounidenses de países latinoamericanos que han sido afectados por las decisiones económicas. Las teorías de la conspiración que se propagaron en agosto sobre un plan del Servicio de Rentas Internas y planes de un “ejército clandestino” ocasionaron que aumentaran las menciones en español de “Ejército IRS” junto con “IRS army”, el equivalente en inglés, según el grupo de investigación Zignal.La desinformación que circula en chino en Twitter, YouTube y WeChat sobre los votos que se envían por correo, el currículum escolar y los crímenes de odio “tiene consecuencias peligrosas” para los votantes asiáticoestadounidenses, que constituyen una fuerza política cada vez mayor, según el grupo Asian Americans Advancing Justice.“Definitivamente hay un envío de mensajes hiperdirigido”, dijo Nick Nguyen, confundador de Viet Fact Check, una organización que ofrece explicaciones sobre la desinformación que circula entre vietnamitas estadounidenses. “Aquí es donde la falta de fluidez en inglés puede hacer que las poblaciones sean vulnerables”.Viet Fact Check forma parte de un conjunto cada vez mayor de grupos que intentan contextualizar y desvirtuar los relatos falsos en internet en idiomas que no son el inglés. Factchequeado, un servicio en español con seis meses de antigüedad está analizando traducciones imprecisas, imágenes manipuladas, videos editados de manera engañosa sobre el cateo en Mar-a-Lago y la visita de Nancy Pelosi a Taiwán. Desifact, que se especializa en comunidades estadounidenses con origen en el sur de Asia, empezó en febrero publicando notas explicativas y aclaraciones sobre temas como inmigración y condonación de deuda estudiantil en hindi, bengalí y tamil.Viet Fact Check es uno de los grupos que está tratando de contrarrestar los relatos falsos en internet en idiomas que no son el inglés, pero puede ser difícil seguir el ritmo de la avalancha de información errónea.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesPero los verificadores multilingües dicen que no se dan abasto ante la avalancha de falsedades que proliferan en internet. Han pedido a las grandes plataformas de medios, como Facebook y YouTube, para que prioricen más los esfuerzos en otros idiomas, tal como harían con la desinformación en inglés.“Con la desinformación en español, sentimos que estamos luchando contra un gigante”, dijo Tamoa Calzadilla, la editora responsable de Factchequedo y exlíder de la operación de verificación de Univisión. “Es frustrante porque estamos intentando hacer algo y necesitamos apoyo de las plataformas; estamos haciendo nuestro trabajo pero los gigantes tecnológicos pueden hacer más”.Las empresas de redes sociales dijeron que moderaban el contenido o brindaban verificación de datos en muchos idiomas: más de 70 para TikTok y más de 60 para Meta. YouTube, dijo que tenía más de 20.000 personas que revisaban y retiraban información falsa, incluyendo en mandarín y español; TikTok dijo que tenía miles. Las empresas no quisieron comentar cuántos empleados trabajaban en idiomas distintos al inglés.TikTok ha traducido un centro de información sobre las elecciones de mitad de mandato en su aplicación a más de 45 idiomas. Twitter tiene un centro similar sobre las elecciones disponible en inglés y en español, junto con palabras clave que desmienten y “pre-desmienten” la desinformación en distintos idiomas, una técnica que en inglés se conoce como pre-bunk. Meta dijo que había invertido en iniciativas como servicios de verificación de datos en WhatsApp antes de las elecciones y que mostraría notificaciones relacionadas con la votación, tanto en inglés como en un segundo idioma, según la actividad del usuario.Las empresas también mencionaron mejoras más amplias. Meta dijo que sus modelos de predicción de desinformación en español para Estados Unidos ahora operaban a la par que sus modelos en inglés y que había aumentado significativamente la cantidad de contenido en español que se envía a los verificadores de datos para su revisión. Twitter dijo que sus etiquetas contextuales recién reformuladas, que se traducen según los ajustes de idioma de los usuarios, habían ayudado a reducir la interacción con la información errónea. YouTube afirmó que los paneles de información ahora aparecían en distintos idiomas para varios resultados de búsqueda y videos. También destaca el contenido de fuentes de noticias aprobadas en idiomas distintos al inglés según las preferencias de idioma y las búsquedas de los usuarios, indicó la empresa.Tamoa Calzadilla es la directora editorial de Factchequeado, una organización dedicada a examinar las traducciones engañosas al español.Eva Marie Uzcategui para The New York TimesPero hay preocupación entre los investigadores por el efecto que la desinformación que no está en inglés pueda tener en las votaciones de noviembre, al decir que las mentiras y los rumores en otros idiomas siguen permeando. Un informe difundido el lunes del grupo de vigilancia Media Matters encontró 40 videos en español en Youtube que impulsan información errónea sobre las elecciones estadounidenses, entre ella la afirmación falsa de que a Estados Unidos entraban papeletas de votación fraudulentas procedentes de China y México.Expertos en desinformación, junto con algunos funcionarios electos, han presionado a plataformas de redes sociales para emprender más acciones y tener mayor transparencia.Este año, el Caucus Hispano del Congreso impulsó a Meta, TikTok, YouTube y Twitter a reunirse con sus principales ejecutivos para discutir la difusión de información falsa en español. YouTube puso a disposición a su directora ejecutiva, Susan Wojcicki; TikTok y Twitter enviaron a otros ejecutivos. El comité y Meta no pudieron agendar una reunión, y Meta dijo que planeaba presentar por escrito un comunicado.Un ejemplo del tipo de publicación que Factchequeado intenta desacreditar se ve en la computadora de Calzadilla. La organización puso un sello que dice “Falso” sobre esta imagen engañosa.Eva Marie Uzcategui para The New York TimesEn enero, la International Fact-Checking Network de Poynter envió una carta abierta a YouTube en la describía la facilidad con la que la información falsa fluía a través de las fronteras en la plataforma. Los investigadores han dicho que, a menudo, el mismo relato surge en diferentes sitios en distintos países y luego pasa por un proceso de polinización cruzada o transculturación en un círculo vicioso que hace que parezca más verosímil. Como argumentó un verificador, es más probable que una persona que quiere migrar confíe en una teoría de conspiración compartida tanto por su madre en El Salvador como por su amigo en San Francisco.La información errónea también puede hacer lo que los investigadores llaman salto de plataforma: originarse en inglés en redes marginales como Truth Social o Gab y después surgir en sitios más convencionales, en un idioma diferente o, a veces, con una traducción engañosa.Recientemente, Alethea Group, que ayuda a las corporaciones a protegerse contra la desinformación, analizó siete canales de YouTube con sede en Colombia pero que parecían estar dirigidos a hispanohablantes conservadores que viven o están vinculados a Estados Unidos. Los investigadores encontraron que, con frecuencia, los canales usaban relatos falsos o engañosos de medios conservadores o de medios propiedad de Estados extranjeros, las circulaban en español en YouTube y, en ocasiones, después enfocaban a las audiencias en plataformas como Twitter y Telegram, donde el contenido traducido seguía difundiéndose. A veces, los operadores del canal intentaron monetizar los videos con anuncios o solicitudes de donaciones o suscripciones.Una publicación traducida al español en Telegram repitió la afirmación falsa del expresidente Donald Trump de que los documentos fueron tirados en el suelo al azar.Althea descubrió una cuenta con más de 300.000 suscriptores que reutilizaba y traducía teorías sin sustento de que el FBI había plantado documentos deliberadamente en Mar-a-Lago para incriminar al expresidente estadounidense Donald J. Trump, según el informe. El título de un video era “S4LE LA V3RDAD” en lugar de “sale la verdad”, un posible intento de sortear a los moderadores de YouTube, creen los investigadores de Alethea. Otros investigadores han descubierto cuentas, que ya habían sido canceladas por algunas plataformas debido a la violación de sus pautas de desinformación, que reaparecieron con diferentes nombres.Dominik A. Stecula, un profesor asistente de ciencias políticas en la Universidad Estatal de Colorado y quien migró de Polonia, atribuye en parte la difusión de información falsa multilingüe en línea al lento ocaso de los medios de comunicación étnicos y locales que cubren temas comunitarios.“La gente no quiere pagar por el contenido y, como resultado, muchas de estas instituciones se están desmoronando”, dijo Stecula. “Lo que los remplaza es un tipo en Arizona con una cámara de alta definición y un micrófono”.Stecula observó que la moderación se complica por los matices culturales y las diferentes preferencias de comunicación y explicó que mientras que los inmigrantes de Asia tienden a favorecer WhatsApp, la gente de Polonia se inclina más hacia Facebook.Algunos expertos, que permanecen escépticos ante la posibilidad de que toda la desinformación en distintos idiomas pueda ser retirada, más bien impulsan otras formas de limitar la difusión. El año pasado, Twitter probó una función que permitía que algunos expertos en Estados Unidos, Corea del Sur y Australia identificaran tuits como engañosos.Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, la jefa de estrategia de la consultora We Are Más, en el sur de Florida, calcula que decenas de miles de personas siguen canales en español en Telegram que promueven las teorías de la conspiración de QAnon. Dijo que supo de un grupo, con casi 8000 suscriptores, por su estilista, quien es colombiano-estadounidense.Dijo que esos grupos han sido “muy inteligentes en asegurarse de que el mensaje se adapte a la cultura y subcultura”, a veces al utilizar símbolos como el puño levantado, que para los jóvenes nacidos en Estados Unidos puede representar esperanza y solidaridad pero a los inmigrantes de mayor edad les puede recordar a las dictaduras de izquierda latinoamericanas. Las publicaciones han combinado el sentir anticomunista con la retórica conspirativa de QAnon, y llaman al presidente Biden la “Lagartija” o se refieren a su partido como “Demoniocratas”.“No se trata solo de información errónea o desinformación, también debe existir la responsabilidad de comprender que las palabras y los símbolos significan cosas diferentes para otras comunidades”, dijo Pérez-Verdía. “No importa si eres de Vietnam o de Colombia, la mayoría de la gente ve el prisma de la política de nuestro país a través del prisma de la política de ellos”.Tiffany Hsu es reportera de tecnología y cubre desinformación e información falsa. @tiffkhsu More
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Misinformation Swirls in Non-English Languages Ahead of Midterms
by Aurelia Butler 12 October 2022, 14:28
Unsubstantiated rumors and outright falsehoods spread widely in immigrant communities ahead of the presidential election in 2020. That is happening again in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections, researchers say, but with an insidious twist: The social media accounts pushing misinformation are now targeting audiences in more languages on more topics and across more digital platforms, with scant resistance from social media companies.In recent weeks, posts exaggerating the fallout from inflation have been aimed at Americans from Latin American countries that have been crippled by poor economic management. Conspiracy theories that spread in August about the Internal Revenue Service’s plans for a “shadow army” led mentions of “Ejército IRS” to surge alongside “IRS army,” its equivalent in English, according to the research group Zignal.Misinformation swirling in Chinese on Twitter, YouTube and WeChat about mail-in ballots, school curriculums and hate crimes “has dangerous implications” this year for Asian American voters, who are growing as a political force, according to the advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice.“There’s definitely a hyper-targeting of messaging,” said Nick Nguyen, a co-founder of Viet Fact Check, a group that offers explanations about misinformation circulating among Vietnamese Americans. “This is where a lack of English-language fluency can make populations vulnerable.”Viet Fact Check is among a growing number of groups trying to contextualize and debunk false online narratives in languages other than English. Factchequeado, a six-month-old Spanish-language service, is examining inaccurate translations, manipulated images and misleadingly edited videos about the search of Mar-a-Lago and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Desifacts, which focuses on South Asian American communities, began publishing explainers and clarifications about topics such as immigration and student debt relief in Hindi, Bengali and Tamil in February.Viet Fact Check is among a growing number of groups trying to battle false online narratives in non-English languages, but it can be hard to keep up with the flood of misinformation.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesBut the multilingual fact checkers say they cannot keep pace with the deluge of falsehoods online. They have called on the big social media platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, to do more for efforts in other languages as they would for misinformation in English.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.“With mis- and disinformation in Spanish, we feel like we are fighting a giant,” said Tamoa Calzadilla, Factchequeado’s managing editor and the former head of Univision’s fact-checking operation. “It’s frustrating because we are trying to do something, and we need support from the platforms — we are doing our work, but Big Tech can do more.”The social media companies said they moderated content or provided fact-checks in many languages: more than 70 languages for TikTok, and more than 60 for Meta, which owns Facebook. YouTube said it had more than 20,000 people reviewing and removing misinformation, including in languages such as Mandarin and Spanish; TikTok said it had thousands. The companies declined to say how many employees were doing work in languages other than English.TikTok has translated a midterms information hub on its app into more than 45 languages. Twitter has a similar elections center available in English and Spanish, along with prompts that debunk and “pre-bunk” misinformation in different languages. Meta said that it had invested in initiatives such as Spanish fact-checking services on WhatsApp in preparation for the elections and that it would show voting-related notifications in both English and a second language based on users’ activity.The companies also cited broader improvements. Meta said its Spanish misinformation prediction models in the United States were now working on a par with its English-language models and had significantly increased the amount of Spanish content sent to fact checkers for review. Twitter said its newly redesigned contextual labels, which are translated based on users’ language settings, had helped shrink engagement with misinformation. YouTube said information panels now appeared in different languages for certain search results and videos. It also highlights content from vetted non-English news sources based on users’ language settings and search queries, the company said.Tamoa Calzadilla is the managing editor of Factchequeado, an organization dedicated to examining inaccurate Spanish translations. Eva Marie Uzcategui for The New York TimesBut researchers worry about the effect of non-English misinformation on the coming vote, saying lies and rumors in other languages continue to seep through. A report released Monday from the watchdog group Media Matters found 40 Spanish-language videos on YouTube that advanced misinformation about U.S. elections, including the false notion that fraudulent ballots were coming into the United States from China and Mexico.Some disinformation experts, along with some elected officials, have pressed the social platforms for more action and transparency.This year, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus pushed Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter for meetings with their top executives to discuss the spread of misinformation in Spanish. YouTube made its chief executive, Susan Wojcicki, available; TikTok and Twitter sent other executives. The caucus and Meta were unable to schedule a meeting, and Meta said it planned to instead submit a written update.An example of the kind of post Factchequeado seeks to debunk, shown on Ms. Calzadilla’s laptop. The organization placed a stamp that reads “Falso” over this misleading image.Eva Marie Uzcategui for The New York TimesThe International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter sent an open letter to YouTube in January, describing the ease with which misinformation on the platform was flowing across borders. Researchers have said the same narrative often emerges on different sites in different countries, and then cross-pollinates in a feedback loop that makes it seem more believable. As one fact checker argued, an immigrant is more likely to trust a conspiracy theory voiced by both the person’s mother in El Salvador and a friend in San Francisco.Misinformation can also do what researchers call platform-jump — originate in English on fringe services like Truth Social or Gab and then emerge later on more mainstream sites, presented in a different language or sometimes with a misleading translation attached.Alethea Group, which helps corporations guard against disinformation, recently looked at seven YouTube channels that were based in Colombia but appeared to target conservative Spanish speakers living in or tied to the United States. Researchers found that the channels often took false or misleading narratives from conservative or foreign state media, repeated it on YouTube in Spanish, and then sometimes pointed viewers to platforms like Twitter and Telegram, where the translated content continued to spread. Sometimes, the channel operators tried to monetize the videos through ads or requests for donations or subscriptions.Alethea found that one account with more than 300,000 subscribers repurposed and translated existing unsubstantiated narratives that the F.B.I. had deliberately planted documents at Mar-a-Lago to entrap former President Donald J. Trump, according to the report. The title of one video was “S4LE LA V3RDAD” instead of “sale la verdad” (the truth comes out), which Alethea researchers believe may have been a potential attempt to evade YouTube moderators. Other researchers have discovered accounts, previously terminated by platforms for violating misinformation guidelines, that reincarnated under different aliases.A post translated into Spanish on Telegram repeated former President Donald J. Trump’s false claim that documents were thrown haphazardly on the floor.Dominik A. Stecula, an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University and an immigrant from Poland, attributed the spread of multilingual misinformation online in part to the slow decline of local ethnic media outlets covering community issues.“People don’t want to pay for content, and as a result, a lot of these institutions are falling apart,” Mr. Stecula said. “What replaces them is just some dude in Arizona with a high-definition camera and a microphone.”Mr. Stecula noted how moderation was complicated by cultural nuances and diverse communication preferences, explaining that while immigrants from Asia tend to prefer WhatsApp, people from Poland often gravitate toward Facebook.Some experts, skeptical that all multilingual misinformation can be removed, push instead for other ways to limit amplification. Last year, Twitter tested a feature that allowed some users in the United States, South Korea and Australia to flag tweets as misleading.Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, the head of strategy at the consulting firm We Are Más, in South Florida, estimated that tens of thousands of people followed Spanish-language channels on Telegram that promote the QAnon conspiracy theory. She said she had learned about one group, with nearly 8,000 subscribers, from her Colombian American hairstylist.She said such groups have been “very smart to make sure the message is tailored based on culture and subculture,” sometimes exploiting symbols like the raised fist, which can represent hope and solidarity to younger people born in the United States while reminding older immigrants of leftist Latin American dictatorships. Posts have blended anti-communist sentiment with conspiratorial QAnon language, calling President Biden “el Lagartija” (the Lizard) while describing his party as “Demoniocratas” (Demon-Democrats).“It’s not only about misinformation or disinformation — there also needs to be a responsibility to understand that words and symbols mean different things to other communities,” Ms. Pérez-Verdía said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re from Vietnam or from Colombia — most people see the prism of the politics of our nation through the prism of the politics of theirs.” More
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Dozens of Candidates of Color Give House Republicans a Path to Diversity
by Aurelia Butler 11 October 2022, 19:04
House Republicans are fielding a slate of 67 Black, Latino, Asian or Native American candidates on the ballot in November, by the party’s count, raising an opportunity to change the composition of a House G.O.P. conference that now has only a dozen members of color.Depending on the outcome, those Republican candidates say, they could challenge the notion that theirs is the party of white voters.The lineup of Republican candidates is historic — 32 Latinos, 22 Black candidates, 11 Asian Americans and two Native Americans, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee. (Of those candidates, four identify as more than one race.) Many of them are long shots in heavily Democratic districts, but with so few Republicans of color now in Congress, the party’s complexion will almost certainly look different next year.More remarkable, perhaps, is that the Republican candidates are nearing the finish line even as some of the party’s white lawmakers have ratcheted up racist language or lines of attack — a sign that some party leaders remain unconcerned about racial sensitivity.This weekend, Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, rallied with former President Donald J. Trump in Nevada and told the crowd that Democrats were “pro-crime” and wanted reparations — widely understood as a reference to slavery — for “the people that do the crime.” At the same event, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, invoked the racist “great replacement theory” when she said, “Joe Biden’s five million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you.”Elsewhere, including in Wisconsin and North Carolina, Democrats have accused Republicans of darkening the skin of Black candidates in campaign materials and of running ads brazenly trying to tether Black politicians to Black criminals.The 2022 candidates do not want such issues to derail their groundbreaking runs. After watching the comments from Ms. Greene and Mr. Tuberville, Anna Paulina Luna, a Latina favored to win a House seat in Florida, responded carefully but did not condemn them, instead saying, “Establishment Democrats are exploiting illegals as political currency.”“Many times, illegal immigrants are employed under the table. Many Americans are not offered fair wages because some choose to pay illegals under the table at lower cost,” she said, continuing, “During the naturalization process, individuals are required to learn about our history and culture. That is important as a nation.”Still, the numbers speak for themselves. The only two Black Republicans in the House, Representatives Burgess Owens of Utah and Byron Donalds of Florida, are likely to be joined by Wesley Hunt of Texas and John James of Michigan, Black G.O.P. candidates who are favored to win on Nov. 8. The numbers of this small group could rise further with victories by Jennifer-Ruth Green in Indiana, John Gibbs in Michigan and George Logan in Connecticut, all of whom have a chance.The ranks of the seven incumbent Latino Republicans in the House could nearly double if all six Latino candidates in tight races triumph. And Allan Fung, a Republican in a tossup contest in Rhode Island, could lift the number of Asian American Republicans by 50 percent if he wins and two Southern California incumbents, Representatives Young Kim and Michelle Steel, beat back Democratic challengers.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.“It’s Hispanic people, Black people, Black women, Black men, Asian men, Asian women,” Mr. Hunt of Texas said in an interview. “It has been outstanding to see our party get to the point where, yeah, we’re conservatives, but guess what: We’re also not monolithic.”Michelle Steel, right, became one of the first Korean American women in Congress when she won a House race in California in 2020. She is seeking to defend her seat.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesRepublicans have a long way to go to match the Democrats in diversity. A strong G.O.P. showing in November could bring the number of Black Republicans in the House to seven. House Democrats have 56 Black members, including influential leaders.If Republicans end up with 13 Latino members in the House, they still will not measure up to the 34 Hispanic Democrats.And with the right political breaks, Democrats could end up bolstering their already diverse caucus. Fourteen out of the 36 Democrats aiming for competitive Republican seats are candidates of color.Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the House Democratic campaign arm, said that “Republicans are mistaken if they think finally engaging with communities of color in the year 2022 with flawed candidates” would distance their party from what he called an “unpopular, extreme agenda.”“While Republicans attempt to dilute the number of white supremacists within their ranks, their politics of dividing Americans and promoting hate remains,” he said.Republicans, however, see a virtuous circle in the gains they are making: As more candidates of color triumph, the thinking goes, more will enter future races, and more voters of color will see a home in the Republican Party. .css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“We’re narrative busters,” said Mr. Donalds, who helped the National Republican Congressional Committee with recruiting candidates. “We break up the dogma of Democratic politics, in terms of how to view Republicans.”Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the group’s chairman, said this year’s slate was no accident. Four years ago, when he took over the committee, he set about changing the way Republicans recruited candidates, seeking far more diversity. The group would de-emphasize the Washington-based consultants who had a financial stake in promoting their candidates and instead rely on members to seek out talent in their districts.John James speaking to supporters in 2020, when he lost a close race for Senate in Michigan. Republicans recruited him to run for the House in 2022.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesTwo years ago was a dry run; House Republicans gained an unexpected 14 seats, and every seat they flipped from Democrats was captured by a woman or a candidate of color.Mr. Trump’s gains with Hispanic voters and Black men — which he made despite his stream of racist and xenophobic comments while in office — inspired a fresh push by Republicans.Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, Republican of Florida, who helped with Latino recruitment, said it was not a difficult pitch. More Hispanic candidates were galvanized to run by soaring inflation rates, a surge of migrants in heavily Latino border districts and a growing sense that Democrats were now the party of the educated elite, he said.“Democrats, one could argue, have done a good job with their rhetoric, but their policies have been disastrous, and they’ve been particularly disastrous for the working class,” Mr. Diaz-Balart said. “Was Trump’s rhetoric the words that would be ideal to get Latino voters? No, but the policies were.”Mr. Donalds insisted the former president was not a racist but said, “The question is really silly at this point.”“Republicans now are far more open and far more direct about talking to every voter, not just Republican voters, quote, unquote,” he said. “I think that that’s what’s given the impetus for people to decide to run.”That and a lot of pushing. Mr. Emmer spoke of meeting a trade expert who worked for Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona two years ago, then telling Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, to persuade Juan Ciscomani to run.Mr. Ciscomani recalled talking over the possibility with his wife and Mr. Ducey in 2018 and 2020 before backing away. In the spring of 2021, the one-two push from Mr. Emmer and Mr. McCarthy sealed the deal.“Democrats have taken the Hispanic vote for granted,” he said. “They pandered to the Hispanic community, saying what they wanted to hear and doing nothing about it.” He added: “But Republicans never made an effort. They never tried to get their votes.”Mr. Ciscomani is now favored to win back Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District from the Democrats.Juan Ciscomani, a Republican, is favored to win his House race in Arizona.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesIn 2020, Mr. James — a Black Republican whom Mr. Emmer called “a candidate that only comes along once in a while” — fell short in a surprisingly close race to unseat Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan. Afterward, the N.R.C.C. chairman cleared a path for Mr. James to run for the House.“I told him, ‘To learn to really refine your ability when it comes to campaigning and to understand the business of campaigning, there’s nothing wrong with starting in the House,’” Mr. Emmer said.Mr. Hunt had also tried to run for office and failed — in 2020, for a House seat in the Houston suburbs. In 2018, Mr. McCarthy had been in Houston for a fund-raiser when he met Mr. Hunt, a veteran West Point graduate with a conservative bent, and pressed him to run.Mr. Hunt recalled that after his 2020 loss, “Kevin McCarthy called me the next day, and he said: ‘Hang in there. Let’s see what happens after redistricting. We need you up here. Please don’t give up the fight.’”Mr. Hunt added, “It changed everything.”Ms. Luna had been a conservative activist and political commentator when she decided on her own to run for a Tampa-area House seat in 2020. She said she did not hear from Republicans in Washington until after she won the Republican primary. But when she came up short against Representative Charlie Crist, the hard sell descended.Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, called her days after her defeat, seeing her as a potential recruit for the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich followed, and then Mr. Donalds took her under his wing. “When people see that we are conservatives, we are Republicans, and there’s not this stereotype of what it means to be Republican, I think it empowers them to own their convictions, to own their ideologies,” she said on Friday.Democrats have made it clear that they will not shy away from criticizing Republican candidates for their positions just because of their backgrounds. They have highlighted college writings by Mr. Gibbs suggesting women should not have the right to vote. Representative Mayra Flores of Texas, who won a special election in June but faces a tough race in a more Democratic district, has promoted QAnon conspiracy theories.Representative Burgess Owens, left, and Representative Victoria Spartz after Ms. Spartz made an emotional speech about Ukraine in March. Mr. Owens is one of two Black Republicans in the House.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesRepublicans who want to diversify their ranks say they also hope to change the views of some G.O.P. voters. Mr. Hunt told of a young man who talked with him after a campaign event, then handed his phone over so he could talk to the man’s white grandfather.“He said: ‘Mr. Hunt, you’re the first Black person I ever voted for my entire life. I’m here to tell you that I was racist, and I grew up racist, and there have been times in my life that I have not treated Black people fairly,’” Mr. Hunt recounted. “‘I met you and I said, I have to get behind this guy, in spite of my prejudice.’” More
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Zeldin Sees a Path to Becoming Governor. It Runs Through Brooklyn.
by Aurelia Butler 23 September 2022, 14:44
A curious thing happened last weekend when Representative Lee Zeldin brought his Republican campaign for governor of New York into Hasidic Brooklyn.Mr. Zeldin, a pronounced underdog, was greeted like a rock star. Crowds chanted in approval. Yiddish-language campaign posters littered the streets. “Mister Lee Zeldin, you got my vote,” a paramedic yelled out of an ambulance inscribed in Hebrew lettering.Mr. Zeldin, one of only two Jewish Republicans in Congress, has long been a fierce supporter of Israel and a fixture at Republican Jewish Coalition events. But in recent weeks, he has maneuvered aggressively to position himself in lock step with Orthodox Jewish concerns over an increase in hate crimes and ongoing state attempts to regulate private religious schools, known as yeshivas.“It’s not just on our streets, but even in our schools where we are being targeted,” he said during a visit Sunday to Borough Park.With less than 50 days until Election Day, Mr. Zeldin’s Jewish outreach is at the center of a concerted and overlooked effort to court enclaves like these in boroughs outside Manhattan, where English is often a second language and voters appear to be highly motivated by education issues, congestion pricing and threats to public safety — along with a leftward drift among Democrats they have long supported.Mr. Zeldin, whose campaign is strongest in areas far outside New York City, has recently made other stops in the city at Asian American neighborhoods in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Flushing, Queens; Russian-speaking communities around Brighton Beach, Brooklyn; and a conservative Hispanic church in the Bronx. Pro-Zeldin super PACs are providing backup with foreign-language ads and outreach on WeChat and WhatsApp.Whether he can move enough votes to destabilize Democrats’ New York City firewall remains to be seen. Recent polls from Emerson and Siena Colleges show him trailing Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, by roughly 15 percentage points, although other polls suggest that the race may be tighter.No Republican candidate for governor has earned more than 30 percent of the city vote — Mr. Zeldin’s benchmark — in two decades. And even if he did, he would still have to pull off commanding victories upstate and in New York’s increasingly diverse suburbs to beat Ms. Hochul, who is spending freely from overflowing campaign accounts to try to ensure that does not happen.But for New York Republicans locked in the political wilderness since former President Donald J. Trump’s election, the promise of a longer-term realignment among crucial Asian and Jewish voting blocks is tantalizing — even if the party has to wait until after November for it to happen.“These are voters who are free agents,” said Chapin Fay, a former Zeldin adviser leading one of the super PACs, who nonetheless remains worried Republicans are not doing enough to capitalize on the opening.Mr. Zeldin’s campaign passed out signs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesThe recent Emerson College poll found Ms. Hochul leading among voters who identified as Asian, but by only 10 percentage points, compared to her 37-point lead among Hispanics and 60-point lead among African Americans.“It’s hard for me to go into any group that I’m in without seeing a Zeldin news article, or a flier, or a Republican piece of literature, on WeChat,” said Yiatin Chu, the president of Asian Wave Alliance, a nonpartisan political club formed to help organize voters.Ms. Chu has never voted for a Republican. But after Mr. Zeldin met with a group of Asian leaders last year, she was convinced that he would prioritize fighting anti-Asian violence, and block changes to the admissions process for elite public schools, which enroll large numbers of Asian Americans. “My message to Democrats locally and nationally is please don’t take our communities for granted,” said Representative Grace Meng, the state’s only Asian American congresswoman, who started sounding alarms about aggressive Republican outreach in her Queens district last year.But she predicted that Ms. Hochul would fare well there, particularly given her outspoken support for abortion rights, aggressive steps to combat gun violence and distance from former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s unpopular education policies.As for Mr. Zeldin’s outreach: “It’s a little late.”Democrats are making their own large investments in many of the same communities, along with more reliable segments of the party’s base that could offset Mr. Zeldin’s gains.Ms. Hochul’s campaign said it would spend six figures on ads aimed at Jewish voters and another $1 million on Spanish-language ads. Many will tout her work on gun control and mental health while hammering Mr. Zeldin for opposing abortion rights and supporting Mr. Trump, who remains broadly unpopular here.Despite Mr. Zeldin’s optimism about Orthodox Jewish groups, some estimates suggest that the Hasidic vote typically represents less than 2 percent of statewide turnout, while other religious Jewish groups, including the modern Orthodox, account for another 2 to 3 percent. And Ms. Hochul, who made a series of cold calls last week seeking to shore up ties with prominent Jewish allies, is still expected to win Jewish voters overall, running up the score among non-Orthodox voters.“From Borough Park to the South Bronx, Governor Hochul has built a broad coalition of New Yorkers who are supporting her campaign because of her effective leadership and ability to get things done,” said a Hochul spokesman, Jerrel Harvey.Still, Mr. Zeldin may have good reason to think he can notch gains.In southern Brooklyn, Russian and Ukrainian immigrants — many of them Jewish — helped flip a City Council seat for Republicans last year. The large population of immigrants who fled the former Soviet Union voted enthusiastically for Mr. Trump and have increasingly rejected Democrats — even moderates like Mayor Eric Adams and Ms. Hochul — for their ties to a party that harbors a small minority of democratic socialists.“Even if it’s a centrist Democrat, they will select a Republican at this point,” said Inna Vernikov, a Democrat-turned-Republican who won the Council seat.Republicans also believe opposition to the state’s new congestion pricing plan, which would make commuting into Manhattan more expensive for middle-class New Yorkers at a time of sharp inflation, could help motivate turnout.For now, the competition for votes appears to be fiercest in New York’s politically influential and fast-growing Hasidic communities, which have also shifted quickly to the right in recent years.Though they are not exceptionally large, these groups tend to turn out when other voters do not and vote as a bloc. And right now, they may be some of the most motivated voters in the state.Most of New York’s major Hasidic groups backed Gov. Kathy Hochul ahead of the Democratic primary this summer, but have not yet made their endorsements for the general election. Andrew Seng for The New York TimesHasidic Jews have been particularly visible targets of an uptick in antisemitic violence. And in recent weeks, government intervention in Hasidic yeshivas has been framed as an existential threat to the community.Earlier this month, The New York Times published an investigation that found that roughly 100 Hasidic boys’ schools were systematically denying their students a basic secular education and regularly using corporal punishment, while receiving large sums of taxpayer funds. A few days later, a state education panel passed long-awaited rules to regulate nonreligious studies in private schools.“New York State declares a war against its ultra-Orthodox residents,” screamed the front page of Der Blatt, a Yiddish-language newspaper.While Ms. Hochul has maintained a studied silence on yeshivas, Mr. Zeldin had sought to capitalize on the issue.In recent days, he has crisscrossed Hasidic areas to declare that he will protect yeshivas from the government he is hoping to run. Mr. Zeldin often stresses that his mother taught at a yeshiva, and highlights his defense of Israel in Congress. (Mr. Zeldin is also targeting modern Orthodox Jewish voters, who often vote for Republicans.)English- and Yiddish-language ads quickly appeared last week to amplify Mr. Zeldin’s defense of the yeshivas. “They both want our support,” one read, referring to the two candidates. “Only Lee Zeldin stands up to defend us. Only Lee Zeldin is a friend we can rely on.”Earlier this summer, Mr. Zeldin visited a summer camp in the Catskills with Joel Rosenfeld, a Hasidic leader. Sitting in front of a hand-scribbled sign that read “Make New York Great Again,” Mr. Zeldin listened as a large group of boys sang in unison.“A governor who hears, a governor who cares, that’s Congressman Lee Zeldin,” they sang, raising their voices for the finale: “A leader who understands our needs and demands, Congressman Lee Zeldin!”Mr. Zeldin began his day Sunday with a visit to the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the revered leader of the Lubavitcher group of Hasidic Jews. Later in Williamsburg, he visited the book-lined apartment of a religious leader of a minor Hasidic sect, where he cited statistics about antisemitic violence and suggested the state should be more concerned about struggling public schools than yeshivas.All of it has fueled speculation about whether he will win endorsements from Hasidic groups that backed Ms. Hochul in the primary.In recent visits to Hasidic neighborhoods, Mr. Zeldin has vowed to protect yeshivas from governmental interference, reminding voters that his mother taught at a yeshiva.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesYet Hasidic leaders have maintained an intensely pragmatic streak in local elections, supporting ruling Democrats and calling upon their followers to do the same. Supporting a Republican could be risky for Hasidic leaders who rely on Democrats to serve a community that has some of the highest poverty rates in New York — and who draw some of their power from a perception among politicians that their word moves votes.Still, some religious leaders may decide to back Mr. Zeldin, or simply stay neutral, with the knowledge that many Hasidic voters are likely to support the congressman, regardless of how their leaders steer them.Moishe Indig, a Hasidic leader whose group has not yet made an endorsement in the race, said in a statement: “Governor Hochul has always been a friend of our community and she remains a friend of our community.” More
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Progressive Network Will Spend $10 Million on Asian American Turnout
by Aurelia Butler 15 September 2022, 21:54
Two years after Asian American voters played a pivotal role in the presidential election, a coalition focused on building Asian American political power and engagement is launching a new $10 million midterm mobilization effort in critical battleground states. The Asian American Power Network, a coalition of organizations seeking to activate Asian American voters around progressive issues and candidates, is kicking off the initiative across six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The network is also training its eyes on three competitive House districts in California — two in Southern California and one in the Central Valley.“Asian American voters have been progressive” in some recent presidential elections, Nadia Belkin, the executive director of the network, said. “It’s no secret, though, that some of the Asian American voters do tend to be more swingy in the midterms. That’s why our group is spending a lot of time on the ground.”“Organizing our community,” she added, “requires a cultural understanding and nuance.”The network is an effort to support state organizations that are working on year-round engagement of Asian Americans.The midterms-focused initiative includes door-to-door canvassing and outreach by phone, text, mail and digital engagement in an array of languages. Aspects of the programming got underway earlier this month.In Pennsylvania the goal is to conduct voter outreach in 15 languages total, in support of Democratic candidates like Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, and John Fetterman, who is running for Senate. In North Carolina, efforts to engage Asian American voters will be conducted in 18 different languages across different media, including educational videos about voting.And the political arm of the Georgia affiliate is mobilizing for Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor, and Senator Raphael Warnock, both Democrats.In 2020, Asian American voters turned out in significant numbers in Georgia, as Democrats flipped the state first in the presidential election and then, in 2021, in a pair of runoff elections that cemented Democratic control of the Senate.But that result does not mean that the party has a lock on Asian American voters — a diverse and complex constituency — this year. A survey conducted this summer for the AARP by a bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research found that in congressional battleground districts, Democrats were underperforming among Asian American voters over age 50 compared with past elections. However, the Asian American Voter Survey, a large-scale poll, found earlier this year that Asian Americans leaned toward supporting Democratic House candidates by a margin of 54 percent to 27 percent overall, numbers that varied notably by individual constituencies. Ms. Belkin emphasized the importance of engaging the Asian American voters who turned out for the first time in 2020. “We do have a responsibility around talking to those voters about what’s at stake,” she said. “We have good rapport with many portions of the community, but I would say, you know, just like any other demographic bloc, we are working to do more and make sure that it’s sustained.” More
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In Orange County, House Race Tests What Asian Americans Want
by Aurelia Butler 8 September 2022, 23:16
WESTMINSTER, Calif. — Dozens of Vietnamese-speaking volunteers filled a community center on a recent Wednesday to phone bank for Representative Michelle Steel, Republican of California, a Korean American lawmaker whose campaign signs and fliers in Vietnamese and English lined the walls.A few neighborhoods down, Jay Chen, a Democrat and Navy reservist of Taiwanese descent who is challenging Ms. Steel, passed out fliers outside of Zippost, a shipping business that residents often use to send packages to relatives in Vietnam. Mr. Chen, donning a Navy hat, walked around the plaza with a Vietnamese-speaking volunteer in tow helping residents register to vote.Ms. Steel and Mr. Chen are vying to appeal to the Asian American voters who dominate the electorate in this slice of Orange County, making up a quarter of the voting population. Their race — one of only a few dozen competitive ones that could determine which party controls the House — is being watched closely for clues about what may move voters in this increasingly critical bloc.“The Asian vote can really give enough votes for a candidate to win,” said Mary Anne Foo, the executive director of the nonprofit Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, a nonpartisan resource center. “What’s significant now is the number of Asian Americans running for office. Having representation is exciting.”Across the country, Asian American voters, who comprised 4 percent of the electorate in 2020, are the fastest-growing population of eligible voters. The Asian American Voter Survey found in July that nearly half of Asian Americans identified as Democrats, about a third as independents and about a fifth as Republicans. About two-thirds voted for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump, surveys show.However, an analysis by The New York Times found that immigrant communities shifted to the right as they had a surge in voters in 2020. The Asian American Voter Survey found that older Asian voters tended to identify as independent or Republican at higher rates than those in younger generations. Vietnamese Americans, who make up a large proportion of Asian residents in Orange County, also leaned more to the right.Asian American voters dominate the electorate in this Orange County district.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesBoth candidates in the race have made tackling inflation the centerpiece of their campaigns, and both have also focused on safety amid an increase in reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans — themes that are top of mind for many Asian voters, according to analysts.Karthick Ramakrishnan, the founder of AAPI Data, which helps conduct the annual Asian American Voter Survey, said the economy and crime were top issues for respondents, which could give an advantage to Republicans. But health care has also been a major issue, he said, which could boost Democrats, who recently pushed through Congress sweeping climate, health and tax legislation that would lower prescription drug costs and subsidize health insurance, among other benefits.“The ethnicity of the candidate is a bit of a wash in terms of how much it will make a difference here, so it’ll be important to see the kind of appeals each of these candidates make,” Mr. Ramakrishnan said.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Abrams’s Struggles: Stacey Abrams has been trailing her Republican rival, Gov. Brian Kemp, alarming those who celebrated her as the master strategist behind Georgia’s Democratic shift.Battleground Pennsylvania: Few states feature as many high-stakes, competitive races as Pennsylvania, which has emerged as the nation’s center of political gravity.The Dobbs Decision’s Effect: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of women signing up to vote has surged in some states and the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage are hard to see.How a G.O.P. Haul Vanished: Last year, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans was smashing fund-raising records. Now, most of the money is gone.Still, race has hung heavily over the contest, sometimes in ugly ways.Ms. Steel, who was born in South Korea and raised in Japan, has accused Mr. Chen of mocking her accent; he said at a campaign event in April that people need “an interpreter to figure out exactly what she’s saying.” Mr. Chen said in an interview that his comments were misconstrued and that he meant he did not understand her policies.In the campaign feud, he has accused Ms. Steel of “red-baiting” by painting him as sympathetic to China’s authoritarian government. An accusation of communist sympathies may be particularly resonant to the county’s many refugees who still have bitter memories of fleeing a communist regime.Mr. Chen, the Harvard-educated son of immigrants who is a member of the board of trustees of Mt. San Antonio Community College and owns a local real estate business, said he has tried to appeal to right-leaning voters with his military experience. He served stints in the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula with the Seventh Fleet, which helped evacuate refugees after the Vietnam War.“Whenever I mention that, it really resonates,” Mr. Chen said.Jay Chen, the Harvard-educated son of immigrants who owns a real estate business, is challenging Ms. Steel.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMs. Steel became one of the first Korean American women to serve in Congress in 2020.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMs. Steel, a former member of the county board of supervisors and a local business owner, is fighting to hold onto her seat in a changed political environment. She narrowly defeated Representative Harley Rouda, a Democrat, in 2020 in a district along the California Coast that leaned Republican, becoming one of the first three Korean American women to serve in Congress. But she was displaced by redistricting and opted to run in a new district that tilts slightly toward Democrats.Lance Trover, the communications director for Ms. Steel’s campaign, said in a statement that she was focused on standing up to China and lowering taxes.“Michelle is the campaign’s greatest asset because AAPI voters know and trust her,” Mr. Trover said in the statement, using the abbreviation for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Ms. Steel declined to be interviewed.Orange County was once described by President Ronald Reagan as a place “where the good Republicans go before they die.” Its partisan bent has since shifted as a younger, more diverse population has moved from the Los Angeles metropolitan area seeking more affordable living. Now, Democrats outnumber Republicans in voter registration, and there is a sizable no-party preference voter bloc, according to the latest statistics from the county voter registrar.The pendulum swung for the first time in 2018, when Democrats swept into the House majority by flipping four seats in the area, giving Democrats control of all seven congressional seats in the county. It swung in the other direction in 2020, when Republicans reclaimed two seats in Orange County.But the shifts reshaping the area are lasting, and they reflect similar ones underway in suburban enclaves across the country, as immigrant communities relocate out of cities, said Christine Chen, the executive director of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, which helps conduct the Asian American Voter Survey.As immigrant communities around the country move from cities to the suburbs, the politics of those areas are shifting.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesThe same trend is underway in Virginia, a state that has leaned toward Democrats in recent years, and in Georgia, she said. Mr. Ramakrishnan added that districts in New Jersey and the suburbs of Houston and Dallas are experiencing a similar dynamic.“The Asian American population, in all of those instances, has increased so much that, really, elected officials have no choice but to make sure they engage and develop a relationship with the Asian American voters, because they’re coming out to vote,” said Ms. Chen, who is not related to the Democratic candidate challenging Ms. Steel.Asian Americans make up over a fifth of residents of Orange County, which is known for having the largest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam, many of whom sought refuge in the region after the Vietnam War.The district encompasses Little Saigon, a stretch of Vietnamese-owned homes and businesses in the city of Westminster, which looks like most aging suburbs in Southern California: palm trees, stucco single-family homes and sun-bleached signs. Vietnamese and occasionally Korean and Chinese characters are predominantly featured on storefronts, and the political signage clogging up street corners feature mainly candidates with Asian surnames. Both campaigns and local organizations have been investing heavily on advertisements in Vietnamese.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced in July that it planned to make a seven-figure investment to reach Asian voters in California, and the Republican National Committee has opened several Asian Pacific American community centers across the county, a multimillion-dollar investment aiming to recruit volunteers for voter outreach to support Republican candidates, with one of the first in Little Saigon.John Le, 57, a Vietnamese American Microsoft engineer from Lake Forest who described himself as a traditional Republican, said that, partisan politics aside, he was proud to be in a district with two Asian American candidates. He said he planned to vote for Ms. Steel.“It’s the American dream,” Mr. Le said. “We should be proud of these people who are giving back to the community. I will look at who will represent me the most.” More
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Will Asian American Voters Continue to Rally Behind Democrats?
by Aurelia Butler 13 August 2022, 15:03
The party confronts a mood of frustration among the rising electoral force that helped vault it to power. The campaign in Georgia will test that bond.JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — At a brightly lit restaurant in suburban Atlanta, nestled in a tidy neighborhood of office buildings and private drives, State Senator Michelle Au brought up the mass shooting that lingers as a singular trauma in the local Asian American community.Addressing a predominantly Chinese American group of about 40 people, Dr. Au, a practicing anesthesiologist, delicately alluded to “the shootings that took place in metro Atlanta on March 16 of 2021” as she launched into a plea for new gun-control laws that Georgia Republicans oppose. She did not need to remind her audience of the details of the deadly attack carried out last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area, killing eight people including six women of Asian descent.“Republicans, while they talk a big game about public safety, they don’t seem to be as interested in actually proposing concrete solutions to deal with it,” Dr. Au told the crowd.The issue of gun safety is one of several that Democrats like Dr. Au are putting at the center of their argument to Asian American voters ahead of the November elections, as they work to win over the array of communities that make up America’s fastest-growing demographic group.Dr. Au’s district — a well-paved tangle of shopping centers and office complexes where law firms list their names in Korean and Indian grocers compete for space with bubble tea chains — is a case study in the social and political complexity of an electoral force rising in swing states: the diverse collection of communities jammed into the census label “Asian American.”The attack last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIn 2020, Georgia voters turned out in force to eject Donald J. Trump from office and then elect two Democratic senators in a runoff that decided control of the Senate. It was a breakthrough in Asian American mobilization, with turnout surging nationally by about 40 percent over the 2016 election — the largest spike of any demographic group. It amounted to an emphatic repudiation of a president who trafficked in race baiting amid a wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans.Yet just two years later, Democratic candidates in states like Georgia are confronting a mood of frustration and fear among Asian American voters that threatens to weaken the political coalition that turned Georgia blue for the first time this century.The anxious mood, voters and local leaders say, comes from persistent alarm about public safety and a feeling of being overlooked by national political leaders despite growing electoral clout.They warn that too many Democrats are still treating Asian Americans as a constituency of secondary importance, while Republicans continue pushing an agenda that is broadly unfriendly to Asian American communities even as the G.O.P. makes sporadic overtures on issues like education and crime.The ongoing scourge of racist harassment and violence, stirred during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and stoked by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, has kept the electorate on edge and heightened concerns about lax gun laws and crime. At Dr. Au’s event in Johns Creek, one speaker brought up attacks against Asian Americans on the New York City subway as part of a national atmosphere of menace.Narender G. Reddy, Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesSeveral state elections in Georgia will represent a revealing test of Democrats’ bond with the Asian American electorate. The party has nominated a number of Asian Americans for important races, including Bee Nguyen, a Vietnamese American state legislator running for secretary of state against the Republican incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, and Nabilah Islam, a Bangladeshi American seeking a State Senate seat in the Atlanta suburbs.Republicans have put forward a handful of Asian American candidates, too: Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, Narender G. Reddy, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor who has pressed Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans to do more to woo South Asian voters. There are signs this year that Mr. Kemp is making a meaningful effort.Gun Violence and Gun Control in America2022 Mass Shootings: Gun violence is a persistent American problem. A partial list of mass shootings this year offers a glimpse at the scope.Ending a Stalemate: A bipartisan bill, the most significant gun measure to clear Congress in decades, was forged by an unlikely coalition of senators.California’s New Law: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that provides a minimum $10,000 award to residents who successfully sue makers of illegal guns. The measure is modeled after a Texas anti-abortion law.Armed and Ready to Teach: Lawmakers in Ohio have made it easier for teachers and other school employees to carry guns. The move is part of a wider strategy by Republicans and gun rights advocates, who say that allowing teachers, principals and superintendents to be trained and armed gives schools a fighting chance in case of attack.Democrats are counting on voters in communities like Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, to help Stacey Abrams defeat Mr. Kemp and re-elect Senator Raphael Warnock. About a quarter of residents in the area identify as Asian American.In an interview, Dr. Au, 44, said Democrats needed to connect with Asian American voters on policy issues like gun safety and abortion rights rather than assuming Asian Americans would continue to vote Democratic chiefly out of distaste for Republicans. Economic frustrations over inflation and gas prices were part of the Asian American experience, too, she said.The community, Dr. Au said, wants “to have a voice and have power and be listened to.”“It’s not a safe thing to say that all voters of color, uniformly, will vote for Democrats because they have a more inclusive platform,” she said. “And I think it’s not safe to say that all Asian voters will vote for Democrats, because of that same reason.”Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, could be a pivotal community for the Democratic Party in November. About a quarter of the residents in the area identify as ethnically Asian.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAsian American voters have steadily shifted in the direction of Democrats since the turn of the century, as a younger and more liberal generation has come of age politically, while conservative-leaning older voters have turned away from the Republican Party’s increasingly hard-line views on race and national identity.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats in November because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights. The law enacted by Georgia Republicans to ban most abortions, Ms. Xu said, reminded her of the repressive reproductive policies in China, where she lived for the first half of her life.But Ms. Xu, 51, who works in the financial industry, said she still considered herself a political independent and did not see either party as having a dominant advantage with voters like her.“Just like the country’s split, our community is very split,” Ms. Xu said.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats this year because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA Fragile AllianceThe relationship between Democrats and the Asian American community was tested almost immediately after the 2020 election, in tense exchanges between Mr. Biden and Asian American lawmakers who questioned whether the incoming president understood the role their community had played in his victory.Asian American voters made up about 4 percent of the national electorate in 2020, with studies showing they voted for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by a margin of roughly two to one. That was enough to secure victory for Democrats in a narrowly split state like Georgia.Still, Republicans maintained support in more right-leaning parts of the community, particularly among older and more religious voters; in Southern California, Vietnamese American voters helped elect to Congress two Korean American Republican women who branded the Democratic Party as a vehicle for socialism.Mr. Biden struggled at the outset to forge a tighter bond with Asian American political leaders, clashing with lawmakers over the near-absence of Asian Americans from early appointments to his administration. Private frustrations exploded into a damaging public spectacle when Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a Democrat of Thai ancestry, threatened a blockade of Mr. Biden’s nominees until the administration pledged to put more Asian Americans in important positions.Representative Judy Chu of California, the head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said lawmakers had been “severely disappointed” during the transition but that the president had given convincing assurances he recognized the influence of the Asian American vote.After the spa shooting, Mr. Biden traveled to Georgia to meet with Asian American leaders. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, herself the daughter of an Indian American immigrant. Weeks later, Mr. Biden returned for a rally marking his 100th day in office.Asian businesses along Buford Highway in Doraville, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIntroducing him on that April day was Long Tran, a cafe owner in Dunwoody who said he spoke backstage with Mr. Biden about the shooting and the impact of “anti-Chinese rhetoric.” The president, Mr. Tran said, stressed that he and Ms. Harris “haven’t forgotten that Asian hate is still rising in the country and it’s something that needs to be addressed.”Yet in the 2021 off-year elections, Republicans recovered some ground with Asian American voters in New York City and Virginia, offering a hard-edged message about crime and opposition to liberal education policies that would have reformed or abolished certain kinds of selective public-school programs that are popular with Asian families but that many Democrats regard as exclusionary of Black and Hispanic students.Asian American voters motivated by similar concerns helped upend local politics in San Francisco, ejecting members of a left-wing school board and a progressive district attorney in recall elections that showed powerful currents of discontent within the overwhelmingly Democratic city.This summer, focus groups conducted by national Democratic pollsters found Asian American voters expressing dismay that Democrats often prioritize other constituencies defined by race or sexual orientation above Asian Americans, according to two people briefed on the studies.Long Tran, a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters, said many people he met were uneasy about left-wing ideas on police reform and concerned about support on the right for lax firearm laws.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesStill, the Asian American Voter Survey, a large-scale poll conducted annually, found in July that Asian Americans leaned toward supporting Democratic congressional candidates by a margin of 54 percent to 27 percent. Those voters trusted Democrats more than Republicans on issues including guns, the environment and race — but split evenly on which party they preferred to handle the economy.Mr. Trump remained intensely unpopular with Asian American voters.EunSook Lee, the head of the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, a progressive nonprofit, said Democrats still had a window to solidify their political relationship with the Asian American electorate.Of Asian American voters, she said, “They care about reproductive rights. They care about gun control. And on all those issues, the Republican Party isn’t budging.”Divide and ConquerIn a real estate office in Duluth, Ga., minutes away from Johns Creek, Mr. Reddy — Dr. Au’s Republican opponent — gave a blunt assessment of his party’s efforts to court Asian Americans: “Still not there.”Mr. Reddy’s office is all but wallpapered with photos of himself with Republican politicians like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, an expression of his personal devotion to the G.O.P. But Mr. Reddy, 71, said most of his Indian American friends saw the Republican Party as “all white.”“That’s the only popular perception,” he said. “And there is truth to it, actually.”The party, he said, had been harmed by episodes like a rally at the end of the Georgia Senate runoffs when Senator David Perdue, a Republican incumbent, had mocked the pronunciation of Ms. Harris’s first name. National Democratic organizations, including the advocacy group Indian American Impact, mounted a fierce campaign targeting Asian American voters with information about Mr. Perdue’s insulting conduct.The G.O.P.’s business-friendly economic agenda could resonate in the community, Mr. Reddy argued, but Republicans were still seen as “anti-immigrant” and overly tied to Mr. Trump. A supporter of Mr. Trump for years, Mr. Reddy said it had grown difficult to justify his behavior.Republicans in Georgia have taken something of a divide-and-conquer approach to the Asian American vote. The governor appointed the first Asian American justice to Georgia’s Supreme Court and Republicans have recruited a few Asian American candidates to run in state legislative seats.At the same time, the Republican-dominated legislature has used gerrymandering to break up ethnically Asian communities and mute their influence at the polls. Dr. Au became a victim of that strategy last year when Republicans demolished her State Senate district, prompting her to run for a Democratic-leaning seat in the lower chamber instead.Mr. Tran, the businessman who introduced Mr. Biden last year in Atlanta, is now a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters. Mr. Tran, 46, said he often found voters expressing unease about left-wing ideas on police reform.He said he had encountered pervasive concern about gun violence and Republican support for lax firearm laws. “Everyone is scared to death about guns,” Mr. Tran said. “I was eating dim sum and the waiters were saying, ‘We can’t stop looking at the door and wondering if the next person who comes in will have a gun.’” More
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The New York Times’s Interview With Yuh-Line Niou
by Aurelia Butler 13 August 2022, 15:00
Yuh-Line Niou is a state assemblywoman in New York’s 65th District, representing parts of Lower Manhattan since 2017.This interview with Ms. Niou was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on July 28.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic congressional primary for New York’s 10th District here.Kathleen Kingsbury: OK. Well, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m Katie Kingsbury. I’m the Opinion editor. Obviously, you have a range of our colleagues. We don’t have much time together, and we have a lot of questions. So we ask you to keep your answers relatively brief, if possible. And we’re going to dive in.I understand the premise of this question you may reject out of hand. But I hope we could start by talking a little bit about what you think you would be able to accomplish in a Republican-controlled Congress, if you could be as specific as possible. But also, is there one big idea that you would want to pursue on a bipartisan basis?I do reject that premise [laughs]. I don’t want us to lose, obviously. And I think that it’s really important for us to always come with preparation that there is going to be some kind of difficulty in negotiating things. As you know, I have represented part of this district for six years now. And when I first came in, I actually was elected the day that Trump got elected. I was also elected into a seat where it was Sheldon Silver’s seat.And then on top of that, we were still in a I.D.C.-controlled Senate situation where, obviously, there were Democrats who were elected as Democrats but voted with the Republicans, gave the power to the Republicans. And we were still able to get things moving. And I think that the reasons why we were still able to get certain things moving was because we had folks who were going to be moving on the ground, and we had outside influences, and we also had inside forces, like me, pushing for certain things.[The Independent Democratic Conference, or I.D.C., was a group of Democratic state senators who in 2011 broke with their caucus to work with the Senate’s Republican majority. It has been defunct since 2018.]I think that in the six years that I’ve been an elected official, I’ve definitely changed a number of ways that Albany moves and works. And I think that I would do the same here as well. And I think that it’s really about political courage. It’s about making sure that you’re standing up, giving transparency to how things are working, making sure that you have a communication with your constituents, fighting for the things that we care about.And obviously, I believe representation matters. And I believe that we have better government when more voices are involved. I think that — I represented a voice that I think was definitely not seen very often in Albany, if never. And I think that there were a lot of times when we needed to be the first and only, even though it was a difficult first and only.And I am not here to be an agent of the broken status quo. And I want to make government work. And I think that instead of being the status quo and just accepting that the I.D.C. was going to be the I.D.C., and that was going to be the Senate, I went out there. I supported candidates who were running against the I.D.C. I went out there myself to make sure that we were changing the Senate. And then I think that we’ve changed the way that Albany has worked forever.I will, I think, from my end, continue to fight for the things that I’ve always fought for. I’ve always been an anti-poverty advocate. I’ve always tried to make sure that we had a more fair and equitable government in all those things. I think that the way that I look at things is unique in the sense that I think I have lenses that I look through. I look at everything through an economic-justice lens, a racial and social justice lens, an environmental-justice lens and, of course, through a disability lens.[Ms. Niou has talked openly about being autistic.]And I think that it’s really important for us to make sure that every single bill that we do, every single policy that we enact, is seen through those lenses. And I think that’s where we have that change. And that makes that huge difference. So every single thing is interconnected in that way.And so when we’re talking about big legislation, one of the pieces that I’m really, really proud of that I think that I would continue to fight for on the federal level is to make sure that we have a prohibiting of unfair, deceptive, abusive and predatory practices.This was a state bill that I was working on because of the Dodd-Frank decision that people probably are very familiar with — the overturning of Dodd-Frank on the federal level that made it so that certain unfair practices and consumer protections were obviously lifted. So I think that it’s really important for us to continue to fight to make sure that we have an ability to be able to help those who need the most help.Mara Gay: Thank you. What would you do, as a member of Congress, to ease the burden on renters in New York City, in your district, and even on those who would like to own?So one of the biggest things, obviously, that people probably know me for is the fight that I’ve done for affordable housing and also for NYCHA. So folks probably also realize that one third of my assembly district is public housing. And public housing is the only true and deeply affordable housing that we have here in New York. And from my end, in Albany, I have been the leading voice fighting for the state government to actually put funding directly into our public housing’s capital budget.Folks probably know this, but time after time after time, every single year that I was telling them we need to make sure that we are funding our public housing, I was told, it’s a federal issue. It’s HUD. We can’t do this. And I was able to move our speaker, my very first term, to be able to get $250 million directly into public housing for capital dollars. Of course, Cuomo didn’t release it all. But we were able to get it.And in my sixth year now, we finally, in total, have now put over a billion dollars of state dollars into capital fixes for public housing. And obviously, for the federal level, I definitely want to continue to make sure that we are actually fully funding public housing.There are several bills right now that I obviously would support greatly. But Nydia Velázquez has her Public Housing Emergency Response Act, which would allocate $70 billion, I believe, to public-housing capital repairs, which would fully fund public housing, and a large portion would come to New York. A.O.C obviously has her Green New Deal package, which looks at public housing, making sure that there’s climate-change use savings from energy efficiency that would also fund more public-housing construction.And then also, one of the biggest things is — obviously the big piece is — we have to repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which makes it so that we cannot have more public housing. I think that we need more public housing and not less. And it’s really important to make sure to alleviate some of that housing burden. I believe that the Faircloth Amendment makes it so that the amount of public housing that we have to 1991 levels was the highest that we could ever have.Right now, there has been obviously a push on the Assembly side and the Senate side of the state government to make it so that there is a push towards privatization. And I’m very concerned about it. I think that the privatization of public housing is dangerous. But we have to make sure that we’re protecting Section 9.I will say that the plan that we ended up with was a lot better than the plan that I saw six years ago. And I think that our pushback was what made it so much better. I will say that I’m still concerned about some of the obvious election things that they have in there. They did not firm that up. But anyway, sorry. I get really wonky about these policy things.But I will say that if I had been in Congress this session, I would have been a vocal champion for the $350 billion in housing investments that Chairwoman Maxine Waters actually put together into the Build Back Better plan. I was really disappointed to see, of course, that those housing ideas actually seemed to vanish almost without anybody really fighting for it. But I will say that those housing ideas should probably be a stand-alone thing. It would be a really, really excellent thing to see.[The House version of Build Back Better passed last year includes a $166 billion investment in affordable housing.]We saw, yesterday, really exciting — well, I guess it’s still happening right now — but really excitingly, some of the climate stuff happening. So we’re in the midst of it. They’re doing these negotiations. I really hope that they also have a housing package that they can do like that.Mara Gay: Thank you.Jyoti Thottam: OK, great. Just going back for a bit, what do you think, in Congress, the Democrats can do to protect democracy and, particularly, secure voting rights?We’ve been going through it. And I think that one of the biggest things that I would say is really important is, obviously, the politicization of our courts has been really awful to see. It’s been really difficult for me to even stomach or swallow some of the things that are coming down the pike. I can only think of horrible things.But the politicization of our courts is a real issue. And I think that there are bills that will expand the [Supreme Court] or put in term limits for the court. I think that we have to really look at them and examine that. I think that right now, we have a couple of bills that are really great. One of them obviously is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And I think that we have to make that good trouble and protect our voters and protect our voting rights.And I will say that my mom, when she first came to campaign with me for the very first time — she told me something that remains in my heart every single time I take a vote, even. And it’s just that she said that she realized, with my campaign, that to cast a vote was to basically prove that you’re an American. Just, it’s the one act that makes you American.And for her, she never realized that until I was running. And then she saw how important it was to vote. And this is also why I have never missed a vote in Albany, never missed a committee vote or a floor vote. And I think that that’s why it’s so important for us to represent our people in that way.Patrick Healy: Do you think the Democratic elected officials are out of step with Democratic voters on immigration today, on L.G.B.T.Q. rights or on any other issue, as you talk to voters and listen to what party leaders and officials say?Maybe not in my district. In District 10, it’s going to be — it’s probably one of the more progressive districts in the state. So maybe that’s maybe not what I’m hearing as much in the district. I think a lot of people are definitely very much thinking the same when it comes to protecting our bodily autonomy, making sure to restrict — make sure that we have tighter gun laws, making sure that we have L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. protections, rights, making sure that we have a better answer to how we are looking at public safety.I think that my district cares the most about what The New York Times has to say. I think that it’s really about trying to make sure that we have a reason for also standing up for things that we do. And I think that that’s really what it is. I don’t think that Democrats are necessarily out of touch. But I think that what can be difficult for the rest of the state, maybe, and even the rest of America — I think that there are certain messaging pieces that are hitting home for my district, but maybe not necessarily for everyone else.Patrick Healy: Is there just, real quickly, an example of that?For example, I think that in my district, one of the things that we all care about is our bodily autonomy. I saw that almost all of my neighbors came out when Roe was overturned, right? We were all out there on the street. As I was walking through Washington Square Park, I kept on seeing neighbor after neighbor after neighbor. They’re like, ‘Hey, Line, what’s up? We knew you would be out here.’ It was like every single person that I knew was there.But it just seemed, I don’t know, just kind of shocking to me, in some aspects, because I live down here, that there were people who felt differently, obviously, elsewhere in America. And I also hear it sometimes in the very Christian Chinese community. I hear it sometimes in parts of the district.Like, we can talk to them, but it’s really about making sure that we actually answer people’s questions, give transparency and improve that messaging. But yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest things. I’m actually shocked when this has been law for so long.Eleanor Randolph: So we have some yes-or-no questions —OK.Eleanor Randolph: You mentioned —Is this the rapid-fire thing?Eleanor Randolph: No, Mara has that.Oh.[Laughter.]Eleanor Randolph: This is just yes or no. So you mentioned this, but do you favor expanding the Supreme Court?Yes.Eleanor Randolph: And what about ending the filibuster?Yes.Eleanor Randolph: And do you think there should be term limits for members of Congress?Yes.Eleanor Randolph: And what about an age limit?I don’t think that I would actually support ageism in any way, shape or form.Eleanor Randolph: So is that a no?No.Eleanor Randolph: A no. So should Biden run again?I think that it really depends on our party looking to see if there’s somebody who would make it so that we are represented by everyone. And that depends on a primary.Eleanor Randolph: OK, thanks.I obviously had supported the same person that you all supported, so —Alex Kingsbury: Can I ask you about Ukraine? I’m interested if —Sure.Alex Kingsbury: — you think there should be an upper limit on the amount of taxpayer dollars that go to that conflict and if we should ask for some more safeguards or conditions for the aid that we supply.I believe so. I think that — gosh. It’s a really big situation over there right now. And I think that we obviously do need to have transparency over all of the tax dollars that we spend on anything, I think. And so, for example, I would be supportive of the McCollum amendment. I think that there’s a couple of different things that would be good for us to do. And I think that it’s important for everybody to know where our tax dollars are going.We have to be extremely attentive to the possibilities of this conflict escalating and never forget that Russia is a nuclear-armed power. And I think that things have amped up recently, especially in the last couple days — I think this is, what, almost the anniversary of month five. Almost exact, right?I think that most wars ultimately don’t end with total victory and total defeat or anything like that, but with some kind of negotiation of peace. And I think that a real diplomatic solution to the conflict might not be possible at present, in what I’m seeing, anyway. And I don’t have all the information, obviously. I’m not sitting in the seat right now. But I would encourage, obviously, our government to prioritize peace and the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty and hopefully not pursue certain dangerous aims.I think that there needs to be — yeah, there needs to be some point, I think, that we are making sure that national self-defense is appropriate, obviously, and that other things might not be as appropriate. So I will end it at that. It’s a very complex issue right now. I don’t have all of the information at hand. But from what I’m seeing, it’s very scary for us, actually.Alex Kingsbury: Great. Thanks.Jyoti Thottam: OK. So just moving to climate change, I know those congressional negotiations are still going on. But what else specifically do you think Congress could do, particularly given Republican opposition on so many issues, what could Congress do on climate change to meet America’s commitments there?[The Senate passed the climate, health and tax bill on Aug. 7 and the House on Aug. 12, both after this interview took place.]We’re in the middle of a negotiation right now, which is kind of exciting because we have a current plan that is — right now, we’re — yesterday night, I guess, at 6 p.m. or something. Was it 4 or 6? I don’t know. It was happening as we were talking. And so I was like, oh, no.But it was very, very exciting to actually see that we were actually putting together a plan, that there is something that’s going to be pushed forward for climate. And I think that right now, there is, I believe — I was reading about it and writing about it just a little bit earlier. But I think that it’s really great to see that there is going to be some help with making sure that there is some caps to some of the polluters.I think one of the things that I wanted to know — and I wrote this down for myself because it was so important. But obviously, if the legislation passes, it’s a huge victory. But I can’t remember what it was. But it was, I believe — the dollars that they were putting into making sure that there was going to be some money that would come back into $369 billion, I believe, for climate and energy, which is basically, I think, four times bigger than any kind of climate investment that we’ve ever made.I think that there was some kinds of need for — I don’t know. I didn’t like this part about the fossil-fuel subsidies and the new leases and the more pipelines that Manchin wanted, which I think is going to make us more dependent on fossil fuels. But I think that, overwhelmingly, this bill right now would help us to go towards our energy goals. And I think that it would be — experts are saying that it’s about 80 percent — would help us go towards 80 percent of our energy goals right now and climate goals right now.So I think that right now, I like the methane fee. And I think that I’m just hoping that Menendez or Suozzi don’t blow it up or obviously don’t not vote for it or something. So right now, it’s just something that we’re just seeing right now. So I’m trying to paraphrase it all. But I’m not very good at that. I like to dive deep.Kathleen Kingsbury: Mara, why don’t we go to the lightning round?Mara Gay: Great. OK. Here’s the lightning round for you. How does Plan B work?How does Plan B work?Mara Gay: Yes, in the body.It is a — yeah, so it basically helps you to get your period. So it basically forces you to your next period and is an infusion of hormones that will make it so that you are given your period or forced to shed.Mara Gay: It prevents ovulation.Yeah. Mhmm.Mara Gay: Do you own a gun?I do not.Mara Gay: Have you ever fired a gun?Yes.Mara Gay: Where?I was at a training where they — I was at R.A. training, where the police officers on campus took us to learn how to shoot a gun. It was strange.Mara Gay: This was —This was a college thing. I don’t know. It was very strange.Mara Gay: That will suffice. Thank you. What is the average age of a member of Congress?I actually don’t know that.Mara Gay: Take a guess. Any number.Sixty?Mara Gay: Fifty-eight. Pretty close. What about of a U.S. senator?I don’t know that, either. Probably around 70?Mara Gay: Sixty-four. And please name a member of Congress, either dead or living, who you most admire and would emulate if you are elected to serve.Elizabeth Warren, obviously. I think that she’s somebody that I greatly admire. I think that she and I are very alike in the way that we think about policy. I really like, obviously, a lot of her bills, when it comes to making sure that we are holding big corporations accountable, making sure that we are driving towards stopping cycles of debt, making sure that we have anti-poverty pieces into all of our legislation. And I really appreciate the way that she has a good lens on policy.Mara Gay: Thank you. What’s your favorite restaurant in the district?Oh, that’s hard. You know, I have so many lists. I would have to say probably — I’m going to be giving away my dumpling place — but Super Taste on Eldridge is the best dumpling place in all of New York.Mara Gay: Thank you. What is your pathway to victory in this exceptionally crowded race?I think I have a really great path to victory. My whole entire Assembly district is inside of this new New York 10. So I have a very large base. I think that it was really significant when the special master designated both Chinatowns to be inside of this New York 10 District for a reason. I think that I have the support of the Working Families Party. I’m endorsed by the Working Families Party. And a quarter of this district voted on the Working Families Party line in the 2020 election.I think that it’s really important to make sure that we have a lot of people turning out, even though I know this is a turnout election. I think that we excite people. We’ve helped people to come to the doors. And we have an incredible, incredible ground game. We have over 850 volunteers already. I think that it’s been really amazing to see how many doors have been knocked and how many people have been called.But I think that, yes, the turnout has been historically low. Because of the excitement that we generate, we will turn out what it takes to get our campaign the win. I think the other thing is that we have been endorsed by some folks who have already won this district before, multiple times, including Cynthia Nixon. We have an ability to be able to win this race, because —Eleanor Randolph: So can I ask you — you said that you support BDS, this movement to boycott Israel. You have a very large Jewish community in this district. How do you explain that to your Jewish voters?Well, I support the freedom of speech. I think that that’s really my point here, is that I think that people have the right to be able to exercise what we’ve always exercised in our American democracy, whether it’s the Great Boycott or the Montgomery bus boycotts or —I think that it’s really important to be able to exercise that freedom of speech. I think that it’s important to protect it. I think that it’s important to make sure that people have that. I think that the Jewish community is not a monolith, just like the A.A.P.I. community is not a monolith. And I think that there are a lot of people who also believe that Palestinian human rights are important in this moment and in all ways.I think that it’s really important that we are looking at protecting everyone. I think that it’s really about making sure that we have Israeli and Palestinian rights respected. It’s something that I strongly believe, because I think that no matter what I do, I look through a human-rights lens no matter what. That’s where we have to have that political courageous too.Eleanor Randolph: But does that mean you support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel?I think that it’s important for us to be able to honor the fact that there is a movement of doing that. I think that that part is important.Eleanor Randolph: So you don’t —Kathleen Kingsbury: I have a question —Eleanor Randolph: Do you support it? Sorry. Sorry, Katie —Kathleen Kingsbury: Go ahead, Eleanor.Eleanor Randolph: Well, so you —Kathleen Kingsbury: You support BDS, the —Eleanor Randolph: Yeah.Kathleen Kingsbury: — BDS movement, correct?I support its right to exist. There are currently people all over the country who have put out laws that would prohibit people from doing certain things that are just their First Amendment rights. And I think that that part is really important to make sure that we are not prohibiting people from doing things that are protected by our law, right?We are allowed to criticize our government. We’re allowed to criticize how our government interacts with other governments. And I think that that’s something that must be protected, just like freedom of the press. We should make sure to protect our freedom of the press. We should make sure to protect our freedom of speech.Kathleen Kingsbury: OK. In the past, you’ve supported the movement to defund the police. Do you still? And if so, could you talk a little bit about how you talk about public safety to members of your community who are concerned about it right now?Yeah, and I think that one of the things that we obviously have seen — and I actually really appreciated Mara’s editorial on this. I think that we have to really look at how we are looking at facts, right? Our communities have been overcriminalized and overpoliced because of an obsession with crime, and when we really should have been focused on safety and real community safety.It’s important that we are looking at this problem just like we’re solving all other big problems, right? And we should be looking at what created that inequity and what created that unsafety, such as job insecurity, food insecurity, making sure that people have access to health care, right? We need to make sure that we have more security for people and safety for people, on a broad level.And I tell people this all the time, especially in our community, where we’ve been experiencing so much anti-Asian hate. And the anti-Asian sentiment and the anti-Asian hate is not new. It’s not something that’s new, and it’s not something that can be fixed with a silver bullet or a magic wand or some kind of instant kind of thing.It’s state-sanctioned racism, right? It’s built into our country, from the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment, from the anti-miscegenation laws. It’s built in. We can’t just throw more money or police at the issue. But what we need to do is actually invest in our communities to make sure that we have the language access services that will help people to actually get the services that they need.We need social services. I brought in $30 million last year and this year to our Asian American community organizations. We had never had a line item for Asian American community organizations inside of our state budget ever. And I was the first to bring in some dollars.And it was — it’s embarrassing, really. It’s $300,000, really, actually, the first time that I brought in some dollars for our Asian American communities. Then last year, we were finally able to get $10 million. Then this year, we got another $20 million. But again, it’s not a celebration. It’s money that’s owed to our communities, because it’s money that we should have been getting all along in order to make sure that our community organizations can thrive and grow and be able to get the services that people need every single day —Patrick Healy: Excuse me.Mhmm?Patrick Healy: Oh, yeah. We’re sorry. We’re just almost out of time. We just —Oh, no. I’m sorry.Patrick Healy: You live in Manhattan while most of the district is in Brooklyn. Why are you the best person to represent this district?I think that it’s 40-60, so it’s really even. But I will say that I think that I have the most of the district, more than anyone else. And I’ve represented this district for six years now. I obviously know my policies, city level, state level, federal level.I think that it’s been a really important thing to see that we have political courage in this seat in Congress right now. We are in crisis. We just talked a lot about what’s going on with the courts, gun laws, abortion. We’ve talked a lot about some of the other issues that have been coming down the pike that are really scary.And we need to make sure that we have people who are willing to have the political courage to be able to stand up. I have always had the political courage to do the right thing. And I promised Eleanor when I was first running that I was not going to be furniture ever. And I haven’t been.I think I’ve changed the way that Albany is shaped. And I know that I can change the way that Congress looks and Congress is shaped, because we don’t need people that are going to go along to get along. We need people who are going to fight for the things that we deserve. And right now, this seat is one of the most progressive seats in the state. This is one that we desperately need to be a change-maker seat. We have the ability to be able to make that change now.I have always been the person who stood up against Cuomo. I stood up against my own leadership, even. When it came to the austerity budget, I stood up and was the first to call out any kind of corruption, vetting issues from our own governor. It didn’t matter what it was that my constituents needed from me. I always made sure to be transparent and always led with accessibility and transparency and the ability to make sure that my constituents were heard.It didn’t matter what it was that was going to come down the pike at me, because I will tell you, it’s been scary for me. But I will say that it’s always important for us to have that powerful leadership in order to make sure to have the best representation. I think that this is an opportunity for us to weigh in in a way that will make change in history.I will be the first Asian American to represent this district. And I think that that’s a really big deal. We will be doubling the amount of Asian American representation that we have in Congress from New York, because it’s the first time that our two Chinatowns will be able to vote together. We are the most underrepresented racial and ethnic group inside of Congress right now. And I think that it’s important for us to be able to have representation.[After this interview took place, Ms. Niou’s campaign clarified her comment that this will be the first time Manhattan’s Chinatown and Sunset Park’s Chinatown in Brooklyn will vote together in an open-seat election.]I think that I come with a different kind of lens that looks at disability issues in a real way. I will be the first openly autistic legislator in Congress. And I think that it’s important that we are constantly centering our disability communities as well, because it’s actually every issue. Every issue is a disability issue. And if you’re lucky enough to go into a ripe old age, you’ll also have to — if you’re able-bodied now, you’ll have to have help sometime.So I think that it’s really important that we are centering all of our communities in that way. And I think that we have the ability to win, and we have the ability to make sure that we make that change for everyone.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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