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      New York City Pulls Plug on Second Homeless Shelter in Chinatown

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      The Adams administration backtracked on the second shelter, one of three that had been proposed for the neighborhood, after protests from the community.For the second time in less than a week, New York City canceled plans on Monday for a shelter in Chinatown, where community opposition has complicated Mayor Eric Adams’s efforts to move homeless New Yorkers off the streets.The 94-bed shelter would have been in a closed hotel at the busy intersection of Grand Street and Bowery. The location is near where an Asian American woman was murdered in February in an attack for which a homeless man has been charged. The shelter’s would-be operator, Housing Works, had planned to allow illegal drugs in the building, a move that drew fierce condemnation from local residents.Both canceled shelters are of a specialized type known as safe havens or stabilization hotels, which offer more privacy and social services and fewer restrictions than traditional shelters. Mr. Adams announced plans last week to open at least 900 rooms in such shelters by mid-2023.The city Department of Homeless Services, which had previously said that the large street-homeless population in the neighborhood made it a crucial place to add shelter capacity, said on Monday that it would instead open a facility in an area with fewer services for the homeless.The department said in a statement, “Our goal is always to work with communities to understand their needs and equitably distribute shelters across all five boroughs to serve our most vulnerable New Yorkers.”This was the same reason that city offered last week when it announced it would not open the other Chinatown shelter, at 47 Madison Street.But uncertainty about which union’s workers would staff the shelter may have also played a role in the shelter’s cancellation.Charles King, the C.E.O. of Housing Works, said that the organization was required to use workers from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents Housing Works’ employees.But the powerful New York Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which has close ties to the mayor and is better known as the Hotel Trades Council, said that it has an existing contract with the owner of the building, a former Best Western hotel, requiring the building to use its workers.“There’s only one contract with this building, and it’s ours,” said Rich Maroko, president of the Hotel Trades Council. Mr. King said that Housing Works proposed a compromise under which the building owner would hire eight Hotel Trades Council workers. But he said Gary Jenkins, the city commissioner of social services, who oversees the Department of Homeless Services, told him that the city was pulling the plug on the shelter at the Hotel Trades Council’s insistence.“It’s really clear to me that the mayor is more concerned about pleasing this one union than he is about addressing the needs of homeless people,” Mr. King said.The Department of Homeless Services did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. King’s assertion. Mr. Maroko said that the hotel union had urged City Hall not to go through with the shelter conversion.The R.W.D.S.U., which is in contentious contract negotiations with Housing Works, said for its part, “We have no desire to displace hotel workers or see this hotel converted.”During the 2021 mayoral campaign, the hotel union, which has nearly 40,000 members, gave Mr. Adams his first major labor endorsement. Susan Lee, founder of the Alliance for Community Preservation and Betterment, a Chinatown group that mobilized protests against the shelter, applauded the city for “listening to the concerns of the Chinatown community.”She said she hoped the hotel would reopen as a tourist hotel and help the neighborhood recover from the pandemic.Dana Rubinstein More

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      How Likely Is Another Civil War?

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      More from our inbox:Listen to Asian American VotersA Double Standard for Supreme Court NomineesHelping Students Fight DisinformationCovid’s Origins, and the Animal-Human LinkMr. Biden, Reach the HeartlandAt the Georgia State Capitol, demonstrating against the inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20, 2021.Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Jamelle Bouie starts out by documenting the public feeling that the United States is indeed facing a second civil war. But he takes a wrong turn by suggesting that this conflict will not happen because today’s conditions do not mirror those of our 19th-century version (“Why We Are Not Facing the Prospect of a Second Civil War,” column, Feb. 17).However, we are in a very precarious position. Large portions of our population have adopted an antigovernment position, fueled by our former president and his minions. Racism is now out in the open, as evidenced by the rantings of anti-diversity proponents in raucous school board meetings throughout the country. The country is more armed than ever, and thousands of these citizens belong to organized militia.We learn more details every day about how close we came last year to a coup engineered by the former president. Too many elected officials no longer display commitment to our democratic principles. The organized campaign of disinformation that is destroying our country is buttressed every day by extreme-right media outlets and commentators.Contrary to Mr. Bouie’s piece, there is a serious risk that we will lose this precious experiment called American democracy. Yet there is still a modicum of hope it can be averted. But that will require that we all take responsibility by speaking up for our Republic.James MartoranoYorktown Heights, N.Y.To the Editor:The plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the continuing trumpeting of the lie that the election was stolen approach the criterion that Jamelle Bouie sets for a second civil war: “irreconcilable social and economic interests of opposing groups within the society.”In her book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” Barbara F. Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, states that, according to the polity index score, which places countries on a scale from fully autocratic (-10) to fully democratic (+10), the United States is now a +5, which makes us an “anocracy,” a country that is moving from a democracy to an authoritarian regime.In just five years, we went from +10 to +5! “A partial democracy,” writes Ms. Walter, “is three times as likely to experience civil war as a full democracy.”Now is the time to strengthen our democracy to avert another civil war.Allen J. DavisDublin, N.H.Listen to Asian American Voters  Doris LiouTo the Editor:Re “Will Asian Americans Desert Democrats?,” by Thomas B. Edsall (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, March 6):Mr. Edsall’s essay ponders whether Asian Americans are bolting from the Democratic Party, using isolated examples of Chinese American voters swaying recent races in two major cities, New York and San Francisco. However, his claim that this is evidence of Asian Americans moving to the right is a flawed analysis.First, these were complicated elections that cannot be boiled down to one or two issues. Second, how Chinese Americans voted in two cities cannot represent the political preferences of Asian Americans everywhere — just as the fact that Asian Americans helped flip historically Republican-held Senate seats in Georgia and Arizona does not necessarily mean Asian Americans are moving left nationwide.Although not often reported in media analyses, our Asian American Voter Survey polling data includes Asian American suburban moms, college- and non-college-educated, rich and poor, and a wide range of ethnic identities across all 50 states. One would not say the trends of white voters in Little Rock tell the story of white voters everywhere. This should not be done with Asian American voters either.To understand the future of our communities’ votes, one must look at who is listening, engaging and working on our behalf. Parties and political candidates who can do this the most effectively are more likely to win our vote; it’s as simple as that.Christine ChenWashingtonThe writer is executive director of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote.A Double Standard for Supreme Court Nominees  Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Another Working Mother for the Supreme Court” (Opinion guest essay, March 8):Melissa Murray opines that, at her confirmation hearings, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s status as a “working mother” might be for her a selling point among conservative senators, just as it had factored into their support of Justice Amy Coney Barrett at her hearings.Funny, I don’t recall any prospective male justices ever being asked about whether their status as “working fathers” might affect their abilities and opinions. Republicans clearly did not deem it relevant to find out if a nominee was a superdad — whether he could do laundry, help kids with homework and work outside the home, all at the same time!Lori Pearson WiseWinter Park, Fla.Helping Students Fight Disinformation  Alberto MirandaTo the Editor:Re “Combating Disinformation Can Feel Like a Lost Cause. It Isn’t,” by Jay Caspian Kang (Opinion, March 9):It is no revelation to me, a retired middle- and upper-school librarian, that students in lower-income environments and underfunded public schools do not register well on media literacy tests.The hiring of professional, credentialed librarians in these schools is often postponed and neglected in order to hire more subject-matter teachers to decrease class sizes, leaving no one with the training and skill sets to introduce these important literacy tools.It is a disservice to these vulnerable students not to provide a curriculum that addresses this gaping hole in their education.Sandra MooreTownship of Washington, N.J.Covid’s Origins, and the Animal-Human Link  Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Pair of Studies Say Covid Originated in Wuhan Market” (news article, Feb. 28):As we enter the third year of the pandemic, it is becoming increasingly clear that we may never know the full and exact details of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in humans.Even as experts continue to uncover connections to the market in Wuhan, China, the spillover story may only remain a partial narrative, veiled by insufficient data. This is an uncertainty, like so many other unknowns on a shifting planet undergoing climate change, to which we must adapt.The one certainty we can rely on, however, is the inextricable link between humans and animals. From hunter-gathering to the industrial livestock production model, our relationships with animals cannot be unbound. What’s more, we’ve progressively dominated species and their habitats with dire consequences. This certainty is highlighted by the pandemic through which we are all living today.So, it’s time to start talking about our health differently. Public health does not exist in isolation from other beings. It’s time to become comfortable talking about public health as planetary health.Perhaps normalizing this discourse might have us, as a global community, face the destruction of natural habitats as the destruction of global human health. Perhaps it might have us cultivate a different type of care, a reciprocal care that might stand to benefit us all.Christine YanagawaVancouver, British ColumbiaMr. Biden, Reach the Heartland Ryan Peltier To the Editor:Re “What the Democrats Need to Do,” by Michael Kazin (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, Feb. 27):Mr. Kazin is right that President Biden could be more forceful in pushing for the stalled Build Back Better bill and the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.But the president needs to go beyond that and directly address the rural populace. He needs to tour the outposts of the heartland, the Rust Belt, the rural West and the South, bringing a message that Democrats have compassion for all Americans and that Democratic policies will make their lives better.We need to see more of the ol’ Empathetic Joe. The difference between a mountebank like Donald Trump and Joe Biden is that Mr. Biden can actually stand behind his promises to make America better — for all of us.Luc NadeauLongmont, Colo. More

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      Will Asian Americans Bolt From the Democratic Party?

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      Over the past three decades, Asian American voters — according to Pew, the fastest growing group in the country — have shifted from decisively supporting Republicans to becoming a reliably Democratic bloc, anchored by firmly liberal views on key national issues.The question now is whether this party loyalty will withstand politically divisive developments that appear to pit Asian Americans against other key Democratic constituencies — as controversies emerge, for example, over progressive education policies that show signs of decreasing access to top schools for Asian Americans in order to increase access for Black and Hispanic students.There is little question of the depth of liberal commitments among Asian Americans.“Do Asian Americans, a group marked by crosscutting demographic cleavages and distinct settlement histories, constitute a meaningful political category with shared policy views?” ask Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, and Sono Shah, a computer scientist at the Pew Research Center, in their 2021 paper “Convergence Across Difference: Understanding the Political Ties That Bind with the 2016 National Asian American Survey.”Their answer: “Political differences within the Asian American community are between those who are progressive and those who are even more so.”Wong and Shah cite a 2016 New York Times article by my news-side colleague Jeremy W. Peters, “Donald Trump Is Seen as Helping Push Asian Americans Into Democratic Arms”:In 1992, the year national exit polls started reporting Asian American sentiment, the group leaned Republican, supporting George Bush over Bill Clinton 55 percent to 31 percent. But by 2012, that had reversed. Asian Americans overwhelmingly supported President Obama over Mitt Romney — 73 percent to 26 percent.In their paper, Wong and Shah note that “despite critical differences in national origin, generation, class, and even partisanship, Asian Americans demonstrate a surprising degree of political commonality.”With regard to taxes, for example, “More than 75 percent of both Asian American Democrats and Republicans support increasing taxes on the rich to provide a tax cut for the middle class.”Or take support for strong emissions regulations to address environmental concerns. This has 78.3 percent support among Asian American Democrats and 76.9 percent among Asian American Republicans.In a 2021 paper, “Fault Lines Among Asian Americans,” Sunmin Kim — a sociologist at Dartmouth — found that Asian Americans took decisively liberal stands on Obamacare, admission of Syrian refugees, free college tuition, opposition to the Muslim immigration ban, environmental restrictions on power plants and government assistance to Black Americans. The only exception was legalization of marijuana, which received less support from Asian Americans than from any other group.In an email, Kim cited the declining importance of communism as a key factor in the changing partisan allegiance of Asian American voters. In the 1970s and 80s, he said, “Taiwanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese chose the party that had a reputation of being tougher on communism. Obviously, it was the Republican Party. Chinese immigrants, many of whom retained the memory of the Cultural Revolution, were not too different.” After the 1990s, he continued, “the children of immigrants who grew up and received education in the United States replace the first generation, and their outlook on politics is much different from their parents. They see themselves as a racial minority, and their high education level pushes them towards liberalism on many issues.”In short, Kim wrote: “the Cold War ended and a generational shift occurred.”Despite many shared values, there are divergences of opinion among Asian Americans on a number of issues, in part depending on the country of origin. These differences are clear in the results of the 2020 Asian American Voter Survey, which was released in September 2020.Asked for their preference for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, 54 percent of all Asian Americans chose Biden to 30 percent for Trump. Biden had majority support from Indian (65-28), Japanese (61-24), Korean (57-26), Chinese (56-20) and Filipino Americans (52-34). Vietnamese Americans were the lone exception, supporting Trump 48-36.At the moment, affirmative action admissions policies are a key issue testing Asian American support for the Democratic Party. In educational institutions as diverse as Harvard, San Francisco’s Lowell High School, Loudon County’s Thomas Jefferson High School and the most prestigious selective high schools in New York and Boston, conflict over educational resources between Asian American students and parents on one side and Black and Hispanic students and parents on the other has become endemic. Policies designed to increase Black and Hispanic access to high quality schools often result in a reduction in the number of Asian American students admitted.Despite this, the 2020 Asian American Voter Survey cited above found that 70 percent of Asian Americans said they “favor affirmative action programs designed to help Blacks, women and other minorities,” with 16 percent opposed. Indian Americans were strongest in their support, 86-9, while Chinese Americans were lowest, 56-25.These numbers appear to mask considerable ambivalence over affirmative action among Asian Americans when the question was posed not in the abstract but in the real world. In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209 prohibiting government from implementing affirmative action policies, declaring that “The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”In 2020, California voters were asked to support or oppose repeal of the anti-affirmative action measure — that is, to restore affirmative action. 36 percent of all Asian American voters said they would support restoration of affirmative action, 22 percent were opposed and 36 percent were undecided. A plurality of Chinese Americans, 38 percent, on the other hand, opposed restoration of affirmative action, 30 percent were in favor, and 28 percent were undecided.The debate over affirmative action admission policies has deep roots. In 2009, Thomas J. Espenshade, a sociologist at Princeton, and Alexandria Walton Radford, of the Center for Applied Research in Postsecondary Education, wrote in their paper. “A New Manhattan Project” thatCompared to white applicants at selective private colleges and universities, black applicants receive an admission boost that is equivalent to 310 SAT points, measured on an all-other-things-equal basis. The boost for Hispanic candidates is equal on average to 130 SAT points. Asian applicants face a 140 point SAT disadvantage.In 2018, the Harvard Crimson studied the average SAT scores of students admitted to Harvard from 1995 to 2013. It found that Asian Americans admitted to Harvard earned an average SAT score of 767 across all sections, while whites averaged 745 across all sections, Hispanic American 718, Native-American and Native-Hawaiian 712 and African-American 704.Scholars of Asian American politics have found that Asian American voters have remained relatively strong supporters of affirmative action policies, with one exception: Chinese Americans, who constitute nearly a quarter of all Asian Americans.In “Asian Americans and Race-Conscious Admissions: Understanding the Conservative Opposition’s Strategy of Misinformation, Intimidation & Racial Division,” Liliana M. Garces and OiYan Poon, professors of educational leadership at the University of Texas-Austin and Colorado State University, give the following reasons for the concentration of anti-affirmative action sentiment among Chinese Americans.Garces and Poon write that 1990 changes in the U.S. Immigration Act “increased by threefold the number of visas for highly skilled, professional-class immigrants, privileging highly educated and skilled immigrants” while “migration policy changes in China advantaged more structurally-privileged Chinese to emigrate.”Second, “growing up in mainland China, many of these more recent Chinese American immigrants were systemically and culturally socialized to strongly believe that a single examination is a valid measure of merit for elite college access.”Third, “The residential and employment patterns among more recent immigrants suggest that their social lives remain limited to middle and upper-middle class Chinese American immigrants and whites.”And finally,The social media platform, WeChat, plays an important role in fostering opposition to affirmative action among some Chinese American immigrants. Some studies have found that WeChat plays a central role in the distribution of information among the Chinese diasporic community, including fake news, to politically motivate and organize Chinese immigrants for conservative causes, especially against affirmative action and ethnic data disaggregation.Another issue with the potential to push Asian American voters to the right is crime.The 2018 Crime Victimization report issued in September 2019 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Department of Justice found that a total of 182,230 violent crimes were committed against Asian Americans in 2018. 27.5 percent were committed by African Americans, 24.1 percent by whites, 24.1 percent by Asian Americans, 7.0 percent by Hispanics, and the rest undetermined.The New York City police report on 2021 hate crime arrestees shows that 30 of the 56 men and women charged with hate crimes against Asian Americans were Black, 14 were Hispanic, 7 were white and five were Asian American/Pacific Islanders.While most of the experts on Asian American politics I contacted voiced confidence in the continued commitment of Asian Americans to the Democratic Party and its candidates, there were some danger signals — for example, in the 2021 New York City mayoral election.That year, Eric Adams, the Democrat, decisively beat Curtis Sliwa, the Republican, 65.5 to 27.1, but support for Sliwa — an anti-crime stalwart who pledged to take on “the spineless politicians who vote to defund police” — shot up to 44 percent “in precincts where more than half of residents are Asian,” according to The City.The story was headlined “Chinese voters came out in force for the GOP in NYC, shaking up politics” and the subhead read “From Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Elmhurst and Flushing in Queens, frustrations over Democratic stances on schools and crime helped mobilize votes for Republican Curtis Sliwa for mayor and conservative Council candidates.”A crucial catalyst in the surge of support for Sliwa, according to The City, was his “proposed reforms to specialized high school admissions and gifted and talented programs” — ignoring the fact that Adams had also pledged to do this. More generally, the City reported,A wave of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the pandemic has heightened a sense of urgency about public safety and law enforcement. Asian anger and frustration have, for the first time, left a visible dent in a city election.Grace Meng, a Democratic congresswoman from Queens, tweeted on Nov. 4, 2021:Pending paper ballot counts, the assembly districts of @nily, @edbraunstein, @Barnwell30, @Rontkim and @Stacey23AD all went Republican. Our party better start giving more of a sh*t about #aapi (Asian American-Pacific Island) voters and communities. No other community turned out at a faster pace than AAPIs in 2020.Similarly, Asian Americans led the drive to oust three San Francisco School Board members — all progressive Democrats — last month. As Times colleague Amelia Nierenberg wrote on Feb. 16:The recall also appeared to be a demonstration of Asian American electoral power. In echoes of debates in other cities, many Chinese voters were incensed when the school board changed the admission system for the district’s most prestigious institution, Lowell High School. It abolished requirements based primarily on grades and test scores, instead implementing a lottery system.In their March 2021 paper, “Why the trope of Black-Asian conflict in the face of anti-Asian violence dismisses solidarity,” Jennifer Lee and Tiffany Huang, sociologists at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, point out that “there have been over 3,000 self-reported incidents of anti-Asian violence from 47 states and the District of Columbia, ranging from stabbings and beatings, to verbal harassment and bullying, to being spit on and shunned.”While “these senseless acts of anti-Asian violence have finally garnered the national attention they deserve,” Lee and Huang continue, “they have also invoked anti-Black sentiment and reignited the trope of Black-Asian conflict. Because some of the videotaped perpetrators appear to have been Black, some observers immediately reduced anti-Asian violence to Black-Asian conflict.”Working against such Black-Asian conflict, the two authors argue, is a besieged but “real-world solidarity” demonstrated instudies showing that Black Americans are more likely than white or Hispanic Americans to recognize racism toward Asian Americans, and that Asian Americans who experience discrimination are more likely to recognize political commonality with Black Americans. Covid-related anti-Asian bias is not inevitable. While “China virus” rhetoric has been linked to violence and hostility, new research shows that priming Americans about the coronavirus did not increase anger among the majority of Americans toward Asian Americans.Lee and Huang warn, however, that “anger among a minority has invoked fear among the majority of Asian Americans.”In “Asian Americans, Affirmative Action & the Rise in Anti-Asian Hate,” published in the Spring 2021 issue of Daedalus, a journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Lee makes the case that Asian American are at a political tipping point. She argues that:The changing selectivity of contemporary U.S. Asian immigration has recast Asian Americans from ‘unassimilable to exceptional,’ resulting in their rapid racial mobility. This mobility combined with their minoritized status places them in a unique group position in the U.S. racial hierarchy, conveniently wedged between underrepresented minorities who stand to gain most from the policy (affirmative action) and the advantaged majority who stands to lose most because of it. It also marks Asians as compelling victims of affirmative action who are penalized because of their race.In recent years, “a new brand of Asian immigrants has entered the political sphere whose attitudes depart from the Asian American college student activists of the 1960s,” Lee writes. “This faction of politically conservative Asian immigrants has no intention of following their liberal-leaning predecessors, nor do they intend to stay silent.”The issue is “whether more Asian Americans will choose to side with conservatives,” Lee writes, “or whether they will choose to forge a collective Asian American alliance will depend on whether U.S. Asians recognize and embrace their ethnic and class diversity. Will they forge a sense of linked fate akin to that which has guided the political attitudes and voting behavior of Black Americans?”The outcome may well have a major impact on the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans.Catalyst, the liberal voter analysis firm, found that from 2016 to 2020, Asian Americans increased their voter turnout by 39 percent, more than any other racial or ethnic constituency, including Hispanic Americans (up 31 percent) and African Americans (up 14 percent). This turnout increase worked decisively in favor of the Democratic Party as Asian Americans voted two to one for the party in both elections.The April 2021 Pew Research report cited above found that from 2000 to 2019, “The Asian population in the U.S. grew 81 percent from roughly 10.5 million to a record 18.9 million, surpassing the 70 percent growth rate of the nation’s Hispanic population. Furthermore, by 2060, the number of U.S. Asians is projected to rise to 35.8 million, more than triple their 2000 population.”What this means is that Republicans are certain to intensify their use affirmative action, crime, especially hate crime, and the movement away from merit testing to lotteries for admission to high caliber public schools as wedge issues to try to pry Asian American voters away from the Democratic Party. Indeed, they are already at it. For its part, the Democratic Party will need to add significant muscle to Jennifer Lee’s call for a “linked fate” among Asian and African Americans to fend off the challenge.The strong commitment of Asian Americans to education has been a source of allegiance to a Democratic Party that has become the preferred home for voters with college and advanced degrees. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is, at the same time, testing the strength of that allegiance by supporting education policies that reduce opportunities for Asian Americans at elite schools while increasing opportunity for two larger Democratic constituencies, made up of Black and Hispanic voters. This is the kind of problem inherent in a diverse coalition comprising a segmented electorate with competing agendas. For the foreseeable future, the ability of the party to manage these conflicts will be a key factor in its success or failure.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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      San Francisco Voters Recall 3 Board of Education Members

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      The recall, which galvanized Asian Americans, was a victory for parents angered by the district’s priorities during the pandemic.In a recall election fueled by pandemic angst and anger, San Francisco voters ousted three members of the Board of Education on Tuesday, closing a bitter chapter in the city’s politics that was rife with infighting, accusations of racism and a flurry of lawsuits.More than 70 percent of voters supported the recall of each member when initial results were released just before 9 p.m. Pacific time, and one of the board members conceded defeat. Those votes made up about one-quarter of registered voters in the city, and turnout was not expected to be considerably higher.The vote stripped the members, Alison Collins, Gabriela López and Faauuga Moliga, of their positions on the seven-person board, which Ms. Lopez served as president. They will be replaced by members chosen by Mayor London Breed.“It’s the people rising up in revolt in San Francisco and saying it’s unacceptable to abandon your responsibility to educate our children,” said Siva Raj, a San Francisco parent of public school students who helped lead the signature campaign to put the recall election on the ballot.The recall was a victory for parents who were angered that the district spent time deciding whether to rename a third of its schools last year instead of focusing on reopening them. It also appeared to be a demonstration of Asian American electoral power, a galvanizing moment for Chinese voters in particular who turned out in unusually large numbers for the election.In echoes of debates in other cities, many Chinese voters were incensed when the school board introduced a lottery admission system for Lowell High School, the district’s most prestigious institution, abolishing requirements primarily based on grades and test scores. A judge last year ruled that the board had violated procedures in making the change.“The voters of this city have delivered a clear message,” Ms. Breed, who supported the recall, said in a statement on Tuesday night.The landslide result is already being analyzed for its implications for the city’s upcoming elections.District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a progressive prosecutor, faces a recall election in June fueled by moderate San Franciscans worried about a spike in property crimes and hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic. Ms. Breed is running for re-election next year.On Tuesday, one of the ousted board members, Mr. Moliga, posted on social media that it had been an honor to serve the city. “It appears we were unsuccessful at defeating my recall,” he wrote. “We fought hard and ran a great campaign.”“There are many more fights ahead of us,” he added.In a city with more dogs than children, school board elections in San Francisco have for decades been obscure sideshows to the more high-profile political contests.That changed with the pandemic — data released by the district suggests that remote learning increased racial achievement gaps — and the profusion of controversies that plagued the board.The district captured national headlines last year for its botched and in some cases historically inaccurate effort to rename 44 public schools.The targeted schools carry the names of a range of historical figures including Abraham Lincoln and the three other presidents chiseled into Mount Rushmore; Spanish conquerors such as Vasco Núñez de Balboa; John Muir, the naturalist and author; and Paul Revere, the Revolutionary War figure.After a barrage of criticism, including from Ms. Breed, the board put the renaming process on hold. A judge ruled that the board had violated a California law on open meetings in its proceedings.Criticism of the board grew stronger, while signature gathering for the recall effort was already underway, when controversial tweets written by Ms. Collins, the board’s vice president, were discovered. In them, she said Asian Americans were like slaves who benefited from working inside a slave owner’s house — a comparison that Asian American groups and many city leaders called racist.The board voted to strip Ms. Collins of her vice presidency, which prompted her to sue members of the board and the district for $87 million. A judge dismissed the case.David Lee, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University, said the combination of the tweets and the changes to the admission policies at Lowell had empowered Asian American voters.“It’s been an opportunity for the Chinese community to flex its muscles,” Mr. Lee said. “The community is reasserting itself.”Asian American voters had punched below their weight in San Francisco in recent years, making up about 18 percent of active voters in recent elections — well below their 34 percent share in the city overall. But supporters of Tuesday’s recall election say Asian Americans played an outsize role.Mr. Raj, the San Francisco parent, pointed to strong turnout in neighborhoods with large Asian populations as well as a relatively high return rate among people who requested a Chinese-language ballot.Ann Hsu, a San Francisco resident with two high school students in the public school system, helped register more than 500 Chinese residents in the months before the election. Education, she said, was a powerful issue.“That’s been ingrained in Chinese culture for thousands and thousands of years,” she said.Ms. Hsu said she had observed some of the inner workings of the district in her role as a P.T.A. president of a high school as well as the chair of a Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee, a body that oversees the district’s use of money raised through bonds. The oversight committee was formed last year after a whistle-blower notified the city attorney’s office that the school district had failed to create the board, which is required by law.“The board is incompetent,” Ms. Hsu said.Meredith W. Dodson, the executive director of the San Francisco Parent Coalition, a group formed during the pandemic to pressure the district to reopen schools, called the recall campaign a powerful demonstration of parental activism.“We can never go back to the previous world where parents weren’t organized and weren’t lifting up their concerns together,” she said. More

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      Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach

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      A new report, in perhaps the most thorough soul-searching done by either party this year, points to an urgent need for the party to present a positive economic agenda and rebut Republican misinformation.Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.The 70-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.Read the reportThree prominent Democratic groups, Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, conducted a review of the 2020 election.Read Document 73 pagesIn part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina.Overall, the report warns, Democrats in 2020 lacked a core argument about the economy and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic — one that might have helped candidates repel Republican claims that they wanted to “keep the economy shut down,” or worse. The party “leaned too heavily on ‘anti-Trump’ rhetoric,” the report concludes.“Win or lose, self-described progressive or moderate, Democrats consistently raised a lack of strong Democratic Party brand as a significant concern in 2020,” the report states. “In the absence of strong party branding, the opposition latched on to G.O.P. talking points, suggesting our candidates would ‘burn down your house and take away the police.’”Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who lost re-election in South Florida in November, said in an interview that she had spoken with the authors of the report and raised concerns about Democratic outreach to Hispanic voters and the party’s failure to rebut misinformation in Spanish-language media.“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has in some ways lost touch with our electorate,” Ms. Mucarsel-Powell said. “There is this assumption that of course people of color, or the working class, are going to vote for Democrats. We can never assume anything.”The report, chiefly written by a pair of veteran Democratic operatives, Marlon Marshall and Lynda Tran, is among the most significant salvos yet in the Democratic Party’s internal debate about how it should approach the 2022 elections. It may stir skepticism from some quarters because of the involvement of Third Way, which much of the left regards with hostility.A fourth group that initially backed the study, the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United, backed away this spring. Tiffany Muller, the head of the group, said it had to abandon its involvement to focus instead on passing the For the People Act, a sweeping good-government bill that is stuck in the Senate.Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, lost re-election in South Florida last year. She remains worried about her party’s outreach to Hispanic voters.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMr. Marshall and Ms. Tran, as well as the groups sponsoring the review, have begun to share its conclusions with Democratic lawmakers and party officials in recent days, including Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.The study spanned nearly six months of research and data analysis that scrutinized about three dozen races for the House and the Senate, and involved interviews with 143 people, including lawmakers, candidates and pollsters, people involved in assembling the report said. Among the campaigns reviewed were the Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as House races in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas, and in rural New Mexico and Maine.The study follows an internal review conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was unveiled last month. Both projects found that Democratic candidates had been hobbled by flawed polling and pandemic-imposed limitations on campaigning.In the D.C.C.C. report, the committee attributed setbacks at the congressional level to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to attacks calling them police-hating socialists.Some lawmakers on the left have complained that criticism of left-wing messaging amounts to scapegoating activists for the party’s failures.Yet the review by Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund goes further in diagnosing the party’s messaging as deficient in ways that may have cost Democrats more than a dozen seats in the House. Its report offers a blunt assessment that in 2020, Republicans succeeded in misleading voters about the Democratic Party’s agenda and that Democrats had erred by speaking to voters of color as though they are a monolithic, left-leaning group.Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who helms the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”“That’s been a ridiculous idea and that’s never been true,” Mr. Cárdenas said, lamenting that Republicans had succeeded in “trying to confuse Latino voters with the socialism message, things of that nature, ‘defund the police.’”Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that “some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats” had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to “defund” the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.“We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets,” Mr. James said. “That terminology — ‘defund’ — was not popular in the Black community.”A report by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attributed the party’s setbacks to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to Republican attacks.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesKara Eastman, a progressive Democrat who lost her bid for a House seat based in Omaha, said Republicans had succeeded in delivering a “barrage of messages” that tarred her and her party as being outside the mainstream. Ms. Eastman said she had told the authors of the 2020 review that she believed those labels were particularly damaging to women.Matt Bennett, a Third Way strategist, said the party needed to be far better prepared to mount a defense in the midterm campaign.“We have got to take very seriously these attacks on Democrats as radicals and stipulate that they land,” Mr. Bennett said. “A lot of this just didn’t land on Joe Biden.”Democrats maintained a large advantage with voters of color in the 2020 elections, but the report identified telling areas of weakness. Mr. Biden and other Democrats lost ground with Latino voters relative to the party’s performance in 2016, “especially among working-class and non-college voters in these communities,” the report found.The report found that a surge in Asian American turnout appeared to have secured Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia but that Democratic House candidates ran behind Mr. Biden with Asian American voters in contested California and Texas races. In some important states, Democrats did not mobilize Black voters at the same rate that Republicans did conservative white voters.“A substantial boost in turnout netted Democrats more raw votes from Black voters than in 2016, but the explosive growth among white voters in most races outpaced these gains,” the report warns.There has been no comparable self-review on the Republican side after the party’s severe setbacks last year, mainly because G.O.P. leaders have no appetite for a debate about Mr. Trump’s impact.Republicans will continue to have structural advantages in Washington because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College. Erin Scott for The New York TimesThe Republican Party faces serious political obstacles, arising from Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, the growing liberalism of young voters and the country’s growing diversity. Many of the party’s policies are unpopular, including cutting social-welfare and retirement-security programs and keeping taxes low for the wealthy and big corporations.Yet the structure of the American electoral system has tilted national campaigns toward the G.O.P., because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College.Democratic hopes for the midterm elections have so far hinged on the prospect of a strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and on voters’ regarding Republicans as a party unsuited to governing.Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who was briefed on the findings of the report, called it proof that the party needed a strong central message about the economy in 2022.“We need to continue to show the American people what we’ve done, and then talk incessantly across the country, in every town, about how Democrats are governing,” Ms. Sherrill said.Largely unaddressed in the report is the immense deficit Democrats face among lower-income white voters. In its conclusion, however, Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran write that Democrats need to deliver a message that includes working-class whites and matches the G.O.P.’s clear “collective gospel” about low taxes and military strength.“Our gospel should be about championing all working people — including but not limited to white working people — and lifting up our values of opportunity, equity, inclusion,” they write. More

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      As Yang’s New York Ties Are Questioned, He Cites Anti-Asian Bias

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      Mr. Yang, who is seeking to make history as the city’s first Asian American mayor, says anti-Asian sentiment has crept into the campaign. Andrew Yang said that a New York Daily News cartoon played into anti-Asian stereotypes by characterizing him as a tourist.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesAndrew Yang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants and a leading candidate for mayor of New York City, took on issues of race and identity in extraordinarily personal terms on the campaign trail this week, seeking to reframe some criticisms of his candidacy as questions of his Americanness.Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, has in this race spoken out often and forcefully against a spike in anti-Asian violence that has alarmed many city residents.But his efforts to condemn anti-Asian racism entered a new phase this week, as he criticized unnamed opponents for questioning his New York credentials, while his typically private wife, Evelyn, appeared with him at a news conference to blast a cartoon that portrayed him as a tourist.The Yangs said the New York Daily News editorial cartoon played into anti-Asian stereotypes, and painted it as an example of subtle racism that had crept into the campaign.“It is not OK to use Andrew to make Asians the butt of racist jokes, especially during this time of unprecedented racial tension,” Ms. Yang said, her voice appearing to waver at times. “A time when Asians are being randomly attacked on our streets just because of how they look.”The joint news conference was called in part to denounce the cartoon, which the Daily News’s editorial board has defended, and in part to grapple with a spike in hate crimes and other attacks directed at Asian Americans. The Yangs spoke outside a subway stop in Queens on Tuesday, a day after a man of Asian descent had been pushed onto the tracks — one more incident in a string of violent assaults on Asian Americans across the city.The emotional appearance, which was later featured in part in a digital ad, also came as the mayoral race appears to be tightening in the final stretch. Mr. Yang, who repeated criticisms of the cartoon on CNN on Thursday, is seeking to make history as the city’s first Asian American mayor.From the beginning of his candidacy, Mr. Yang has banked on his ability to inspire significant turnout among Asian American voters, who have become an increasingly powerful force at the national level in recent campaigns.Even as Mr. Yang’s front-runner status has begun to slip in some recent polls, he has demonstrated growing traction with New York’s diverse Asian American community, landing the endorsement of Representative Grace Meng, the highest-ranking Asian American elected official in New York, earlier this month. And on Monday, State Senator John C. Liu of Queens, who has previously sounded skeptical of Mr. Yang, endorsed him, calling him “a bit our A.O.C.,” a reference to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.“It’s not easy to call out racism when it’s against you, because it’s not easy for anybody to cast themselves as the victim,” said Mr. Liu, who ran for mayor himself in 2013 and is known as a formidable surrogate and retail campaigner. “I’m very happy that he spoke out about it.”Mr. Yang, who was born in Schenectady, N.Y., and has lived in New York City for around 25 years, has faced vigorous scrutiny throughout the campaign over the depth of his civic ties to the city.His allies say that some of the mockery reinforces stereotypes that cast Asian Americans as outsiders — the “foreign tourist,” as Mr. Liu put it, as encapsulated in the cartoon. He has been ridiculed over his definition of a bodega and his knowledge of subway lines, and he sparked an incredulous online outcry after citing Times Square, near his Hell’s Kitchen apartment, as his favorite subway station.But Mr. Yang has also drawn criticism over the extent of his knowledge of municipal government and of the city’s fabric — issues that have nothing to do with his identity, but are central to questions surrounding his ability to govern.Indeed, he has never voted for mayor of the city he hopes to lead, or worked in its government. Before running for mayor, he has said, he “almost certainly” had never visited one of the city’s public housing developments. He has struggled to navigate any number of policy questions, from details about police disciplinary records to queries about the subway system.And he has in many ways branded himself as a political outsider who can think outside the constraints of a byzantine city bureaucracy.Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou of Manhattan said that it was legitimate and vital to question a candidate’s experience, but that there are ways to do so without raising questions of “belonging.”“I know what my experience brings to the table when I’m talking about different policies — that, to me, is important,” said Ms. Niou, who had previously supported Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, but withdrew that endorsement and has not backed anyone else. “You can talk about inexperience, you can talk about someone who has very little background knowledge about a particular policy issue. To say somebody is not belonging here is a whole other thing.”Art Chang, the only other Asian American seeking the Democratic mayoral nomination, said that he shared Mr. Yang’s criticism of the cartoon — but he was skeptical of Mr. Yang’s approach to addressing it, suggesting that other issues, like pandemic recovery, were more urgent..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“It’s fine to make a comment about a particular cartoon, but does it deserve more than a tweet? I’m not sure,” said Mr. Chang, a long-shot candidate. “If it had the word ‘Chang’ on the front, I would not have reacted the same way.”During his Tuesday appearance, Mr. Yang appeared reluctant to name names when asked which of his opponents were, in his view, casting doubt on his ties to the city — though he left the unmistakable impression that some contenders were doing just that.“Saying something like, ‘Welcome to New York,’ I just chalked it up to politics,” Mr. Yang said. “But if you have a pattern, particularly in an era when Asians are being cast as foreign and even being victimized on the basis of their race, then it becomes impossible to ignore.”Chris Coffey, his co-campaign manager, indicated on Thursday that the remarks referenced Mr. Stringer and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, who has surpassed Mr. Yang in some recent polls. Both men have sharply questioned Mr. Yang’s qualifications to lead the city — and certainly, he has a mixed record of success in the business and nonprofit worlds.They have also jabbed him over the time he spent outside of New York City during the pandemic with his family (“Can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment?” Mr. Yang asked), with Tyrone Stevens, a Stringer spokesman, remarking at the time, “We welcome Andrew Yang to the mayor’s race — and to New York City.”Mr. Yang’s comments were “a rebuke of any candidate who has tried to make Andrew an ‘other,’ and the two people that come to mind, for me at least, are Scott and Eric,” Mr. Coffey said. “I should also point out, Maya Wiley has been the opposite of that.”Both the Adams and Stringer camps fired back on Thursday with vigorous criticism of Mr. Yang’s ability to navigate the city’s political landscape, without otherwise touching on his identity.“Andrew Yang never voted in a local election then fled the city at its darkest hour,” said Evan Thies, an Adams spokesman, accusing Mr. Yang of returning to run for mayor. “That’s what Eric and so many New Yorkers think disqualifies him in this election.”Mr. Stevens said Mr. Yang has shown “ignorance of basic facts and issues.”“There has been a legitimate question from Day 1 of Mr. Yang’s candidacy, whether someone who’s never demonstrated any connection to the city’s civic life should be elected as its mayor,” he said. “To suggest my statement spoke to anything else is beyond disingenuous.”Mr. Liu, the state senator, said that there is “tremendous support” for Mr. Yang among Asian American voters — but he questioned the idea that voters felt particularly protective of him following the cartoon incident.“I don’t think voters tend to be defensive of candidates,” he said. Still, he went on, “The message we’ve all tried to project is, speak out, don’t be silent. It would have been, frankly, terrible if he didn’t speak out.” More

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      Andrew Yang's Endorsement from Rep. Grace Meng Shows Momentum With Key Voting Bloc

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      The former presidential candidate won a major endorsement in the New York City mayor’s race from Rep. Grace Meng, a top Asian-American leader in Queens.When Andrew Yang ran for president last year, the surprising staying power of his candidacy was powered by a fiercely loyal, politically diverse group of supporters often referred to as the “Yang Gang.”He also enthusiastically embraced his Taiwanese-American background, drawing support from Asian-American voters, even as he occasionally fed stereotypical tropes like describing himself as “an Asian man who likes math.”Now, Mr. Yang is running for mayor of New York City, and his appeal to that constituency may be critical in the June 22 Democratic primary. Asian-Americans have generally accounted for 6 to 10 percent of voters in previous elections, and a large turnout could have an outsize impact on a race where voter interest has been lagging.On Monday, Mr. Yang received a major boost with an endorsement from Representative Grace Meng, the highest-ranking Asian-American elected official in New York, as he seeks to solidify support among Asian-American leaders.Ms. Meng, the city’s first Asian-American member of Congress, said she decided to back Mr. Yang after she kept hearing from her constituents in Queens who were genuinely excited by him.“They really feel like he’s someone who gives them hope,” she said in an interview.Standing outside a school in Flushing, Queens, with Ms. Meng, who is also Taiwanese-American, Mr. Yang said that Asian-Americans were often considered an afterthought in the life of the city. He said that he was glad that people were inspired by his campaign, but he also wants to focus on the nuts and bolts of improving their lives.Representative Grace Meng, center, said she endorsed Andrew Yang in part because her constituents in Queens said that he was “someone who gives them hope.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesMr. Yang, a former nonprofit executive, already has endorsements from key leaders in the community, including Ron Kim, a prominent Korean-American assemblyman in Queens, and Margaret Chin, a city councilwoman from Hong Kong who represents Lower Manhattan.Asian-American voters represent an important constituency, with strongholds in Flushing and in Chinatowns in Manhattan and Sunset Park, Brooklyn. But they are hardly a monolithic group: There is great diversity among Chinese and Indian voters and along generational lines, with older voters skewing more conservative.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, was endorsed by a group of Asian-American leaders last week in Sunset Park and also has support from Peter Koo, a city councilman from Queens who grew up in Hong Kong.More than 700 people from the Asian-American community signed a letter opposing Mr. Yang, saying that he was too pro-police and perpetuated racist stereotypes, and that “representation alone is simply not enough.”Many of those who signed are involved in progressive politics, including a candidate for City Council who wants to cut the police budget in half and another who is a Democratic-Socialist.John Liu, a state senator who was a leading candidate for mayor in 2013, is considering endorsing Mr. Yang, but had not ruled out backing Mr. Adams or Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. Liu said that he likes many of Mr. Yang’s plans for the city and that Ms. Meng’s endorsement was significant.“Grace is a visible and influential leader, especially in this particular moment that we’re in with the Asian-American community feeling under siege and unprotected and underrepresented,” Mr. Liu said.Mr. Adams had been banking on support from the Asian-American community and continues to make the argument that voters can rely on him because he has been their friend for many years.“Before Yang, I was the Chinese candidate,” Mr. Adams recently told The New York Times.Mr. Yang has focused attention on violent attacks on Asian-Americans in New York and across the nation and has spoken about the discrimination he faced growing up. Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist who is not working for anyone in the race, said Mr. Yang could try to boost Asian-American turnout in the primary to more than 10 percent. He compared his situation to Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, who was Italian-American and Jewish and who won in 1933 with those voters’ support at a time when Italians and Jews together represented a third of New York’s population.“His prospects depend upon that being the fact, just as it did for La Guardia among Italian voters in 1933,” he said.The League of Asian Americans of New York, an organization that has hosted forums in recent months with some mayoral candidates, has not yet made an endorsement. Many of the group’s members are Chinese-Americans who became politically engaged in recent years in order to oppose the elimination of admissions tests for New York’s specialized public high schools..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}David Lee, a leading member of the organization, said that the two most important issues for the group were public safety and education.Mr. Lee, a retired financial analyst and registered Republican, said that he liked Mr. Yang’s personality and approachability, and believed it was important to have an Asian-American mayor. But Mr. Adams was much stronger in supporting specialized testing and law enforcement, Mr. Lee said, noting that Asian-American shop owners have raised concerns about enforcement for shoplifting and violent crimes.“He’s a former police officer. That really says it all,” Mr. Lee said.Mr. Adams has hammered Mr. Yang for his decision to leave New York City during the pandemic and for not being a native New Yorker — Mr. Yang grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., and Westchester County, and has lived in the city for more than two decades since attending Columbia Law School.His wife, Evelyn, grew up in Flushing and attended public school there. Her father owned a small business, and her mother worked as an insurance and real estate broker before becoming a stay-at-home mother. Her first job, the campaign noted, was at a bagel shop in Bayside, Queens.Andrew Yang did not grow up in New York City, but his wife, Evelyn, left, did.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesMr. Yang said on Monday that he had a “special connection” to voters in Queens because of his wife’s roots, and it was like a “second home” to him.In downtown Flushing on Monday, reaction to Mr. Yang and the mayor’s race ranged from optimism to indifference, even as large posters of the candidate were visible, including outside the busy New World Mall food court.Takla Tashi Lama, 42, who works in the jewelry business and was waiting in line at the Queens Public Library to be vaccinated, said he planned to vote for Mr. Yang.“He’s very hard working and sincere,” he said, adding that he hoped Mr. Yang brought transparency to City Hall.Benjamin Chin, 30, who was working at a vaccine site at the Queens Public Library, identified himself as a proud member of the “Yang Gang.” He said that one important issue for him was keeping the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test to make sure that Asian-American students have a path to a good education. (Mr. Yang said he wants to keep the test, but to also consider other criteria as part of the admissions process to the elite high schools.)But most of all, Mr. Chin liked that Mr. Yang was an outsider.“I’m very much in favor of not having a politician in office,” he said. “I don’t trust politicians.”Nicole Hong contributed reporting. More

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      Anti-Asian Attacks Place Andrew Yang in the Spotlight. How Will He Use It?

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      Mr. Yang is seeking to become New York City’s first Asian-American mayor, but critics say that some of his past comments have fed racial stereotypes.During a surge in attacks on Asian-Americans last spring, Andrew Yang — then recently off the 2020 presidential campaign trail — wrote an op-ed suggesting that “we Asian-Americans need to embrace and show our Americanness in ways we never have before.”To many Asian-Americans, the message seemed to place yet another burden on victims, and it stung.One year later, as Mr. Yang hopes to make history as New York City’s first Asian-American mayor, some New Yorkers have not forgotten that op-ed, or their sense that Mr. Yang’s remarks during the presidential campaign — describing himself as “an Asian man who likes math,” for instance — could feed stereotypical tropes.But many Asian-Americans also see in his candidacy an opportunity for representation at the highest level of city government, an increasingly meaningful metric amid violent attacks on Asian-Americans in New York and across the nation, including the fatal shootings in the Atlanta area last week that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent.“I grew up Asian-American in New York, and I was always accustomed to a certain level of bullying, of racism, but it took a form of mockery, of invisibility, of disdain,” an emotional Mr. Yang said at a news conference in Times Square the next day. “That has metastasized into something far darker. You can feel it on the streets of New York.”As New York’s diverse Asian-American constituencies grapple with both overt violence — the city saw three more anti-Asian attacks on Sunday — and more subtle forms of bigotry, Mr. Yang and many of the other leading mayoral candidates are racing to show how they would lead a community in crisis. They are holding news conferences, contacting key leaders and attending rallies in solidarity with Asian-Americans who have at once demonstrated growing political power and are experiencing great pain now.But more than any other candidate, it is Mr. Yang who is in the spotlight, with the moment emerging as the most significant test yet of his ability to demonstrate leadership and empathy under pressure. He is also looking to respond in a way that will strengthen his support among Asian-Americans, a group whose backing he is counting on, while simultaneously building a broader coalition.In recent weeks, Mr. Yang has visited a branch of Xi’an Famous Foods, a popular New York restaurant chain that has been hit hard by anti-Asian harassment. Along with other contenders he joined a rally against Asian-American hate in Manhattan late last month and participated in a vigil on Friday and other outreach efforts over the weekend.“We have to start building bonds of connection with the Asian-American community to let them know that this city is theirs, this city is ours,” Mr. Yang said at a rally on Sunday. “One great way to do that is by electing the first Asian-American mayor in the history of New York City. Because you know I’ll take it seriously.”Throughout the race he has made frequent visits to heavily Asian-American neighborhoods across the city, expanding his coalition of “Yang Gang” supporters, a cohort that in his 2020 campaign included many young, white men. He has also taken multiple turns on national television to discuss attacks on Asian-Americans, including an appearance with his wife, Evelyn, on ABC’s “20/20” on Friday. Earlier this month, Mr. Yang visited Xi’an Famous Foods, a popular New York restaurant chain that has been hit by anti-Asian harassment. Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesMr. Yang was not, however, the first contender to condemn the Georgia shootings, tweeting late that night instead about a St. Patrick’s Day scarf, in a move that struck some observers as tone deaf. (He later said that he had not seen the news on Tuesday. He issued a series of tweets about Atlanta on Wednesday morning, before making public remarks.)On Thursday, Mr. Yang’s voice appeared to waver with emotion as he spoke at an event convened by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader. Speaking in starkly personal terms, Mr. Yang discussed the importance of “seeing that Asian-Americans are human beings, Asian-Americans are just as American as anyone else.”“I’m glad that he’s leaning in,” said Representative Grace Meng, the only Asian-American member of New York’s congressional delegation. “I felt like he was getting a little emotional. And I think that the Asian-American community likes to see more of that.”Jo-Ann Yoo, the executive director of New York’s Asian American Federation, said there were signs that Mr. Yang was connecting in particular with younger Asian-American voters.“They’ve said, well, nobody has invited us, drawn us into politics, we don’t see ourselves reflected in any of these spaces,” she said. “If those are the reasons Asian-American young people are not engaging, I think Yang’s done a pretty good job of leading the conversations and drawing young people in.”But, she added, “Other non-Asian candidates should not assume that Asians only vote for Asians.”Interviews with around a dozen community leaders, elected officials and voters suggest that the candidates who are best-known to Asian-American New Yorkers include Mr. Yang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants, and two veteran city officials: Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller.“It’s really a test of whether people are going to lean into longer-term relationships with electeds like Eric and Scott, or are they going to base their decision, especially the newer voters, on more identity politics, like with Andrew Yang?” said Ms. Meng, who has not endorsed a candidate.Some also mentioned interest in candidates including Maya D. Wiley, the former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio; Dianne Morales, who has relationships with community leaders from her time as a nonprofit executive; and Councilman Carlos Menchaca, a low-polling contender who represents a significant Asian-American population in Brooklyn. Ms. Meng also described Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner, as being especially proactive in her outreach.Like every other constituency in New York, the Asian-American slice of the electorate encompasses a diversity of views on high-priority issues including education, the economy, poverty and health care. But community leaders say that the matters of security and confronting bias have plainly become among the most urgent, though there are differences of opinion around the role policing should play in combating the uptick in attacks.“Especially during these times, it’s really important to be that candidate to show that you can empathize with the Asian-American community, that you’re reaching out actively to the community and you’re thinking of ways to bring different coalitions together,” Ms. Meng said.In Queens, the borough with the largest population of people of Asian descent, Mr. Yang’s greatest competition for those voters appears to be Mr. Adams, a former police officer who has been vocal in calling for more resources to combat anti-Asian attacks, and who is widely seen as a strong mayoral contender despite trailing Mr. Yang in the little public polling that is available.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has been vocal in requesting more resources to combat anti-Asian attacks. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“Eric seems to have engaged in the broadest level of outreach in communities across the city, in particular, in Asian-American communities,” said State Senator John C. Liu of Queens, an influential voice in New York Asian-American politics.Asked about Mr. Yang’s outreach, he replied, “I’m going to limit my comments to things I will positively say about specific candidates.”“You can use that as my response to your specific question,” he added.The parents of Wenjian Liu, a police officer who was fatally shot in a patrol car in Brooklyn in 2014, endorsed Mr. Adams on Sunday.“Eric Adams was there for us when we lost our son — and he’s always been there for the Asian community, not just when he decided to run for mayor,” Wei Tang Liu and Xiu Yan Li said in a statement provided by the Adams campaign.It’s a message that some may see as a swipe at Mr. Yang, who has lived in New York City for years — building a career in the nonprofit and start-up worlds — but has not been active in local politics until now.At the rally against Asian-American hate late last month, Jessica Zhao, 36, said she felt torn about his candidacy. She approved of his outreach to Asian-American voters as a mayoral candidate, but she remained concerned by last spring’s op-ed, in which Mr. Yang offered a wide range of recommendations — including advising that Asian-Americans should wear red, white and blue.Indeed, Ms. Zhao had outfitted her husband — a Navy veteran — with masks bearing the military logo out of a “desperate” concern for his safety. But she detested the notion that proof of patriotism might ward off hate crimes, and was deeply bothered that, in her view, Mr. Yang seemed to put the onus for safety on Asian-Americans under attack.“To put even more of a burden on us — we could do even more to supposedly pacify racists enough that they won’t attack us? — really hit a nerve,” said Ms. Zhao, who is active with the Forest Hills Asian Association in Queens. “To say that he felt ashamed to be Asian, it was like the opposite of what we needed in that moment. We were so desperately hoping he could be a galvanizing voice for us.”In an interview last week, Mr. Yang declined to say whether he regretted writing the op-ed, but said repeatedly that he was “pained” by how it was perceived.“It pained me greatly that people felt I was somehow calling our Americanness into question when really my feeling was the opposite,” said Mr. Yang, who also pledged to be more active in New York’s Asian-American communities. “Which was, we are just as American as everyone else, and then, how can we help our people in this time when there is so much need and deprivation?”Asked whether he had changed how he approached matters of race and identity since running for president, he paused.“This is a very difficult time,” Mr. Yang finally said. “Our sense of who we are in this country has changed appreciably in the last number of months.”And in the last few weeks, Ms. Zhao’s sense of Mr. Yang has changed, too, she said.“Seeing his, I guess, evolution, in being able to properly address anti-Asian sentiment in this country, that has been encouraging,” she said. “I can tell that he brings a unique perspective of what Asians are suffering through. And that’s when representation really does come through. That’s when it does matter.”Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting. More