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    George Santos, the Falsehoods and the Facts

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    More from our inbox:Sam Bankman-Fried’s Release on BondHarmful Stereotypes About AfricaWhy Fewer Women Become TeachersCuba’s DepopulationPhoto illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Caroline Brehman/EPA, via ShutterstockTo the Editor:Re “Santos Admits to a Long List of Falsehoods” (front page, Dec. 27):Representative-elect George Santos told The New York Post that he was “embellishing my résumé.” No. They were lies!As a constituent of the Third Congressional District, I don’t want Mr. Santos representing me. We don’t need a deadbeat liar who has not answered where the $700,000 donation that he made to his campaign came from. We need to see the paperwork. We don’t need another politician who promises to release his return after the audit.He’s worse than a joke. Have we no respect for the truth and a little integrity?Robert DetorPort Washington, N.Y.To the Editor:I am grateful to George Santos for redefining lying as a “poor choice of words.” For the past few years, I’d been confined to explaining eye-opening statements as “alternate facts.” I can finally bid farewell to Kellyanne Conway’s creativity and move on to the new standard for political opportunism without consequences.Michael EmmerBrooklynTo the Editor:Re “How Opposition Research Really Works,” by Tyson Brody (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 26), about opposition research on George Santos:After 40 years of working with my late husband, who delved into the background of dozens of high-level candidates, I do know this: It’s a serious job that requires diligent work and professional skills.The real work is in following up. It’s the legwork — hours searching paper land records, visiting residences, interviewing people — that makes the real difference. A candidate cannot simply rely on computer research or popular websites to get the job done.Once the information is found the opposition researcher works directly with reporters with whom they have developed a relationship and whom they trust. Reporters often don’t have time or resources to do all the legwork. Nor can a candidate rely on political party committees.Persistence, attention to detail, legwork, and an honest relationship with the press and professional campaign staff are often the key to winning an election.Otherwise, the voters may have the kind of buyer’s remorse that so many of Mr. Santos’s new constituents are now experiencing.Sandy CheitenNew YorkTo the Editor:Tyson Brody describes the process behind the Democrats’ failure to expose George Santos’s multiple misrepresentations about his life. He explains that “a junior researcher” documented some of the issues, which appeared “in small sections interspersed through a nearly 90-page document.”As a corporate investigator who has spent more than 30 years supervising hundreds of researchers producing thousands of reports, I always insist on executive summaries covering the key points in the report. I have, on countless occasions, repeated the admonition, “Don’t bury the lede.”Ernest BrodNew YorkThe writer is president of Brod Global Intelligence.Sam Bankman-Fried’s Release on BondSam Bankman-Fried, founder of the crypto firm FTX, leaving Federal District Court in Manhattan after being released on a $250 million bond.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Disgraced FTX Co-Founder Freed on $250 Million Bond” (Business, Dec. 23):So, Sam Bankman-Fried, the Bernie Madoff of his generation, is freed on bond less than two weeks after his arrest at a luxury apartment complex in the Bahamas. How lovely for him that his parents were willing and able to secure this bond, risking their own home — and perhaps, their reputations — in the process.It took years of vigorous advocacy for New York State to enact some form of cash bail reform for nonviolent offenders who so often languished at Rikers Island because they couldn’t raise even the minimal funds they needed to be released pending trial.It strikes me as obscene that Mr. Bankman-Fried, whose treachery and cheating have ruined so many lives, spent virtually no time in jail. Even with a firmly affixed ankle bracelet, he will clearly be living a pretty comfortable life safely ensconced in his parents’ home.One can only hope that he will eventually receive the punishment he so richly deserves.Carol NadellNew YorkHarmful Stereotypes About AfricaMauricio Lima for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Putin Wants Loyalty, and He’s Found It in Africa” (front page, Dec. 25):I was disappointed in The Times’s portrayal of Russian involvement in the Central African Republic. On what basis is the relationship between Russia and the Central African Republic characterized as one of African fealty and passive subjugation — of “master” and “vassal”?African states, and countries in the Global South more generally, continue to be inaccurately portrayed as lacking agency in how they conduct their foreign relations. We can certainly debate and inquire into the motives of the leaders of the Central African Republic in partnering with Russia. We can also debate the wisdom of this decision or how likely Russia is to be a good partner to smaller, weaker countries (just as we can question how good of a partner the West is to these same countries).However, it perpetuates harmful stereotypes to presume that the leaders and citizens of African states are merely passive recipients of the desires of foreign actors or to suggest that Western governments know what is best for them.Katherine BeallPrinceton, N.J.The writer is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University.Why Fewer Women Become TeachersCalla Kessler/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “There’s a Reason There Aren’t Enough Teachers in America. Many Reasons, Actually,” by Thomas B. Edsall (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Dec. 14):The enormous drop in the number of college students graduating with degrees in education (from 176,307 in 1970-71 to 104,008 in 2010-11) coincides perfectly with the rise of the feminist movement, which gave women a far greater range of employment opportunities than earlier, when teacher, nurse and secretary were the predominant jobs for female college graduates.Without denigrating the many excellent K-12 teachers, I think it is safe to say that many women who would have been teachers a generation earlier chose different career paths with higher salaries and, often, prestige.Ellen T. BrownSt. Paul, Minn.Cuba’s DepopulationEliana Aponte Tobar for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Largest Exodus Imperils Future of Ailing Cuba” (front page, Dec. 11):Cuba has had many mass migrations since 1959. In fact, the exodus has never stopped, only waxed and waned as the government alternatively cracked down on or encouraged emigration, or as the means to escape became more, or less, easy.In the nearly 64 years of communist rule, one of every six Cubans has left the island. More than 10,000 have drowned or disappeared in the Florida Straits, trying to reach the freedom of the U.S. Scores have been murdered by the regime’s security forces trying to escape.This depopulation is not because of U.S. sanctions; it is because of political repression and Marxist economics. Fidel Castro himself, while alive and the sole ruler, ridiculed the embargo, because he was receiving ample economic aid from the Soviets. It was only when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 that Castro began blaming the U.S. for the problems communism had created.Otto J. ReichFalls Church, Va.The writer is the president of the Center for a Free Cuba and a former diplomat in the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. More

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      Zeldin Uses Adams as a Surprising Weapon in N.Y. Governor’s Race

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      Lee Zeldin and other Republicans are trying to attract swing voters by aligning themselves with Mayor Adams, a Democrat, over his law-and-order platform.In his uphill battle to become New York’s next governor, Representative Lee M. Zeldin, the Trump-supporting conservative Republican from Long Island, has turned to an unlikely weapon: Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City.In recent weeks, and despite Mr. Adams’s protestations, Mr. Zeldin has repeatedly aligned himself with Mr. Adams, a first-term Democrat, over the issue of the state’s 2019 bail reform law, which both men have argued is deeply flawed and needs to be overhauled.It is a message that some other Republicans have also begun sounding, echoing the law-and-order credo that helped Mr. Adams get elected last year and the litany that Republicans have been reciting in races across the country. Their goal appears to be to focus swing voters on crime and public safety rather than divisive social issues, like abortion, that often lead those voters to favor Democrats.Marc Molinaro, a Republican running for Congress in the newly redrawn 19th Congressional District, which now stretches from the northern Hudson Valley to the Southern Tier, said he sometimes invokes Mr. Adams’s call to tighten bail restrictions.“I will say it in town hall meetings, sort of to emphasize the logic of the reforms that we want to see, I point to Mayor Adams,” said Mr. Molinaro, who serves as the Dutchess County executive.The Republican minority leaders in the State Legislature have also cited Mr. Adams, and Nick Langworthy, the state Republican Party chair, suggested other Republicans would be wise to employ the tactic.“I do think that Mayor Adams’s position could be used” more broadly, he said. “Not because he’s collaborating, but because common sense should unite people of all party affiliations.”With less than two months until Election Day, Mr. Zeldin is generally considered an underdog against Gov. Kathy Hochul, with polls generally showing him consistently behind the incumbent. Mr. Zeldin is also badly trailing Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, in the fund-raising race, and has recently leaned on Mr. Trump for help.Mr. Zeldin’s embrace of Mr. Adams is particularly striking given Mr. Adams’s endorsement of Ms. Hochul and the outsize role that the mayor’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, played as a boogeyman for conservative campaigns across New York State during his eight years in office. Republicans frequently deployed Mr. de Blasio as an example of liberalism run amok, often tying him to candidates with little or no actual connection to the former mayor.“I believe the story that will be written in 2023 is how well a Governor Zeldin is working with Mayor Adams to save this city and to save the state,” Mr. Zeldin said in a recent interview. History is against him: Mr. Zeldin, a four-term congressman who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, is seeking to become only the second Republican to be elected governor of New York in the last 50 years.But he believes he has a path to defeating Ms. Hochul, if he can capture about 30 percent of the New York City voters, something he thinks he is capable of doing despite daunting odds. The city is overwhelmingly Democratic, with Republicans and Conservative Party members making up about 10 percent of the city’s more than five million registered voters. Voters who decline to state their affiliation — generally considered independents — make up approximately 20 percent.William F.B. O’Reilly, a Republican consultant who worked with Rob Astorino, one of Mr. Zeldin’s vanquished primary opponents, said that by parroting Mayor Adams’s rhetoric on crime, Mr. Zeldin and Republicans elsewhere can heighten their appeal to independents and some middle-of-the-road Democrats.“By aligning himself with a prominent Democrat, it suggests that he’s part of the middle,” Mr. O’Reilly said, noting that Mr. Adams’s race could also be a factor. “He’s Black, he’s a Democrat, he’s a former police officer, and I think he’s generally considered a centrist. So the closer that Zeldin can get to him the better.”Ms. Hochul’s camp scoffs at the notion that Mr. Zeldin — who opposes abortion rights, supports nearly unfettered gun rights and has been close with former President Donald J. Trump — can somehow present himself as a moderate.Mayor Eric Adams, right, largely based his campaign on a law-and-order platform.Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times“This is another pathetic attempt from Lee Zeldin to distract voters from his extreme MAGA positions,” said Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for the Hochul campaign. “Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams have made progress on countless issues and shared Democratic priorities, from reducing gun violence to expanding child care to getting our economy back on track.” Likewise, Mr. Adams has resoundingly and repeatedly rejected any suggestion that he and Mr. Zeldin have anything in common, saying that Mr. Zeldin is a threat to public safety, not an asset. Mr. Zeldin has criticized the state’s strict gun laws and hailed a recent Supreme Court decision allowing easier use of concealed weapons.“In spite of what people are attempting to say — Lee Zeldin and I are aligned at the hip — we must have a broken hip because he clearly doesn’t get it,” Mr. Adams said in August. “He has voted against all of the responsible gun laws in Congress.”Still, the implied association between the mayor and the Republican nominee has dismayed his fellow Democrats, particularly those whose political beliefs are to the left of his.“It’s not surprising that Zeldin wants to latch on to the Democratic mayor of the state’s largest city,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, the Queens Democrat who serves as deputy majority leader in Albany’s upper chamber. “What is surprising is the mayor is giving him the fuel to do so.”Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat, said that it was “inevitable” that Republicans would pick up the similarities between their rhetoric and Mr. Adams’s in an election year, even if the mayor disapproves of Mr. Zeldin.“As a Democrat, this isn’t where you want to be, especially with other gender and racial justice issues that he’s clearly not aligned with Lee Zeldin on, ” Mr. Kim said. “So it’s unfortunate that he’s giving him cover around bail when there’s other big things that Democrats want to home in on.”The disdain expressed by Mr. Gianaris and Mr. Kim is part of a larger schism in the state Democratic Party between progressives and more centrist leaders like Mr. Adams, a former police captain who was elected in part by promising robust law enforcement in a city suffering from a rise in some forms of violent crime.Mr. Zeldin has made repeated references to Mr. Adams’s stance on bail in campaign events and news releases, echoing the mayor’s call for a special legislative session devoted to the issue.In 2019, the state changed its bail law to prevent those charged with relatively minor crimes from being held on bail. Proponents of the new law argue that the issuance of bail disproportionately affects poorer people, keeping them in jail because they cannot afford to post bail.The law, which took effect the following year, has since been amended twice amid widespread opposition from law enforcement officials, who claim it has led to increased crime. No data has emerged indicating that to be the case.Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn who helped craft the bail reform legislation, says it is particularly rich for Mr. Zeldin to use bail reform to paint himself a law-and-order candidate, in light of his fealty to Mr. Trump.“Lee Zeldin and those around him in my mind have zero credibility on public safety,” Mr. Myrie said. “This is the same candidate who, after the former president stole nuclear secrets from the White House, instead of distancing himself from that, has only drawn closer to him.”Mr. Myrie, who is Black, also noted a racial dynamic inherent to the debate. Both Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who is a constant Zeldin target, and Mr. Adams are Black. Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Trump are white.“I truly believe that deep down, race is driving this conversation,” he said. “That’s why to me it’s very insidious sometimes what we hear emanating from the mayor’s office or from various other city agencies, because they — they being the Republicans — are not good faith actors when it comes to this, and you have put Black men in the line of fire because of the nature and the temperature of the rhetoric around public safety.”In an interview, Mr. Zeldin said that bail wasn’t the only issue on which he agreed with Mr. Adams, noting his support for mayoral control of schools, something that Albany lawmakers agreed to in June, but only after extracting concessions on reducing class sizes.“I thought it was absurd,” said Mr. Zeldin, of the Legislature’s negotiating tactics. “He had just got into office. The correct policy is just to extend mayoral control. So just do it.”Mr. Zeldin says that he and Mr. Adams became acquainted, from opposite sides of the aisle, when both were state senators in Albany, sometimes sharing lunch amid colleagues in a conference room adjacent to the Senate floor.While in Albany in 2013, Mr. Adams also served as a chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging, the only mainstream Democrat to hold a chairmanship in that period from the chamber’s Republican leaders. Mr. Zeldin, who also served on the committee, recalled that the two “got along well, and we stayed in touch afterward.”“It’s not like he’s calling me up to be the best man at his wedding, or vice versa,” Mr. Zeldin added. “But the goal here, the objective, the motive is to work together.”Jonah Bromwich contributed reporting. More

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      Eric Adams Is Using Endorsements to Influence Policy

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      The mayor has chosen sides in at least 10 primaries this year, as he looks to enact criminal justice changes and defeat left-leaning candidates.Most big-city mayors, especially those in the relative infancy of their tenures, typically try to avoid wading into fractious party primaries, mindful that their goal is to build consensus.Mayor Eric Adams of New York City does not subscribe to that theory.Just seven months into his first term, Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has injected himself into his party’s divide, making endorsements in roughly a dozen state legislative primaries.Mr. Adams has endorsed incumbents, upstart challengers, and even a minister with a history of making antisemitic and homophobic statements.Behind all the endorsements lies a common theme: The mayor wants to push Albany and his party away from the left, toward the center.“I just want reasonable thinking lawmakers. I want people that are responding to the constituents,” Mr. Adams said Thursday. “The people of this city, they want to support police, they want safe streets, they want to make sure people who are part of the catch-release-repeat system don’t continue to hurt innocent New Yorkers.”In Tuesday’s State Senate primary, the mayor has endorsed three candidates facing rivals backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. The mayor said the endorsements are meant to help elect people willing to tighten the state’s bail law, a move that he believes is needed to address an uptick in serious crime.Mr. Adams’s most striking endorsement might be his decision to back the Rev. Conrad Tillard, who has disavowed his remarks about gay people and Jews, over incumbent Senator Jabari Brisport, a member of the Democratic Socialists.The mayor, who proudly hires people with troubled pasts, said Mr. Tillard is a changed man. During a recent interview on WABC radio, Mr. Tillard said that Mr. Adams was elected with a “mandate” to make New York City safer.“I want to join him in Albany, and I want to join other legislators who have common sense, who realize that without safe streets, safe communities, we cannot have a thriving city,” he said.The mayor has also held a fund-raiser for Miguelina Camilo, a lawyer running against Senator Gustavo Rivera in the Bronx. Mr. Rivera was endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has criticized Mr. Adams for some of his centrist views; Ms. Camilo is the candidate of the Bronx Democratic Party.In a newly created Senate district that covers parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, the mayor has endorsed a moderate Democrat, Elizabeth Crowley, over Kristen Gonzalez, a tech worker who is supported by the Democratic Socialists and the Working Families Party. Mike Corbett, a former City Council staff member, is also running. The race has been flooded with outside money supporting Ms. Crowley.In Brooklyn, Mr. Adams endorsed incumbent Senator Kevin Parker, who is facing a challenge from Kaegan Mays-Williams, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney, and David Alexis, a former Lyft driver and co-founder of the Drivers Cooperative who also has support from the Democratic Socialists.Senator Kevin Parker, endorsed by the mayor, faces a Democratic Socialist opponent.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesThree candidates — Mr. Brisport, Ms. Gonzalez and Mr. Alexis — whose rivals were supported by Mr. Adams said they are opposed to revising the bail law to keep more people in jail before their trials.“When it comes to an issue like bail reform, what we don’t want to have is a double standard where if you have enough money you can make bail and get out, but if you are poor or working class you don’t,” Ms. Gonzalez said.Mr. Brisport said that the mayor’s motive extends beyond bail and criminal justice issues.Mr. Adams, Mr. Brisport said, is “making a concerted effort to build a team that will do his bidding in Albany.”The mayor did not disagree.In his first dealings with Albany as a mayor, Mr. Adams fell short of accomplishing his legislative agenda. He had some victories, but was displeased with the Legislature’s refusal to accommodate his wishes on the bail law or to grant him long-term control of the schools, two issues central to his agenda.While crime overall remains comparatively low and homicides and shootings are down, other crimes such as robbery, assault and burglary have increased as much as 40 percent compared with this time last year. Without evidence, the mayor has blamed the bail reform law for letting repeat offenders out of jail.Under pressure from the governor, the Legislature in April made changes to the bail law, but the mayor has repeatedly criticized lawmakers for not going far enough.Mr. Adams has raised campaign money for Miguelina Camilo, center. Janice Chung for The New York Times“We passed a lot of laws for people who commit crimes, but I just want to see what are the list of laws we pass that deal with a New Yorker who was the victim of a crime,” Mr. Adams said. The mayor’s strategy is not entirely new. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought influence by donating from his personal fortune to Republicans. Mayor Bill de Blasio embarked on a disastrous fund-raising plan to help Democrats take control of the Senate in 2014. But those mayors were interceding in general elections, not intraparty primaries.In the June Assembly primaries, Mr. Adams endorsed a handful of incumbents facing upstart challengers from the left. He backed Michael Benedetto, an incumbent from the Bronx who beat back a primary challenge from Jonathan Soto, who worked for, and was endorsed by, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Adams also endorsed Assemblywoman Inez E. Dickens in Central Harlem in her victorious campaign against another candidate backed by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.“The jury is still out on how much endorsements matter, but they do matter for the person being endorsed,” said Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a Democratic political strategist and former aide to Mr. de Blasio. “It’s good to keep your friends close.”Mr. Adams’s influence is not restricted to his endorsements. Striving for a Better New York, a political action committee run by one of his associates, the Rev. Alfred L. Cockfield II, donated $7,500 to Mr. Tillard in May and more than $12,000 to Mr. Parker through August.The mayor’s efforts have come under attack. Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader in the Senate, said there is no need to create a new faction in the Senate that is reminiscent of the Independent Democratic Conference, a group of breakaway Democrats that allowed Senate Republicans to control the chamber until they were vanquished in 2018.“Eric Adams was never very good at Senate politics when he was in the Senate,” Mr. Gianaris said. “And apparently he hasn’t gotten much better at it.”It’s unclear how much influence Mr. Adams’s endorsements will have. Sumathy Kumar, co-chair of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, said that with the mayor’s lukewarm approval ratings, she’s betting that on-the-ground organizing will be the deciding factor in what is expected to be a low turnout primary.Mr. Parker said the mayor’s endorsement would be influential in his district and supported Mr. Adams’s push against the left wing of the party.“How many times do you have to be attacked by the D.S.A. before you realize you’re in a fight and decide to fight back?” Mr. Parker said.Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting. More

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      Adams Won’t Let Up on Bail Reform, Putting Pressure on Hochul

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      Mayor Eric Adams is calling forcefully for another round of changes to state bail law, putting pressure on Gov. Kathy Hochul as she runs for a full term in November.Hours before Mayor Eric Adams held a news conference on Wednesday to argue that an “insane, broken system” allowed repeat offenders to keep getting arrested and then released without bail in New York City, Gov. Kathy Hochul issued something of a pre-emptive strike.Four months ago, the governor and the State Legislature tightened New York’s bail laws for the second time in three years, making more crimes bail-eligible and giving judges additional discretion to consider both the severity of a case and a defendant’s repeat offenses when setting bail.But the mayor, dissatisfied with the city’s crime rates, was again putting the ball back in her court.At her own news conference, the governor, visibly peeved, brought up the recent bail law revisions. “I’m not sure why everybody intentionally ignores this,” she said. “But people are out there and, you know, people trying to make political calculations based on this.”She did not mention Mr. Adams, a fellow Democrat, by name, or, for that matter, her Republican opponent in November, Representative Lee Zeldin. But both Mr. Adams and Mr. Zeldin have hammered the governor on the state’s approach to bail and have made similar claims about how the bail laws have affected crime rates.Mr. Adams, who has based much of his mayoral platform on reducing crime, even made use of physical props on Wednesday to illustrate his point. He made his remarks next to poster boards detailing the crimes of individuals he said were some of the city’s worst recidivists. (Mr. Adams said his lawyers forbade him from releasing the individuals’ names.)Mayor Adams gave examples of how some repeat offenders had committed multiple crimes after being released without bail.Natalie Keyssar for The New York TimesThe mayor and his police officials also unleashed a litany of statistics they said demonstrated the severity of the problem.“Our recidivism rates have skyrocketed,” Mr. Adams said. “Let’s look at the real numbers. In 2022, 25 percent of the 1,494 people arrested for burglary committed another felony within 60 days.”He added: “In 2017, however, just 7.7 percent went on to commit another crime.”In 2019, state lawmakers rewrote bail law so that fewer people awaiting trial landed behind bars because they could not afford to post bail. Law enforcement agencies have furiously fought the law, whose implementation came at the beginning of the pandemic, during which gun crime rose in cities around the country.After a wave of criticism, lawmakers agreed upon a set of changes in 2020 that added two dozen crimes to the list of serious charges for which a judge could impose cash bail.The second revisions to bail law came earlier this year, after Mr. Adams demanded further changes, angering many lawmakers.But Mr. Adams said tougher revisions are still needed. He called on the state to allow judges to more frequently take dangerousness into account when deciding to set bail, and to have some juveniles’ cases play out in criminal court rather than family court.He insisted on Wednesday that he was not trying to target the governor, his ostensible political ally whom he endorsed less than two months ago. Ms. Hochul, likewise, chose to highlight the programs she and the mayor had worked on together, and the ways they were “in sync.”The mayor and governor have made a point of projecting political comity, a new tone after years of public feuding between their predecessors, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.But the uptick in crime and Mr. Adams’s laserlike focus on the issue threatens to strain their relationship.Murders and shootings are down slightly this year, but major crimes including burglaries have risen more than 35 percent.Mr. Adams, a former police captain, sometimes turns to hyperbole to describe the situation. In May, he said he had never seen crime at these levels, despite serving as a police officer in the 1980s, when crime was far, far higher. Today’s murder rate, for example, is roughly on par with 2009, when Michael R. Bloomberg was mayor.But Mr. Adams ran for office on the premise that he would bring down crime, and his political imperatives threaten to collide with Ms. Hochul’s, who has every incentive to cast herself as firmly in control of the situation.Many left-leaning advocates, as well as some political leaders, have pushed the state to not undo changes made to the bail laws in recent years.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesLegislative leaders in Albany have recoiled at Mr. Adam’s recent comments. When a reporter last week asked the mayor if he wanted a special session to address bail reform, and the mayor responded in the affirmative, Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader in the Senate, compared him to Republicans.“It’s sad Mayor Adams has joined the ranks of right wingers who are so grossly demagoguing this issue,” Mr. Gianaris said. “He should focus less on deflecting from his own responsibility for higher crime and more on taking steps that would actually make New York safer.”When Mr. Adams pressed for the second wave of changes to the law earlier this year, Ms. Hochul adopted the cause as her own, expending significant political power to do so. The effort met with fierce opposition in the Legislature, with one lawmaker going on a hunger strike to oppose the Hochul plan.And while Ms. Hochul was ultimately successful in winning alterations, the effort left a stain on her relationship with the Legislature.Among other things, the 2022 revisions made more crimes eligible for bail, and gave judges additional discretion to consider whether a defendant is accused of causing “serious harm” to someone, or has a history of using or possessing a gun. The new changes did not, however, impose a dangerousness standard that Mr. Adams is now pressing for, which criminal justice advocates argue is subject to racial bias.Mr. Adams’s decision to push for even more changes has created an opening for Mr. Zeldin, who last week held a news conference to voice support for Mr. Adams’s calls for a special session to address bail reform.“I believe that judges should have discretion to weigh dangerousness and flight risk and past criminal records and seriousness of the offense on far more offenses,” Mr. Zeldin said.A poll this week found that Ms. Hochul has a 14-point lead over Mr. Zeldin — “an early but certainly not insurmountable lead,” according to the pollster at Siena College.Gov. Hochul said that judges and prosecutors had the “tools they needed” to improve public safety, but had not deployed them effectively.Anna Watts for The New York TimesThe mayor on Wednesday took pains to insist that he and Mr. Zeldin were not, in fact, joined at the hip.“We must have a broken hip, because he clearly doesn’t get it,” Mr. Adams said of Mr. Zeldin. “He has voted against all of the responsible gun laws in Congress.”The Legal Aid Society, the main legal provider for poor New Yorkers, said in a statement on Wednesday that the Adams administration was trying to “cherry-pick a handful of cases to misguide New Yorkers and convince them that bail reform is responsible for all of society’s ills.”Ms. Hochul was more circumspect in her criticism, instead focusing on the recent revisions to the bail laws. She said that the changes gave judges and district attorneys “the tools they need” to improve public safety and suggested that those who failed to utilize them should answer to voters.“I believe in accountability at all levels,” she said. “And you know, people can’t just be saying that they don’t have something when they do have it.”Jonah E. Bromwich More

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      How Bruce Blakeman Used a Mask Rebellion to Revive His Career

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      Since a surprise win on Long Island, Bruce Blakeman has been on a seemingly single-minded mission to challenge and defy Gov. Kathy Hochul over mask mandates.Bruce Blakeman, who has emerged as the leader of suburban Long Island’s revolt against mask mandates, has lost his fair share of elections.In 1998, Mr. Blakeman — a lifelong Republican — was trounced in a statewide election for comptroller. A year later, he was stunned to be voted out of the Nassau County Legislature, losing his perch as its presiding officer and majority leader. After toying with a run for New York City mayor in 2009, he then lost a congressional race to Representative Kathleen Rice of Long Island in 2014.But Mr. Blakeman’s surprising November win in the race for Nassau County executive — upsetting Laura Curran, a moderate, first-term Democrat — has led, after so many races, to his informal anointment as the state party’s unlikeliest new star.Helping to fuel his rise has been Mr. Blakeman’s seemingly single-minded political mission to challenge and defy Gov. Kathy Hochul, the state’s top Democrat, over her mask mandates, as well as rising crime rates and bail reform, which have proved potent issues for Republicans.“Bruce Blakeman is on the scene; he’s a major Republican leader in this state,” said Nick Langworthy, New York’s Republican Party chairman. “Everybody counted him out, but now Bruce has a great platform. And what I admire about him is he really wants to use it.”Mr. Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, in Mineola. His victory was part of a wave of Republican wins in the county.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Ms. Hochul announced that she would end some rules on indoor masking. Infection rates and hospitalizations have rapidly declined as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has waned. She added that counties and individual businesses could still require masks, framing that decision as empowering for local leaders.Extending that sort of restriction seems unlikely in Nassau, at least as far as the county government is concerned. Shortly after being inaugurated in early January, Mr. Blakeman made headlines by issuing a flurry of executive orders directing county agencies to stop enforcing mask mandates, and proclaiming that local school districts had to vote on whether or not to grant children what he called “the constitutional right” to cast off masks in the classroom.Whether those orders are legal or not — and Ms. Hochul says they clearly weren’t, considering that state orders outweigh local dictums — the defiant stance resulted in Mr. Blakeman’s ascension to the role of sought-after rabble-rouser, complete with repeated appearances on Fox News and a hero’s welcome in Republican circles in Albany.All of which, Mr. Blakeman insists, stems from a genuine concern for parental rights, not political gain.“I think good government is good politics,” Mr. Blakeman said in a recent interview in the State Capitol. “And part of good government is listening to your constituents.”Mr. Blakeman’s opponents counter that such platitudes are a mere disguise for an ambitious and oft-thwarted politician who has found his moment amid the polarization of the Trump era.“He’s following the tried-and-true Republican playbook,” said Jay Jacobs, who serves as both the Nassau County Democratic Party chair, as well as state chairman for the party. “You either scare the voters or make them angry.”Mr. Blakeman’s sudden celebrity has already paid dividends in one way: Less than a week after he announced his executive orders, his party selected Nassau County as the host for its 2022 convention later this month, noting the “historic Republican resurgence” in the county.Mr. Blakeman’s victory was part of a wave of Republican wins in Nassau, including by Anne Donnelly in the race for Nassau County district attorney, the first time that a Republican has held that position since 2005.White-maned, blue-eyed and fond of snazzy three-piece suits, Mr. Blakeman, 66, exudes a kind of old-school New York political swagger, complete with providing Page Six fodder, in part because his ex-wife, Nancy Shevell, is married to Paul McCartney.Politics is a bit of a Blakeman family business: Mr. Blakeman’s father, Robert, was a state assemblyman, and his younger brother, Bradley, was on President George W. Bush’s White House staff. One of five siblings who grew up in Valley Stream, on the Queens border, Mr. Blakeman recalls using Halloween as a campaign outing for his father.“I’d go out with an empty bag and a full bag of literature,” Mr. Blakeman said. “I came back home with a full bag of candy and an empty bag of literature.”After college and law school stints in Arizona and California — working for Republican campaigns and as a driver and aide to the former first lady Nancy Reagan — Mr. Blakeman returned to Long Island to serve as a partner in his father’s firm before being appointed Hempstead town councilman in 1993. He won a full term on the council later that same year, before being elected to the County Legislature in 1995.Mr. Blakeman at a meeting of the Nassau County Legislature in 1996. His father, Robert, was a state assemblyman.Vic DeLucia/The New York TimesLast winter, he had come full circle, once again serving as a member of the Hempstead Town council, when the Nassau County Republican chairman, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., approached him about taking on Ms. Curran.He was ambivalent, he said, because he was in “a very comfortable place in my life” and “wasn’t sure I wanted to go into that kind of a battle.”But, Mr. Blakeman said, he saw an opening as he looked at polling, saying that while Ms. Curran was popular, “she was upside-down on every important issue,” including bail reform. A 2019 law passed by Democrats in Albany had effectively abolished bail for many nonviolent felonies and most misdemeanors.To that end, Mr. Blakeman ran a law-and-order and anti-tax campaign. He seemingly galvanized concerned suburbanites and die-hard Trump conservatives into a winning coalition, despite Democrats outnumbering Republicans by about 25,000 in the county, with a tranche of some 200,000 independent voters.The margin was thin, with Mr. Blakeman beating Ms. Curran by less than 1 percent, or about 2,100 votes.Mr. Cairo said that Mr. Blakeman’s opponents “tried to portray him as being a loser, and that he’s only doing this because he’s Cairo’s friend.”Mr. Blakeman proved to a dogged campaigner, however, impressing even some Democrats.“I would see him along the way and he’d say, ‘Tom, we’re going to win this.’ And I would say, ‘Really?’” said Thomas DiNapoli, the state’s comptroller, a Democrat, and a figure in Nassau County politics for more than three decades. “But he believed in himself.”Mr. Blakeman also won, said Lawrence Levy, the dean of suburban studies at Hofstra University, because he “leveraged concerns over bail reform and property tax assessments in ways that appealed both to his base and the sort of moderate independent who abandoned Trump in 2020.”That combination, however, will prove to be difficult to maintain, Mr. Levy said.“He is trying to thread a political and ideological needle,” he said. “He is getting a lot of attention for taking very conservative populist positions with Trump-style rhetoric, ostensibly to deliver on promises he made to his base. But he’s also trying not to entirely alienate the sort of suburban swing voter that decides national and local elections.”Mr. Blakeman spoke at a press conference in Mineola about the funeral of Officer Wilbert D. Mora of the New York Police Department in February.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesStill, Mr. Blakeman’s victory gave particular hope to Republicans on Long Island, where liberals had celebrated in 2018, after an anti-Trump sentiment led to four State Senate seats flipping to Democrats on the island. The party then took control of the chamber for the first time in nearly a decade.And while new redistricting maps may dash any Republican dreams of seizing the State Senate — the Democrats hold a 23-seat advantage in a 63-seat chamber — Robert Ortt, the Republican minority leader, said Mr. Blakeman showed the potential potency of “bail reform and crime and public safety” in elections all across the state.“It’s a template from the standpoint that it’s a huge issue,” Mr. Ortt said, adding that “public safety is an issue we all campaign on.”Even before taking office, Mr. Blakeman was invited to Albany in mid-December to headline an anti-bail-reform rally in the State Capitol and once again took an opportunity to criticize Ms. Hochul as someone “who likes to lecture me on the law.”“When you look at this bail reform law it is nothing more than a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said, citing examples of gun charges in his county related to defendants released without bail. “It’s madness, it’s crazy and enough is enough.”In a county in which President Biden won, of course, Mr. Blakeman may well have to walk a fine line between appealing to moderates and the Republican base. Asked about President Donald J. Trump, he said he was “a very effective president,” but added: “Our personalities and delivery style are very different.”His ascension in Republican ranks has fostered some chatter that perhaps Mr. Blakeman — who lives in the well-to-do enclave of Atlantic Beach with his wife, Segal Blakeman, a lawyer — might want to challenge Ms. Hochul at some point.But Mr. Blakeman denies this, saying he supports this year’s front-runner for the Republican nomination, Representative Lee Zeldin, and is happy staying put in Nassau.“I have zero plans,” he said. “This is a great job, I love it. And I get to stay home.” More

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      Conflict Quickly Emerges Between Top Prosecutor and Police Commissioner

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      A memo by New York City’s new police leader sharply questioned Manhattan’s new district attorney over his strategy for prosecuting crime.New York City’s new police commissioner has expressed severe dissatisfaction with the policies of the new Manhattan district attorney, sending an email to all officers late on Friday that suggests a potential rupture between City Hall and the prosecutor over their approaches to public safety.The email from Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said she was deeply troubled by policies outlined by Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, in a 10-page memo that Mr. Bragg sent to his staff on Monday. The memo instructed prosecutors to avoid seeking jail or prison time for all but the most serious crimes, and to cease charging a number of lower-level crimes.Commissioner Sewell, who, like Mr. Bragg, was just a week into her job, said in her email to about 36,000 members of the department that she had studied the policies and come away “very concerned about the implications to your safety as police officers, the safety of the public and justice for the victims.”The email, which was first reported by WNBC-TV, suggests a looming conflict not just between them, but also between the new district attorney and the commissioner’s boss, Mayor Eric Adams.The collision course between the mayor and the district attorney was sketched out during the Democratic primary in the spring of 2021. Mr. Adams made a crackdown on crime one of the main themes of his campaign; Mr. Bragg, following in the path carved by a handful of prosecutors in cities around the country, pledged to help reshape the legal system, to avoid disproportionate punishment for first-time offenders or those struggling with mental health issues or poverty.In a statement on Saturday, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office said: “We share Commissioner Sewell’s call for frank and productive discussions to reach common ground on our shared mission to deliver safety and justice for all and look forward to the opportunity to clear up some misunderstandings.”“For our office, safety is paramount,” the statement said. It added that contrary to the way that Commissioner Sewell and others had interpreted parts of the memo, the office intended to charge anyone who used guns to rob stores or who assaulted police officers with felonies. “All must be held accountable for their actions,” it said.To some degree, the emerging tensions between the commissioner and Mr. Bragg reflect a broader political argument between centrist Democrats across the nation looking to soothe voters worried about crime and a movement of progressive prosecutors that has pushed for more lenient policies to make the justice system more fair and less biased.Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell has expressed serious concerns about Mr. Bragg’s policies.Hiram Durán for The New York TimesSome of those tensions are likely to play out in Albany this year in a debate over whether to scale back changes in a state bail law that went into effect two years ago, and that provoked strong reactions almost immediately.There is always an ingrained tension between the police and prosecutors that often centers on what charges to bring and, at times, whether there is sufficient evidence to make an arrest. For the police, in some measure, the job ends with handcuffs, while prosecutors are left with proving a case beyond a reasonable doubt or finding some other resolution. But such arguments do not often became public at all, let alone so early in a new administration.Mr. Adams has been complimentary about Mr. Bragg when asked about him in recent interviews, calling him a “great prosecutor” and declining to criticize the memo. Asked about the commissioner’s email, the mayor’s office responded with a statement from Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser: “The mayor has deep respect for the district attorney and looks forward to working with him and the police commissioner to make sure the streets are safe, and to discussing any concerns directly.”A police spokesman said the email “speaks for itself.”Mr. Bragg and Mr. Adams, both Democrats, have significant histories in law enforcement, and both have pledged some measure of reform. Mr. Bragg, a former federal prosecutor, stood out in a competitive primary vowing to balance safety with justice. Mr. Adams, a former police captain, has spoken out against police brutality and, while serving, pushed for changes within the department.Mr. Bragg is the first Black person to lead the district attorney’s office, Mr. Adams is the second Black mayor in the city’s history, and Commissioner Sewell is the first woman and third Black person to lead the Police Department.In his memo, Mr. Bragg instructed his prosecutors that unless they were required by law to do otherwise, they should ask judges for jail or prison time only for those who had committed serious offenses, including murder, sexual assault and major economic crimes. Others, he has said, would be directed to programs better equipped to deal with the issues that had led them to commit the crimes.The new district attorney also instructed his prosecutors not to charge a number of misdemeanors. Many of the crimes on his list already were not being prosecuted by his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. But Mr. Bragg directed his staff to avoid charging several misdemeanors which previously had been charged, including resisting arrest.“These policy changes not only will, in and of themselves, make us safer; they also will free up prosecutorial resources to focus on violent crime,” Mr. Bragg said in his memo.The directive on resisting arrest was among those that Commissioner Sewell expressed most concern about. She said that it would send a message to police officers and others that there was “an unwillingness to protect those who are carrying out their duties.”“I strongly believe that this policy injects debate into decisions that would otherwise be uncontroversial, will invite violence against police officers and will have deleterious effects on our relationship with the communities we protect,” she wrote.Incoming N.Y.C. Mayor Eric Adams’s New AdministrationCard 1 of 7Schools Chancellor: David Banks. More