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      New York Election Will Test Asian Americans’ Political Power

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      Whether they stick with Democrats or continue their shift to the right, Asian American voters will help decide competitive races on Nov. 7.Two years ago, many Asian American voters in New York City demonstrated their political muscle by voting for Republicans in traditional Democratic enclaves, voicing their concerns about crime and education while sending a warning signal to Democrats.The message was quickly received.“Our party better start giving more” attention to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Representative Grace Meng, a Democrat and the first Asian American elected to Congress from New York, wrote on Twitter at the time, using more colorful language to drive home her point.Asian Americans’ growing political clout was also seen in the New York City Council that year, when a record five were elected, including the first Indian American and Korean American members.As the Nov. 7 election nears, in which every City Council seat will be up for grabs, Asian Americans’ strength — as well as their political alliances — will be put to another test.Several Asian Americans are running in this year’s Council races, most notably in a so-called Asian opportunity district in Brooklyn that was created last year as part of a once-a-decade redistricting process to reflect the community’s growth.“I’ve never seen so many Asian Americans running for office,” said Councilwoman Linda Lee, the Democratic incumbent from Eastern Queens who is running against Bernard Chow, a health care benefits adviser and a Republican, in another race where both major party nominees are of Asian descent.Councilwoman Linda Lee, a Democrat, was one of a record five Asian Americans to be elected to the Council in 2021.Janice Chung for The New York TimesWith Asian American influence clearly on the rise, Democratic and Republican leaders are strategizing over how best to capture their votes.Leading Democrats, including Attorney General Letitia James, have expressed concern that the party is losing touch with Asian American voters, especially in southern Brooklyn and Queens, in part because it has not capably battled “misinformation and disinformation.”Republicans, meanwhile, have cast the wave of migrants who have recently come to New York in a negative light, hoping to attract more conservative Asian American voters by deploying a similar strategy as last year, when they amplified fears of crime as a wedge issue.Focusing on such issues may attract Asian American swing voters who may not otherwise be inclined to “completely flip Republican,” said Jerry Kassar, chairman of the state Conservative Party, but are “willing to cast their vote for Republicans.”The Queens district being contested by Ms. Lee and Mr. Chow includes the Hollis, Douglaston and Bellerose neighborhoods and is 45 percent Asian. Like in many districts with significant Asian American populations, Democrats and Republicans there often hold similar stances on the top line issues of public safety, education and the arrival of migrants.Both Ms. Lee and Mr. Chow opposed the placement of a tent complex for 1,000 men in the parking lot of Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Floral Park, Queens, but Mr. Chow contends, incorrectly, that the migrants are here illegally.“I earned my way in,” said Mr. Chow, who emigrated from Hong Kong to the United States to attend college before becoming a citizen.In July, while Ms. Lee was holding a news conference in a building near the psychiatric center to oppose the tent city, on the grounds that the infrastructure in the area wasn’t sufficient to provide for 1,000 additional people, Mr. Chow was outside with protesters, some who held up signs that said “send them back.”Mr. Chow said opposing the shelter was not enough and that Ms. Lee could have done more, including standing with protesters to demand change. Ms. Lee said she spends time with voters explaining what she has done to mitigate issues around the tent city but rejects the xenophobic comments made at some of the rallies.“Asylum seekers come here from horrible situations, and they want to work,” Ms. Lee said.In northern Queens, Asian American voters are being courted in a rematch of a 2021 election in which the Republican candidate, Vickie Paladino, narrowly defeated Tony Avella, a Democrat.Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, a Republican, works with three surrogates, including Yanling Zhang, right, to better reach Asian American voters.Janice Chung for The New York TimesMs. Paladino often knocks on doors with one of three Asian American surrogates, and Mr. Avella has prioritized printing campaign fliers in Mandarin and Korean, reflecting the fact that Asians now comprise 38 percent of the district.“I think the Asian community is finally coming into its own,” Mr. Avella said. “For decades, they were not listened to. Now, they can turn an election.”Asians are the fastest growing group in New York City, according to the 2020 census, which shows that New York City gained 630,000 new residents, 55 percent of whom are Asian, in the previous decade. “Asian Americans are a waking giant,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic consultant who is working on Mr. Avella’s campaign. “We’re not sleeping any more.”Both Ms. Paladino and Mr. Avella have said the nation’s southern border should be closed because of how the migrant crisis is affecting the city.But Mr. Avella has accused Ms. Paladino of making xenophobic remarks about Asians. He sent out a campaign mailer highlighting comments that Ms. Paladino made about how many “Asian languages” there are and noting that she liked a social media post saying that the country should “stop catering to Asians” because “we speak English,” using an expletive for emphasis.Ms. Paladino said Mr. Avella had dug up “joke tweets” from years ago because he had “nothing productive to add to the conversation,” and that she had worked on behalf of Asian Americans for years.Tony Avella, left, prints campaign fliers in Mandarin and Korean, in recognition that 38 percent of his district is of Asian descent.Janice Chung for The New York TimesIn the new Asian opportunity district in southern Brooklyn, the Democratic nominee, Susan Zhuang, and the Republican nominee, Ying Tan, each held rallies in August to oppose a migrant center in Sunset Park that is not even located in their district.Ms. Zhuang and Ms. Tan have focused their campaigns on crime, quality-of-life issues and education, as they fight to represent a district that is 54 percent Asian.During a recent debate, they argued over whether the other had done enough to protect the specialized high school entrance exam and speak out against migrant shelters. Ms. Tan said the city’s right to shelter should be eliminated entirely, while Ms. Zhuang said it should not apply to recent migrants.Mr. Yang, the Democratic consultant, said that the candidates’ response to the migrant influx illustrates how many Asian American voters are more concerned with particular issues than political party lines. Asian Americans, particularly Chinese Americans, are more likely to be unaffiliated with a political party than any racial minority, he added.Hate crimes against Asian Americans is one those issues. A protest on Monday about a 13-year-old Asian teen who was beaten by an adult drew both Mr. Chow and John Liu, a center-left Democratic state senator and the first Asian American elected to citywide office.Both Mr. Liu and Mr. Chow called for criminal charges against the teen’s father to be dropped because he was acting in self-defense.“Incidents like that make people aware in terms of the importance of local elected officials,” said Yiatin Chu, president of the Asian Wave Alliance, which co-sponsored the protest. “What are they saying? How are they helping us navigate these things?”The protest was one of many recent examples of how Asian Americans are pushing elected Democrats to take their concerns more seriously.Shekar Krishnan, the first Indian American elected to the City Council, has a large Bangladeshi population in his district, but noted that there were very few Bengali dual-language programs in public schools.“Government is not hearing our concerns and not taking them seriously enough and treats us still like a monolith,” said Mr. Krishnan, who represents Jackson Heights and Elmhurst in Queens.Grace Lee, an assemblywoman who represents Lower Manhattan, and Mr. Liu are publicly working to protect the commuter vans that are prevalent in Asian communities, and make sure they are not unduly harmed by new congestion pricing rules.The vans are a form of mass transit “that is vital to the Asian American community,” Ms. Lee said. “Those are the sort of things where representation matters.”Ms. Meng said she was starting to see things change. In a recent special election in a Queens Assembly district covering Kew Gardens, College Point and Whitestone, Democrats were able to win over voters who had supported Lee Zeldin, last year’s Republican nominee for governor, instead of Gov. Kathy Hochul.The Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee ran ads in Asian media every day during early voting and worked with a Chinese newspaper to place messages in WeChat, a Chinese messaging app.Councilwoman Sandra Ung represents a district in Flushing, Queens, that has the state’s highest share of Asians.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesOn a warm Friday evening, Sandra Ung, one of the five Asian Americans elected to the Council in 2021, walked north on Main Street in Flushing to knock on doors. Asians comprise 72 percent of her district, the highest share in the city, and Ms. Ung wanted to reach older, first-generation immigrants.One woman, speaking in Mandarin, wanted help finding her polling place. Ms. Ung, a Democrat, and her campaign manager both pulled out their phones.“Ni hao,” Ms. Ung said to another woman who stuck her hand out of the door just far enough to grab a flier written in Mandarin, Korean and English. After a brief conversation in Chinese, the woman said she planned to vote for Ms. Ung.“Sometimes,” Ms. Ung said as she headed for the next apartment, “they just want to have someone who is speaking their language.” More

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      In a Democratic District, Can a Party Defector Get Elected?

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      A contest between two New York City councilmen, Justin Brannan and Ari Kagan, will measure how strong the rightward shift is in southern Brooklyn.At a public housing complex in Coney Island, Brooklyn, a powerful Democratic councilman sought to quickly make the case for why voters should reject his opponent.“He was elected as a Democrat,” the councilman, Justin Brannan, said to a resident. “But he sold us out and became a Trump Republican.”Until recently, that simple argument would have been persuasive enough to convince most voters in this part of New York. But times have changed, and so has the political makeup of certain swaths of the city: Even though Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by three to one, Republicans won three competitive state legislative seats in southern Brooklyn in 2022.Mr. Brannan’s opponent is Ari Kagan, a councilman who was elected as a Democrat to represent Coney Island, but is now a Republican. Because of redistricting, Mr. Brannan and Mr. Kagan have wound up contesting the same district.Mr. Kagan, who would probably have faced long odds against Mr. Brannan in a Democratic primary, won the Republican primary in June, setting up the most competitive and contentious Council election in the city. Its outcome could be a harbinger of whether recent Republican gains in southern Brooklyn might continue.It’s an area where in the 2021 mayoral election, the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, drew slightly more votes than the Democrat, Eric Adams, who won by 40 percentage points citywide.Mr. Kagan has quickly adopted the talking points of his party, criticizing Mr. Brannan, who heads the Council’s Finance Committee, for failing to rein in the city’s spending and allowing the trinity of city crises — crime, migrants and homelessness — to flourish.Justin Brannan spoke to Julia Daniely while canvassing voters in Coney Island. He left the Councl’s progressive caucus this year.Paul Frangipane for The New York Times“He voted for and advocated for $1.4 billion for migrant services for the unbelievable migrant crisis, the public safety crisis, homelessness crisis, quality of life crisis, exorbitant taxation, exorbitant cost of living,” Mr. Kagan said in an interview.“He’s the chair of the Finance Committee, and he likes to say that he’s in the room where all decisions are made,” he added. “Then he has to own his own decisions.”Mr. Brannan talked about the money he has brought back to his district to renovate parks and build new schools and said Mr. Kagan is more focused on “demagoguery” than solutions.As early voting for the Nov. 7 election begins Saturday, issues such as abortion, the influx of asylum seekers and the war between Israeli and Gaza have often overshadowed more local concerns like trash pickup, the need for new parks and the poor living conditions in public housing.The district, the 47th, includes Coney Island, Bay Ridge and part of Bath Beach, and its residents are 49 percent white and 20 percent Asian. The race there is a prime example of how the nation’s divisive political debate has seeped into more local discourse, said Andrew Gounardes, a progressive Democratic state senator who represents southern Brooklyn and who endorsed Mr. Brannan.“If we’re cutting a ribbon for a new park and you’re sitting there talking about vaccines, it’s hard to bring you back from that,” Mr. Gounardes said. “Maybe we never really had you.”Mr. Brannan has nonetheless seemed to have adjusted his political stances, perhaps in recognition of the shifts among voters in South Brooklyn. He left the Council’s Progressive Caucus earlier this year because he opposed a new statement of principles that required its members to commit to reducing “the size and scope” of the Police Department.He, like Mr. Kagan, says he opposes the placement of migrant shelters in their district — a stance that has put him at odds with fellow Democrats, including Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, an assemblywoman who leads the Brooklyn Democratic Party. She said that predominantly white neighborhoods like Bay Ridge in Brooklyn should have migrant shelters and criticized Mr. Brannan for not being supportive.“Justin has an opportunity to contrast himself from his Republican opponent and support a Bay Ridge shelter as a true blue progressive Democrat,” Ms. Bichotte Hermelyn said.Mr. Brannan still has broad support from reliable Democratic mainstays, including several labor unions. He is also being backed by Future NYC, a pro-business super PAC supporting moderate Democrats, which is expected to spend around $100,000 on attack ads that paint Mr. Kagan as “unhinged” and a “Democrat turned Republican.”“Justin is actually a pretty good example of someone who is a center left Democrat. He’s not for defunding the police,” said Jeff Leb, the group’s treasurer. “Ari has become a complete extremist.” Mr. Brannan has attacked Mr. Kagan for refusing to fire his campaign manager, who made derogatory statements on social media about African Americans and the L.G.B.T.Q. community. He has also criticized Mr. Kagan for shifting his stance on abortion.In the Campaign Finance Board’s voter guide, Mr. Kagan wrote that “life starts at conception,” and that abortions should only be allowed in cases of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is in danger. But in July 2022, when he was a Democrat, Mr. Kagan voted in favor of a package of bills that strengthened access to abortion and reproductive health in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.Ari Kagan, right, still has the support of Wanda Feliciano, center, even though he has switched parties.Paul Frangipane for The New York Times“I‘m still a Democrat,” Mr. Brannan said, noting Mr. Kagan’s rightward shift. “I didn’t sell my soul to keep my job.” He launched a website called the “Ari Kagan Accountability Project” to track the positions Mr. Kagan has shifted on since switching parties. Mr. Kagan said that he’s against racism and homophobia, and that his campaign manager apologized. He regrets his vote on the abortion legislation but not his shift to being a Republican — a move that may make him more attractive to the area’s Russian American voters.Gregory Davidzon, who owns Russian language media outlets where Mr. Kagan — who emigrated from Russia three decades ago — once worked, said that Mr. Kagan, like other Republican candidates in the area, would have broad support in the community.He pointed to a neighboring district encompassing Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay, where the sitting councilwoman, Inna Vernikov, was recently arrested after she openly displayed a gun on her hip at a pro-Palestine rally that she opposed. He said the arrest would not hurt her chances at re-election.“If it was Mickey Mouse on the ballot, it would be a vote for the Republican as well,” Mr. Davidzon said.Mr. Kagan has also won endorsements from several law enforcement unions; the Parent Party, a group that supports school choice and policing; and the conservative Asian Wave Alliance.Among the few things Mr. Brannan and Mr. Kagan agree on is that a casino shouldn’t be built in Coney Island. Each also thinks that his opponent represents his party’s more extreme positions.At a recent visit to Unity Towers, a city housing development in Coney Island, Wanda Feliciano, a former tenant leader, told Mr. Kagan that he still had her support even though he was now a Republican.“He did what he had to do for a reason,” Ms. Feliciano said, adding that she remembered how Mr. Kagan helped expedite repairs to the heating system in the buildings and brought food and supplies for residents during the pandemic.“He’s still going to do good for us no matter what party he’s in,” she added.At Carey Gardens, the public housing development that Mr. Brannan had visited, Mr. Kagan’s party switch was met with far less enthusiasm.Mr. Brannan told Star Turnage, 42, a construction worker, that her Council representative had switched parties. After she told Mr. Brannan that her bedroom wall was leaking, he informed her that Mr. Kagan had voted against the $107 billion municipal budget in June that contained funding to repair public housing.Mr. Kagan was the sole Republican to vote against the budget because he said it included “billions for migrant services” but not enough money to hire more police officers. Ms. Turnage had no doubt about her view of Republican politicians. “I would never vote for them,” she said. “They’re not for the people.” More

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      Biden’s Age, and His Achievements

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      More from our inbox:The PGA-LIV Golf MergerSelf-Policing in Brooklyn Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Spry Diplomat With a Stiff Gait: Aging Leader’s Complex Reality” (front page, June 4):Joe Biden on a bad day is better than 99 percent of Americans on a good one. He adroitly defeated the greatest human threat to U.S. democracy since Benedict Arnold, spearheaded a largely successful first-term legislative agenda, managed to avoid World War III with the Russians while materially supporting Ukraine’s war effort, and has kept an increasingly hegemonic China at bay.President Biden just oversaw the first truly bipartisan legislative effort in years, thus averting a world economic meltdown. He is a good and decent man who has spent the majority of his life in public service and has weathered an inordinate number of personal tragedies with a grace and dignity few could muster.While he has lost a step or two over the decades, in the crucible of real life where facts matter and outcomes are measurable, he burns as incandescently bright as any president before him.If the measure of the man is his gait, speech and memory for trivialities, then we are lost. Otherwise, let his achievements and character speak to his fitness to serve again as our president.Lawson BernsteinNew YorkTo the Editor:As an octogenarian myself who still works some and speaks in public, I know that my memory is not what it used to be, and I believe that it is crazy for President Biden to insist on asking for another term as president.At minimum, a new running mate needs to be found who is more electable on his or her own than the current vice president. For example, the governor of Michigan or the senator from Minnesota, and there are others who leap to mind. In any event, Mr. Biden should at least name someone as his running mate who could win the presidency on his or her own.Democratic leaders should speak up at this point on this issue before it’s too late.Isebill V. GruhnSanta Cruz, Calif.The writer is emerita professor of politics at the University of California Santa Cruz.To the Editor:I was an executive in several high-profile organizations and had two published novels. I am also a loyal Democrat.That was then.Now, I am 85. I am healthy and active, but I also note the minor aches and pains of old age, forgetfulness and lack of focus. I’m slower in gait, hearing and reacting.I do not worry about the regular presidential work President Biden will continue to confront. I am concerned about the emergency moment with which he may be faced. Can we really afford to take a chance that at his age, Mr. Biden can reasonably react perfectly to a crisis that may be both unexpected and disastrous?There may be no second chance!Sheila LevinNew YorkTo the Editor:While questions about President Biden’s age should not be automatically dismissed, I am far more concerned about the cognitive functions of a candidate who has spoken of Revolutionary War airports and Andrew Jackson’s Civil War presidency.I question the acuity of a candidate who thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive and suggests that ingesting bleach may be an efficacious way to treat certain serious illnesses. Additionally, declaring that it takes 10 or 15 tries to flush an average toilet suggests deficient mental capabilities.I find it even more alarming, though, that this same candidate regularly praises Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and brags about receiving “love letters” from Kim Jong-un, but lacks respect for Volodymyr Zelensky. Given a choice between the two, I shall vote for an octogenarian President Biden.Steven FantinaPhillipsburg, N.J.To the Editor:Re “President Tripped and Fell During Air Force Graduation” (news article, June 2):I was present at this year’s Air Force Academy graduation. I ask anyone to contemplate standing onstage midday delivering a 30-minute graduation speech, followed by standing onstage another 90 minutes saluting 921 times, each salute followed by a verbal greeting and a firm handshake from an energized 20-something cadet. That is an impressive feat of stamina for a person of any age, let alone an octogenarian.The media’s focus on the nine-second “fall” video completely distorts the reality of the event as perceived by those in attendance, who were present with President Biden during those hours of midday sun, who were actually impressed with the remarkable stamina he demonstrated.The president’s fall was due to a regrettable onstage tripping hazard, a dark sandbag placed on an equally dark floor, intended to stabilize a teleprompter, but unfortunately placed right on the path Mr. Biden was directed to traverse.Both as a physician and an Air Force Academy graduate with some experience saluting, I posit that a person could not accomplish 921 salutes and 921 handshakes without considerable arm and shoulder pain. Yet Mr. Biden did not complain or boast of this feat, as he made it his priority to personally address every graduating cadet. Mr. President, for your remarkable performance at this graduation, I salute you.Stanley SaulnyAustin, TexasThe writer is the father of a member of this year’s Air Force Academy graduating class.To the Editor:Re “11 Skeptical Biden Voters on His Re-election Bid” (“America in Focus” series, Opinion, June 4):It was so dismaying to read the responses of this group. I too have some misgivings about President Biden’s age, but no misgivings about his competence, even when I disagree with him.Mr. Biden’s style is what undercuts the perception of his strength. He’s not flashy. He’s not putting on a show. He’s not a great speaker. He doesn’t have charisma.But he has stood firm with Volodymyr Zelensky and united NATO. He got infrastructure legislation through. He took the first baby steps on negotiating drug prices with Medicare. He kept most of us afloat during a terrible pandemic. He tried to address the problem of the high cost of college.I’ll vote for him gladly. Do I worry about his age? Yes. But I’ll take my chances anytime with him over any of the MAGA party candidates.P.S.: I got much better than what I was expecting when I voted for Joe in the last election.Nancy GersonSouth Dennis, Mass.The PGA-LIV Golf MergerProfessional golfers on both the PGA and LIV tours are unlikely to see changes in their schedules this year.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Golf Gets Jolt as Rival Tours Form Alliance” (front page, June 7):When you sell your soul to the devil, you end up with a match made in hell. Dirty Saudi money wins; principle loses.This is an unfortunate huge double bogey for American golf enthusiasts who have admired the decency and integrity of the golfers who have eschewed preposterous payouts in favor of respecting the tradition of the game and the PGA Tour.In any situation where the Saudis and their favorite former president gloat, and the head of the PGA Tour abruptly changes course where billions are involved, you know it’s time to watch curling instead of golf.Ed LaFreniereGig Harbor, Wash.To the Editor:At first, I was just irritated beyond belief with the golfers who bent over and stuffed their back pockets with money from a bunch of murderers and misogynists. Now that the PGA Tour has married those people, I can just ignore professional golf for the rest of my life.David M. BehrmanHoustonSelf-Policing in Brooklyn Amir Hamja for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “How One Neighborhood in Brooklyn Policed Itself for Five Days” (front page, June 4):Self-policing is a spectacularly bad idea. Despite the failings of many professional police officers, in Brooklyn and elsewhere, they have two things that civilians do not: a core of training and discipline, and recognizable authority. Without these two elements, self-policing is the equivalent of one person trying to stop a fight between two other people.Though the list of things that could go wrong in that scenario is limitless, it definitely includes the injury or death of all three principals, as well as a threat to onlookers.We are all looking for a path to more disciplined, more compassionate and more accountable policing. This is not the way.Bart BravermanIndio, Calif. More

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      Where Asian Neighborhoods Increased Support of New York’s Republicans

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      In last year’s governor’s election, voters in Asian neighborhoods across New York City sharply increased their support for Republicans. Though these areas remained blue overall, they shifted to the right by 23 percentage points, compared with 2018, after more than a decade of reliably backing Democrats. Governor’s margin of victory since 2006 Source: New York […] More

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      Workers at Trader Joe’s in Brooklyn Reject Union

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      Workers at a Trader Joe’s store in Brooklyn have voted against unionizing, handing a union its first loss at the company after two victories this year.The workers voted 94 to 66 against joining Trader Joe’s United, an independent union that represents employees at stores in Western Massachusetts and Minneapolis. Workers at a Trader Joe’s in Colorado filed for an election this summer but withdrew their petition shortly before a scheduled vote.“We are grateful that our crew members trust us to continue to do the work of listening and responding to their needs, as we always have,” Nakia Rohde, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement after the National Labor Relations Board announced the result on Thursday.The result raises questions about whether the uptick in union activity over the past year, in which unions won elections at several previously nonunion companies like Starbucks, Amazon and Apple, may be slowing.Union supporters recently lost an election at an Amazon warehouse near Albany, N.Y., and the pace of unionization at Starbucks has dropped in recent months, though the union has won elections at over 250 of the company’s 9,000 corporate-owned U.S. stores so far.Workers at a second Apple store recently won an election in Oklahoma City, however, and unions have upcoming votes at a Home Depot in Philadelphia and a studio owned by the video game maker Activision Blizzard in upstate New York.As of June, Trader Joe’s had more than 500 locations and 50,000 employees across the country and was not unionized. Early in the pandemic, the company’s chief executive sent a letter to employees complaining of a “current barrage of union activity that has been directed at Trader Joe’s” and arguing that union supporters “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company.”The company has said it is prepared to negotiate contracts at its unionized stores. An employee involved in the union, Maeg Yosef, said the two sides were settling on bargaining dates.Union supporters at the Brooklyn store had said they were seeking an increase in wages, improved health care benefits and paid sick leave as well as changes that would make the company’s disciplinary process more fair.Before union supporters had a chance to talk with all their colleagues, management became aware of the campaign and announced it in a note posted in the store’s break room in late September. The company also fired a prominent union supporter a day or two later.Amy Wilson, a leader of the union campaign in the store, said organizing had become more difficult after the firing and the note from management.“The last core of people hadn’t been spoken to directly by their co-workers, and we lost them instantly,” she said, referring to the note. “It undermined the trust, the relationship. They felt excluded and offended.”Ms. Rohde, the Trader Joe’s spokeswoman, did not respond to a question about why management posted the break room note. She said that while she couldn’t comment on the firing of the union supporter, “we have never and would never fire a crew member for organizing.”Trader Joe’s is known for providing relatively good wages and benefits for the industry, though workers have complained that the company has made its health care and retirement benefits less generous over the past decade. More

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      What Two Primaries Reveal About the Decline of Working-Class Democrats

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      The results of the Democratic congressional primaries in New York City on Tuesday give us a hint of just how far the working-class liberalism once associated with city politics has declined. The winners of two races in particular, Jerrold Nadler and Daniel Goldman, who will almost surely represent much of Manhattan (and a bit of Brooklyn) in the House, emerged as the victors of complicated congressional primaries in districts that were redrawn to reflect national shifts in population.They represent different kinds of New York City Democrats — Mr. Nadler, a longtime congressman, has deep roots in the old grass-roots liberalism of the Upper West Side, while Mr. Goldman is a political newcomer whose star has risen through his association with opposition to Donald Trump — but their shared success nonetheless highlights socioeconomic divisions in Manhattan that have a long history.The primaries reflected the tensions and divisions within contemporary liberalism itself and raise the question of how (or whether) Democrats can effectively represent such radically different constituencies.The changes in the city districts were a result of math — subtraction, to be specific. New York State lost a seat in the House because its population came up short by 89 people in a census conducted in 2020, at the height of Covid in New York. Indeed, if so many New Yorkers had not died in the early months of the pandemic, these contests — particularly the one that pitted Mr. Nadler against his House colleague Carolyn Maloney — would almost certainly not have taken place.Beyond the numbers, though, the primaries were part of a continuing story of class divisions in New York City. In the mid-1930s, the Columbia University sociologist Caroline Ware wrote a study of Greenwich Village that focused on the Irish and Italian immigrants who moved there in the late 19th century and whose Catholic churches still dot the neighborhood.Some at the time saw the Village as a success story of immigrant assimilation. But Professor Ware had a different interpretation. The people of the Village, she suggested, lived side by side but had little contact with one another. They were left to navigate a complicated city as “isolated individuals rather than as part of coherent social wholes.”The national Democratic Party faces a similar class divide between highly educated urbanites and the working-class voters for whom it often claims to speak. It’s no secret that the party has moved away from the fiercely pro-union New Deal politics of the mid-20th century. For much of the 20th century, New York State’s congressional delegation included more than 40 representatives (compared with 27 today), a voting bloc that generally collaborated in support of an expansive social welfare state and working-class interests. New York representatives included many of the country’s most left-leaning politicians (like the Upper West Side’s Bella Abzug).Mr. Nadler and Mr. Goldman come from different backgrounds, politically and economically. Mr. Nadler grew up in the city and got active in politics opposing the Vietnam War. Mr. Goldman is a Washington native who attended Sidwell Friends, Yale, Stanford; he served as assistant U.S. attorney with Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York.For Mr. Nadler, despite his victory on Tuesday night, the political world he emerged from no longer exists as a vital force. This is in part because of transformations within Democratic politics.Mr. Nadler’s political career was forged at a pivotal moment in the aftermath of New York’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s. He was first elected to the State Assembly in 1976. In the following years, Democratic city officials were forced to increase subway fares, close public hospitals, charge tuition at CUNY and cease to embrace a politically ambitious role for local government. Mr. Nadler was elected to Congress in the early 1990s, when Democratic leaders like Bill Clinton proclaimed the end of the era of big government and were most optimistic about free trade and deregulation despite its impact on cities like New York.He has supported many measures over his long career that would aid working-class people, but at the same time the Democrats have generally backed away from politics that would more forcefully address inequality and the economic divide.Meanwhile, the economic fortunes of Manhattan were also changing — as part of an effort to secure a steadier tax base in the aftermath of the collapse of manufacturing, the city under Ed Koch began to reorient its economy toward Wall Street and real estate development.As Wall Street became an engine of the city’s economy in the administration of Michael Bloomberg, Manhattan’s demographics began moving in largely the opposite direction from the city as a whole. From 2010 to 2020, the white and Asian share of the borough’s population grew, while the Black and Latino share fell.Today, the institutions that had once helped to stitch together constituencies from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, like unions, are far weaker in the city and nationally than they once were. People confront the problems of living in New York through the lens of personal ambition — as “isolated individuals,” as Professor Ware put it — rather than through collective efforts to improve the city’s life.The narrow victory of Mr. Goldman illustrates even more sharply the political crisis of working-class New York. In addition to being an heir to the Levi-Strauss fortune, Mr. Goldman is a type well known to denizens of Lower Manhattan, a successful lawyer who was able to self-fund his campaign. He is clearly a candidate whose political appeal was strongest for the new leaders of the Village and Lower Manhattan, the professional upper classes who work in law firms and investment banks, who fund their children’s schools’ parent-teacher associations and the park conservancies.This is a social world that has little meaningful overlap with the working-class population, often Asian and Latino, that still dwells here but lacks the confident political organization and alliances with the middle class that it once possessed.Mr. Goldman’s political fortunes rose with his role as lead counsel in the first impeachment suit against Mr. Trump; his path to the House was largely paved by this rather than any deep engagement with the kinds of material issues that affect the lives of working- or even middle-class New Yorkers.Mr. Goldman’s race was very close — he won by roughly 1,300 votes. The runner-up, Yuh-Line Niou, a state assemblywoman, ran a campaign whose rhetoric focused on class appeals, but unions and progressive groups proved unable to act in a coordinated way to support any single candidate in a crowded field.Despite their different backgrounds, both Mr. Goldman and Mr. Nadler embody a Manhattan that has shifted in ways that affect not only its own politics but those of the country at large. Their careers point to the divides that Professor Ware pointed out decades ago.In her account, the Village — and New York, and America as a whole — faced the problem of how to respond to the collective problems of a modern industrial society through the lens of a political culture that had been shaped by ruthless individual acquisition. The particular problems have changed, and yet Lower Manhattan remains home to a population that, as dense as it is, is intensely divided by class and ethnicity, that is characterized (as Professor Ware put it) by “an almost complete lack of community integration.”The bitter politics of the August primaries, which reveal yet again the declining power of New York’s liberalism, are the result.Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian at Columbia University, is the author, most recently, of “Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics” and “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal.”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