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      In San Francisco, Democrats Are at War With Themselves Over Crime

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      Fueled by concerns about burglaries and hate crimes, San Francisco’s liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, faces a divisive recall in a famously progressive city.SAN FRANCISCO — As the former chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, Mary Jung has a long list of liberal bona fides, including her early days in politics volunteering in Ohio for the presidential campaign of George McGovern and her service on the board of the local Planned Parenthood branch. “In Cleveland, I was considered a communist,” she said in her San Francisco office.But the squalor and petty crime that she sees as crescendoing on some city streets — her office has been broken into four times during the coronavirus pandemic — has tested her liberal outlook. Last year, on the same day her granddaughter was born, she watched a video of a mentally ill man punching an older Chinese woman in broad daylight on Market Street.Ms. Jung, director of government affairs for the San Francisco Association of Realtors and head of a Realtors foundation that assists homeless people, wondered what kind of city her granddaughter would grow up in. “I thought, ‘Am I going to be able to take her out in the stroller?’”Now she finds herself leading what has been called a Democratic civil war in one of America’s most liberal cities: an effort to recall San Francisco’s district attorney, Chesa Boudin, that has echoes of the party’s larger split over how to handle matters of crime and punishment. In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, liberals and independents will decide a recall that is being financially backed by conservative donors.“What shade of blue are you — that’s really what it comes down to,” said Lilly Rapson, the campaign manager of the recall and Ms. Jung’s partner in the endeavor. A lifelong Democrat, Ms. Rapson said she was motivated to lead the campaign after her home was broken into last year as she slept.There is no compelling evidence that Mr. Boudin’s policies have made crime significantly worse in San Francisco. Overall crime in San Francisco has changed little since Mr. Boudin took office in early 2020.But his message of leniency for perpetrators has rankled residents of the city, many of whom feel unsafe and violated by property crimes. Like a president facing election during a bad economy, Mr. Boudin finds himself a vessel for residents’ pandemic angst and their frustrations over a wave of burglaries and other property crimes in well-to-do areas. Some residents, especially the city’s sizable Asian American population, also feel that a spike in hate crimes has made it unsafe to walk the streets.If successful, the recall would overturn one of the nation’s boldest efforts in criminal justice reform: an experiment to install a former public defender as the protector of public safety with promises to reduce mass incarceration, hold the police accountable and tackle racial disparities in the justice system.A vote to push Mr. Boudin from office would signal to Democrats that talking tough on crime could be a winning message in the midterm elections, and deal a blow to a national movement that has elected progressive prosecutors in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.Mr. Boudin faced long odds in his race to become San Francisco’s district attorney two years ago.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesThe election comes as San Francisco is being convulsed by debates over the disorder of its streets — car break-ins, tent encampments that dot the sidewalks in some neighborhoods and the open-air markets peddling illicit fentanyl that has killed more people in the city than Covid-19.Read More About the Homelessness Crisis in America‘Invisible Child’: In 2013, a five-part Times series told the story of Dasani, an 11-year-old Black girl who lived in a Brooklyn homeless shelter. Today, she’s still struggling.A Rising Death Toll: More than ever it has become deadly to be homeless in America, especially for men in their 50s and 60s.Housing Discrimination: A voucher program aimed at reducing homelessness in New York City has been hamstrung by the discriminatory practices of landlords and real estate agents.Los Angeles Goes to War With Itself: The pandemic has intensified a bitter fight over homelessness in the city — with no end in sight.Mr. Boudin, 41, was an outsider to San Francisco politics who grew up while his parents, 1960s radicals with the Weather Underground, went to prison for their role in the notorious 1981 robbery of a Brink’s armored car in New York that left two police officers and a bank guard dead.He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar who graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School before starting his legal career as a public defender. In 2019, Mr. Boudin sought to move across the courtroom and was elected as the city’s top prosecutor, assuming office just before the pandemic.He promised to end cash bail, stop prosecuting children as adults and expand diversion programs that offer defendants a chance at rehabilitation instead of prison — all steps he has taken while in office. Almost immediately, his opponents began collecting signatures toward a recall.“It’s not been an easy time to start a career in public life,” he said recently at a community forum in the North Beach neighborhood, which was interrupted by protesters outside chanting, “Recall Chesa!”On the campaign trail, Mr. Boudin is facing stiff headwinds. Several polls showed him down at least 10 points. In fighting to keep his job, he has leaned on two main strategies: associate, at every turn, the recall effort with Republicans, and confront voters with data that shows overall crime has not increased meaningfully while he has been in office, even as some categories have risen during the pandemic.He has referred to one of the biggest donors to the recall campaign, William Oberndorf, a conservative and wealthy businessman, as an “oligarch,” called his opponents “Trumpian,” and sought to place the recall in the national context of a Republican-led effort to attack liberal prosecutors as weak on crime.“It’s really problematic that we are having a very Trumpian conversation in San Francisco,” Mr. Boudin said.California Democrats have had success using that strategy of attaching opponents to former President Donald J. Trump — most notably in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s triumph over a recall drive. But some wonder if the approach has staying power the longer Mr. Trump is out of office.Mr. Boudin added that the recall campaign had exploited individual tragedies like the story of a Thai grandfather who was fatally attacked last year while taking his morning walk. He also pointed to an increase in media coverage of crime, and especially high-profile videos on social media of shoplifting cases — like one showing a man on a bike stealing from a Walgreens.“And then people read the story, they see the video, and they perceive crime as being out of control,” Mr. Boudin said. “When in fact things like shoplifting are down dramatically. It doesn’t mean we don’t have a real problem with auto burglaries, but the notion that it’s out of control today and it wasn’t in 2019 is just demonstrably false.”Auto burglaries have been especially common in San Francisco’s tourist hot spots.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesBut more than anything, it was the case of Troy McAlister, a man with a long criminal history who mowed down two people with a stolen car on New Year’s Eve in 2020, that has fueled the recall effort. Mr. McAlister was free because Mr. Boudin’s office had previously negotiated a plea deal on an armed robbery charge. And Mr. Boudin says it is a case that keeps him up at night.“The nature of this job is we are always looking backwards and hindsight is 20-20,” Mr. Boudin said. “We know as a matter of material fact that some people will be released and commit bad crimes. There’s always going to be cases where if we look back we would make different decisions.”Unlike in other parts of the country, homicides are not driving the anger and passions of recall advocates. The annual number of people killed in the city has stayed within a range of 41 to 56 over the past seven years.Instead, recall advocates describe a pervasive feeling that quality of life in San Francisco has deteriorated. Burglaries, especially in wealthier neighborhoods, have soared during the pandemic. The city recorded 7,575 burglaries in 2020 and 7,217 last year, a sharp increase of more than 45 percent from 2019. Car break-ins, long a festering problem, were less frequent during the pandemic, but thieves shifted their targets from tourist areas to more residential neighborhoods, a change that gave the issue more immediacy and urgency among voters.Another problem is that Mr. Boudin and the Police Department, whose rate of arrests for reported crimes is among the lowest of major cities, have a toxic relationship. In the 2019 campaign, the San Francisco Police Officers Association attacked Mr. Boudin by calling him the “#1 choice of criminals and gang members.” Supporters of Mr. Boudin responded at his victory party with chants of epithets toward the union.Officers have been heard on body camera footage telling residents that the district attorney is unwilling to prosecute crimes. And while Mr. Boudin has been criticized for not more aggressively prosecuting drug dealing, he said the police make, on average, only two drug-dealing arrests a day.“The perception is right,” Mr. Boudin said. “Low-level drug dealers can reasonably expect in San Francisco that nothing will happen to them. Because they’re not getting arrested. Incidentally, the same thing is true with auto burglaries, where 1 percent of reported auto burglaries result in an arrest. So the focus on my office or on me or my policies is really misplaced.”The chief of police, Bill Scott, declined to answer questions on the department’s rate of solving crimes. A spokesman said in a statement that it was “not appropriate for him to get into the type of political discussion that could influence the will of the voters of San Francisco.”“While Chief Scott admits that he and District Attorney Boudin have their disagreements, he maintains that they have a candid and very professional relationship,” the spokesman said.San Francisco has had a long line of liberal prosecutors, including Vice President Kamala Harris. But if Mr. Boudin loses the recall, Mayor London Breed is likely to appoint a more moderate Democrat, political analysts say. The replacement would serve through the end of the year and then might be eligible for re-election.Some of the recall campaign’s most visible supporters have come from within the district attorney’s office, which has seen a high rate of turnover — dozens of lawyers have left since Mr. Boudin took over, after resigning or being fired.Brooke Jenkins, a former prosecutor, left the office to join the recall effort in part, she says, because she clashed with Mr. Boudin about how to prosecute a murder case. “I don’t believe Chesa is living up to his obligation as the district attorney,” Ms. Jenkins said. “He of course ran on a platform of reform, and reform is necessary in the criminal justice system. But you have to be able to balance that with your primary obligation of maintaining public safety.”Among the most frustrated residents in San Francisco are those who live and work in the Tenderloin, the compact neighborhood near City Hall that was once the city’s red-light district filled with bars and boxing gyms. Today, it is a gritty tableau of the city’s most persistent ills — the illicit drug markets, the desperation of those who are chronically homeless and the consequences of untreated mental illness.A homeless encampment in the Tenderloin.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAs the manager of Threads for Therapy, a nonprofit thrift shop in the Tenderloin run by a Christian charity, Angel Fernandez watched warily on a recent afternoon as customers perused the women’s coats. The shop has a full-time security guard because so many people try to shoplift.Mr. Fernandez does not hesitate when asked how he will vote on the recall. He compares Mr. Boudin to Robin Hood, someone who views criminals as “the downtrodden forced into crime.” But like the concerns of many recall supporters, some of Mr. Fernandez’s complaints do not relate directly to the district attorney’s performance — they are more general feelings of a need for order and responsiveness from the city, including the police. When Mr. Fernandez calls the Tenderloin police station one block away to report fights on the sidewalk, drug sales, threatening behavior or shoplifting, he is frequently disappointed with the slow response. “Sometimes they don’t come at all,” he said of the police.Holly Secon More

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      Rick Caruso’s Wild Promises for Los Angeles

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      At first glance — and maybe even at a second one — it’s difficult to tell what, exactly, makes Rick Caruso a Democrat. Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer best known for his outdoor shopping malls, is a former Republican who is running to be the next Democratic mayor of Los Angeles. He has offered up a three-plank plan reminiscent of Rudy Giuliani’s second New York City mayoral campaign in 1993: an end to “street homelessness”; a return to “public safety”; and the end of civic corruption.If that alone doesn’t warrant the comparisons to Giuliani, Caruso has gained the endorsement of William Bratton, the former New York City Police commissioner who served Giuliani from 1994 to 1996 and introduced the broken-windows theory of policing to the city.Caruso’s message to his fellow Angelenos has been clear and consistent: It’s time, he says, to “get real” about crime, homelessness and the ruin of a once-great city. His ads, which play on repeat, promise: “Rick Caruso can clean up L.A.” As of the latest polling, he is in a close race with a longtime progressive congresswoman, Karen Bass.Last December, I wrote about a growing number of minority politicians in major cities who have pushed some version of let’s “get real.” The mayors of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Charlotte all fit this description. Caruso is white, but his campaign has stressed his Italian immigrant background. He has also run ads in different languages.He is a somewhat counterintuitive, yet increasingly common case in identity politics: A Democratic candidate who understands that many Latino and Asian immigrant communities are largely made up of moderates who want more policing. Caruso, who has spent over $30 million of his own money on his campaign, seems to be saying: We are all Angelenos. And we have all had enough.Like nearly every politician in California’s major cities, Caruso’s success will hinge on homelessness. If he’s elected, he promises on his first day in office to declare a “state of emergency” over homelessness. This would allow him to bypass various regulations and governmental checks and, in his words, treat the homelessness crisis “like a natural disaster.”He plans to build 30,000 new shelter beds in 300 days, roughly doubling the current number. This would require expansions of current programs, including a commitment to quadruple the number of tiny homes in the city. (Regular readers of this newsletter will be familiar with these structures. If you’re new, please read about them here or here.) Caruso would also expand Project Roomkey, the program that converts motels and hotels into shelters.When a writer for The Los Angeles Times asked how he might be able to do all this, Caruso suggested Fort Bliss, a tent camp for undocumented migrant children in Texas, as a possible model. This would certainly be a confusing choice for Los Angeles, given that Fort Bliss is filled with large, airplane hangar-size tents that would be almost impossible to place anywhere in the city without a prolonged battle with neighbors. And last year, the Department of Health and Human Services opened an investigation into poor management and living conditions inside Fort Bliss, which, as of August 2021, could only accommodate about 4,000 teenagers, 26,000 less than the number of unhoused people Caruso would hope to shelter.The ideological divide in California’s homelessness crisis lies between those who believe that the problem is mostly fueled by drug addiction and mental health issues and those who believe that a housing shortage and escalating costs of living are to blame. Given that Caruso plans to create a “Department of Mental Health and Addiction Treatment” and “compel people suffering mental illness into care,” Caruso clearly has heard the former.But he also has planks in his platform that would make even the most housing-first progressive rejoice. He has called for an expansion of permanent supportive housing and rental protections and says he would petition the federal government to triple the number of Section 8 vouchers that help struggling families afford rent. He is, in short, promising the world to both sides.His plans for public safety are just as ambitious. The story of crime in Los Angeles isn’t all that much different from most major American cities. Last year, homicides in the city hit a 15-year high, but those who say violent crime has never been worse are most likely forgetting the 1990s.His plan to reduce crime is what you’d imagine from a politician who played up an endorsement from Bratton. He wants 1,500 more cops on the streets and enforced penalties for property crimes like breaking into cars. He also says he wants to apply pressure on the city attorney to prosecute misdemeanors more regularly.In a lengthy interview with the editorial board of The Los Angeles Times, Caruso said, “We have laws now that aren’t being enforced,” referring to low-level crimes that would be taken more seriously under a broken-windows regime. “And we’re paying a deep price for it. Now, consequences should be fair. We should have a whole bunch of things in place that allows people to rehabilitate themselves. You know, I don’t believe in criminalizing everything. But we certainly have to get a handle on the behavior in this city. People are scared and they don’t feel listened to.”In theory, there is a lot to admire about Caruso’s big solutions for big problems approach. It might make sense, for example, to shoot for 30,000 shelter beds and an increase of affordable housing, because even if you end somewhere significantly short of those goals, you’re still doing better than the status quo. But the problem with the clean-up-our-cities Democrat isn’t that the message is wrong — it has proved to be popular throughout the country — but, rather, that it lives in a fantasy world where ambitions ignore both the legislative and infrastructural realities on the ground.Caruso is hardly the first politician to make big promises, but his seem especially unrealistic. If he wants 1,500 more police officers on the streets, for example, he must first contend with the fact that the L.A.P.D. is currently short 325 officers with no real clear solutions on how to fill those existing spots. Police academies in the city are significantly under-enrolled.Similarly, his plans for the homeless require a fleet of civic and nonprofit workers that don’t exist yet. The current mobilization against homelessness across the state has seen dire staffing shortages, something I wrote about back in March. The shortfall reflects a very sobering reality: It’s hard to find a lot of people who want to deal with the emotional and physical labor of working with unhoused people. Caruso cannot just snap his fingers and find these workers, some of whom would need to be highly trained professionals to work in his “Department of Mental Health and Addiction Treatment.”And given how difficult it is to build shelter for even a few dozen people — you have to find sites, convince neighbors and go through a glut of bureaucracy — where would Caruso’s Fort Bliss-like tent cities go? Which neighborhoods would host these 30,000 new beds and which ones wouldn’t? (To be fair, nearly every candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral race has promised new housing, albeit on much more reasonable time tables. The early days of the race were like an auction in which the candidates tried to outbid each other with shelter beds.)I try to be a pragmatist about progressive politics. I do not think it does anyone any favors to pretend, for example, that Angelenos should look at spiking homicides and console themselves with the knowledge that things were worse before. I also get that the homelessness in Los Angeles and the Bay Area has gone well beyond a crisis point. Those who believe that hundreds of tent encampments throughout the state and escalating overdose deaths from fentanyl do not require a wide-scale intervention are deluding themselves.What Caruso seems to be banking on is that the public, when faced with rising violent crime and homelessness, will seek out desperate solutions, especially hard-line tactics of the past like broken-windows policing. He may very well be right. The public’s exhaustion with crime, homelessness and drug overdoses is real.Going forward, progressive politicians who don’t want a Rick Caruso in every city should take some lessons from some of the things he does well. It’s good to take concerns about crime and homelessness seriously. It’s also good to appeal to a communal city for all Angelenos. But progressives need to take those ideas and back them with their own solutions:compassion for the less fortunate, care for the mentally ill and a reasonable and humane deployment of police power. These also have the benefit of being more achievable.Serious, progressive solutions might be a tough sell these days, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Not all crises in America need to be solved by billionaires and their wild promises.Have feedback? Send a note to kang-newsletter@nytimes.com.Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.” More

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      Democrats’ Mystery: How to Brighten a Presidency and a National Mood

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      LAKEWOOD, Ohio — At a Whole Foods in one moderate Cleveland suburb, shoppers recently worried about war, inflation, a “scary” political climate — and a Democratic Party some saw as slow to address the nation’s burning problems.At a house party for a left-wing congressional candidate across town, attendees fretted over the high cost of living and exorbitant student loan debt as they weighed their choices in Ohio’s primary elections on Tuesday.And at a campaign event for Representative Shontel Brown here in Lakewood, a liberal city near Cleveland, not everyone seemed impressed by President Biden.“He’s OK,” allowed Yolanda Pace-Owens, 46, who works in security. She said that she had voted for Mr. Biden and still admired him, but that she was alarmed by a pandemic-era rise in violent crime. “We just got to do better,” she said.Nearly six months before the midterm elections, Mr. Biden and the Democrats face staggering challenges and signs of dampened enthusiasm among nearly every constituency that powered their 2020 presidential and 2018 midterm victories, according to polls and more than two dozen interviews with voters, elected officials and party strategists across the country.Yet Democrats are still struggling with how to even discuss the nation’s greatest challenges — much less reach a consensus on how to right the ship.The party’s problems run deep, as Mr. Biden’s lead pollster has privately warned the White House for months. Independent voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020, but his approval rating with independents now hovers in the 30s. He has underperformed with voters of color in some surveys. Warning signs have emerged among suburban voters. And Mr. Biden’s approval rating has deteriorated with young people even though he won them overwhelmingly in 2020.Yolanda Pace-Owens said that she admired Mr. Biden but that “we just got to do better.” Dustin Franz for The New York TimesIn a midterm environment heavily shaped by the president’s approval rating, all of those numbers are gravely worrying for Democratic candidates, who are left with tough questions about how to engage unsettled voters and reinvigorate their base.How much time should they spend trying to show voters they grasp the pain of inflation, compared with efforts to remind them of low unemployment? Should they pursue ambitious policies that show Democrats are fighters, or is it enough to hope for more modest victories while emphasizing all that the party has passed already?A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.And even when candidates try to tell that story, is anyone listening?“Voters hear us, but I don’t know that we have convinced voters as to how these things will affect them on a personal level,” Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat, said in a recent interview. “We’re not connecting with the voters on the level that they can connect with.”As Mr. Biden confronts the lingering pandemic, war in Ukraine and historical headwinds — the president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections — he has acknowledged his party’s messaging challenges, worrying recently that amid crises, “we haven’t sold the American people what we’ve actually done.”The president, a consummate retail politician who some Democrats had hoped would be more visible, is now pursuing a more robust travel schedule to sell his party’s agenda and accomplishments, and he is highlighting some contrasts with Republicans.Consumers across the country are seeing a rise in the price of everyday items, like $8.29 for a gallon of milk at a Whole Foods grocery store in Rocky River, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesHao Pham of Cleveland filling his S.U.V. with gas, the price of which has increased.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesAllies and some voters note that polling is partially driven by anger over extraordinary events, including the war’s impact on gas prices, that the White House could not fully control. But Mr. Biden’s advisers say that the president is working to demonstrate that Democrats understand voters’ struggles and are moving to fix them, as the party’s lawmakers make a fresh push for a range of legislative priorities, especially concerning prices. On Thursday, Mr. Biden also said that he was considering wiping out some student loan debt.A new Washington Post-ABC poll also showed some positive signs for Mr. Biden and the Democrats, though Republicans retained significant advantages on issues including inflation, the economy and crime.“While President Biden and Democrats work to lower costs and continue the historic economic recovery made possible by the American Rescue Plan, Republicans have done everything they can to try to stand in the way,” Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.Yet months of national polls show that Americans have a vastly different perception of the party in power. Even in overwhelmingly liberal Los Angeles, private Democratic polling in April found Mr. Biden’s favorability rating at only 58 percent, according to a person with direct knowledge of the data.Democratic tensions over messaging have been on display in Ohio, where candidates in this week’s primaries reflect the full spectrum of competing views.Ms. Brown, who faces a contested primary in a safely Democratic seat and was endorsed by Mr. Biden, is running hard on the bipartisan infrastructure law.She echoed other House Democrats in promoting the message that “Democrats have been delivering.”But Biden advisers have privately indicated that pitch tests poorly as a party slogan. And at another Ohio event in late April, Nina Turner, a former state senator who is challenging Ms. Brown from the left in a rematch, suggested that Democrats had not delivered nearly enough.She urged, among other priorities, universal cancellation of student debt — or, at a minimum, canceling $10,000 in federal student debt per borrower (Ms. Brown also supports some student debt forgiveness measures). Mr. Biden, who endorsed the $10,000 goal in 2020, has postponed payments, and significant student debt has been erased during his tenure, but some have called on him to do much more. He may take further action, and there is still time to make more progress on the Democratic agenda.But for now, many on the left are disappointed that Democrats, despite controlling Washington, have run aground in the divided Senate on priorities like the climate and voting rights.“People can forgive you, even if you can’t get something done,” Ms. Turner said. “What they don’t like is when you’re not fighting. And we need to see more of a fighting spirit among the Democratic Party.”Nina Turner, a progressive House candidate in Ohio, held a gathering with supporters to talk about issues they prioritized.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesOn the other end of the party’s ideological spectrum is Representative Tim Ryan, a moderate Ohio Democrat running for Senate in a state that has veered rightward. He is casting himself as a fighter for the working class and highlighting measures like the infrastructure law, while seeking some cultural and political distance from many others in his party.In an interview, Mr. Ryan cheered a ruling to eliminate mask mandates on airlines and public transportation, which is now being challenged. “Masks suck,” he said. “I think we’re all tired of it.”Asked which national Democratic surrogates he would welcome, he cited Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Senator Jon Tester of Montana and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan — but asked specifically about Mr. Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Ryan said: “This is my race. I’m going to be the face of this.” (Biden advisers noted that the president has recently appeared with Democrats in competitive races.)And as of Friday, Mr. Ryan was one of seven Democratic candidates who have run ads this year that mentioned inflation, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. By contrast, dozens of Republican candidates and allied groups have done the same. In polls, Americans have cited inflation as a top issue.“Burying your head in the sand,” Mr. Ryan said, “is not the way to approach it.” Asked about the biggest challenges facing his party, he replied, “A response to the inflation piece is a big hurdle.”He also cited “a national brand that is not seen as connected to the working-class people, whether they’re white or Black or brown.”Representative Tim Ryan, center right, and Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, met in April at a home in Youngstown, Ohio, where lead pipes are set to be replaced thanks to new federal funding.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesLou McMahon, a registered Democrat who said he did not vote in the last two presidential elections because he did not like his choices, sounded open to Mr. Ryan in an interview at Ms. Brown’s event. But asked to assess Democrats in Washington generally, he replied, “Promise, but not delivered,” citing both stalled legislative ambitions and Mr. Biden’s pledge to help heal partisan divisions.“The targets and the aspirations were maybe beyond the reach,” said Mr. McMahon, 58, an environmental lawyer. “The reuniting that was so much of the promise hasn’t played out in reality quite that way.”Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic strategist and a pollster on Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign, said that “there’s nobody in America more deeply disappointed in how divided America is than Joe Biden.”“He does communicate it, but I think it helps a lot when he’s on the road,” she said.Republicans face their own midterm difficulties. Many candidates have adopted former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless focus on the false notion of a stolen 2020 election, a stance that swing voters may dismiss as extreme. In some primaries, the party runs the risk of nominating seriously flawed general-election candidates.Democratic officials hope their prospects will brighten as primary contests are settled and candidates draw sharper direct contrasts with their opponents — and they are already trying to define that choice.On one side, they say, are bomb-throwing Republicans who are caught up in cultural battles, fealty to Trumpism and a controversial tax and social safety net proposal. On the other, Democrats argue, is a party that passed major infrastructure and pandemic relief measures, and spearheaded the confirmation of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Mr. Biden has also moved to combat gun violence, confronting Republican efforts to portray Democrats as weak on crime.Many Democratic candidates are also raising vast sums of money, a sign of voter engagement.“Our members have a great record of results, and the other side is offering nothing except anger and fear,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chair of the House Democratic campaign arm. “My message is: We’re getting good things done. We’re part of the solution. Give us a little more time.”Time indeed remains, and Democrats could reverse their fortunes in an unpredictable environment — but it is also possible that in the fall, the outlook will be largely unchanged.“The problem with midterm elections is, they’re not really a choice,” said David Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama. “They tend to be a referendum on the party that controls the White House.” More

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      Drug Sentencing Bill Is in Limbo as Midterm Politics Paralyze Congress

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      A broadly supported bipartisan measure to eliminate a racial disparity in drug sentencing faces a difficult road as Republicans seek to weaponize the issue of crime against Democrats.WASHINGTON — The Equal Act would appear to be a slam dunk even in a badly divided Congress.The legislation, which aims to end a longstanding racial disparity in federal prison sentences for drug possession, passed the House overwhelmingly last year, with more than 360 votes. It has been enthusiastically embraced on the left and right and by law enforcement as a long-overdue fix for a biased policy. It has filibuster-proof bipartisan support in the Senate and the endorsement of President Biden and the Justice Department.Yet with control of Congress at stake and Republicans weaponizing a law-and-order message against Democrats in their midterm election campaigns, the fate of the measure is in doubt. Democrats worry that bringing it up would allow Republicans to demand a series of votes that could make them look soft on crime and lax on immigration — risks they are reluctant to take months before they face voters.Even the measure’s Republican backers concede that bringing it to the floor could lead to an array of difficult votes.“I assume the topic opens itself pretty wide,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, who became the 11th member of his party to sign on to the Equal Act this month, giving its supporters more than the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural obstacles.The drug legislation is not the only bipartisan bill caught in a midterm political squeeze. A multibillion-dollar Covid relief package has been languishing for weeks, as Republicans insist that consideration of the measure must include a vote on retaining pandemic-era immigration restrictions that the Biden administration wants to lift.Democrats are increasingly at odds with the administration over its plan to wind down the public-health rule, known as Title 42. A vote would underscore that division and potentially open some of them to a politically difficult vote.Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, became the 11th member of his party to sign on to the legislation this month.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThe uncertainty surrounding the bipartisan bills is a clear sign that if legislating on Capitol Hill is not already done for the year, that moment is fast approaching.Given the calendar, virtually any legislation that reaches the floor is bound to attract trouble. Even consensus measures are at risk unless enough supporters in both parties agree to band together to reject politically difficult votes that could lend themselves to 30-second attack ads — the kind of deal that grows more difficult to reach each passing day.There are exceptions. A request by Mr. Biden this week to send an additional $33 billion in aid to Ukraine to bolster the war effort is expected to draw broad bipartisan support and little dispute. Democrats are still hopeful they may be able to salvage pieces of a hulking social safety net and climate package under special rules that allow them to move forward without Republican support. But that, too, could require a series of votes orchestrated by the G.O.P. to make Democrats squirm.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“What’s hurting bipartisanship is that even when there’s enough Republican support to pass a bill, the hard-right militants sabotage it to score political points, and gridlock prevails,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. “But there’s always hope that cooler heads prevail, and occasionally they do.”Backers of the Equal Act and other criminal justice legislation said they hoped that was true for them. They insist that they can still get their bill passed this year, and that opposition will backfire politically.“This is a real opportunity for bipartisan achievement to eliminate one of the worst vestiges of injustice from American drug policy,” said Holly Harris, the president and executive director of the Justice Action Network and a leading proponent of criminal justice changes. “Those who seek to thwart this opportunity for 15 minutes of fame, five minutes of fame — I don’t think that’s going to be rewarded by voters.”The measure has bipartisan support in the Senate and the endorsement of President Biden and the Justice Department.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn a letter to Senate leaders this week, Ms. Harris’s group and about 50 law enforcement, progressive and conservative organizations urged them to quickly take up the legislation, saying that “we cannot miss this moment to right this decades-long wrong.”The legislation would eliminate the current 18-to-1 disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder. The policy that can be traced to the “war on drugs” mind-set of the 1980s, which treated those trafficking in crack cocaine more harshly. It resulted in a disproportionate number of Black Americans facing longer sentences for drug offenses than white Americans, who were usually arrested with the powder version.As a senator, Mr. Biden was one of the champions of the policy; it has since become widely discredited, and he has disavowed it.The United States Sentencing Commission has said that passage of the legislation could reduce the sentences of more than 7,600 federal prisoners. The average 14-year sentence would be cut by about six years, it estimated.Though Mr. Schumer endorsed the legislation in April, he has not laid out a timeline for bringing it to the floor. Democrats say he is giving backers of the bill a chance to build additional support and find a way to advance the measure without causing a floor fight that could take weeks — time that Democrats do not have if they want to continue to win approval of new judges and take care of other business before the end of the year.“Getting the opportunity is the challenge,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and one of the original sponsors of the legislation. “We just don’t move many free-standing bills which involve some controversy.”Its supporters say that they recognize the difficulties but believe that it is the single piece of criminal justice legislation with a chance of reaching the president’s desk in the current political environment.“Of all the criminal justice bills, this is the one that is set up for success right now,” said Inimai Chettiar, the federal director for the Justice Action Network. “It is not going to be easy on the floor, but I think it is doable.”The problem is that the push comes as top Republicans have made clear that they intend to try to capitalize on public concern about increasing crime in the battle for Senate and House control in November.The approach was crystallized in their attacks on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last month, as they accused her of leniency in sentencing. Given the rise in crime and drug overdoses, some Republicans say they are also having second thoughts about the landmark First Step Act, a sweeping bipartisan law passed in 2018 that freed thousands from prison after their sentences were reduced in a bid to ease mass incarceration.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, this week reprised his criticism of Judge Jackson and attacked Mr. Biden for having issued his first round of pardons and commutations, including for those convicted of drug crimes.“They never miss an opportunity to send the wrong signal,” he said of Democrats.Senator Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican who led the opposition to the First Step Act, said he was in no mood to let the Equal Act sail through. He has said that if the disparity is to be erased, penalties for powder cocaine should be increased.Demonstrators at a criminal justice reform rally in Washington in 2018.Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images“My opposition to the Equal Act will be as strong as my opposition to the First Step Act,” Mr. Cotton said.The legislation encountered another complication on Thursday, when Senators Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah, two top Republican supporters of the previous criminal justice overhaul, introduced a competing bill that would reduce — but not eliminate — the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. They said that research showed that crack traffickers were more likely to return to crime and carry deadly weapons.“Our legislation will significantly reduce this disparity while ensuring those more likely to reoffend face appropriate penalties,” said Mr. Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.Sponsors of the Equal Act say they intend to push forward and remain optimistic that they can overcome the difficulties.“We’ve got an amazing bill, and we’ve got 11 Republicans and people want to get this done,” said Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey and the lead sponsor of the legislation. “My hope is that we are going to have a shot to get this done right now.”Ms. Harris said that Democrats must recognize Republicans will attack them as soft on crime regardless of whether they act on the measure.“They are fearing something that is already happening,” she said. “Why not dig in, stay true to your principles, and do what is right for the American people? Maybe, just maybe, the politics will shake out.” More

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      How This ‘Progressive Prosecutor’ Balances Politics and Public Safety

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      As his peers around the country face fierce criticism, Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, is navigating a narrow path so far.On the first Sunday in February, Eric Gonzalez, Brooklyn’s district attorney, sat in the front row at Antioch Baptist Church in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The visit was emblematic of Mr. Gonzalez’s approach to criminal justice: Alongside dozens of parishioners, he and several local officials and police leaders listened to music, prayer and a biblical account of healing by faith and touch.When the service was over, Mr. Gonzalez and a top police commander stepped outside and into a crime scene. Just down the street, at around 2 a.m. that day, an 18-year-old man had been fatally shot in his car — Brooklyn’s 11th homicide of the year.A few short hours and a few hundred feet apart, the two episodes illustrated the narrow path that Mr. Gonzalez must walk. First elected in 2017, he pledged to bring a modern, progressive approach — a prosecutor’s healing touch — to a criminal justice system that has long been seen as a source of inequity. But as he begins his second term, stubborn increases in shootings, gang violence and other crimes have focused the city’s attention on public safety and complicated Mr. Gonzalez’s ability to fulfill that pledge.Some New Yorkers — most notably, Mayor Eric Adams — have blamed the increases in everything from shoplifting to shootings on leniency in prosecuting lower-level crimes. Calls for a tough-on-crime approach have run up against efforts to reduce the city’s jail population and rectify decades of racially biased policing.Mr. Gonzalez joined other elected leaders at the Antioch Baptist Church in Brooklyn this month, a visit that was emblematic of this approach to criminal justice.Amr Alfiky for The New York TimesAcross the country, many of Mr. Gonzalez’s peers in what has come to be known as the “progressive prosecutor” movement — including Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s newly elected district attorney — have struggled to balance the competing demands. Although it is unclear what is causing the spike in shootings, their critics have focused on what they see as heightened scrutiny of the police, an emphasis on social services over prosecution and the easing of bail and sentencing laws.Faced with a spate of grisly crimes, rising public anxiety, relentless criticism from conservative commentators and open rejection by police unions, Mr. Bragg has spent his first weeks in the job clarifying and, in some cases, reversing some of his more ambitious proposals.Mr. Gonzalez has largely escaped such scrutiny, despite pursuing similar policies for years.How he navigates these at times conflicting priorities — reducing crime while making the justice system more just; responding to residents’ concerns without filling jails; serving victims while addressing the roots of criminal behavior — could be key in shaping the future of the city’s criminal justice system.“I know what works, and my strategy has not shifted,” Mr. Gonzalez said in a recent interview. “It’s my job to care about quality of life. What I am responsible for is safety — I am also a steward of public trust in our justice system.”He added: “Those are all things progressives have not gotten right in their messaging.”According to current and former colleagues, nonprofit leaders, academics, Mr. Gonzalez’s peers and other law-enforcement officials, his strategy boils down to this: Listen to the community. Work with the police. Do not speak in absolutes or make promises you cannot keep. Work quietly and steadily, making change case by case.A Career in BrooklynMr. Gonzalez joined the Brooklyn district attorney’s office in 1995. He rose through the ranks to become acting district attorney in 2016 and was elected to his first full term the next year. Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesMr. Gonzalez, 53, grew up in the East New York and Williamsburg neighborhoods, at a time when violence and drugs plagued Brooklyn.He graduated from John Dewey High School in Coney Island, then went to Cornell University and the University of Michigan Law School. In 1995, he started working at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, rose through the ranks as a prosecutor, and never left. He lives with his wife and three sons in Williamsburg, less than a mile from where he grew up.He became acting district attorney in late 2016, after his predecessor, Ken Thompson, died of cancer.When he was elected to a full term the next year, Mr. Gonzalez pledged to lead “the most progressive D.A.’s office in the country,” promoting public safety and treating Brooklyn’s minority residents fairly.Mr. Gonzalez and his advisers put together a vision for the office, which was discussed widely within the office and shared with residents and the police. Early release from prison would be the default position in most parole proceedings; intervention efforts would be employed to drive down gang crime; prosecutors would be encouraged to resolve cases without jail time. The plan also called for more vigorous prosecution of certain sex crimes — such as so-called acquaintance rape — and the addition of a hate crimes unit.When the plan, “Justice 2020,” came out, it was “a non-story, because he had already sold it and begun to implement it,” said Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who served as general counsel under Mr. Gonzalez, and ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Bragg last year. She and several other former colleagues said the quiet, incremental rollout was typical of his style. “Not because you’re trying to hide the ball, but because that’s sometimes the best way for public safety,” she said.In his first full term, Mr. Gonzalez continued the work he began as acting district attorney: He dismissed tens of thousands of summonses for low-level offenses, and virtually stopped prosecuting marijuana possession. He expanded a mentorship program that allowed some young men arrested with a gun for the first time to avoid prison, and he reached plea deals with immigrant defendants that allowed them to avoid deportation.Yung-Mi Lee, the legal director of the criminal defense practice at Brooklyn Defender Services, said an important difference between Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Bragg was that Mr. Gonzalez did not come out of the gates with a sweeping set of changes.Instead, Ms. Lee said, he had been “quietly implementing his policies, in terms of what kinds of cases should be prosecuted, which kinds of cases he has been declining to prosecute” — with some getting “a very hard-line approach.”“It’s all about prosecutorial discretion,” she said.When residents of Bay Ridge were upset about a group of men who often lingered on a corner near a school, drinking and urinating, Mr. Gonzalez said, his office intervened. Instead of seeking charges, the office contacted a charity service, and got a couple of the men into shelters.“Eric Gonzalez, rhetorically, is very progressive,” said Carl Hamad-Lipscombe, the executive director of the Envision Freedom Fund, a Brooklyn nonprofit and bail fund that pushes for alternatives to pretrial detention.“What plays out in court is often very different,” Mr. Hamad-Lipscombe said, with prosecutors from Mr. Gonzalez’s office seeking bail in cases that might not call for it.Working With the PoliceAfter historic lows in the years before the pandemic, shootings and murders rose sharply in Brooklyn in 2020. Amr Alfiky for The New York TimesOne factor that contributes to Mr. Gonzalez’s ability to walk the line between progressive priorities and community calls to tackle public safety concerns more aggressively is his diplomatic relationship with the Police Department, which he cultivated over a quarter century as a state prosecutor.“They have always been given a voice at the table,” Mr. Gonzalez said of the police.In 2017, the city’s largest police union endorsed Mr. Gonzalez in the Democratic primary, saying he “demonstrated a clear commitment to justice and fairness, as well as an understanding of the difficult and unique nature of a police officer’s duties.”Still, Mr. Gonzalez has occasionally faced criticism from the police. In 2019, when his office released a list of officers whose credibility had been undermined through discredited testimony or workplace infractions, the police union that once endorsed him said he had “abandoned his prosecutorial role,” siding with “criminals, not crime victims.”The department also objected strongly to his approach to gun possession cases. The police started to send gun cases to federal prosecutors instead; one of Mr. Gonzalez’s former top aides recalled that he had to work hard “to rebuild those bridges.”Mr. Gonzalez’s delicate approach to working with the police is rooted, observers said, in a fundamental understanding of New York: When it comes to law and order, much of the city can be somewhat conservative. In last year’s Democratic mayoral primary, Mr. Adams — a former police officer who ran on a tough-on-crime platform — carried many of the districts hit hardest by violent crime.“I constantly hear people say they want more cops — they just want their cops to behave differently,” said Richard Aborn, the president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York, a nonprofit group that works closely with law enforcement and community organizations.Mr. Gonzalez, center, has forged collaborative relationships with the police while acknowledging that their approaches to reducing crime sometimes differ.Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesBy the end of 2020, Brooklyn had tallied 175 murders and 652 shootings, compared with about 100 murders and 290 shootings the year before. Aggravated assaults also increased, as did burglaries and car thefts.Brooklyn reported some improvement last year: a 15 percent decline in murders and 20 percent fewer shootings. Robbery, rape and burglary also dropped. Mr. Gonzalez’s office worked with the police on four major gang takedowns.But there is more work to be done.“We became the safest large city in America,” Mr. Aborn said. “When you’ve had 15 years of those levels of safety, and suddenly random shootings and murders start to creep up — people being shot, people being pushed on the subway, bodegas broken into with guns, that is going to shake an already shaken city.”Mr. Gonzalez has argued that this is not a problem the city can arrest its way out of. Many of the concerns he hears, he said, are not about violent crime or gangs or gun violence, but about residents’ perceptions of an erosion of public safety.“You have to have your ear to the ground, because it really goes from community to community,” Mr. Gonzalez said.His office recently fielded a call from a chain drugstore in the Brownsville neighborhood that was being targeted regularly by several shoplifters who would get violent when confronted.“There are neighborhoods with one pharmacy,” Mr. Gonzalez said. If that branch shuts down, “Suddenly, that community doesn’t have a 24-hour pharmacy.”A woman in Mr. Gonzalez’s office who handles cases involving repeat offenders talked to the local precinct and set up a pilot program. Detectives in unmarked cars stationed outside the store arrested the shoplifters but, rather than jail or prosecute them, the district attorney’s office spoke with them about what was behind the thefts: Of the six who agreed to participate in the pilot program, two reported having mental health problems, three were homeless and all reported substance abuse problems.The six were referred to service providers, and Mr. Gonzalez’s office is tracking their progress.“To me, being progressive is not simply about not prosecuting cases,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “It’s about using the resources to protect communities.”Nicole Hong More

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      Louisville Mayoral Candidate Says Gunman Shot at Him in Campaign Office

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      The candidate, Craig Greenberg, was unharmed, but the attack left a bullet hole in his sweater. A man was charged with attempted murder, the police said.A mayoral candidate in Louisville, Ky., said he was the target of a shooting inside his campaign office on Monday that left him unharmed but shaken — and with a bullet hole in the back of his sweater.The candidate, Craig Greenberg, said he and four members of his campaign team were in a morning meeting near downtown when a man walked in.“When we greeted him, he pulled out a gun, aimed directly at me and began shooting,” Mr. Greenberg said at a news conference.The gunman was standing in the doorway as he fired his weapon multiple times, Mr. Greenberg said, and a member of his campaign staff slammed the door shut before helping to build a barricade out of tables and desks.Police officers who responded to the scene detained Quintez Brown, 21, outside the building. Mr. Brown was later charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment, a Police Department spokeswoman said.According to Louisville news media outlets, Mr. Brown is a Black Lives Matter activist who was involved in protests after city police officers killed Breonna Taylor during a botched drug raid in her apartment in March 2020. He has written columns for The Courier-Journal about race and social justice.Mr. Brown announced in December that he would run for a Metro Council seat but county records show that he did not file to do so before last month’s deadline. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer.Mr. Greenberg declined to say whether he recognized the attacker, citing the police investigation, and it was not clear why he was targeted.Chief Erika Shields of the Louisville Metro Police Department said at a news conference that possible reasons for the attack include Mr. Greenberg’s mayoral candidacy or his Jewish identity, but that it was also conceivable that the police were “dealing with someone who has mental issues or is venomous.”“Until we can determine what the motivating factors were, we are going to keep an open mind and proceed with an abundance of caution and concern for many of our community members,” Chief Shields said.Mr. Greenberg, a Democrat, is in a crowded race to replace Mayor Greg Fischer, a Democrat who cannot run again because he is limited to three terms. The party primary contests are in May, followed by a general election in November.There are eight Democratic candidates, including David L. Nicholson, the Circuit Court clerk for Jefferson County; the Rev. Timothy Findley Jr. of Kingdom Fellowship Christian Life Center; and Shameka Parrish-Wright, a local social justice activist. Bill Dieruf, the mayor of Jeffersontown, a Louisville suburb, is one of the four Republicans in the race.Mr. Greenberg is a businessman who has been the president of a boutique hotel chain and a member of the University of Louisville’s board of trustees. He has been endorsed by at least six members of the 26-person Metro Council, including its president.The top issue on Mr. Greenberg’s campaign website is public safety. An eight-page plan outlines his desire, among other things, to hire nearly 300 police officers and to dedicate more resources to solving violent crime and making sure illegal guns stay off the streets.“Too many Louisville families have experienced the trauma of gun violence,” Mr. Greenberg said after the shooting. “Too many in Louisville were not as blessed as my team and I were today to survive.“Clearly, much more work needs to be done to end this senseless gun violence and make Louisville a safer place for everyone.”Like many large cities, Louisville has seen an increase in violent crime during the coronavirus pandemic. The city set a record with 173 homicides in 2020, and then broke it with 188 homicides last year. There were 18 homicides this year through Feb. 6, according to the Police Department, slightly behind last year’s pace.The Police Department itself has been under scrutiny for years, most prominently after officers killed Ms. Taylor. The police chief at that time was fired after officers killed a restaurant owner during protests over Ms. Taylor’s death.On Monday, Mr. Greenberg thanked the Police Department for its swift response to the shooting and its daily efforts to keep the city safe. He said he wanted to go home and hug his wife and two sons, pausing to compose himself.“It all happened so quick, but it’s a very surreal experience,” he said of the shooting. “There are far too many other people in Louisville who have experienced that same feeling.” 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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      Thomas Kenniff, Manhattan D.A. Candidate, Sees a City on the Brink

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      Thomas Kenniff, who is facing Alvin Bragg in the Nov. 2 election, has focused his campaign on a recent increase in some types of crime.Thomas Kenniff believes that New York City is teetering on a precipice.Mr. Kenniff, the Republican candidate for Manhattan district attorney, is not referring to Covid-19 or climate-related disasters, like the flooding that killed 13 people in the city last month.No, it is crime that worries Mr. Kenniff — crime, and progressive policies that he believes have contributed to its rise, particularly the bail reform law that went into effect in January 2020, which stopped criminal courts from setting cash bail on most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.Though legal experts who have studied the matter say there is no clear connection between that law and the rise in some categories of violent crime, including murders and shootings, Mr. Kenniff, 46, is convinced that a link exists.“As a result of misguided criminal justice policies that embrace criminals at the expense of victims, we are seeing an increase in violent crime and a decrease in quality of life like nothing we have experienced in years,” he said in a recent debate with his Democratic opponent, Alvin Bragg. The election, on Nov. 2, will determine the leader of an office that handles tens of thousands of cases a year and conducts many high-profile investigations, including an ongoing inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.Mr. Bragg, 48, has an overwhelming advantage. Democrats outnumber Republicans in Manhattan by nearly eight to one, and residents of the borough — which Mr. Kenniff left for Long Island about four years ago — have not elected a Republican as their district attorney since 1937.Alvin Bragg, the Democratic nominee for Manhattan district attorney, supported the bail reform law that Mr. Kenniff has criticized.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut Mr. Kenniff, a major in the Army National Guard and veteran of the Iraq War, says he expects to compete with Mr. Bragg given the number of Manhattanites he hears from who are concerned about crime.“I do think there is something fermenting in response to what is happening on the street level that Alvin Bragg has not condemned in any meaningful way,” Mr. Kenniff said.Asked to respond, a spokesman for Mr. Bragg, Richard Fife, said that Mr. Kenniff had spent the campaign “making ridiculous attacks playing on people’s fears.”“Alvin Bragg understands from personal experience the safety concerns families face and the inequities embedded into our system,” Mr. Fife said.Mr. Kenniff has consistently asserted — as have other law enforcement figures, most prominently Commissioner Dermot Shea of the New York Police Department — that the bail overhaul is partly behind the spike in certain categories of gun crime, which began in the summer of 2020.Experts disagree, and point toward similar spikes in murders and shootings in cities around the country, regardless of their bail laws.“There is no evidence linking the bail reforms to the uptick in shootings and homicides,” said Michael Rempel, the director of jail reform at the Center for Court Innovation, a nonprofit organization that works in partnership with the mayor’s office, the state courts and other institutional players in the criminal justice system.Mr. Kenniff, who now works primarily as a defense lawyer, said that he sees a correlation and rejects arguments like Mr. Rempel’s.“I reject it based on what I’ve seen in my own practice and the people I’ve represented,” he said. “I reject it based on what I see on the streets.”From Long Island to IraqMr. Kenniff was born in Brooklyn in 1975 and grew up in Massapequa, in a waterfront house on the South Shore of Long Island. He attended the University of Rochester, where he majored in history. And he began to consider the possibility of being a lawyer, in part because of the unlikely influence of the actor Tom Cruise.“Whatever part he was playing, you wanted to do that,” Mr. Kenniff said. “I saw ‘Days of Thunder,’ I wanted to be a racecar driver. I saw ‘Cocktail,’ I wanted to become a bartender.”The movie that really influenced Mr. Kenniff was “A Few Good Men,” in which Mr. Cruise plays a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, military lawyers who prosecute and defend members of the armed services.After graduating from Hofstra’s law school, and spending several years at a law firm and the Westchester district attorney’s office, Mr. Kenniff began the commissioning process. In early 2005, he was deployed to a military base right outside of Tikrit, Iraq.While abroad, he defended soldiers who were charged with violations of military law and provided counsel to soldiers and civilians. He also sweated out a number of rocket attacks, said his roommate, Major Robert Kincaid, who added that Mr. Kenniff soon got used to the strikes.“We heard the alarms go off and I was like, ‘Oh, we’re supposed to go to the shelter,’” Mr. Kincaid recalled. “And he looks at me and goes, ‘Are you going to do that? I think it’s safer in here.’”Mr. Kenniff returned to the United States toward the end of 2005 and after about six more months as a prosecutor in Westchester, he left the office to start a law firm with another veteran, Steven M. Raiser, where over the past 15 years he has done defense work for a wide range of clients.Mr. Kenniff spent long stretches of the pandemic housed at a hotel in Manhattan, like other service members, and on active duty at the Javits Center, which was transformed into a field hospital. During that time, Mr. Kenniff began following the nascent Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney and grew alarmed at what he was hearing.A Return to ‘Broken Windows’Eight candidates ran as Democrats to become Manhattan district attorney, including three without any prosecutorial experience.But as murders and shootings continued to rise in the early months of 2021, voters leaned toward more experienced contenders like Mr. Bragg, a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Bragg won a close primary, leaving him poised to become the first Black Manhattan district attorney.Mr. Kenniff said he is concerned that Mr. Bragg — who supported the bail law and has pledged to dedicate new units in the office to hold the police accountable and to review the office’s past convictions — will implement lenient policies that will encourage crime.Asked about his own priorities, Mr. Kenniff said that he wanted to focus on reducing gun crime, which he believes means also cracking down on misdemeanors, including fare evasion and graffiti-related crimes.He said he believes in the merits of “broken windows” policing, the idea that actively policing and prosecuting petty crimes will have a healthy effect on the overall crime rate. The theory has been called into question by a number of criminologists and others, who say it naturally leads to discriminatory overpolicing.“I’m not trying to upend the whole concept of a prosecutor’s office,” Mr. Kenniff said. “I don’t need 20-page manifestoes about how I’m going to do this, this and that.”Mr. Kenniff has reserved much of his energy for criticizing the bail law, which was passed in an effort to ensure that poor people were not disproportionately penalized because they could not afford bail. The law effectively eliminated money bail and pretrial detention for almost all misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, but allowed for bail to be set on virtually all violent felonies.It was met with immediate resistance from opponents, who argued that it would lead to the release of dangerous criminals. In April 2020, the law was amended to allow judges more discretion to jail defendants. (It remains illegal in New York for judges to consider a defendant’s threat to public safety in setting bail, as it has been for the last 50 years.)The law remains a target of conservatives, including Mr. Kenniff, who says that along with the disbandment of the police’s anti-crime units and local politicians’ lack of support for the police, the law was key to rises in gun crime. He argues that the pretrial release of those charged with crimes like gun possession and misdemeanor assault has endangered communities.As of yet, there is no evidence of that. The mayor’s office of criminal justice has found that the bail law had no discernible effect on the rate of rearrest. And studies conducted in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Jersey, which made similar changes, found that their rates of recidivism had not gone up.None of that carries weight with Mr. Kenniff.“The notion that these policies haven’t contributed to what is going on on the street is just utterly counterintuitive,” he said. “So would I be skeptical, am I skeptical, of studies and statistics that say otherwise? Sure.” More