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      The Spectacular Fall of Lori Lightfoot

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      It was a stunning rebuke. On Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, the first Black woman and first openly L.G.B.T.Q. person to lead the city, failed to advance to a runoff, earning just 17 percent of the vote and becoming the first incumbent mayor in 40 years to lose a re-election bid.Four days before the election, I interviewed Lightfoot in her Chicago office. The space, with its soaring ceiling, was a clash of aesthetics, like many government buildings, displaying a kind of prudent grandeur, evoking the gravitas of the office without signaling excess, much like Lightfoot herself, who settled her small frame, dressed in a smart gray suit, into a large chair.During our nearly hourlong interview, she choked up and fought back tears when discussing the sacrifices her parents had made for her and her siblings. A smile lit her face when she talked about all the memes that had made her a folk hero in the early days of her term, and she puffed up with pride when discussing her proudest moments as mayor, including how she and her team had dealt with the Covid-19 crisis.But those weren’t the reasons I’d trekked to the frigid city on the lake. I’d come because Lightfoot belongs to a group of recently elected Black mayors of major American cities, including Eric Adams in New York, Sylvester Turner in Houston and Karen Bass in Los Angeles.In those cities, Black people are outnumbered by other nonwhite groups, and in New York City and Chicago their ranks are dwindling.Each of these four mayors was elected or re-elected around the height of two seismic cultural phenomena — Black Lives Matter and the pandemic. Of the four, Lightfoot would be one of the first to face voters and test the fallout. (Turner is term-limited and can’t run again.)It clearly did not go well.On one level, the results of Tuesday’s election speak to how potent the issue of crime can be and how it can be used as a scare tactic. Lightfoot said that it was absolutely used as a political tool in her race: “You’ve got people who are using it as a cudgel against me every single day. You’ve got the only white candidate in the race who’s acting like he’s going to be a great white savior on public safety.”That white candidate is Paul Vallas, who finished at the top of the crowded field on Tuesday with 34 percent of the vote. Vallas had run a tough-on-crime, law-and-order campaign in which he told one crowd that his “whole campaign is about taking back our city, pure and simple.”Lightfoot called the remark “the ultimate dog whistle.”In our interview, she was brutal in her racial assessment of Vallas: “He is giving voice and platform to people who are hateful of anyone who isn’t white and Republican in our city, in our country.” She is also surprisingly candid about how race operates in the city itself: “Chicago is a deeply divided and segregated city.”It is that division, in her view, fomented by candidates who see politics in the city as a zero-sum game, that provided Vallas with an opening to win over the city’s white citizens. As she put it, “People who are not used to feeling the touch of violence, particularly people on the North Side of our city, they are buying what he’s selling.”Indeed, Vallas won many of the wards in the northern part of the city, while Lightfoot won most of the wards on the largely Black South Side.But two things can be true simultaneously: There can be legitimate concerns about rising crime, and crime can be used as a political wedge issue, particularly against elected officials of color, which has happened often.In this moment, when the country has still not come to grips with the wide-ranging societal trauma that the pandemic exacerbated and unleashed, mayors are being held responsible for that crime. If all politics is local, crime and safety are the most local. And when the perception of crime collides with ingrained societal concepts of race and gender, politicians, particularly Black women, can pay the price.In 2021, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta chose not to seek re-election, becoming the city’s first Black mayor to serve only a single term, after wrestling with what she called the “Covid crime wave.” Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans is facing a possible recall, largely over the issue of crime in her city, and organizers said this week that they have gathered enough signatures to force a recall vote.Even in cities where Black mayors aren’t likely to be removed from office, their opponents are searching for ways to limit their power, using criminal justice as justification.The Mississippi House recently passed a bill that would create a separate court system and an expanded police force in the city of Jackson, one of the Blackest cities in America. The new district “would incorporate all of the city’s significantly populated white-majority neighborhoods,” as an analysis by The Guardian pointed out. Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, said the plan reminded him of apartheid.Crime often comes in waves, but a question lingers about how people, even liberals, respond when a crest arrives under Black leadership: Are Black mayors too quickly and easily blamed for rising crime, and if so, why? Because of an unwillingness to crack down on criminals or because of a more insidious, latent belief in ineffectual Black leadership in times of crisis?Lightfoot told me she understood that as a woman and as a person of color, “I’m always going to be viewed through a different lens, that the things I do and say, that the toughness that I exhibit, is viewed as divisive, that I’m the mean mayor, that I can’t collaborate with anyone.”Even so, she conceded, “If you feel like your life has been challenged because of the public safety issues coming to your doorstep, it doesn’t matter what the numbers are — you need to feel safe.”But feelings on issues of politics, crime and race also tap into our biases, both conscious and subconscious. In that vein, Lightfoot may be a harbinger, or at least a warning, for the other big-city Black mayors: As the Covid crime wave wears on, will their mostly non-Black citizens feel that their safety is being prioritized and secured under Black leadership?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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Why Chicago’s Mayoral Election Matters, Even if You Don’t Live in Chicago

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      America’s cities increasingly face similar problems, particularly worries about crime and hangovers from the pandemic. That’s why the mayor’s election in Chicago on Tuesday is about more than Chicago.CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot faces eight challengers in a fierce mayoral election and risks being ousted from City Hall after one term. Here’s why the election, at a time of widespread unease in the nation’s cities, reflects issues that are resonating around the country.The race is a referendum on crime and policing.On the campaign trail and in debates, the election in Chicago has been driven by one issue above all others: crime.Under Ms. Lightfoot, who was elected in 2019, homicide rates soared to generational highs, an increase that was most deeply felt in pockets of the South and West Sides that have historically been plagued by gun violence. And residents throughout the city say they are unsettled by a spike in robberies, muggings, carjackings and other property crimes, and they have placed the blame on Ms. Lightfoot.She is facing her most serious competition from a tough-on-crime candidate, Paul Vallas, a former public schools executive who began attacking her record on public safety early in the campaign.The same political dynamic has played out in mayoral races in New York City and Los Angeles, with varying results: Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, a former police captain, won office in 2021 amid widespread concerns about crime. But last fall, Los Angeles voters chose Karen Bass, a veteran Democratic congresswoman, over Rick Caruso, a billionaire mall developer who spent close to $100 million on a campaign that focused directly on concerns over crime and disorder.Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago met with Mayor Eric Adams of New York last year to discuss crime-fighting strategies.Tyler Pasciak Lariviere/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressMs. Lightfoot has crisscrossed Chicago telling voters that crime is down in the city and that her focus on the issue is yielding results: Homicides dropped in 2022 after rising in the two previous years. For many voters, it may be coming too late.The next Chicago mayor could reshape downtown.“Make no little plans,” Chicagoans like to say, quoting the city planner and architect Daniel Burnham, whose vision transformed Chicago’s lakefront and skyline.Cities around the county are struggling to redefine and revitalize their downtowns in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. And whoever wins the mayoral election in Chicago will have the opportunity to make very big plans for the city’s downtown, including its most prominent neighborhood, the Loop. The area was battered during the pandemic and has yet to fully recover.Ms. Lightfoot has already made proposals that could nudge the Loop away from its identity as a center for office workers, and toward becoming a more residential neighborhood and hub of cultural life. (The Chicago Loop Alliance, a business advocacy group, says the area is already well on its way: There are now more people living in the Loop than before the pandemic, reflecting growth of about 9 percent since 2020.)One plan introduced under the Lightfoot administration addresses the high vacancy rates for commercial space in the Loop, calling for older office buildings on LaSalle Street in the heart of Chicago’s business district to be turned into apartments and condominiums, including affordable housing. If the plan is successful, it may become a model for other big cities that find themselves with excess commercial real estate as remote workers continue to balk at returning downtown.Whoever wins the mayoral election in Chicago will have the chance to shape downtown Chicago as it adapts to the effects of the pandemic.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBig-city politics are in flux.Mayoral elections in Chicago are officially nonpartisan, but none of the nine candidates on the ballot on Tuesday is a Republican. (In the 2020 presidential election, 83 percent of Chicago voters voted Democratic.) Assuming none wins an outright majority on Tuesday, the top two finishers in the race will advance to a runoff on April 4. Who those candidates turn out to be may offer a glimpse into the direction of urban politics in post-pandemic America.Ms. Lightfoot has been attacked from both the right and the left, and her challengers fit in familiar niches on the national Democratic spectrum. Mr. Vallas has attracted support from more conservative voters, especially in heavily white wards on the Northwest and Southwest Sides, where many police officers, firefighters and other city workers live. He has also gained support from Democrats who voted for Ms. Lightfoot in 2019 but are now fed up over crime and are willing to vote for a more conservative candidate.The mayor also faces serious challenges from the liberal wing of the party, especially from Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the liberal Chicago Teachers Union. Mr. Johnson has gained momentum in the last several weeks, polls suggest, as progressive voters who are unwilling to give Ms. Lightfoot another chance have searched for an alternative. But at a time when public safety is the No. 1 issue for many voters, Mr. Johnson’s previous support for reducing police funding — a stance he later backtracked from — may complicate his mayoral bid. More

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      Lori Lightfoot Seeks a Second Term as Chicago Mayor

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      CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot met recently with two dozen Chicagoans at a campaign event in a plush apartment building in the city’s affluent Lincoln Park neighborhood. Before long, she shifted into the rapid-fire mode that defined her career before City Hall, when she was a federal prosecutor known for her tenacity.She rattled off statistics, handpicked to show that Chicago was on the upswing: The number of shootings in the city had fallen 20 percent in 2022, after spiking during the pandemic. Homicides were down 14 percent. Carjackings decreased, too.“You know that crime is a complicated issue — you can’t just snap your fingers and make it disappear,” she said, adding: “If you don’t feel safe, none of the rest of it matters.”Whether Chicagoans believe that the city is getting safer could determine Ms. Lightfoot’s political future. Four years ago, after a politically battered Rahm Emanuel decided not to run for re-election, Ms. Lightfoot emerged from the back of a crowded pack to replace him. She ran as an anticorruption reformer who promised to do away with the old, clubby ways of governing in Chicago. She was elected in a landslide over more prominent, more experienced opponents, sweeping all 50 wards to become the city’s first Black woman mayor.Less than a year into her first term, though, Ms. Lightfoot, a Democrat, was hit with the Covid-19 pandemic and all its attendant crises — and she now governs a restless city that has yet to fully shake off its pandemic malaise.Chicagoans have a lot of gripes about the last several years, and many people have laid the blame at Ms. Lightfoot’s feet. Public transit has been shaky, with riders complaining of long waits for buses and “L” trains. Chicago’s school system has steadily lost enrollment, and in 2019, parents endured a teachers’ strike that shuttered schools for 11 days.The Willis Tower looms over the Chicago skyline and the north branch of the Chicago River.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesChicago’s public transit has been shaky, with riders complaining of long waits for buses and “L” trains.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesMs. Lightfoot spoke to a small group in a North Side condominium building about her policies on education, crime and other issues.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAbove all other issues, crime has unsettled Chicago. Though many kinds of violent crimes fell in 2022, robberies, thefts and burglaries increased from 2021, according to the Chicago Police Department. The North Side is “as safe as it’s been in a generation,” Crain’s Chicago Business wrote in October, but other parts of the city have visibly suffered.“The city is worse than it’s ever been,” said Pamela Wortham, 65, as she pushed her grocery cart out of a Jewel-Osco store. Her neighborhood, South Shore, has struggled with gun violence and poverty. “But with the right person,” she said, “we could come up again.”Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Union Support: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. Democrats hope it will lead to increased union strength.A Chaotic Majority: The defining dynamic for House Republicans, who have a slim majority, may be the push and pull between the far right and the rest of the conference. Here is a closer look at the fractious caucus.A New Kind of Welfare: In a post-Roe world, some conservative thinkers are pushing Republicans to move on from Reagan-era family policy and send cash to families. A few lawmakers are listening.Flipping the Pennsylvania House: Democrats swept three special elections in solidly blue House districts, putting the party in the majority for the first time in a dozen years by a single seat.Whether that person is Ms. Lightfoot, who is seeking a second term at City Hall, will be determined in the next few weeks. She is an unpopular mayor whose support has nose-dived in the last four years, in part because of her performance and in part because of the circumstances of the pandemic. Her own polling shows her leading an unwieldy pack of nine mayoral candidates, several of whom have run unsuccessfully before — but it shows her doing so with only 24 percent of the splintered vote.The mayoral election on Feb. 28 has attracted a long line of challengers, including Representative Jesús G. García, whose Congressional district includes parts of the city, and Paul Vallas, a former head of the Chicago Public Schools. Unless a candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote — an extremely unlikely scenario — there will be a runoff in April between the two top finishers.Mr. Vallas, who was endorsed by The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board, has made solving the city’s crime problem his signature campaign issue. Mr. García, the son of Mexican immigrants, would be Chicago’s first Latino mayor; he won enough votes in the 2015 mayoral race to force Mr. Emanuel into a runoff.Edwin Eisendrath, a businessman and former alderman who has endorsed Mr. García, said that he supported Ms. Lightfoot in 2019 but has been disappointed in her approach to governing.“We have great universities, we have fabulous neighborhoods, we have important transit infrastructure — in the world of climate change, we have water,” he said, referring to Lake Michigan. “But there’s an enormous leadership gap in Chicago that we all feel, particularly in the last three years.”Many people point to her temperament. Ms. Lightfoot has sparred with the City Council; the Democratic governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker; and legislators in Springfield, particularly over a law that created an elected school board.The city was focused on rooting out corruption when she was elected mayor four years ago, said David Axelrod, the Chicago-based political strategist.Red lanterns hung overhead in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood this month. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“The city is worse than it’s ever been,” said Pamela Wortham, 65, a resident of the South Shore neighborhood.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesA new condominium building sits among century-old houses in the Avondale neighborhood.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“She was the outsider prosecutor, the avenger who was going to come in and bring about change,” Mr. Axelrod said. “She’s a very pugnacious person. But the skill set that is required to run a city — you need some of that pugnaciousness, but you also need to cajole, recruit, compromise. The very qualities that made her appealing four years ago may have been a bit of an obstacle here.”In interviews around Chicago, many residents said they were frustrated with Ms. Lightfoot, bothered by a sense that the city has stagnated under her watch and unsure whether they wanted to give her another chance.Ms. Wortham said that her neighborhood, South Shore, had deteriorated while other areas of the city, especially on the North Side, have been thriving. She said that when she was a little girl, growing up in the house where she still lives, she could ride her bike to a nearby beach on Lake Michigan without any problems. Now she tells her 10-year-old granddaughter to stay inside, where she is safer.Ron Bailey, 57, a salesman from the South Side, said he was disappointed that the mayor had not lived up to her promises to overhaul the Chicago Police Department.“People are still suffering from the pandemic’s effects,” he said. “We see on the news every day what’s going on. There is a crisis of hope in our communities, and unless that crisis is addressed, we’re going to keep getting what we get.”Jens Ludwig, a professor and the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, said that though the numbers of violent crimes have declined, it was not yet clear whether that was the beginning of a longer trend.“We don’t quite appreciate the effect of the pandemic enough on the crime problem,” he said. “You can see, all sorts of behavior problems have really gone up in the pandemic and post-pandemic period — motor vehicle deaths, disciplinary problems with kids, people fighting on airplanes. All of that stuff is part and parcel of the underappreciated lingering mental health consequences of the pandemic.”Ms. Lightfoot’s supporters say that her achievements — under difficult conditions — have been understated. The unemployment rate in Chicago is 4.3 percent, down from 18.3 percent in April 2020. The city’s economy remains diverse, a hub of transportation, manufacturing and technology.Jesse Chacon, 35, who lives on the West Side, said he voted for Ms. Lightfoot once and would probably do so again. “The city’s been good for me and for my family,” he said as he entered an “L” station this month, naming at least four relatives who work in the city’s public schools, fire department or police department.Jesse Chacon, 35, who lives on the West Side, said he would probably vote for Ms. Lightfoot. “The city’s been good for me and for my family,” he said. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesA mural by a local artist in the Logan Square neighborhood on the North Side.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesCondominium towers in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesUnder Ms. Lightfoot, Chicago has made progress on improving its finances and has earned upgrades from credit rating agencies. The nonpartisan Civic Federation applauded Ms. Lightfoot last fall for including sizable supplemental payments to the city’s pension funds in her most recent budget, though it criticized her for a lack of transparency on police budgeting.“A lot of people have a very short memory of all that she accomplished,” said Tamar Newberger, a North Side resident who introduced Ms. Lightfoot at the campaign event on Monday. “The financial health of our city is greatly improved.”Anton Seals Jr., a founder and community organizer on the South Side, said he has seen a burst in Black entrepreneurship in Chicago in recent years, and praised Ms. Lightfoot for working on initiatives to invest in neighborhoods on the South and West Sides.“I think, to her credit, what she’s attempted to do is to shine a light and send resources to communities that haven’t gotten it,” he said. “At least in this administration, you’ve had a commitment to try to do something.”Among the campaign promises that Ms. Lightfoot has yet to fulfill is a vow to draw more people to live in Chicago. Its population grew by nearly 2 percent between 2010 and 2020, to more than 2.7 million people, though the city then lost roughly 50,000 residents during the pandemic, erasing that growth, according to census data.Juliana Santamaria, 34, a paralegal, is one former Chicagoan who left the city for the suburbs in recent years, driven out of the Pilsen neighborhood when her rent jumped by $400 a month. As she waited for an Uber with a friend in Pilsen this month, she said she missed living in Chicago and was mulling what she would do when her teenage children graduate from high school.“It’s one of my goals, to move back,” she said. More

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      In Capitol Attack, Over 900 People Have Been Criminally Charged

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      Even as a House select committee prepared on Monday to recommend criminal charges in connection with a series of attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the Justice Department has not relented in its own investigation of the culmination of those efforts: the mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The inquiry into the Capitol assault is the largest criminal investigation in the department’s history and has shown no signs of slowing down. More than 900 people, from nearly every state, are now facing charges, and prosecutors have indicated that hundreds more cases could be filed.While most of the charges brought have been for petty offenses like disorderly conduct or illegally parading in the Capitol, more than 280 people have been accused of assaulting or resisting the police, including about 100 who are facing additional charges of using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing bodily injury to officers.In addition, 290 people have been charged with obstructing an official proceeding in front of Congress — the count that prosecutors have used to describe how the mob disrupted the certification of the election that was taking place at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Last week, a federal appeals court was asked to toss the charge in all of the cases by defense lawyers who claim it was improperly used.Nearly 40 defendants have gone to trial in Jan. 6-related cases, and only one of them — a former government contractor from New Mexico — has been fully acquitted. All of the trials have taken place in Federal District Court in Washington, which sits within sight of the Capitol building. In the most prominent trial so far, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was convicted along with one of his lieutenants of seditious conspiracy.The sentences handed down by judges in the cases have varied widely. Many, if not most, of the defendants who were charged with minor crimes and pleaded guilty have faced no jail time. The stiffest sentence issued so far — a 10-year prison term — was given to a former New York City police officer who swung a metal flagpole at a Washington officer during the attack.In a separate investigation, a special counsel, Jack Smith, is examining the roles that former President Donald J. Trump and several of his allies played in seeking to overturn the results of the election. While that inquiry has many tentacles, one of the chief lines of investigation concerns an expansive plan to create false slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump in seven key swing states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. More

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      The Root Cause of Violent Crime Is Not What We Think It Is

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      There is a prevailing narrative about crime that positions bad people as the problem and toughness — in the form of police and prisons — as the solution. It’s emotionally powerful, enough to make politicians allocate money for more cops and more jails in order to avoid being labeled weak, or worse, pro-crime. The recent decision by Mayor Eric Adams of New York to get more homeless mentally ill people involuntarily committed — which shocked even the N.Y.P.D. — is just the latest example.But policies like this have little if any effect on violent crime, in part because they do not address what causes the problem.The 2022 midterm elections, in which the Republican Party poured considerable sums into a tough-on-crime message and did far worse than expected, offers hope that change is at last possible. Candidates with the courage to do so can run — and win — on a promise to reduce the causes of violence, addressing it before it occurs instead of just punishing it when the damage is already done.If throwing money at police and prisons made us safer, we would probably already be the safest country in the history of the world. We are not, because insufficient punishment is not the root cause of violence. And if someone is talking about how tough they are and how scared you should be, they care more about keeping you scared than keeping you safe.The tough-on-crime narrative acts like a black hole. It subsumes new ideas and silences discussions of solutions that are already making a difference in people’s lives. And it provides bottomless succor to politicians who are more interested in keeping themselves in power than keeping people safe.I have seen the message of “strong communities keeping everyone safe” open the minds of Republican voters, Democratic voters, and many in between. It is backed up by science. Academics, government commissions and even many police chiefs have agreed with the substance behind the message for decades. And there is evidence, including the results of last month’s midterms, that it can work politically on a larger scale.Local successes can be harder for national and statewide candidates to take credit for. But they are still better off telling a story about solutions than trying to out-punish their opponents. Senator-elect John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, often advertised his efforts to eliminate shooting deaths as the mayor of Braddock, Pa.In contrast, many New York State Democrats defaulted to a defensive posture. In the closing weeks of the midterms, Gov. Kathy Hochul cut an ad highlighting stricter bail terms and trumpeted increased police presence in New York City. Sean Patrick Maloney sought (and received) the endorsement of the powerful Police Benevolent Association of New York City even though his district is not in the city. It didn’t work. Hochul survived an unexpectedly close race, but Maloney lost his seat, as did many other Democrats in the state.Even in areas that have doubled down on punishment, the police are finding it exceedingly difficult to solve crimes. This is particularly true of homicides. In New York City, by contrast, the decision to end the unconstitutional tactic of stopping and frisking hundreds of thousands of mostly young Black and brown men did not lead to a spike in crime.Meanwhile, local policies that get closer to the cause are showing results. Dozens of communities are demonstrating how to ensure safety and, in many cases, save money along the way. In Austin, Texas, a 911 call from a person reporting a mental health emergency used to get directed to the police. Now, if there is no immediate danger, dispatchers have the option to transfer the call to a mental health clinician. In the first eight months after the program’s 2019 launch, 82 percent of calls that were transferred were handled without police involvement, which resulted in savings to the taxpayer of $1,642,213. By the 2021 fiscal year, the program was involved in almost 2,000 calls. In Brooklyn, young people who completed an alternative program for illegal gun possession had a 22 percent lower rearrest rate than peers who went to prison. In Olympia, Wash., a new unit of the Police Department that provides “free, confidential, and voluntary crisis response assistance” has responded to 3,108 calls since 2019, all while minimizing arrests and with zero injuries to responders.Communities that have adopted these approaches have not done away with enforcement; they have just required less of it. In Denver, a five-year randomized control trial of a program that provides housing subsidies to those at risk of being unhoused found a 40 percent reduction in arrests among participants. These kinds of results are why localities from New Jersey to New Mexico are restructuring their local governments to invest in the social determinants of health and safety.And yet, as I have learned over more than two decades of work in this field, the black hole narrative cannot be changed by statistics alone. If you want policies that actually work, you have to change the political conversation from “tough candidates punishing bad people” to “strong communities keeping everyone safe.” Candidates who care about solving a problem pay attention to what caused it. Imagine a plumber who tells you to get more absorbent flooring but does not look for the leak.Because the old narrative is so ingrained, candidates often assume that voters agree with it. But common sense and recent polling show that a majority of voters are concerned about crime and also supportive of changes in how we keep communities safe. This has fueled thousands of local innovations across the country. City governments, community groups and nonprofits are comparing notes on what works. And organizations like One Million Experiments are tracking innovations aimed at producing scalable solutions that do not rely on punishment. Reducing crime and reducing reliance on punishment only seem incompatible if you accept, as the narrative black hole dictates, that police and prisons are the only solution.Voters know the status quo does not work. In the run-up to 2024, for the sake of public safety, candidates need to give them real alternatives. That is the only way to get out of the black hole and into the light.Phillip Atiba Goff is the chair and Carl I. Hovland professor of African American studies and professor of psychology at Yale University. He is also the co-founder and C.E.O. of the Center for Policing Equity, a nonprofit that focuses on making policing less racist, less deadly and less omnipresent.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Meet the Voters Who Fueled New York’s Seismic Tilt Toward the G.O.P.

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      Republicans used doomsday-style ads to prey on suburban voters’ fear of crime in New York, helping to flip enough seats to capture the House.GREAT NECK PLAZA, N.Y. — Lynn Frankel still has bouts of nostalgia for her old life, the one before the coronavirus pandemic brought New York City to a standstill and fears about crime began to bubble across this well-to-do suburb. There were dinners in the city with friends, Broadway shows, outings with her children — all an easy train ride away.But these days if she can help it, Ms. Frankel, 58, does not set foot in the city. She’s seen too many headlines about “a lot of crazy stuff”: flagrant shoplifting, seemingly random acts of violence and hate crimes, which triggered concern about the safety of her daughters, who are Asian American.Something else has changed, too. Ms. Frankel, a political independent who reviled Donald J. Trump, gladly voted Republican in this month’s midterm elections to endorse the party’s tough-on-crime platform, and punish the “seeming indifference” she ascribes to Democrats like Gov. Kathy Hochul.“If you don’t feel safe, than it doesn’t matter what all the other issues are,” she said the other day in Great Neck Plaza’s tidy commercial area.New York and its suburbs may remain among the safest large communities in the country. Yet amid a torrent of doomsday-style advertising and constant media headlines about rising crime and deteriorating public safety, suburban swing voters like Ms. Frankel helped drive a Republican rout that played a decisive role in tipping control of the House.The attempt to capitalize on upticks in crime may have fallen short for Republicans elsewhere across the nation. But from Long Island to the Lower Hudson Valley, Republicans running predominantly on crime swept five of six suburban congressional seats, including three that President Biden won handily that encompass some of the nation’s most affluent, well-educated commuter towns.Even in places like Westchester County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans, Mr. Zeldin and other Republican candidates found pockets of support.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesThe numbers were stark. New York’s major suburban counties around the city — Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland — all shifted between 14 and 20 points to the right, thanks to a surge in Republican turnout and crucial crossover votes from independents and Democrats. Even parts of the city followed the trend, though it remained overwhelmingly blue.Take the Third Congressional District, a predominately white and Asian American seat connecting northeast Queens with the North Shore of Long Island that flipped to a Republican, George Santos. Turnout data suggests that Republican enthusiasm almost completely erased Democrats’ large voter registration advantage and flipped some voters, helping Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor, turn a long-shot bid into the state’s closest race for governor in 30 years.Other factors accounted for Democrats’ suburban struggles here. Threats to abortion access drove some liberal voters to the polls, but many reliably Democratic Black, Latino and white voters stayed home. Swing voters blamed the party for painful increases in gas and grocery bills. Orthodox Jews furious over local education issues voted for Republicans at unusually high rates. Tactical decisions by Ms. Hochul appear to have hurt her party, too.The Aftermath of New York’s Midterms ElectionsWho’s at Fault?: As New York Democrats sought to spread blame for their dismal performance in the elections, a fair share was directed toward Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.Hochul’s New Challenges: Gov. Kathy Hochul managed to repel late momentum by Representative Lee Zeldin. Now she must govern over a fractured New York electorate.How Maloney Lost: Democrats won tough races across the country. But Sean Patrick Maloney, a party leader and a five-term congressman, lost his Hudson Valley seat. What happened?A Weak Link: If Democrats lose the House, they may have New York to blame. Republicans flipped four seats in the state, the most of any state in the country.But in interviews with strategists from both parties, candidates, and more than three dozen voters across Long Island and Westchester County, it appeared that New York was uniquely primed over the last two years for a suburban revolt over crime and quality of life.“Elections move dramatically when they become about a singular topic, and the election in New York was not about extremism on the left or right, about abortion or about Kathy Hochul,” said Isaac Goldberg, a Democratic political strategist on the losing side of several marquee races. “The election in New York was about crime.”Long Island and Rockland County in particular have large populations of active and retired law enforcement, and a history of sensitivity to crime and costs. Growing Asian American and Orthodox Jewish populations were especially motivated this year by a string of high-profile hate crimes.Many Orthodox Jews who voted for Republican candidates like Mr. Zeldin were especially motivated by a string of high-profile hate crimes.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesThen there is the coronavirus pandemic. Arguably no metropolitan area was hit harder than New York, where the economy and old patterns of life have also been slower to return. Remote work remains popular here, leaving Midtown office towers, commuter trains and subways below capacity — and many suburbanites increasingly reliant on media accounts saturated with images and videos of brutal acts of violence to shape their perceptions.Commuters recently boarding trains into Manhattan from Nassau and Westchester said they were uneasy navigating Pennsylvania Station, some of which has been under construction; unnerved by the apparent proliferation of homeless encampments and open drug usage in Midtown; and now looked over their shoulder on the subway for people who appear to be mentally disturbed.Several, including Ms. Frankel, said they frequently read The New York Post, which made Mr. Zeldin’s candidacy for governor and the repeal of the state’s 2019 bail law a crusade for more than a year, splashing violent crimes across its front page, however rare they may still be. Many asked not to be identified by their full names out of fear of backlash from friends, colleagues or even strangers who could identify them online.“I wouldn’t go into the city even if they paid me,” a retired dental hygienist said as she mailed a letter in Oyster Bay. A 41-year-old lawyer from Rockville Centre said she sometimes wondered if she would make it home at night alive. A financial adviser from North Salem in Westchester County said it felt like the worst days of the 1980s and 1990s had returned, despite the fact that crime rates remain a fraction of what they were then.“I have kids who live in Manhattan, and I am every day scared,” Lisa Greco, an empty nester who voted all Republican, said as she waited at a nail salon in Pleasantville, in Westchester.“I don’t want them taking the subways but of course they do,” she continued. “I actually track them because I have to know every day that they’re back home. Like, I don’t want to keep texting them like, ‘Are you at work? Are you here?’”Republicans, led by Mr. Zeldin, a Long Islander himself, relentlessly fanned those fears, blaming Democrats for the small rises in crime while accusing them of coddling criminals. A deluge of conservative advertising only amplified the approach, which blamed the new bail law and a Democratic Party that has complete control over both New York City and Albany.Crime statistics tell a more complicated story. Incidents of major crimes are higher in New York City and Nassau County than before the pandemic, though they remain well below levels seen in recent decades. In Westchester, Suffolk and Rockland counties, major crime has been flatter, though in the first six months of this year, property and violent crimes were up compared with the same period in 2021.Despite the Republican Party narrative, major crime has not increased in most suburban areas like Suffolk County, where Mr. Zeldin greeted voters from his district on Election Day. Johnny Milano for The New York TimesMs. Hochul had taken actions as governor to help combat crime and address the mental health crisis among the city’s homeless. And in the race’s final weeks, she pivoted to stress that she would do more. But voters and Democratic officials alike agreed the more nuanced approach was too little, too late.“She’s not wrong, but it came across to a lot of the people I spoke to on Long Island as dismissive and tone deaf,” said Laura Curran, the former Democratic Nassau County executive who was swept out of office last fall by similar currents. “I don’t think it can be overstated how visceral people on Long Island feel about it.”Ms. Hochul and other Democratic candidates spent more of the campaign focused on economic issues and protecting abortion rights. But unlike other states, some voters in New York said they were satisfied that abortion was already safely protected under state law.“The mayor of New York City got elected last year running on this issue. Nothing got better; it got worse,” said Mike Lawler, a Republican who unseated Representative Sean Patrick Maloney in a district that Mr. Biden won by 10 points in Westchester and Rockland Counties. “So I don’t know why any of them are so surprised that this was top of mind to voters.”Representative-elect Mike Lawler, left, was able to upset Sean Patrick Maloney, a powerful Democrat, in a district that President Biden won easily two years ago.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMany New York City residents are baffled by what they view as the irrational fear of those in communities that are objectively far safer. But so are some suburbanites.Back on the South Shore of Long Island, a woman waiting for the Long Island Railroad one morning last week said that since relocating from Brooklyn earlier this year, she had noticed a “hypersensitivity to strangeness” and “hysteria” around crime. It included fliers claiming only Republicans could keep the area safe and a drumbeat of messages in a neighborhood watch group about suspicious looking strangers wandering through well-appointed streets.“There’s a lot of community fear around this town and Nassau becoming more unsafe or changing,” said the woman, a Black lawyer in her mid-40s who only agreed to be identified by her initials K.V. “Maybe it has to do with a wave of people moving from urban communities since the pandemic.”Commuting into the city two to three times a week for work from Rockville Centre, she said she felt no less safe than before, recalling stories of people getting pushed onto subway tracks when she was a child. She voted for Democrats to ensure the protection of abortion access.Republican George Santos won an upset victory in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressOther voters who supported Democrats said they did have concerns about increases in crime, but could not justify backing any Republican associated with Mr. Trump and opposed to abortion rights.“Abortion was definitely the biggest reason I voted Democrat,” said Susie Park, 41, who recently moved to Nassau County from Manhattan. “I don’t feel like a party should ever tell you what you should or should not do.”At the ballot box, though, they were clearly outnumbered on Long Island this year by voters like Gregory Gatti, a 61-year-old insurance broker.A political independent, he said he and most of his friends had voted for Republicans “because they want something done” about crime, inflation and illegal immigration.As he read a fresh New York Post — its front-page headline, “Children of War,” once again devoted to New York City crime — Mr. Gatti said changes to the state’s bail law were “definitely” driving increases in crime, and he was now worried about possible upticks in the suburbs. But he had noted other reasons for concern, as well, as he commutes a couple of days each week through Penn Station to Lower Manhattan.“I have noticed more homeless encampments. We never used to have those,” he said. “You have encampments, then you have drugs, you have crime.”Timmy Facciola contributed reporting from Pleasantville, N.Y. More

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      College Athletes and Ideals for Women’s Body Image

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      More from our inbox:Elizabeth Warren’s Election Analysis: We DisagreeEric Adams and the MidtermsSue Republican LiarsA Matter of SpaceAudra Koopman, who ran track and field at Penn State, said she felt pressured to avoid sweets and to trim down. But even as she did, she didn’t feel like she performed better.Rachel Woolf for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Women in College Sports Feel Pressure to Be Lean at Any Cost” (Sports, Nov. 14):Thank you for raising awareness about the risks of scrutinizing body composition in college athletes. I am a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders, and the highlighted profiles echo stories I have heard many times over.No evidence suggests that participating in a sport causes eating disorders, but rates of these illnesses among athletes are higher than the national average. Athletes who participate in endurance, weight-class or aesthetic-based sports are at heightened risk.A focus on metrics like body fat percentage and body weight may breed an unhelpful hypervigilance on restrictive eating, body size and burning calories. College-age men and women are often still maturing physically, and by taking drastic measures to change their bodies risk their physical and psychological well-being.They also risk missing out on the greatest pleasures of sports: being a good teammate and finding joy in competition even while competing at a high personal level.Deborah R. GlasoferNew YorkThe writer is an associate professor of clinical medical psychology, Columbia Center for Eating Disorders, New York State Psychiatric Institute.To the Editor:Women in college sports are simply the tip of the spear when it comes to our affluent culture’s widely promoted ideal of thinness for women. I lived in Nigeria for many years, and there plumpness in a woman is seen as a desirable signifier of affluence. So this ideal for women’s bodies is anything but universal or timeless.Athletes and dancers perform in public, and the moves that make up their routines are easier when there is less body fat to contend with.This fact extends into other areas of daily life. But though men perform these activities too, and can also have eating disorders, the fact that women are the focal point of this discussion, as they were when I was a professor of women’s studies at Rutgers, says something about the larger issue of gender ideals in our culture.Katherine EllisNew YorkElizabeth Warren’s Election Analysis: We Disagree Kenny Holston for The New York TimesTo the Editor:In “Democrats, Let’s Seize This Moment” (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 14), Senator Elizabeth Warren claims, “The so-called experts who called Democrats’ messaging incoherent were just plain wrong — and candidates who ignored their advice won.”I beg to differ. Surveys show that a large majority of Americans favor most Democratic policies — legal access to abortion, a fair and progressive tax structure, strong environmental regulations and worker protection, a reasonable minimum wage, not cutting Social Security or Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. Yet many Democratic candidates barely squeaked by, and the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives.It’s easy to know what Republicans stand for — even if it’s based on lies. It’s all over the media. I’m not sure that most Americans can say what Democrats stand for, although a large minority of Americans seem to think that we steal elections, and want to curtail the police, open the borders and hand out large sums of money to people who refuse to work. Why? Because the Republican message (often lies) is getting through.Democratic politicians may have great ideas, but they’re terrible at communicating them. Otherwise they’d have a much bigger majority in government.Shaun BreidbartPelham, N.Y.To the Editor:Democrats squeaking by in the midterms is not an overwhelming endorsement of President Biden’s spending and other policies. In many cases it’s voting for the least worst candidate.Has Elizabeth Warren not seen the polls about dissatisfaction with both former President Donald Trump and President Biden? If “none of the above” were a choice, it would likely have won on many ballots.As a centrist, I want elected officials to stop talking and writing about how great they are and how bad their opposition is. Rather, focus on what you will accomplish, bipartisan cooperation and problem solving.Many of my moderate Democratic friends would vote for Liz Cheney if she were a presidential candidate. Sure, she is more conservative, but she has demonstrated integrity, bipartisanship and intelligence. That would be a refreshing change.Gail MacLeodLexington, Va.Eric Adams and the MidtermsMayor Eric Adams views the Democrats’ poor performance in New York as validation of his messaging about crime and his brand of moderate politics.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Democrats See Adams at Root of State Losses” (front page, Nov. 18):Mayor Eric Adams did not lose four New York congressional seats. Asserting that he is to blame says, in essence, that the majority of voters who elected Republicans in swing districts chose poorly and that if voters had not been told crime was a problem, the Democratic candidates in those districts would have won.Mr. Adams has identified crime as a priority for his administration. By virtue of winning election, he is entitled to set his agenda. Whether the current increase in crime is a surge or a blip can be debated, certainly, but the idea that he should soft-pedal concerns about public safety to help other Democratic candidates is inappropriate.On the other hand, the fact that Republicans exploited perceptions about crime for electoral gain may be deplorable, but it is well within the rules of the game.The Democrats’ loss of New York congressional seats resulted from hubris around redistricting and willful ignorance about public perception of issues like bail reform. Eric Adams had nothing to do with either.Rob AbbotCroton-on-Hudson, N.Y.Sue Republican LiarsTo the Editor:Re “Misinformation on Pelosi Attack Spread by G.O.P.” (front page, Nov. 6):The notion seems firmly rooted among Democratic political leaders that since politics is rough and tumble, they should rise above it when the G.O.P.’s fabrication machine spews ominous conspiracy theories and baseless slurs to obscure reality.But since Republican politicians aren’t restrained by shame, common decency or respect for the truth, tolerating their falsehoods only encourages the right wing to wallow in fact-free filth. Instead, the victims of right-wing slanders owe it to themselves — and to us — to seek money damages for defamation from reckless Republican liars.First Amendment law protects scorching invective. But there’s a limit. Under the constitutional principles that govern defamation law, a political speaker is not free to knowingly utter falsehoods or to speak with reckless indifference to truth or falsity.That principle plainly applies to unfounded Republican claims about Paul Pelosi. It likewise applies to Newt Gingrich’s assertion that John Fetterman has “ties to the crips gang,” and to Donald Trump’s lies about a voting machine maker.Multimillion-dollar damage awards might deter Republicans from fouling the political landscape with lies designed to conceal their lack of answers to America’s problems.Mitchell ZimmermanPalo Alto, Calif.The writer is an attorney.A Matter of Space Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Dimming Hope Office Buildings Will Ever Refill” (front page, Nov. 18):Not enough housing? Too much office space? Go figure.Deborah BayerRichmond, Calif. More