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      Left and Center-Left Both Claim Stacey Abrams. Who’s Right?

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      Ms. Abrams, the Georgia Democrat running for governor, has admirers in both wings of her party — and Republicans eager to defeat her. Her carefully calibrated strategy faces a test in 2022.To left-leaning Democrats, Stacey Abrams, who is making her second run for Georgia governor, is a superstar: a nationally recognized voting-rights champion, a symbol of her state’s changing demographics, and a political visionary who registered and mobilized tens of thousands of new voters — the kind of grass-roots organizing that progressives have long preached.“I don’t think anyone could call Stacey Abrams a moderate,” said Aimee Allison, the founder of She the People, a progressive advocacy group for women of color.Moderates would beg to differ. They see Ms. Abrams as an ally for rejecting left-wing policies that center-left Democrats have spurned, like “Medicare for all,” the Green New Deal to combat climate change and the defunding of law enforcement in response to police violence.“I don’t know that anybody in the party can say, ‘She’s one of us,’” said Matt Bennett, a founder of Third Way, the center-left group. “We can’t pretend she’s a moderate,” he added. “But the progressives can’t say she’s a progressive and not a moderate. We’re both kind of right.”The question of how to define Ms. Abrams, 48, the presumptive Democratic standard-bearer in one of the most high-profile races of 2022, takes on new urgency amid the current landscape of the party.Moderates and progressives sparred in Washington throughout 2021, frustrating a White House struggling to achieve consensus on its priorities and continuing an ideological debate that has raged in the party for years. There is also thirst for new blood across the party, considering the advanced ages of President Biden, congressional leaders, and leading progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.On a local level, whether Ms. Abrams maintains credibility with both Democratic wings may determine how well she can withstand Republican attacks. Those close to her campaign say they expect an extremely close race, and that the key is holding the suburban moderates who supported her in 2018 while exciting enough of the new Georgia voters who have registered since that election.Republicans in Georgia — who await Ms. Abrams in the general election — are eager to denounce her as a left-wing radical out of place in a state that was a G.O.P. stronghold until it narrowly tipped into the Democratic column in 2020. Gov. Brian Kemp, who faces a fierce primary challenge in May from former Senator David Perdue, who has the support of former President Donald J. Trump, has released five digital advertisements attacking Ms. Abrams since she announced her campaign on Dec. 1.“Stacey Abrams’ far left agenda has no place in Georgia,” one warns ominously.But a review of Ms. Abrams’s policy statements and television advertisements, and interviews with political figures who have known her for years, reveal a leader who has carefully calibrated her positions, making a point to avoid drifting into one Democratic lane or another.Her allies say the fluidity is an asset, and highlights how policy is only one way that voters choose which candidate to rally behind. Racial representation and the unique political context of the American South are also factors in whether a candidate can credibly claim progressive bona fides, they argue..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Steve Phillips, an early supporter and prominent progressive Democratic donor, said Ms. Abrams’s political strategy was progressive, even if her policy positions were more moderate.“It’s hard for white progressives to be too critical of someone who is so strongly and fiercely unapologetically Black and female,” he said. “Her authenticity comes from the sectors that are the core parts of the progressive base.”Ms. Abrams’s approach does carry risks. In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, several candidates who sought to straddle the line between moderate and progressive policies lost the trust of significant numbers of voters in both camps, as activists pushed for firm commitments on issues like health care, climate change, expanding the Supreme Court and reparations for descendants of enslaved people.At times, Ms. Abrams has used her perch to speak out against progressive causes and defend the Democratic establishment. She said attempts to defund police departments after the murder of George Floyd were creating a “false choice” and said departments should be reformed instead.On health care, she has focused on expanding Medicaid rather than supporting a single-payer system. And in 2020, a think tank founded by Ms. Abrams released a climate plan focused on the South that embraced efforts to incentivize renewable energy but stopped short of the ambitious goals pushed by progressive activists and lawmakers like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.But Ben Jealous, a former Democratic candidate for governor of Maryland who leads the progressive group People for the American Way, said progressives should trust Ms. Abrams just the same. “The Green New Deal is designed for the industrialized unionized North,” he said. “And you’ve got to translate that into Southern.” He added, “She does that.”Several of Ms. Abrams’s allies welcomed an examination of her policy record, arguing that characterizing her as a progressive only fueled Republican attacks.Ms. Abrams declined to be interviewed for this article. Asked how she defined herself ideologically, a spokesman, Seth Bringman, said she “defines herself by her values and her ability to deliver results for the common good by navigating disparate groups and ideologies.”“She’s unwavering in her support for unions, and she worked with anti-union corporations to stop discrimination against the L.G.B.T.Q. community,” he added. “She’s unapologetically pro-choice, and she coordinated with anti-choice legislators to pass criminal justice reform. She’s a capitalist who supports regulation and believes we can fight poverty while praising success.”Such pragmatism has encouraged some moderates — including Georgians who served with Ms. Abrams in the State Capitol — to compare her to other center-left national figures who had credibility among the grass-roots base, like Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Mr. Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, said Ms. Abrams had demonstrated that she “wasn’t going to be pushed around by anybody in the party, from the center or from the left.”Some moderates see Ms. Abrams as a center-left leader in the mold of former Presidents Barack Obama, right, and Bill Clinton.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesHe added, “That independence has made her a very viable candidate.”Carolyn Hugley, a Georgia state representative who has known Ms. Abrams since 2011, said she had always sought to be seen as a “doer” and an organizer. As minority leader, Ms. Abrams, a budget wonk, aligned with Tea Party members and some religious groups to oppose a Republican tax reform bill.“If you had asked me 10 years ago if voting rights was what she was going to be known for, I would probably say no,” Ms. Hugley said. In Georgia, Ms. Abrams became known for her willingness to work with anyone, even if it led to a backlash. In 2011, she lent bipartisan credibility to an effort by Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, to restructure the state’s scholarship program for low-income students. Several Democrats criticized her decision to stand with him at a news conference, saying it gave a gift to an incumbent who had sought to shrink the program and was an example of Ms. Abrams’s putting her own ambitions above the party’s long-term interests.“It got misinterpreted,” said DuBose Porter, a former chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party. “But the real Stacey Abrams will always come through. And that real Stacey Abrams is somebody that cares about the issues.”Mr. Jealous, of People for the American Way, said he recalled Ms. Abrams encouraging him to reach out to Newt Gingrich, the Georgia Republican and former House speaker, to build cross-aisle support for reforming the state’s prisons.This campaign cycle, even Ms. Abrams’s supporters concede that the intensifying spotlight could test her political talent anew. The prospect that she could become the first Black woman in the country to be elected governor has already renewed whispers about her possible presidential ambitions.Unlike in 2018, when Ms. Abrams was not yet a national figure, or during Mr. Biden’s vice-presidential search, in which she was considered a long shot, she enters the 2022 race as a marquee name on the Democratic roster — and a prime target for Republicans.The Virginia governor’s race offered a preview of what Ms. Abrams could face, with Democrats on the defensive and Republicans pummeling them over Mr. Biden’s vaccine mandates, how schools teach about racism and the removal of Confederate statues.Ms. Abrams rallied Virginia Democrats behind the Democratic candidate, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, in the days before the election — a testament to her standing in the party. By contrast, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said she and other progressives were told to stay away.When announcing her candidacy in December, Ms. Abrams stuck to local themes, highlighting her work during the pandemic and her efforts to expand Medicaid access in Georgia. In the 2018 governor’s race, she did not run an ad about race or voting rights, according to a list her aides provided.Last month, during an online campaign event with more than 350 supporters on the theme of “One Georgia,” Ms. Abrams steered clear of policy specifics and hot-button cultural conversations, focusing instead on issues like the coronavirus and education — and on her Republican opponents.“When people ask what’s the biggest difference between me and the current governor, it’s that I like Georgians,” Ms. Abrams said. “I like all of them. The ones who agree with me and the ones who do not.”As much as Democrats may want to label her, Mr. Jealous advised against it, citing two lessons he learned about Ms. Abrams when they first met as 19-year-old college activists. The first: She would not be pushed to go anywhere she was not comfortable. The second: “Never speak after her,” he said.Mr. Phillips, the Democratic donor, said he was confident that the war between moderates and progressives would not affect Ms. Abrams in 2022.When, then, would it matter?“If and when she runs for president,” he said. More

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      Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now

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      One year after from the smoke and broken glass, the mock gallows and the very real bloodshed of that awful day, it is tempting to look back and imagine that we can, in fact, simply look back. To imagine that what happened on Jan. 6, 2021 — a deadly riot at the seat of American government, incited by a defeated president amid a last-ditch effort to thwart the transfer of power to his successor — was horrifying but that it is in the past and that we as a nation have moved on.This is an understandable impulse. After four years of chaos, cruelty and incompetence, culminating in a pandemic and the once-unthinkable trauma of Jan. 6, most Americans were desperate for some peace and quiet.On the surface, we have achieved that. Our political life seems more or less normal these days, as the president pardons turkeys and Congress quarrels over spending bills. But peel back a layer, and things are far from normal. Jan. 6 is not in the past; it is every day.It is regular citizens who threaten election officials and other public servants, who ask, “When can we use the guns?” and who vow to murder politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is Republican lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking back and forward at the same time.Truly grappling with the threat ahead means taking full account of the terror of that day a year ago. Thanks largely to the dogged work of a bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives, this reckoning is underway. We know now that the violence and mayhem broadcast live around the world was only the most visible and visceral part of the effort to overturn the election. The effort extended all the way into the Oval Office, where Mr. Trump and his allies plotted a constitutional self-coup.We know now that top Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures privately understood how dangerous the riot was and pleaded with Mr. Trump to call a halt to it, even as they publicly pretended otherwise. We know now that those who may have critical information about the planning and execution of the attack are refusing to cooperate with Congress, even if it means being charged with criminal contempt.For now, the committee’s work continues. It has scheduled a series of public hearings in the new year to lay out these and other details, and it plans to release a full report of its findings before the midterm elections — after which, should Republicans regain control of the House as expected, the committee will undoubtedly be dissolved.This is where looking forward comes in. Over the past year, Republican lawmakers in 41 states have been trying to advance the goals of the Jan. 6 rioters — not by breaking laws but by making them. Hundreds of bills have been proposed and nearly three dozen laws have been passed that empower state legislatures to sabotage their own elections and overturn the will of their voters, according to a running tally by a nonpartisan consortium of pro-democracy organizations.Some bills would change the rules to make it easier for lawmakers to reject the votes of their citizens if they don’t like the outcome. Others replace professional election officials with partisan actors who have a vested interest in seeing their preferred candidate win. Yet more attempt to criminalize human errors by election officials, in some cases even threatening prison.Many of these laws are being proposed and passed in crucial battleground states like Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Trump campaign targeted voting results in all these states, suing for recounts or intimidating officials into finding “missing” votes. The effort failed, thanks primarily to the professionalism and integrity of election officials. Many of those officials have since been stripped of their power or pushed out of office and replaced by people who openly say the last election was fraudulent.Thus the Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country, in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court.This isn’t the first time state legislatures have tried to wrest control of electoral votes from their own people, nor is it the first time that the dangers of such a ploy have been pointed out. In 1891, President Benjamin Harrison warned Congress of the risk that such a “trick” could determine the outcome of a presidential election.The Constitution guarantees to all Americans a republican form of government, Harrison said. “The essential features of such a government are the right of the people to choose their own officers” and to have their votes counted equally in making that choice. “Our chief national danger,” he continued, is “the overthrow of majority control by the suppression or perversion of popular suffrage.” If a state legislature were to succeed in substituting its own will for that of its voters, “it is not too much to say that the public peace might be seriously and widely endangered.”A healthy, functioning political party faces its electoral losses by assessing what went wrong and redoubling its efforts to appeal to more voters the next time. The Republican Party, like authoritarian movements the world over, has shown itself recently to be incapable of doing this. Party leaders’ rhetoric suggests they see it as the only legitimate governing power and thus portrays anyone else’s victory as the result of fraud — hence the foundational falsehood that spurred the Jan. 6 attack, that Joe Biden didn’t win the election.“The thing that’s most concerning is that it has endured in the face of all evidence,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of the vanishingly few Republicans in Congress who remain committed to empirical reality and representative democracy. “And I’ve gotten to wonder if there is actually any evidence that would ever change certain people’s minds.”The answer, for now, appears to be no. Polling finds that the overwhelming majority of Republicans believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected and that about one-third approve of using violence to achieve political goals. Put those two numbers together, and you have a recipe for extreme danger.Political violence is not an inevitable outcome. Republican leaders could help by being honest with their voters and combating the extremists in their midst. Throughout American history, party leaders, from Abraham Lincoln to Margaret Chase Smith to John McCain, have stood up for the union and democracy first, to their everlasting credit.Democrats aren’t helpless, either. They hold unified power in Washington, for the last time in what may be a long time. Yet they have so far failed to confront the urgency of this moment — unwilling or unable to take action to protect elections from subversion and sabotage. Blame Senator Joe Manchin or Senator Kyrsten Sinema, but the only thing that matters in the end is whether you get it done. For that reason, Mr. Biden and other leading Democrats should make use of what remaining power they have to end the filibuster for voting rights legislation, even if nothing else.Whatever happens in Washington, in the months and years to come, Americans of all stripes who value their self-government must mobilize at every level — not simply once every four years but today and tomorrow and the next day — to win elections and help protect the basic functions of democracy. If people who believe in conspiracy theories can win, so can those who live in the reality-based world.Above all, we should stop underestimating the threat facing the country. Countless times over the past six years, up to and including the events of Jan. 6, Mr. Trump and his allies openly projected their intent to do something outrageous or illegal or destructive. Every time, the common response was that they weren’t serious or that they would never succeed. How many times will we have to be proved wrong before we take it seriously? The sooner we do, the sooner we might hope to salvage a democracy that is in grave danger.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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      Eric Adams Takes Office as New York City's Mayor

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      Eric Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, faces difficult decisions over how to lead New York City through the next wave of the pandemic.Eric Leroy Adams was sworn in as the 110th mayor of New York City early Saturday in a festive but pared-down Times Square ceremony, a signal of the formidable task before him as he begins his term while coronavirus cases are surging anew.Mr. Adams, 61, the son of a house cleaner who was a New York City police captain before entering politics, has called himself “the future of the Democratic Party,” and pledged to address longstanding inequities as the city’s “first blue-collar mayor,” while simultaneously embracing the business community.Yet not since 2002, when Michael R. Bloomberg took office shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, has an incoming mayor confronted such daunting challenges in New York City. Even before the latest Omicron-fueled surge, the city’s economy was still struggling to recover, with the city’s 9.4 percent unemployment rate more than double the national average. Murders, shootings and some other categories of violent crimes rose early in the pandemic and have remained higher than before the virus began to spread.Mr. Adams ran for mayor on a public safety message, using his working-class and police background to convey empathy for the parts of New York still struggling with the effects of crime.But Mr. Adams’s first task as mayor will be to help New Yorkers navigate the Omicron variant and a troubling spike in cases. The city has recorded over 40,000 cases per day in recent days, and the number of hospitalizations is growing. The city’s testing system, once the envy of the nation, has struggled to meet demand and long lines form outside testing sites.Mr. Adams will keep on the current health commissioner, Dr. Dave Chokshi, until March to continue the city’s Covid response.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesConcerns over the virus caused Mr. Adams to cancel an inauguration ceremony indoors at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn — a tribute to the voters outside Manhattan who elected him. Instead, Mr. Adams chose the backdrop of the ball-drop crowd, which itself had been limited for distancing purposes to just a quarter of the usual size.Still, his swearing-in ceremony in Times Square, shortly after the ceremonial countdown, was jubilant, and Mr. Adams said he was hopeful about the city’s future.“Trust me, we’re ready for a major comeback because this is New York,” Mr. Adams said, standing among the revelers earlier in the night.Mr. Adams, the second Black mayor in the city’s history, was sworn in using a family Bible, held by his son, Jordan Coleman, and clasping a framed photograph of his mother, Dorothy, who died last spring.As Mr. Adams left the stage, he proclaimed, “New York is back.”Mayor Bill de Blasio also attended the Times Square celebration and danced with his wife onstage after leading the midnight countdown — his last official act as mayor after eight years in office.Mr. Adams, who grew up poor in Queens, represents a center-left brand of Democratic politics. He could offer a blend of the last two mayors — Mr. de Blasio, who was known to quote the socialist Karl Marx, and Michael R. Bloomberg, a billionaire and a former Republican like Mr. Adams.Mr. Adams narrowly won a competitive Democratic primary last summer when coronavirus cases were low and millions of New Yorkers were getting vaccinated. The city had started to rebound slowly after the virus devastated the economy and left more than 35,000 New Yorkers dead. Now that cases are spiking again, companies in Manhattan have abandoned return to office plans, and many Broadway shows and restaurants have closed.Mr. Adams captured the mayoralty by focusing on a public safety message, empathizing with working-class voters outside Manhattan.James Estrin/The New York TimesWith schools set to reopen on Monday, Mr. Adams must determine how to keep students and teachers safe while ensuring that schools remain open for in-person learning. Mr. Adams has insisted that the city cannot shut down again and must learn to live with the virus, and he has been supportive of Mr. de Blasio’s vaccine mandates.On Thursday, Mr. Adams announced that he would retain New York City’s vaccine requirement for private-sector employers. The mandate, which was implemented by Mayor de Blasio and is the first of its kind in the nation, went into effect on Monday.Even so, Mr. Adams made it clear that his focus is on compliance, not aggressive enforcement; it remains unclear whether he will require teachers, police officers and other city workers to receive a booster shot.Mr. Adams has also said that he wants to continue Mr. de Blasio’s focus on reducing inequality, even as he has sought to foster a better relationship with the city’s elites.“I genuinely don’t think he’s going to be in the box of being a conservative or a progressive,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “Adams is excited to keep people on their toes.”When Mr. de Blasio took office in 2014, he and his allies made it clear that his administration would offer a clean break from the Bloomberg era; he famously characterized New York as a “tale of two cities,” and vowed to narrow the inequity gap that he said had widened under Mr. Bloomberg.For the most part, Mr. Adams has signaled that his administration will not vary greatly from Mr. de Blasio’s. Several of his recent cabinet appointments worked in the de Blasio administration.Mr. Adams has signaled that his agenda will not differ greatly from that of his predecessor, Bill de Blasio.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThere will be some differences: Mr. Adams said he does not plan to end the city’s gifted and talented program, as Mr. de Blasio had intended. Mr. Adams has also vowed to bring back a plainclothes police unit that was disbanded last year, in an effort to get more guns off the street.Mr. Adams will take the helm of the city during a period of racial reckoning, after the pandemic exposed profound economic and health disparities. At the same time, calls for police reform and measures to address the city’s segregated public schools are growing. During the mayoral campaign, Mr. Adams faced significant questions from his opponents and the news media over matters of transparency, residency and his own financial dealings. Mr. Adams said he was unfazed by the criticism and was focused on “getting stuff done.”Incoming N.Y.C. Mayor Eric Adams’s New AdministrationCard 1 of 7Schools Chancellor: David Banks. More

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      Michigan’s New Congressional Maps Undo Years of Gerrymandering

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      A citizen ballot initiative took redistricting out of the hands of partisan legislators. The result: competitive political districts — and an example of how to push back against hyperpartisanship.One of the country’s most gerrymandered political maps has suddenly been replaced by one of the fairest.A decade after Michigan Republicans gave themselves seemingly impregnable majorities in the state Legislature by drawing districts that heavily favored their party, a newly created independent commission approved maps late Tuesday that create districts so competitive that Democrats have a fighting chance of recapturing the State Senate for the first time since 1984.The work of the new commission, which includes Democrats, Republicans and independents and was established through a citizen ballot initiative, stands in sharp contrast to the type of hyperpartisan extreme gerrymandering that has swept much of the country, exacerbating political polarization — and it may highlight a potential path to undoing such gerrymandering.With lawmakers excluded from the mapmaking process, Michigan’s new districts will much more closely reflect the overall partisan makeup of the hotly contested battleground state.“Michigan’s a jump ball, and this is a jump-ball map,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel who focuses on redistricting at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a lot of competition in this map, which is what you would expect in a state like Michigan.”The commission’s three new maps — for Congress, the State House and the State Senate — restore a degree of fairness, but there were some notable criticisms. All of the maps still have a slight Republican advantage, in part because Democratic voters in the state are mostly concentrated in densely populated areas. The map for the State House also splits more than half of the state’s counties into several districts, despite redistricting guidelines that call for keeping neighboring communities together.The maps may also face a legal challenge from Black voters in the Detroit area, to whom the commission tried to give more opportunities for representation by unpacking them, or spreading them among more legislative districts.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.Detroit’s State Senate delegation will jump to nine members from five, and its State House delegation to 15 representatives from nine. But local Black elected officials and civil rights groups contend that while the intention may have been noble, the result actually dilutes Black voting strength, not only in general elections but also in primaries, in which elections for Black legislators are almost always decided.The reduced percentages of Black voters in some of the new districts may prevent candidates from winning primary elections on the strength of the Black vote alone, those critics say.“The goal of creating partisan fairness cannot so negatively impact Black communities as to erase us from the space,” said Adam Hollier, a state senator from the Detroit area. “They think that they are unpacking, because that is the narrative that they hear from across the country, without looking at what that means in the city of Detroit.”Republicans were also discussing possible challenges to the new maps.“We are evaluating all options to take steps necessary to defend the voices silenced by this commission,” Gustavo Portela, a Michigan G.O.P. spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday, without elaborating on whose voices he meant.The G.O.P. advantage in Michigan’s Legislature has held solid for years even as Democrats carried the state in presidential elections and won races for governor and U.S. Senate. In 2014, Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, won the seat formerly held by Carl Levin by more than 13 percentage points. Yet in the same year, Republicans in the State Senate expanded their supermajority, winning 27 of 38 seats.So great a divergence between statewide and legislative elections is often a telltale sign of a gerrymandered map. And a lawsuit in 2018 unearthed emails in which Republicans boasted about packing “Dem garbage” into fewer districts and ensuring Republican advantages “in 2012 and beyond.”But the new State Senate map would create 20 seats that President Biden would have carried in 2020 and 18 that former President Donald J. Trump would have carried, giving Democrats new hopes of competitiveness.The new maps offer no guarantee that Democrats will win either chamber, however. And in a strong year for the G.O.P., which 2022 may be, Republicans could retain their advantage in the Legislature and could also come away with a majority of the state’s new 13-seat congressional delegation.The congressional map includes three tossup seats where the 2020 presidential margin was less than five points, and two more seats that could be competitive in a wave year, with presidential margins of less than 10 points. Two current Democratic representatives, Haley Stevens and Andy Levin, were drawn into the same district, setting up a competitive primary in the 11th District. Both declared their intention to run on Tuesday.The State House will also feature at least 20 competitive districts.Preserving such competition, election experts say, is one of the key goals in redistricting reform.“This is the quintessential success story of redistricting,” said Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “These maps treated the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, about as fairly as you could ever imagine a map being. In all three cases, whoever gets the most votes statewide is likely to control the chamber or the delegation. And there’s competition in all three maps.”Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Voting Rights Tracker: What to Know About the U.S. Elections Fight

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      Since the 2020 election, Republicans have pursued a host of new voting restrictions across the country. Here’s where things stand.The current battle over voting rights — who gets to vote, how votes are cast and counted, who oversees the process — has turned what was once the humdrum machine room of United States democracy into a central partisan battlefield with enormous stakes for the future of American democracy.Since the 2020 election, and spurred in large part by former President Donald J. Trump’s oft-repeated lie that a second term was stolen from him, the Republican Party has made a concerted new effort to restrict voting and give itself more power over the mechanics of casting and counting ballots.In 2021, Republican-led legislatures in dozens of states enacted wide-ranging laws overhauling their election systems, and G.O.P. lawmakers are planning a new wave of such laws in 2022.Here is a quick rundown of those efforts, Democratic pushback and why it all matters.Why are voting rights an issue now?The 2020 election saw a sea change in voting habits. Driven largely by the pandemic, millions of Americans embraced voting early in person and voting by mail.Forty-three percent of voters cast ballots by mail in 2020, making it the most popular method, and 26 percent voted early in person, according to the Census Bureau. Just 21 percent voted on Election Day.Democrats in particular flocked to the two forms of early voting, far outpacing Republicans in some states — a trend that raised alarms among Republicans.Mr. Trump denounced voting by mail for months during the campaign. Once defeated, he attacked mailed-in ballots in hopes of overturning the election’s result.Since then, Republican-led legislatures have justified new restrictions on voting by citing a lack of public confidence in elections.What are Republicans trying to do?Broadly, the party is taking a two-pronged approach: Imposing additional restrictions on voting (especially mail voting), and giving Republican-controlled state legislatures greater control over the administration of elections.Republicans have often sought to limit absentee-ballot drop boxes by claiming without evidence that they are susceptible to fraud. Other new laws tighten identification requirements for voting by mail, bar election officials from proactively sending out ballot applications or shorten the time frame during which absentee ballots can be requested.Some legislatures have also taken aim at how elections are overseen, stripping election officials like secretaries of state of some of their powers, exerting more authority over county and local election officials or pursuing partisan reviews of election results.In the 2020 presidential election, Georgia was decided by fewer than 13,000 votes.Elijah Nouvelage/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhy are these legislative efforts important?They have fueled widespread doubts about the integrity of American elections and brought intense partisan gamesmanship to parts of the democratic process that once relied largely on orderly routine and good faith.Some are also likely to affect voters of color disproportionately, echoing the country’s long history of racial discrimination at the polls, where Black citizens once faced barriers to voting including poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation and impossible hurdles, like guessing the number of butter beans in a jar.The newest restrictions are not so draconian, but could have outsize effects in racially diverse, densely populated areas. In Georgia, the four big counties at the core of metropolitan Atlanta — Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett — will have no more than 23 drop boxes in future elections, down from the 94 available in 2020.The stakes are enormous: In battleground states like Georgia and Arizona, where the 2020 presidential margins were less than 13,000 votes, even a slight curtailment of turnout could tilt the outcome.Are there more extreme efforts?Yes. In Arkansas, Republicans enacted new legislation that allows a state board of election commissioners — composed of six Republicans and one Democrat — to investigate and “institute corrective action” when issues arise at any stage of the voting process, from registration to the casting and counting of ballots to the certification of elections.In Texas, Republicans tried to make it easier for the Legislature to overturn an election, but were held up when Democratic lawmakers staged a last-second walkout, and later dropped the effort.Many of the most extreme bills have not made it past state legislatures, with Republicans often choosing to dial back their farthest-reaching proposals.How are Democrats pushing back?Through Congress and the courts, but with limited success.In Congress, Democrats have focused their efforts on two sweeping bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. But Republicans in the 50-50 Senate have blocked both. That leaves many Democrats pressing for a change to the Senate’s filibuster rules, but some moderates, including Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, are opposed.The Justice Department has filed lawsuits challenging Republican voting laws in Georgia and Texas, and has also doubled the size of its civil rights division, which oversees voting litigation.Still, any major judicial ruling on a recently enacted voting law is unlikely to arrive before the 2022 elections.Can the courts do anything about voting laws?Yes — but far less than they once could.The Supreme Court has greatly weakened the Voting Rights Act over the last decade, deeply cutting into the Justice Department’s authority over voting and giving states new latitude to impose restrictions. Voting-rights advocates can still challenge voting laws in federal court on other grounds, including under the 14th and 15th Amendments. They can also cite state constitutional protections in state courts.Democrats, civil-rights groups and voting-rights organizations have filed more than 30 lawsuits opposing new voting laws. But the legal process can sometimes take years.Democrats in Congress have proposed the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to defend voting rights.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesWait, back up. What is the Voting Rights Act?Passed in 1965, it was one of the most important legacies of the civil rights movement. It contained several provisions protecting the right to vote; required states with a history of discrimination at the polls to obtain clearance from the Justice Department before changing their voting laws, and banned racial gerrymandering and any voting measures that would target minority groups.The Voting Rights Act set off a wave of enfranchisement of Black citizens, with more than 250,000 registering to vote before the end of 1965.But the law was hollowed out by a 2013 Supreme Court decision that lifted the requirement for preclearance, paving the way for many of the restrictions enacted in 2021.Where does President Biden stand?He did not mince words, warning in July that “there is an unfolding assault taking place in America today — an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections.” He called it “the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”But in his first year, he did not make voting rights a top priority. As his administration battled to pass infrastructure and economic-relief programs, voting rights groups have grown frustrated, calling for a more aggressive White House push on federal voting legislation.Which states have changed their voting laws?Nineteen states passed 34 laws restricting voting in 2021, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Some of the most significant legislation was enacted in battleground states.Texas forbade balloting methods introduced in 2020 to make voting easier during the pandemic, including drive-through polling places and 24-hour voting. It also barred election officials from sending voters unsolicited absentee-ballot applications and from promoting the use of vote by mail; greatly empowered partisan poll watchers; created new criminal and civil penalties for poll workers, and erected new barriers for those looking to help voters who need assistance.Georgia limited drop boxes, stripped the secretary of state of some of his authority, imposed new oversight of county election boards, restricted who can vote with provisional ballots and made it a crime to offer food or water to voters waiting in lines. It also required runoff elections to be held four weeks after the original vote, down from nine weeks.Florida limited the use of drop boxes; added to the identification requirements for people requesting absentee ballots; required voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, rather than receive them automatically through an absentee-voter list; limited who can collect and drop off ballots; and bolstered the powers of partisan observers in the ballot-counting process.Some states, however, have expanded voting access. New Jersey and Kentucky added more early-voting days and an online registration portal. Virginia created a state-level preclearance requirement and made Election Day a holiday, and New York restored voting rights for some felons.So, will these new voting laws swing elections?Maybe. Maybe not. Some laws will make voting more difficult for certain groups, cause confusion or create longer wait times at polling places, any of which could deter voters from casting ballots.In some places, the new restrictions could backfire: Many Republicans, especially in far-flung rural areas, once preferred to vote by mail, and making it more difficult to do so could inconvenience them more than people in cities and suburbs.The laws have met an impassioned response from voting rights groups, which are working to inform voters about the new restrictions while also hiring lawyers to challenge them.Democrats hope that their voters will be impassioned enough in response to the new restrictions that they turn out in large numbers to defeat Republicans in November. More

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      Democrats Say They Are Serious About State Elections. But Are They Too Late?

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      State-level races are becoming a central focus of American politics as the lasting effects of new congressional maps and election laws raise the stakes.Late on Nov. 8, 2016, the mood inside President Barack Obama’s West Wing turned grim. Hillary Clinton was coming up short. The realization was growing that Donald J. Trump would be elected president.Suddenly, David M. Simas, Mr. Obama’s political director, pumped his fist and called out, “Yes!”A cautious, cerebral lawyer, Mr. Simas was not known for attention-getting exultation. Asked why he was cheering, he deadpanned: “We just won a North Carolina Supreme Court seat.”Incongruous as it was, the moment of triumph in a relatively minor contest reflected a growing concern among Democratic leaders, all the way up to Mr. Obama, that their party needed a more assertive strategy for the end-of-decade redistricting fights to come. But as Democrats awakened to the depth of their plight, they found that learning to think small was easier said than done: Hopes of big gains at the state level in 2020, a crucial year for redistricting, did not materialize. Liberal voters showed they were less hungry to win those races than they were to oust Mr. Trump.Now, however, state-level contests like those for governor’s offices, legislatures and courts are suddenly moving from the periphery to the center of American politics. And the ongoing tussle over political maps is just one front in a larger conflict: As Mr. Trump pushes his false claims of a stolen 2020 election, what was once seen at most as a decennial scrum for partisan advantage in the provinces of government is transforming, in some Democrats’ minds, into a twilight struggle for the future of American democracy.“We’re at a moment of reckoning in America,” former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said during a recent fund-raising event for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group he formed that became the primary locus of Mr. Obama’s political activity when he left the White House. “I’m not being hyperbolic or alarmist. I think our democracy is on the line.”Fund-raising appeals on behalf of Democratic legislative candidates note the fact that at least six Republican state lawmakers were in Washington on Jan. 6, and that Republican-led states from Arizona to Georgia have passed laws tightening the rules around voting. And revelations about Mr. Trump’s ad hoc efforts to overturn the previous presidential election are fueling fears that in a rematch of 2020, Mr. Trump might conspire with G.O.P. state lawmakers to alter the outcome illegitimately.“We believe the right wing is signaling a strategy to steal the election through state legislatures in 2024,” said Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator whose group, the States Project, has announced plans to raise $30 million to support Democratic candidates in state legislative races in 2022.Former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., left with microphone, at a Virginia rally in 2019. He formed a group focused on redistricting.Emma Howells for The New York TimesYet it remains to be seen whether such dire warnings will move voters. Selling rank-and-file Democrats on the importance of offices like state senator or state Supreme Court justice has proved daunting. In the 2020 campaign cycle, donors showered Amy McGrath, a doomed Democratic candidate for Senate from Kentucky, with $96 million, dwarfing the $51 million raised by the national Democratic Party committee responsible for aiding candidates for legislative seats in all 50 states. And Democrats tend to suffer disproportionately from “roll-off,” a phenomenon in which voters fail to complete their ballots, withholding their votes from candidates at the bottom of the ticket.“It feels very much like climbing uphill, pushing a rock while your arms are melting,” said Amanda Litman of the liberal group Run for Something, which recruits young people to run for state and local office.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.Gaby Goldstein, co-founder of Sister District, a grass-roots organization that supports progressive candidates in state legislative races, noted that conservatives have mobilized around state politics for decades. “I always say that Democrats are tardy to the party,” she said.The Democratic Party’s belated interest in lower-tier races grew out of its bruising experience in 2010, when Republicans rode an anti-Obama backlash to oust hundreds of Democratic incumbents nationwide. Spending just $30 million, Republicans flipped 680 state legislative seats and 20 chambers, a stunning victory that put them in position to redraw election maps and entrench their hold over those states — and their congressional delegations — for a decade.“Democrats were frankly unprepared during that cycle,” said Kelly Ward Burton, who at the time was running House Democrats’ campaign committee. Now the president of Mr. Holder’s redistricting committee, Ms. Burton has been working closely with several Democratic campaign groups in hopes of a different outcome from the current round of redistricting.Part hardball politics and part good-government activism, the groups’ strategy has been to break up G.O.P. “trifectas” where possible — reducing the number of states where Republicans enjoy full control of the redistricting process because they hold the governorship and majorities in both legislative chambers. They also ask candidates for state and federal offices to pledge support for “fair redistricting that ends map manipulation and creates truly representative districts,” an aspiration that is sometimes in tension with more partisan goals.Midway through the current redistricting brawl, the results of those Democratic efforts are mixed.The long-troubled Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee became a force under new leadership in 2016, setting up the party to take six chambers in the 2018 midterm elections. Since 2017, Democrats have flipped 10 governor’s offices, including in the battlegrounds of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and picked up seven state Supreme Court seats. Five states have passed nonpartisan redistricting reforms, putting map-drawing in the hands of independent commissions.But the blue wave that Democrats were counting on in 2020 never washed ashore. Although Democratic groups spent record amounts trying to win back G.O.P.-held statehouses, their party ended last year worse off, losing both chambers in New Hampshire. As a result, Republicans not only kept control of prizes like the Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin legislatures, but they also have retained the power to draw maps for 187 congressional districts, while Democrats control the fate of just 75.As a result, Democrats’ hopes of keeping the House may rest on legal challenges to maps that Republican-led states have already approved. And a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, which put partisan gerrymandering claims beyond the purview of federal courts, ensures that state courts will be the main arena for such lawsuits.In 2019, Democrats lost a crucial state Supreme Court contest in Wisconsin by fewer than 6,000 votes, cementing the body’s conservative majority. But the election of liberal judges in North Carolina and Ohio has given Mr. Holder’s group, and other liberal outfits allied with it, at least a chance to win in court what Democrats lack the power to achieve in Republican-dominated legislatures.Tim Butler, a Republican state lawmaker in Illinois. Aggressive gerrymandering in the state could net Democrats at least one additional House seat.Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register, via Associated PressElsewhere, high-minded sentiments are yielding to the demands of brass-knuckle politics. Many Democrats cheered the aggressive gerrymandering in Illinois, where maps approved by Gov. J.B. Pritzker could net them at least one additional House seat, and they are urging a similar approach in New York, where a Democratic supermajority may seek to gerrymander its way to capturing as many as four seats currently held by Republicans.None of which is lost on Republicans. “Democrats pretend to be for ‘fair maps,’ but they use every advantage they get,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      7 Political Wish Lists for the New Year

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      What do the president, vice president, former president and party leaders want in 2022? We made our best guess.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.Given that this is the last On Politics newsletter before Christmas, and of 2021 for that matter, it seems like a good time to take stock and reflect on what a wish list might be for the nation’s leaders.Today, Democrats control both the White House and Congress. But the party’s hold on power is so slim — the 50-50 split in the Senate means that Vice President Kamala Harris must break tied votes — that the entire Biden agenda is dependent on every single Democrat’s falling into line. And they aren’t all doing so.History bodes poorly for the party of the president in a first midterm election, and many Democrats are bracing for a rout in 2022. Here is what we think the nation’s leaders are looking for in the New Year:President Biden: He won the Democratic nomination after making two early bets in the primary that paid off big: that he would be seen as the most electable Democrat and that Black voters would be a loyal base. Both bets paid off. Similarly, Biden made an early two-pronged bet about the midterms: that a surging economy and a waning threat from the coronavirus would deliver victory to the Democrats.Right now, neither is happening.The omicron variant is bringing rising caseloads and fresh fears despite the widespread availability of vaccines. Meanwhile, monthly economic reports tell the story of the fastest inflation in decades, the kind of in-your-face figures that can swamp other positive economic indicators like the unemployment rate.Wish list: a stronger economy, shrinking inflation and a disappearing virus.Mitch McConnell: The Senate Republican leader has an excellent shot at returning to the majority in 2023 — after only two years in the minority. But while the overall political landscape appears rosy for the Republicans, McConnell’s party must navigate a series of primary races next spring and summer that he and his allies worry could result in extreme and unelectable nominees.Former President Donald J. Trump is an added X-factor. He has provided early endorsements for candidates who are not exactly prototypical McConnell recruits, including in North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania, where the first Trump endorsee already dropped out. These days, Trump has even taken to insulting McConnell by name.Wish list: mainstream nominees in swing states for 2022; a toning down of Trump’s attacks. (The latter is probably more pipe dream than wish.)Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi: The Senate majority leader and House speaker want mostly the same thing: to successfully negotiate passage of an enormous social policy bill, the Build Back Better Act, that would remake the social safety net and environmental policy.But there is precious little maneuvering room when you need the votes of liberal firebrands as well as the most conservative members of the caucus, like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.Schumer has literally no votes to spare, which means every Democratically aligned senator holds de facto veto power. He also needs all 50 of those senators to stay healthy and present, not just for the Build Back Better bill but also other priorities like confirming judges and an attempt to pass voting-rights legislation.Wish list: Democratic health and unity; passage of the Build Back Better Act.Joe Manchin: The Senate’s most conservative and consequential Democrat recently declared on Fox News — yes, Fox News — that he was a no on the Build Back Better Act. It sent the White House scrambling and delivered a potentially fatal setback to the party’s signature legislation.Wish list: If Democrats knew for sure, it would already be in the bill.Kevin McCarthy: The House Republican leader has already started to be cast as the next speaker — presuming his party retakes the chamber — but his ascent would depend on more than just a Republican majority in 2022. Mr. McCarthy had to abandon his speakership ambitions in 2015. To succeed in 2023, he faces what Politico recently described as a “vexing speaker math problem”: a cohort of members yearning for an alternative, including some floating Trump himself. That may be far-fetched. But it is a sign of how hard it would be for McCarthy to navigate a majority as narrow as the one Pelosi has.Wish list: winning a big enough G.O.P. majority in 2022 to lead and run the House.Kamala Harris: The history-making vice president has faced a rash of negative media coverage in her first year and discovered, as Mark Z. Barabak of The Los Angeles Times put it, that the “vice presidency is an inherently subordinate position and one that sits ripe for ridicule.” Some of her most senior communications advisers are departing, and 2022 offers the chance at a reset, especially given the uncertainty — despite the White House’s public proclamations otherwise — that Biden will seek re-election in 2024, the year he will turn 82.Wish list: greater staff stability and a more positive portrayal in the press.Donald J. Trump: The former president may be off social media, but he has not receded from the political scene. He has been issuing statements from his new PAC at Twitterlike speed, endorsing a raft of candidates and continuing to raise money online by the bucketload, all while he is under investigation in New York for his business practices.He is talking out loud about running for president again. But for a politician who wants relevance, why would he say anything else?Wish list: vengeance on the few Republicans who voted for his impeachment; continued dominance of the Republican Party.Happy Holidays from the On Politics team! We’re off next week, but we have exciting news: On Politics, which is also available as a newsletter, is relaunching in the new year with new authors, Blake Hounshell and Leah Askarinam. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Menendez’s Son Prepares to Run for His Father’s Old House Seat

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      Robert Menendez Jr., 36, has won backing from key Democrats in the northern New Jersey congressional district.Robert Menendez Jr., the 36-year-old son of New Jersey’s senior United States senator, has told political leaders that he will run for Congress to replace Representative Albio Sires, who announced on Monday that he will not seek re-election.If elected, Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, and his father, Senator Robert Menendez, the 67-year-old chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, would be likely to serve together in Washington.The younger Mr. Menendez is a practicing lawyer who would be making his first run for public office, and he is expected to face challengers from the left in the Democratic stronghold that includes heavily urban parts of Hudson, Essex and Union Counties. He did not return calls or emails.But even before Mr. Sires confirmed that he intended to step down when his term ends next year, powerful political leaders had already begun to coalesce support behind Mr. Menendez.In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Sires, a former mayor of West New York, N.J., who has served in the House of Representatives since 2006, said the younger Mr. Menendez told him that he planned to run and asked for his support.Senator Menendez, who declined to comment through a spokesman, held the same seat in the House before being appointed to the Senate in 2006 to fill a position vacated by Jon Corzine after he was elected governor; the borders of the district, now known as the Eighth Congressional District, have since been slightly redrawn.In June, Mr. Menendez was appointed a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after being nominated by Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a fellow Democrat.“I think he’s the perfect fit for the district,” said Mr. Sires, 70, who emigrated from Cuba as an 11-year-old.As a moderate who also is of Cuban heritage, Mr. Menendez would connect well with voters, Mr. Sires said.“He’s bright. He’s articulate. He’s energetic,” Mr. Sires said. “He comes from good stock.”“He told me, ‘Whatever I can do to help him, please do,’ ” Mr. Sires added. “I told him I would be there.”Brian Stack, a state senator who is also the mayor of Union City, a largely Latino community that is a key voting bloc in the district, also quickly expressed support for Mr. Menendez.“He will be a great congressman,” Mr. Stack told the New Jersey Globe, which first reported that Mr. Sires was retiring and that Mr. Menendez planned to run for the empty seat.Hector Oseguera, a left-leaning Democrat who challenged Mr. Sires last year and lost by a large margin, said that running in the district required a deep understanding of the Democratic political machine in Hudson County.“You can’t really parachute in,” said Mr. Oseguera, who said he would consider running again only if “nobody emerges from the progressive movement.”Ravi Bhalla, a progressive Democrat who was re-elected mayor of Hoboken last month, had been considered a potential candidate for the seat. But on Tuesday Mr. Bhalla, the first Sikh elected mayor in New Jersey, dashed talk that he had any interest in running and strongly suggested that he would support the candidate tapped by the Democratic Party leadership.“While I’m honored and humbled to have been approached by members of the Sikh and South Asian community, along with other stakeholders to run for Congress,” he wrote on Twitter, “I’m 100% committed to serving the residents of Hoboken as mayor.”Mr. Sires, who has served on the House transportation and foreign affairs committees, said that he considered passage of President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill — and the benefits it offers for public transit in New Jersey — the capstone of his career.He is one of 25 members of Congress who have announced that they were quitting politics.“It was time,” said Mr. Sires, who also served in the New Jersey Legislature, where he was the first Latino Assembly speaker. “I’m very grateful for the opportunity this country gave me, and I’m happy to have had the chance to give back.”He said the hyperpartisan political divide in Washington had played a role in his decision.“Washington is a very difficult place to work now,” he said. “You either have to be part of the left or part of the right. There seems to be no room in the middle.”Senator Menendez’s quest for power is markedly different than his son’s. Before he was 21, the senator was elected to the school board in Union City, where he was raised, the son of Cuban immigrants. He went on to become the mayor of the city and a state legislator.Decades later he survived an admonishment from a Senate panel for accepting gifts from a wealthy doctor and a 2017 federal trial on corruption charges. He emerged years later as one of the most powerful Democratic members of Congress.Only two of New Jersey’s 12 House representatives are Republicans. But a redistricting commission is expected to release the state’s new congressional map on Wednesday, and several Democrats in swing districts are likely to face fierce challenges for re-election as Mr. Biden’s popularity wanes.It is not uncommon for a child to follow a parent into Congress; it has occurred at least 42 times in the Senate alone between 1774 and 1989, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.But only a handful of children have served in Congress at the same time as their parent, and there are no pairs in the current 117th Congress, according to the Library of Congress.Mr. Menendez, who is registered to vote in Jersey City, N.J., is a 2008 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to a biography on his law firm’s website. He and his father both graduated from Rutgers Law School.Representative Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat who has worked closely with Mr. Sires in the House, called Mr. Sires “a giant in every sense of the word.”“Albio has battled for Amtrak and our commuters. He has battled for immigrants and human rights. And he’s battled to give the Garden State its rightful share of the pie we are so often denied,” Mr. Pascrell said in a statement.“He’s my buddy and I’m going to miss him greatly,” he added. “We have big shoes to fill.” More