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      India Walton Beat the Buffalo Mayor in a Primary. He Won’t Give Up.

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      India Walton, the democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor, still faces a challenge from Mayor Byron Brown, who is running a write-in campaign against her.BUFFALO, N.Y. — In late June, India Walton shocked the political world by defeating the four-term incumbent mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, in the Democratic primary, seemingly guaranteeing her eventual election in November in a solidly Democratic city.Her win would be historic: She would be the first socialist to be elected mayor of a major American city in more than half a century, and the first woman — and first Black woman — to lead New York’s second-largest city.In recent months, however, Mr. Brown has also been trying to make some history, mounting a furious comeback campaign to hold on to his job as a write-in candidate after trying — in vain — to add his name to the ballot as an independent.While most write-in campaigns are quixotic, political observers in Buffalo believe that Mr. Brown’s widespread name recognition and ample campaign resources could actually make him a slight favorite, particularly if the city’s small cohort of Republicans votes for him.The unexpected battle for Buffalo reflects the defining tension within the national Democratic Party, pitting its new generation of left-wing politicians against its more moderate establishment, as represented by Mr. Brown.That battle played out in the Democratic presidential primary last year and again in the New York City mayoral primary this year — with more centrist candidates, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Eric Adams, winning both times. And it may well resume in next year’s primary for governor, when Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, is likely to face a challenge from the party’s left flank.Against that backdrop, the mayoral race in Democratic-dominated Buffalo has gained national attention, particularly on the left. With a little more than five weeks to go before the election, a roster of prominent liberal figures, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are pledging support for Ms. Walton.Liberal groups and downstate Democrats, including the New York City public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and the former candidate for governor, Cynthia Nixon, have also been rallying to Ms. Walton’s side, hoping to demonstrate that their insurgent energy flows all the way to the edge of Lake Erie, where Buffalo sits.“This has become a statewide, national and international priority,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of the New York Working Families Party, which has endorsed Ms. Walton and is offering strategic and fund-raising support. “People are calling from everywhere to make sure that India can come out ahead.”On paper that would seem like a fait accompli: Ms. Walton is the only person on the ballot. But Mr. Brown, a lifelong Democrat who is the city’s first Black mayor, seems to be banking on a coalition of business leaders and conservatives, some labor groups and loyal voters who approve of his 16 years in office to vault him to victory.Long known as a mild-mannered moderate, Mr. Brown has hardened his rhetoric in response to the threat of political oblivion, portraying Ms. Walton, a registered nurse making her first run for public office, as an inexperienced interloper.“I am convinced that she is unqualified for this position,” said Mr. Brown, 63, in a recent interview. “And if she became mayor of the city of Buffalo, it would be a disaster for this community.”Nor does he see any problem with accepting the support of Republicans.“The way I look at it, an election isn’t over until the general election has been held,” Mr. Brown said. “So I see no concerns with optics at all.”Such statements are galling to Ms. Walton, 39, who says the mayor’s intransigence is doing a disservice to the residents of the very city he says he loves.“I believe that if the mayor wants what’s best for Buffalo, he would have conceded, he would have helped with a productive transition, and gracefully bowed out,” said Ms. Walton, sitting in her single-room downtown campaign office. “But instead he’s throwing a tantrum.”Mr. Brown’s ongoing campaign has made some Democrats queasy, as well as put elected officials in an awkward political position. Among them are Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo native, who is faced with either abandoning Mr. Brown — a former head of the New York Democratic state party — or risking alienating the ascendant left wing.The governor’s office has said Ms. Hochul had no comment on the race, and her campaign office says she will not be making an endorsement, but instead will be “supporting county parties across New York to bolster their get-out-the-vote efforts.”Jeremy Zellner, the chairman of the Erie County Democratic Committee, said that Mr. Brown’s quest to upend a fellow Democrat was unsettling, noting that several prominent local conservatives, as well as outspoken fans of former President Donald J. Trump, have expressed support for Mr. Brown, and have been attacking Ms. Walton.“He’s openly taking the support of Republicans, and working with them,” said Mr. Zellner, who also serves on the Erie County Board of Elections and is backing Ms. Walton.Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, talked to Patrick Lett, a constituent, outside a workforce training center. He lost the primary, but has waged a write-in campaign.Libby March for The New York TimesMs. Walton’s primary victory came largely from the work of a volunteer staff and strong support from the city’s west side, a mix of middle-class neighborhoods, new immigrant communities and elegant homes.She has a compelling personal biography: She is a mother of four children, having had her first child at 14 and later living in a group home and earning a GED while pregnant with twins. Her path to politics was circuitous, including once working as a tattoo artist and later serving as a representative for the powerful health care union, SEIU 1199.Her message, during the primary and now, was one of sharing the wealth in Buffalo, which has seen a surprising uptick in population and pockets of economic vitality over the last decade. Her campaign promises, including reforming policing, addressing poverty and reducing economic and racial inequities, seemingly struck a chord with primary voters, after a year of Covid-19 and a national reckoning over race relations.Her general election campaign seems to be staying on that message, while also trying to play down any suggestion that — as a socialist — she is anti-growth.“I want to reduce poverty in my community,” Ms. Walton said, adding, “If people are less poor, they have more money to spend in businesses.”There are signs, however, that Ms. Walton is bulking up — and changing up — her staff, a possible indication of the seriousness of Mr. Brown’s challenge. Last week, she announced a new campaign manager, Drisana Hughes, who worked on Alvin Bragg’s successful primary run for Manhattan district attorney.She has also been welcoming downstate supporters, doing a swing of events over the weekend in New York City, including a fund-raiser with Mr. Williams, a potential candidate for governor next year, who has criticized Governor Hochul for not vocally backing Ms. Walton.“This should be a race where the governor is stumping for the first female mayor of Buffalo,” he said.Many local and state politicians have, in fact, scrupulously avoided making endorsements of either candidate. And last week, Jay Jacobs, the current chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and a moderate himself, confirmed that the party was not planning on making an endorsement in the race.“One way or another, a Democrat is going to be elected mayor of Buffalo,” Mr. Jacobs said.Mr. Brown was a trailblazer when he was elected the first Black mayor of Buffalo in 2005, after stints as a state senator and city councilman. He takes credit for a series of accomplishments, including tax cuts and increased property values, as well as gleaming new buildings along the city’s waterfront. At the same time, however, Buffalo remains home to one of the highest poverty rates in the country — more than 30 percent — a problem that is even worse for the city’s children. In mid-September, the mayor’s hopes suffered a setback, when judges in both federal and state court ruled that Mr. Brown’s name — and a newly created party he had called the Buffalo Party — should be removed from the official ballot, reversing lower court decisions.Mr. Brown’s write-in campaign’s slogan — “Write Down Byron Brown” — is found on red-white-and-blue campaign signs peppered throughout the city and has been echoed by the Twitter hashtag #writedownbyronbrown.Last week, that hashtag was used by a curious ally: Carl Paladino, the Buffalo developer, former Republican candidate for governor and staunch supporter of Mr. Trump. Mr. Paladino tweeted his support for Mr. Brown, and circulated an emailed invitation for a fund-raiser for him.Jacob Neiheisel, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, said Mr. Brown erred in refusing to debate Ms. Walton before the primary or regularly acknowledge her candidacy.“Frankly I think he just didn’t take it seriously enough,” said Mr. Neiheisel. Since deciding to pursue a write-in campaign, Mr. Brown has been aggressively attacking Ms. Walton; in an early September debate, he accused her of wanting to “defund the police” and cut police jobs, echoing a recent ad.Ms. Walton denied this, saying that she wants the police to concentrate on stopping and investigating crime, not handling social services like homeless outreach and mental health calls.“There’s one person up here that’s been defunding our community,” she said in a reference to her opponent, mentioning his administration’s cuts to community centers and swimming pools. “And that’s caused crime to run rampant.”Later, sitting in a gleaming new workplace training center on the city’s hardscrabble east side, Mr. Brown pressed his case that he was running to safeguard “the future of my city.”“I think I’m the best equipped person to do the work that needs to do done,” he said.He was blunt in response to accusations that he is meanspirited in not accepting the outcome of the primary.“I never cry and whine about what people do who are running for office,” he said, adding, “So I think that notion of ‘sore loser’ that some of her supporters are trying to push is just a false notion.”For her part, Ms. Walton seems confident, saying she and her team are working the phones, knocking on doors and raising money every day.Still, there is a small sense of frustration that Mr. Brown’s general election campaign has prevented her from concentrating on a potential move to City Hall. She noted that “for the last 50 years, the Democratic primary has decided who the presumptive mayor is.”Her responsibility, Ms. Walton said, is to the city’s voters. “I have to deliver for them,” she said. “I shouldn’t be spending all this time justifying a solid win.” More

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      As Adams Plots City’s Future, He Leans on a Past Mayor: Bloomberg

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      The relationship between Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee in New York City, and Mike Bloomberg has benefits for both men.In the lead-up to and aftermath of the New York City mayoral primary, Eric Adams and his team sought guidance from current and past city leaders — first, to help craft his successful bid for the Democratic nomination, and then to prepare for a likely transition to the mayoralty.But Mr. Adams has recently come to lean on one person in particular: Michael R. Bloomberg.In mid-September, Mr. Bloomberg released a video endorsement of Mr. Adams for mayor. The next day, at a business conference featuring various of Mr. Bloomberg’s fellow billionaires, Mr. Adams declared, “New York will no longer be anti-business.”Two days later, Mr. Bloomberg hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams on the roof of the East 78th Street headquarters of Bloomberg Philanthropies, featuring dozens of guests, several of them financial sector executives.Last Wednesday, one of Mr. Bloomberg’s closest advisers, Howard Wolfson, met with David C. Banks, who is thought be among Mr. Adams’s top choices for schools chancellor.The meeting between Mr. Wolfson, Mr. Bloomberg’s former deputy mayor, and Mr. Banks, the founder of a network of all-boys public schools, was not happenstance. It was a product of a burgeoning relationship between the once and likely future mayors and has played out in proclamations of mutual regard.“The best New York City mayor in my lifetime is a combination of Mayor David Dinkins and Michael Bloomberg,” Mr. Adams said during the primary, hailing Mr. Bloomberg’s “practical approach.”Mr. Adams’s overtures to Mr. Bloomberg reinforce the notion that Mr. Adams has himself perpetuated on the campaign trail: that he is a pragmatic, centrist Democrat eager to make New York safe, prosperous and functional.Tying himself to Mr. Bloomberg may yield other benefits for Mr. Adams, too. It gives him access to a particularly well-heeled corner of New York’s donor class and the opportunity to wrap himself in the aura of Mr. Bloomberg’s reputed managerial skill, especially as questions arise about Mr. Adams’s ability to manage his own affairs.In recent days, Mr. Adams has been battered by headlines about his tax returns, which he has promised to revise, for the second time, after reporters found irregularities in them. Mr. Adams blames those errors on his accountant, whom Mr. Adams said he kept in his employ, even though the tax preparer was homeless. The news outlet The City reported that the tax preparer’s neighbors had accused him of embezzling money and had evicted him.Mr. Adams and his campaign have spoken to a number of former officials in the Bloomberg administration and former and current officials in the de Blasio administration, said Evan Thies, a spokesman for Mr. Adams.“It’s not like he’s embracing one mayor over the other mayor,” Mr. Thies said. “That’s just what you do, check in with people who have been there.”Mr. Adams plans to have a group of deputy mayors with whom he can consult, including current and former officials from past administrations. In some ways, he has approached the mayoralty like a research project — seeking out the advice of deputy mayors going as far back as the Giuliani administration.“He was trying to pick my brain and think out of the box,” said Phil Thompson, the deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives for Mr. de Blasio and a former staffer in the Dinkins administration. “He is trying to figure out how a mayor can do something for low-income communities of color to make a difference.”Mr. Adams, center, has said recently that New York City is “out of control,” but is wary of alienating Mayor Bill de Blasio, a supporter.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Bloomberg, who has extended an open-door policy to Mr. Adams and his team, may also derive some benefit from the relationship with Mr. Adams. It allows him to involve himself again in New York City municipal matters — following eight years of disengagement while his successor, Bill de Blasio, held office — and to burnish his reputation here.One former Bloomberg aide, who requested anonymity to speak freely, noted that while the former mayor had little standing in the de Blasio administration, he is far more likely to act as a respected source of advice for Mr. Adams.Mr. de Blasio ran for mayor by decrying Mr. Bloomberg’s legacy, arguing that New York had become a “tale of two cities,” one for the rich, the other for the poor. At Mr. de Blasio’s inauguration in 2014, Mr. Bloomberg was forced to sit poker-faced as speakers derided his tenure, with one comparing the city under his rule to a “plantation.”Mr. Adams, in contrast, campaigned on a platform of restoring public safety and prosperity, the frequently voiced concerns of the business class. He has recently decried the city’s state of “disorder,” and has cited a laundry list of ills such as graffiti, ATVs, homelessness and shootings.Like Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Adams is a former Republican. And during Mr. Bloomberg’s ill-fated presidential campaign, Mr. Adams served as a surrogate, saying publicly that he believed the former mayor was remorseful for his Police Department’s abusive use of stop-and-frisk, after the two men met for 45 minutes at Mr. Adams’s table at Brooklyn’s Park Plaza Restaurant.Dennis M. Walcott, the former city schools chancellor and deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg, said Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Adams have similar styles.“Adams’s style is such that he works with people from both sides of the aisle,” Mr. Walcott said. “One of the interesting things about Mayor Bloomberg is he recruited people who didn’t necessarily support him and then surrounded himself with solid talent.”In mid-September, Mr. Adams appeared on two Bloomberg Media programs, one on the radio, the other on TV, during which he promised to crack down on disorder and open New York City to business, including by offering incentives. Job No. 1, he said, was public safety.Mr. Wolfson, Mr. Bloomberg’s longtime adviser, is spearheading the Bloomberg-Adams engagement effort, by several accounts. He spoke regularly with Sheena Wright, the United Way of New York City chief executive who is running Mr. Adams’s transition, in the run-up to the fund-raiser. Representatives of Mr. Adams have also connected with Robert Steel, another former deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg. And Daniel Doctoroff, Mr. Bloomberg’s former deputy mayor for economic development and the former head of Bloomberg L.P., has independently spoken with Mr. Adams.Mr. Bloomberg has also met personally with Mr. Adams, according to one person familiar with the meeting, and has spoken with him privately throughout the course of the campaign, according to Mr. Adams’s aide. And Mr. Bloomberg hosted last Wednesday’s fund-raiser, during which Mr. Adams is said to have extolled Mr. Bloomberg’s expertise, and Mr. Bloomberg is said to have expressed confidence in Mr. Adams.Several dozen Bloomberg associates attended the 8 a.m. fund-raiser, where the price of admittance was $2,000 a head.The guests included at least five former Bloomberg deputy mayors: Mr. Steel and Robert C. Lieber, both bankers; Edward Skyler, an executive vice president at Citi; Kevin Sheekey, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg; and Patricia E. Harris, the head of Bloomberg Philanthropies, according to fellow attendees.Mr. Adams said at the fund-raiser that he wants the city to work on behalf of both the person in the front of the limousine and the person in the back, according to two attendees. And he said that New York City squandered the last eight years by failing to learn any lessons from the Bloomberg administration.Ken Lipper, a friend of Mr. Bloomberg’s from their days at Salomon Brothers, was also there, and he said he was impressed with Mr. Adams’s practical approach to governance, with its emphasis on making the actual levers of government work.There was something “old-fashioned” about him, according to Mr. Lipper, an investment banker and former deputy mayor under Ed Koch.He said he also appreciated Mr. Adams’s understanding of the tax structure.“Sixty-five thousand people in the entire city pay 51 percent of the taxes,” Mr. Lipper said, referring to the wealthiest personal income tax filers. “Those people don’t use the hospital system, generally, they don’t use the subways in many cases, they’re not using the public schools. So their focus is on having a safe city. You’ve got to give them those minimal services, even though it might seem disproportionate to other areas, and I think Adams kind of gets that.” More

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      Redrawing the Map in New York

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      Sydney Harper and Soraya Shockley and M.J. Davis Lin and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAfter the 2020 census, New York, like many other states, is using population data to redraw congressional and legislative districts.With the midterm elections just a year away, the outcome of the reconfiguring could be crucial in determining which party takes control of the House of Representatives — which Democrats currently hold by a thin margin.Clearly aware of the stakes, New York Democrats are considering a tactic that is usually a preserve of the Republican Party: gerrymandering.On today’s episodeNicholas Fandos, a political correspondent for The New York Times.The State Legislature in Albany this month. Republicans and Democrats on the redistricting commission can’t agree on a set of maps for legislative districts.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesBackground readingA bipartisan commission will examine two competing proposals for the redistricting of New York State. The failure to compromise may pave the way for Democrats to step in and knock out Republican congressional seats.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Soraya Shockley, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop and Chelsea Daniel.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Theo Balcomb, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr and Elizabeth Davis-Moorer. More

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      With Abortion Rights Under Threat, Democrats Hope to Go on Offense

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      Warning of Texas-style laws nationwide, the party believes it can use the issue to turn out suburban women in the Virginia governor’s race this fall and the 2022 midterms.VIRGINIA BEACH — Kenzie Smith is “not big into politics,” she said, and while she votes faithfully in presidential elections, for Democrats, she is less interested in off-year races, such as those seven weeks away in Virginia for governor and the legislature.But the recent news that the Supreme Court had allowed Texas to ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, grabbed her attention.The fear that such a restrictive law, which she called “insane,” could come to Virginia if Republicans take power has sharpened her desire to turn out on Election Day. “If there are laws like what’s going on in Texas coming here, I’d absolutely be motivated to go to the polls over that,” said Ms. Smith, 33, a marketing consultant.The Supreme Court’s decision on Sept. 1 to let Texas enact the country’s most restrictive abortion law came as a grievous blow to abortion rights advocates, a long-sought victory for abortion opponents and, for Democrats, a potential political opportunity.As the party mobilizes for next year’s midterms, its first big test on the issue will come in the Virginia elections this fall. Democrats are hoping to win a tight governor’s race and keep control of the legislature in a state that has moved rapidly to the left. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who is running for his old office, has repeatedly promised to be a “brick wall” against anti-abortion measures, and has played up his defense of abortion rights at a debate last week, on the campaign trail and in fund-raising appeals.Democrats in Virginia and beyond are focusing in particular on suburban women, who played a large role in electing President Biden, but whose broader loyalty to his party is not assured. With Republicans smelling blood in next year’s midterm elections as Mr. Biden’s approval ratings slip and the economy faces a potential stall over the lingering pandemic, Democrats are looking for issues like abortion to overcome their voters’ complacency now that Donald J. Trump is gone from office.In more than two dozen interviews in the politically divided city of Virginia Beach, the largest in the state but essentially a patchwork of suburban neighborhoods, Democratic-leaning and independent female voters expressed fear and outrage over the Supreme Court’s green light for the Texas law. Many said it intensified their desire to elect Democrats, although historically, single issues have not driven turnout waves; candidate personalities and the overall economy have.Even a number of women who said they favored Republicans noted that they also supported abortion rights — which may explain why G.O.P. candidates in Virginia have played down the issue, scrubbing anti-abortion comments from campaign websites and walking back some remarks.In a debate on Thursday between candidates for governor, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican, said, “I would not sign the Texas bill today.” But he dodged when asked if he would sign a six-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape and incest. He affirmed that he supported a “pain-threshold bill,” which generally outlaws abortion after 20 weeks.Mr. McAuliffe said he was “terrified” that “the Trump Supreme Court” could overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision granting a constitutional right to an abortion. He said he supported “a woman’s right to make her own decision to a second trimester.” He misleadingly said that Mr. Youngkin “wants to ban abortions.”Early in the campaign, a liberal activist recorded Mr. Youngkin saying that he had to play down his anti-abortion views to win over independents, but that if he were elected and Republicans took the House of Delegates, he would start “going on offense.” The McAuliffe campaign turned the recording into an attack ad.Ellen Robinson was “horrified” by the Texas law.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesKathleen Moran said the Supreme Court’s decision on the Texas law “scared” her.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesRepublicans portray Mr. McAuliffe as favoring abortions up to the moment of birth, trying to tie him to a failed 2019 bill in the legislature that would have loosened some restrictions on late-term abortions. Virginia law permits abortions in the third trimester if a woman’s life is in danger.Polling on abortion shows that Americans’ attitudes have remained stable for decades, with a majority of around 60 percent saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases. In Virginia, slightly fewer people, 55 percent, agree, according to the Pew Research Center.However, in a contradiction that illustrates the moral complexities of the issue, national polls also show that majorities favor abortion restrictions that are impermissible under Roe, such as outlawing second-trimester abortions in most cases.A Washington Post-Schar School poll of Virginia conducted this month, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Texas law, found that abortion ranked low among voters’ concerns, with only 9 percent saying that it was their most important issue in the governor’s race.The starkness of the Texas decision — and the prospect that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe next year in a case involving a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi — has sharpened the issue.Virginia Beach presents a test case of the fraught abortion issue on the front lines of America’s shifting electoral landscape. The large population of military families has long lent a conservative cast to local politics, but last year the city voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, Mr. Biden, for the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson. Representative Elaine Luria, a Democrat and former Navy commander whose congressional district includes Virginia Beach, is among Republicans’ top targets for 2022.The city stretches from saltwater taffy shops on the touristy Atlantic beaches to quiet streets of brick homes that lace around the area’s many bays. Outdoor conversations are interrupted by earsplitting military jets, which rarely draw a glance skyward.Ellen Robinson, a retired nurse, who identifies as a political independent, was “horrified” by the Texas law and said that if the court overturned Roe, “I think it would be the beginning of fascism in this country.”Kathleen Moran, a technical editor in the engineering field, who favors Democrats, said the Supreme Court’s decision on the Texas law “scared” her.“I have boys who will be dating women,” she said. “I have nieces. This goes back to the whole ‘white men get to make all the decisions about everything.’”Ms. Moran said she was more intent on voting after the court declined to halt the Texas law, which the Biden administration is trying to block.“We are in a really dangerous situation,” she said. “Obviously for abortion, we don’t want to become Texas, but on a lot of issues we could lose what is now a blue state.”While many Republican women across Virginia would most likely support stricter abortion laws, few conservative-leaning women in suburban Virginia Beach expressed support for a six-week abortion law or a reversal of Roe v. Wade. Overall, while these women didn’t always embrace the “pro-choice” label, they agreed that women should be able to make their own reproductive decisions.Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, dodged a question at a debate about whether he would sign a six-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape and incest.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“I know Republicans have been against abortion forever, but as a woman, I think I ought to be able to choose myself,” said Janis Cohen, 73, a retired government employee. Her lawn featured a parade of signs for G.O.P. candidates. When it was pointed out that one of them, Winsome Sears, who is running for lieutenant governor, has said she would support a six-week abortion ban, Ms. Cohen fired back that the current governor, the Democrat Ralph Northam, was what she considered an abortion extremist.In 2019 the governor, a pediatric neurologist, seemed to suggest that a delivered baby could be left to die if the mother requested an abortion while in labor with a deformed fetus unlikely to survive. Republicans across the country seized on the comments as sanctioning “infanticide.” Mr. Northam’s office called the accusations a bad-faith distortion of his views.Polls of the Virginia governor’s race have generally forecast a close race, including one by Emerson College last week with the candidates within the margin of error.Nancy Guy, a Democratic state delegate who flipped a Republican-held seat in Virginia Beach by just 27 votes in 2019, said that before abortion rose as an issue in recent weeks, “most people were complacent and not paying attention.”Ms. Guy’s opponent has pledged that if elected, he will donate his salary to a so-called crisis pregnancy center that steers pregnant women away from abortions. The contrast could not be more clear to voters who follow the issues. Still, Ms. Guy said, with the news constantly churning, it is difficult to know what will drive voters nearly two months from now to cast ballots.Nancy Guy, a Democratic state delegate, said that before abortion rose as an issue in recent weeks, “most people were complacent and not paying attention.”Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesDemocrats in Virginia made huge strides during Mr. Trump’s divisive leadership, culminating in 2019, when the party took control of both the State Senate and House of Delegates. But Democrats’ majorities are slim, and Republicans believe they have an anti-incumbent wind at their backs this year. Three statewide positions are on the ballot on Nov. 2 — governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general — along with all 100 seats in the House.The field director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia said that on average, 10 to 15 volunteers were on door-knocking shifts, compared with 25 to 40 two years ago, a worrying sign for supporters of abortion rights.Han Jones, Planned Parenthood’s political director in Virginia, added: “People are exhausted with elections and exhausted with Donald Trump’s rhetoric and feel like they can take a break. We could easily go red in this election alone if Democratic voters who are not feeling as passionate or leaned in don’t turn out to vote.”A team of Planned Parenthood canvassers who visited a neighborhood of attached town homes recently encountered general support for Democrats, but not much awareness of the election or enthusiasm for it.One voter, Carly White, said abortion was a touchy subject in her household. “I’m for Planned Parenthood but my husband is not,” she said, stepping outside a home with a small, precisely trimmed lawn. “I think the issue is, he’s a man. He’s never grown a baby. I just can’t — I don’t like somebody telling me what I can do with my own body.” More

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      Beto O’Rourke Draws Closer to Entering Texas Governor’s Race

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      Mr. O’Rourke has been calling Democratic leaders in Texas to tell them he is seriously considering challenging Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022. HOUSTON — Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman who became a darling of Democrats after nearly defeating Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, is inching closer to announcing a run for governor of Texas, according to three people who have spoken with him.In recent weeks, Mr. O’Rourke has been making calls to Democratic leaders across Texas to inform them that he is seriously considering taking on Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who is up for re-election next year. And he has begun talking to supporters about having them join his campaign staff. A decision could be made in the coming weeks, the three people said, possibly as soon as October. Democrats in Texas have been urging Mr. O’Rourke to get into the race for governor almost from the moment he dropped out of the 2020 race for president, a quixotic effort that stumbled early and failed to gain traction amid a crowded primary field. But despite his troubles on the national stage, Mr. O’Rourke has maintained a deep wellspring of support in Texas, where many Democrats still display the black-and-white Beto signs from the 2018 campaign on their lawns and on their cars. Mr. O’Rourke did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. David Wysong, a longtime adviser to Mr. O’Rourke, cautioned that “no decision has been made” on a run for governor. The three people who discussed their conversations with Mr. O’Rourke are Democratic officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about conversations that were meant to be private.No Democrat has been elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards in 1990. And no prominent Democrat has emerged to take on Mr. Abbott next year. The governor, who has built up a war chest of more than $55 million, has appeared more concerned with insulating himself from challengers on his right in a Republican primary than worrying about the general election. But Democrats see a potential opening. Over the last few months, Texas has bounced from crisis to crisis — including a surge in pandemic deaths and a winter failure of the electric grid — while Republican leaders in Austin have steered the state even farther to the right on issues from guns to elections to abortion. In a survey last month, a majority of Texans told pollsters they thought the state was heading in the wrong direction.Amid the political turmoil, Mr. O’Rourke has stayed active in the state. “He’s been not just making pronouncements, he’s been out there knocking on doors, leading marches, setting up rallies all over the state,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Mr. Hinojosa said the Supreme Court’s decision to let a strict new abortion law passed by the Texas Legislature go into effect had galvanized many Democrats in the state. The new law effectively bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy and is structured in such a way as to avoid an immediate court challenge.“This whole abortion legislation has changed the dynamics incredibly,” he said. In the 2018 campaign, Mr. O’Rourke showed that he was able to energize Democrats, raise significant sums of money and campaign aggressively across Texas, a large and notoriously difficult place to run a statewide campaign. Even in defeat, his margin against the incumbent Mr. Cruz — 51 to 48 percent — helped lift Democratic candidates in local races and led to gains in the State Legislature that year. The prospect of a run by Mr. O’Rourke against Mr. Abbott — reported by Axios on Sunday — would present Democrats with the biggest and most direct test yet in their attempts to loosen the Republican grip on power in Texas. During his failed presidential run, Mr. O’Rourke took positions, including a hard line on confiscating assault weapons, that could make him vulnerable in any new campaign in Texas. “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” Mr. O’Rourke said during a Democratic debate in Houston in 2019, referring to military-style rifles that have been used in mass shootings.David Carney, a campaign adviser to Mr. Abbott and a longtime Republican political consultant, said that he would not be surprised if Mr. O’Rourke jumped into the race. “O’Rourke has been planning to run since he got crushed in his presidential flop,” Mr. Carney said. “He is a target-rich environment with positions way, way out of the mainstream.” More

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      Don’t Let Trump Steal the Show With ‘Stop the Steal’

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      You cannot actually debunk Republican accusations of voter fraud. You can show they aren’t true (and they aren’t), but that has no bearing on the belief itself.“Voter fraud” is not a factual claim subject to testing and objective analysis as much as it’s a statement of ideology, a belief about the way the world works. In practice, to accuse Democrats of voter fraud is to say that Democratic voters are not legitimate political actors; that their votes do not count the same as those of “the people” (that is, the Republican electorate); and that Democratic officials, elected with those illegitimate votes, have no rightful claim to power.In a sense, one should take accusations of voter fraud seriously but not literally, as apologists for Donald Trump once said of the former president. These accusations, the more florid the better, tell the audience that the speaker is aligned with Trump and that he or she supported his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. They also tell the audience that the speaker will do anything necessary to “stop the steal,” which is to say anything to stop a Republican from losing an election and, barring that, anything to delegitimize the Democrat who won.In the last days of the California recall election that ended this week, for example, the leading Republican candidate, Larry Elder, urged his supporters to report fraud using a website that claimed to have “detected fraud” in the results. “Statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections held in 3rd-world nations (such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran) have detected fraud in California resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor,” the site read. Elder himself told Fox News that the 2020 election was “full of shenanigans.”“My fear is they’re going to try that in this election right here,” he said.Never mind that the results had not yet come in at the time Elder promoted this website, or that he was a long shot to begin with. The last Republican to win statewide high office in California was Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, when he ran successfully for re-election after winning the 2003 recall vote against the Democrat Gray Davis. Newsom, a Democrat, won his 2018 race for governor by nearly 24 points. Elder was not doomed to lose, but the idea that the election was rigged — that he was robbed of victory by mass cheating and fraud — was ridiculous. But again, the point of voter fraud accusations isn’t to describe reality; the point is to express a belief, in this case, the belief that Newsom and his supporters are illegitimate.There are other candidates running for office making similar claims. Adam Laxalt, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race, has promised to “file lawsuits early” in order to “tighten up the election.” Laxalt co-chaired Trump’s 2020 campaign in the state and supported the effort to overturn the results. “There’s no question that, unfortunately, a lot of the lawsuits and a lot of the attention spent on Election Day operations just came too late,” he said in a recent interview.Trump endorsed Laxalt this summer, praising his commitment to the voter fraud narrative. “He fought valiantly against the Election Fraud, which took place in Nevada,” said Trump in a statement. “He is strong on Secure Borders and defending America against the Radical Left. Adam has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”This isn’t just rhetoric either. The ideological belief in voter fraud is driving actual efforts to delegitimize Democratic Party victories and tilt the electoral playing field in favor of Republican candidates. In Florida, for instance, a member of the state House of Representatives introduced a draft bill that would require an Arizona-style election audit in the state’s largest (and most heavily Democratic) counties.In Georgia, a Trump-backed candidate for secretary of state, Jody Hice, is running on a promise to do what the incumbent Brad Raffensperger wouldn’t: subvert the election for Trump’s benefit should the former president make another bid for the White House. “If elected, I will instill confidence in our election process by upholding the Georgia Constitution, enforcing meaningful reform and aggressively pursuing those who commit voter fraud,” Hice said in a statement announcing his candidacy in March. As a congressman, he voted against certifying the 2020 election in January and, the following month, told a group of conservative activists, “What happened this past election was solely because of a horrible secretary of state and horrible decisions that he made.”There is also the question of Republican voters themselves. According to a Monmouth University poll taken in June, nearly one-third of Americans believe that Joe Biden’s victory was the result of fraud, including 63 percent of Republicans. If Republican politicians keep pushing the voter fraud narrative, it is as much because Republican voters want to hear it as it is because those politicians are themselves true believers.If this voter fraud ideology were just a matter of bad information, it would be straightforward (if not exactly easy) to fix. But as the legal scholar Ned Foley has argued, the assertion of fraud — the falsification of reality in support of narrow political goals — is more akin to McCarthyism. It cannot be reasoned with, only defeated.The problem is that to break the hold of this ideology on Republican voters, you need Republican politicians to lead the charge. A Margaret Chase Smith, for example. But as long as Trump controls the party faithful — as long as he is, essentially, the center of a cult of personality — those voices, if they even exist, won’t say in public what they almost certainly say behind closed doors.It is up to Democrats, then, to at least safety-proof our electoral system against another attempt to “stop the steal.” The Senate filibuster makes that a long shot as well, even as centrist Democrats like Joe Manchin insist that there’s a compromise to strike with Republicans. Let’s hope he’s right because at this stage of the game, it is the only move left to play.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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      Trump-Era Special Counsel Secures Indictment of Lawyer for Firm With Democratic Ties

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      The defendant, Michael Sussmann, is accused of lying to the F.B.I. in a meeting about Trump and Russia. He denies wrongdoing.WASHINGTON — The special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to scrutinize the Russia investigation obtained a grand jury indictment on Thursday of a prominent cybersecurity lawyer, accusing him of lying to the F.B.I. five years ago during a meeting about Donald J. Trump and Russia.The indictment secured by the special counsel, John H. Durham, also made public his findings about an episode in which cybersecurity researchers identified unusual internet data in 2016 that they said suggested the possibility of a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked financial institution.He concluded that the Clinton campaign covertly helped push those suspicions to the F.B.I. and reporters, the indictment shows. The F.B.I. looked into the questions about Alfa Bank but dismissed them as unfounded, and the special counsel who later took over the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, ignored the matter in his final report.The charging of the lawyer, Michael A. Sussmann, had been expected. He is accused of falsely telling a top F.B.I. lawyer that he was not representing any client at the meeting about those suspicions. Prosecutors contend that he was instead representing both a technology executive and the Hillary Clinton campaign.“Sussmann’s false statement misled the F.B.I. general counsel and other F.B.I. personnel concerning the political nature of his work and deprived the F.B.I. of information that might have permitted it more fully to assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis, including the identities and motivations of Sussmann’s clients,” the indictment said.Mr. Sussmann’s defense lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, have denied the accusation, insisting that he did not say he had no client and maintaining that the evidence against him is weak. They also denied that the question of who Mr. Sussmann was working for was material, saying the FB.I. would have investigated the matter regardless.“Michael Sussmann was indicted today because of politics, not facts,” they said on Thursday. “The special counsel appears to be using this indictment to advance a conspiracy theory he has chosen not to actually charge. This case represents the opposite of everything the Department of Justice is supposed to stand for. Mr. Sussmann will fight this baseless and politically inspired prosecution.”A former computer crimes prosecutor who worked for the Justice Department for 12 years, Mr. Sussmann in 2016 represented the Democratic National Committee on issues related to Russia’s hacking of its servers.He has been a cybersecurity lawyer for 16 years at the law firm Perkins Coie, which has deep ties to the Democratic Party. A colleague of Mr. Sussmann’s, Marc Elias, was the general counsel to the Clinton campaign. He left the law firm last month.The firm said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Sussmann had also departed: “In light of the special counsel’s action today, Michael Sussmann, who has been on leave from the firm, offered his resignation from the firm in order to focus on his legal defense, and the firm accepted it.”The charge against him centers on a Sept. 19, 2016, meeting with the F.B.I. lawyer, James A. Baker, in which Mr. Sussmann relayed concerns about the odd internet data. Cybersecurity researchers had said it might be evidence of clandestine communications channel between computer servers associated with the Trump Organization and with Russia’s Alfa Bank.The case against Mr. Sussmann turns on Mr. Baker’s recollection that Mr. Sussmann told him he was not at the meeting on behalf of any client — which Mr. Sussmann denies saying. There were no witnesses to their conversation.The indictment says Mr. Baker later briefed another F.B.I. official — apparently Bill Priestap, the bureau’s top counterintelligence official — about the meeting, and that Mr. Priestap’s notes say Mr. Baker recounted that Mr. Sussmann said he was “not doing this for any client.” (It is not clear whether such notes would be admissible at a trial.)In 2017, Mr. Sussmann testified under oath to Congress that he was representing the unnamed technology executive, and his legal team agrees that executive was his client at the meeting — but the only one.Internal law firm billing records, however, show that Mr. Sussmann had been logging his time on Alfa Bank matters to the Clinton campaign, the indictment says, contending that the campaign was his client, too. Those records are said to also show that Mr. Sussmann met or spoke with Mr. Elias about Alfa Bank repeatedly.Seeking to head off any indictment, Mr. Sussmann’s defense lawyers had argued to the Justice Department that the billing records were misleading and that he was not at the meeting at the direction or on behalf of the Clinton campaign, according to people familiar with the case. They also denied that the records could be fairly interpreted as showing that he billed the meeting with Mr. Baker to the campaign, as the indictment accuses him.Mr. Durham is known to have been closely scrutinizing the Alfa Bank episode since last fall, including using a grand jury to subpoena documents and question witnesses in ways that suggested he was pursuing a theory that the data had been manipulated or the analysis of it knowingly torqued.The 27-page indictment disclosed much of what he found, including quoting extensively from internal communications of unnamed researchers.The unidentified technology executive whom Mr. Sussmann represented was not the first researcher to scrutinize the data. But his company had access to large amounts of internet data, and he came to play an important role in driving the research and analysis, which he told Mr. Sussmann about around July 2016, the indictment said.In August of that year, the technology executive outlined to other researchers the goal of the effort, saying that unspecified “VIPs” wanted to find “true” information that would merit closer scrutiny. Noting that Mr. Trump had claimed he had no interactions with Russian financial institutions, the executive wrote that data suggesting that was false “would be jackpot” and would “give the base of a very useful narrative.”The executive also wrote: “Being able to provide evidence of *anything* that shows an attempt to behave badly in relation to this, the VIPs would be happy. They’re looking for a true story that could be used as the basis for closer examination.”But one of the researchers working on the project worried that their analysis had weaknesses and that suggested they all shared anti-Trump sentiment.“The only thing that drive[s] us at this point is that we just do not like” Trump, the indictment quoted one unnamed researcher as writing. “This will not fly in eyes of public scrutiny. Folks, I am afraid we have tunnel vision. Time to regroup?”In early September, the indictment said, Mr. Sussmann met with a New York Times reporter who would later draft a story about Alfa Bank, and also began work on a so-called white paper that would summarize and explain the researchers’ data and analysis, billing the time to the Clinton campaign.On Sept. 12, the indictment said, Mr. Sussmann called Mr. Elias, the Clinton campaign lawyer, and spoke about his “efforts to communicate” with the Times reporter about the Alfa Bank allegations. Both billed the call to the campaign. And three days later, Mr. Elias exchanged emails with top campaign officials about the matter.In the meantime, on Sept. 14, five days before Mr. Sussmann met with the F.B.I., the technology executive emailed three researchers helping him with data. The executive sought to ensure the analysis they were assembling would strike security experts as simply “plausible,” even if it fell short of demonstrably true, prosecutors said.Mr. Sussmann also continued to push the Alfa Bank story to reporters. A month before the election, as Times editors were weighing whether to publish an article the reporter had drafted, Mr. Sussmann told him he should show the editors an opinion essay saying the paper’s investigative reporters had not published as many stories regarding Mr. Trump as other media outlets, the indictment said.Michael E. Sussmann, a lawyer from the firm Perkins Coie, during a cybersecurity conference in 2016.via C-SPANAttorney General William P. Barr appointed Mr. Durham in May 2019 to scour the Russia investigation for any wrongdoing. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr stoked expectations among Mr. Trump’s supporters that the prosecutors would uncover grave offenses by high-level government officials and support claims that the Russia investigation was a plot concocted by the so-called deep state to sabotage Mr. Trump.To date, Mr. Durham’s investigation has fallen short of those expectations. Out of office, Mr. Trump has repeatedly issued statements fuming, “Where’s Durham?”The current attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, said at his confirmation hearing in February that he would let Mr. Durham continue to work and told Congress in July that he agreed with Mr. Barr’s earlier direction that Mr. Durham should eventually submit a report in a form that could be made public.Funding for most Justice Department operations, like much of the federal government, is controlled by an annual budget that covers a fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30. Spokesmen for Mr. Garland and Mr. Durham have declined to answer questions about whether Mr. Durham’s office has funding approval to continue operating beyond this month.But in announcing the indictment of Mr. Sussmann, the Justice Department said, “The special counsel’s investigation is ongoing.” More

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      Newsom Beat the Recall, Now Comes the Hard Part: Governing California

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      Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing multiple crises. Ninety percent of California is in extreme drought. The median home price has eclipsed $800,000. Some 100,000 people are sleeping outside or in their cars.SACRAMENTO — For nearly a year — while a pandemic raged, while wildfires roared, while smoke smothered the once-pristine blue skies over Lake Tahoe — Gov. Gavin Newsom has had to simultaneously govern the nation’s most populous state and beat back an attempted recall.On Wednesday, he emerged victorious — but still had multiple crises to confront. Ninety percent of the state was in extreme drought. The median home price had eclipsed $800,000. Some 100,000 people were sleeping outside or in their cars nightly. And more than 6 million public school children were struggling to make up the learning they had missed because of the coronavirus pandemic.Hundreds of bills on his desk waited to be signed, including one to allow duplexes in single-family neighborhoods across California and another enshrining the vote-by-mail rules that helped keep him in office.The election’s resounding rejection of the long-shot, Republican-led attempt to oust Mr. Newsom appeared not only to strengthen him for re-election next year, but also to bestow a mandate. As the vote count continued on Wednesday, the recall was being rejected by roughly 2-1. The margin echoes the state’s Democrat-Republican split and the scale of Mr. Newsom’s 2018 election, which was a landslide.Voters cast their ballots at Salazar Park in Los Angeles on Tuesday.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesBut what the governor can do with that mandate is unclear. The recall campaign was long and divisive, political experts say, and the state’s problems increasingly resist simple solutions. Many more straightforward challenges were met last year with a massive state surplus and a flood of pandemic aid from the Biden administration.Now — although Mr. Newsom has the advantage of a unified base, a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature and the state’s attention — what remains are issues that require far more than money.“These are problems that take time,” said Jerry Brown, who governed the state for two eight-year stints in the 1970s and again from 2010 to 2018. “Reducing carbon emissions. Reversing the gross inequalities. Being able to keep the crime rate down. Dealing with so many people who have so little that their lives and families are disintegrating.”The recall, Mr. Brown said, was “sound and fury signifying very little” — an “expensive blip” that in a couple of weeks “will be not much more than a footnote.” But, he said, “it’s down now to the bread and butter issues. And they’re the same old issues that have been around for a long time in modern California.”Mr. Newsom offered few details during his campaign on how he would tackle these challenges, in part because of the tenor of the recall. The Republican candidates seeking to replace him framed the campaign as a referendum on him, from his handling of homelessness to the rise of urban crime rates and his decision to party at a luxe wine country restaurant after he had asked Californians to stay home during the pandemic. Larry Elder, who lost a bid to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, thanks supporters who attended his election night party in Costa Mesa after polls closed Tuesday night.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesBut except for his coronavirus policies, which have been pointed to as a potential national model, the governor largely avoided making his agenda part of the recall discussion. Aiming to animate the state’s Democratic base in an off-year special election, he portrayed the recall as a battle to rescue the nation’s biggest blue state from hard right extremists, and as part of a larger, national war on the divisiveness of former President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans who admire him.Outside a victory party afterward, he acknowledged the challenges that await him, but resisted much elaboration.“Let the dust settle,” he said.At least part of the calculus will include next year’s regularly scheduled gubernatorial election. Although the governor is unlikely to face much meaningful opposition, 2022 is a regular election year — a time when controversial legislation tends to be set aside.“It will be interesting to see what he wants to focus on,” said Toni Atkins, the president pro tempore of the California Senate, noting that much of the Legislature also will be campaigning. The dominance of Democrats in the State Senate and Assembly masks an often unwieldy range of views — Bay Area progressives, Central Valley moderates, coastal environmentalists, jobs-first pragmatists.Voting at Central Baptist Church in El Centro. Californians rejected the recall by about 2-1 as of Wednesday morning.John Francis Peters for The New York TimesThe challenge was apparent even within the county-by-county recall tallies, with huge majorities for the governor in Democratic strongholds such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, thinner margins in San Diego and Orange County and much of the far rural north voting to replace him.Legislation of remarkable sweep quietly passed this year, even as the recall consumed the public’s attention, Ms. Atkins said: preschool for all of the state’s 4-year-olds, stimulus checks for low- and middle-income people, health insurance for undocumented immigrants 50 and older.But climate bills stalled, casualties in many cases of the split between parts of the state that prioritize jobs and parts that prioritize action on climate change.She predicted the governor would resume work on priorities he had held from the start of his administration, including affordable housing and early childhood education. But, she added, his victory has whetted legislative ambitions, too.The fifth-largest economy in the world and home to some 40 million people, California is known both for its bounty and for its epic flaws. It leads the nation in billionaires; when housing is factored in, it also has America’s highest poverty level.Its coastline is renowned, but towering wildfires, burning over as much as a million acres, have become a terrifying annual occurrence. A mega-drought has sent the price of agricultural water soaring and tens of thousands of farms are on reduced water rations.One hurdle in carrying out ambitious policy objectives, experts said, was a political lesson that emerged from the recall: Polarization pays. Governor Gavin Newsom delivers remarks on the state’s wildfires in Sacramento on Monday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPartisan rhetoric mobilized voters on both sides, handing Mr. Newsom his win and raising the profile of an otherwise withering Republican Party. Any group that, in the past, might have been daunted by the challenge of launching a statewide recall learned that even a lost cause can disrupt an opponent for months, Mark Baldassare, president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, said.But that isn’t necessarily conducive to governance, he added.“This recall election has just really stirred the pot,” said Mr. Baldassare. “Will people find common ground? It’s going to be hard.”Fernando Guerra, a professor and the director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said the governor has every tool at his disposal to take bold action if he wants to — a supportive White House, a legislative supermajority, a state surplus and billions of federal dollars in pandemic aid. Leveraging those advantages could leave a legacy to rival the state’s most iconic governors, he said, including Jerry Brown and his father, who governed in the 1960s, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.“California will be positioned to have the most extraordinary two or three years of government and state-led innovation since the Pat Brown era — or California could be mired in political paralysis and doomed to incremental decline. And it will all depend on Gavin Newsom,” he said.“If crises are opportunities, then this is the greatest opportunity any sitting governor in America will ever have.”Thomas Fuller contributed reporting from Sacramento. More