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      Revocatoria en California: ¿por qué no participan los latinos?

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      Los votantes hispanos conforman una tercera parte del electorado estatal. El gobernador Gavin Newsom, que enfrenta una votación para retirarlo del cargo, no ha logrado conectar con ellos.LOS ÁNGELES — El poder de los latinos nunca ha sido tan fuerte en California.Son el grupo étnico más numeroso en el estado y constituyen aproximadamente el 30 por ciento de los votantes registrados. Desde hace décadas impulsan las victorias de los demócratas y han ayudado a que el partido obtenga supermayorías en ambas cámaras de la legislatura estatal, donde los senadores y asambleístas latinos ocupan puestos poderosos y han aprobado leyes que se destacan por su apertura hacia la inmigración.Pero ahora que el gobernador Gavin Newsom intenta mantenerse en el poder durante una elección revocatoria que se celebra en apenas unos días, los mismos votantes latinos con los que cuenta parecen indecisos y poco participativos ante la posibilidad de que lo retiren del cargo.En 2018, las encuestas de salida mostraron que Newsom contaba con el apoyo de alrededor de dos terceras partes del total de latinos. Ahora, los sondeos sugieren que los latinos están divididos casi en partes iguales sobre la elección revocatoria. Y hasta el momento, solo el 15 por ciento de todos los latinos registrados para votar han enviado por correo sus papeletas, en contraste con el 29 por ciento de los votantes blancos, según Political Data Inc., un grupo de investigación con sede en Sacramento.Los sentimientos encontrados, para muchos votantes latinos, surgen de la larga batalla contra la pandemia, pues enfrentan desempleo y mayores tasas de contagios y mortalidad. Otros perciben una desconexión profunda con el Partido Demócrata y con el propio Newsom, un multimillonario dueño de una bodega en Napa a quien ven como alguien distante y frío.Entrevistas con votantes latinos, estrategas y activistas estatales revelan que los hispanos sienten una frustración que Newsom jamás ha abordado. La pandemia arraigó la desigualdad en todo el estado y profundizó el descontento en torno a una división de clase generalizada. La riqueza de Newsom resalta esa brecha.Karla Ramirez, una demócrata de 43 años que vive en Downey, un suburbio muy latino al sureste de Los Ángeles, dijo que creía que Newsom había manejado bien la pandemia, en general. Pero Ramirez, que es propietaria junto con su marido de un negocio de limpieza comercial, dijo que no planeaba participar en la contienda y no tenía los medios para prestarle atención a la política estatal mientras el virus seguía arrasando. Su hija de 9 años y su esposo dieron positivo a COVID-19 y están recuperándose de síntomas leves.Todos los votantes registrados han recibido papeletas por correo y tienen la alternativa de enviarlas a través del servicio postal, ir a depositarlas en las urnas o acudir a votar en persona desde ahora hasta el 14 de septiembre, día de la elección. Ramirez ya no tiene la opción de votar por correo.“Me llegó la boleta y la tiré a la basura. Siento que no podría ser justa”, dijo Ramirez. “Estoy ocupada con el regreso de mis hijos a la escuela y con la vacunación”.Karla Ramirez, quien vive en Downey, un suburbio de Los Ángeles, dijo que no votará en las elecciones revocatorias.Jenna Schoenefeld para The New York TimesA solo una semana del cierre de las urnas, las encuestas públicas sugieren que Newsom seguirá en el cargo. Pero muchos ven su dificultad con los votantes hispanos como una preocupante señal para los demócratas, tanto a nivel estatal como nacional, y como un atisbo de las consecuencias del fracaso para conectar con una fuerza política vital cuya lealtad está en juego. Los demócratas se alarmaron luego de la elección presidencial de 2020 cuando muchos votantes hispanos en Florida, Texas y otras zonas del país se inclinaron por el presidente Donald Trump. Pero este problema podría llegar a tener más consecuencias en un estado en el que los latinos representan casi una tercera parte del electorado..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.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;}“El verdadero tema es que el gobernador Newsom no ha engendrado entusiasmo entre los votantes latinos”, dijo Thomas A. Saenz, presidente del Fondo Educativo y de Defensa Legal Mexicoestadounidense, y quien ha participado en la política californiana desde hace décadas. “En parte, esa es la razón por la que él está en riesgo. No los motivan sus políticas y prácticas y él no ha abordado para nada a la comunidad latina como una comunidad latina ni ha reconocido su importancia para el estado”.Los colaboradores de la campaña de Newsom niegan que haya fallado en llamar la atención o atender a los votantes latinos. Más bien, indican que la expansión del servicio Medi-Cal a los habitantes de más de 50 años, que incluye a inmigrantes indocumentados, así como la moratoria a los desalojos son dos políticas clave que han beneficiado a miles de latinos en California. Su campaña ha alardeado repetidamente por el nombramiento de Alex Padilla al Senado de Estados Unidos, lo que lo convirtió en el primer latino de California en servir en esa cámara.Nathan Click, vocero de la campaña de Newsom, dijo que la estrategia del gobernador para acercarse a los votantes latinos prácticamente no ha cambiado. La campaña, dijo Click, siempre ha visto la dificultad, y la importancia, de llegar a los latinos, y en particular a los latinos jóvenes.“Desde el primer día hemos sabido que los votantes que participan en los años electorales pero no votan en las elecciones de medio término y, en realidad, no votan en las elecciones especiales son el principal objetivo de todos nuestros esfuerzos”, dijo.Hace una generación, la Propuesta 187, una iniciativa electoral que habría prohibido a los inmigrantes indocumentados recibir la mayoría de los servicios públicos, obtuvo un amplio apoyo entre los republicanos de California, incluido el gobernador Pete Wilson. La medida antiinmigrante alejó en gran medida a los votantes latinos del Partido Republicano y los lanzó a los brazos de los demócratas, que han reconocido públicamente que la medida electoral fue fundamental para su ascenso al poder.Pero muchos votantes latinos son demasiado jóvenes como para recordar la Propuesta 187 de principios de los noventa y no sienten ninguna lealtad especial por los demócratas. Por mucho que se hable del potencial político latino en California, ningún gobernador en la historia reciente ha logrado convocar a los latinos para convertirlos en sus acérrimos partidarios.Newsom saludaba a trabajadoras agrícolas retiradas en una clínica, en Fresno, el mes pasado.Eric Paul Zamora/The Fresno Bee, vía Associated Press“No hemos argumentado de forma adecuada y durante el tiempo suficiente que las cosas son distintas y mejores, sobre todo para los latinos jóvenes”, comentó Lorena Gonzalez, una demócrata que representa a una zona de clase trabajadora y latina de San Diego en la Asamblea Estatal. “Es como si no hacerle daño a los latinos fuera suficiente para muchos políticos demócratas”.La revocatoria también sucede mientras muchos siguen sufriendo el impacto de la pandemia. Los latinos en California tenían muchas más probabilidades de contraer el virus y morir que los habitantes blancos del estado. La tasa de desempleo entre los latinos sigue por encima del 10 por ciento y muchos pequeños comerciantes latinos han perdido considerablemente sus ingresos en el último año y medio.Frank Oropeza, de 27 años y barbero en Montebello, al este de Los Ángeles, dijo que votó por el presidente Biden el año pasado y se considera demócrata. Pero comentó que no había pensado mucho en por quién votar en la revocatoria y que se sentía dividido: en redes sociales leía de otros colegas del ramo y peluqueros que dijeron estar a favor de revocar a Newsom, que cerró en dos ocasiones sus negocios y también se enteraba de otros que tenían opiniones distintas.“Soy muy influenciable”, dijo riendo. “Es tipo: ‘Cierra los ojos y tira un dardo’”.Oropeza dijo que entendía que eran necesarias algunas restricciones pandémicas. Pero le frustraba que los peluqueros y barberos hubieran tenido que dejar de trabajar en una segunda ocasión, aunque ya se habían implementado las medidas de precaución, como el uso universal de cubrebocas.Esa es una de las críticas que han aprovechado los oponentes de Newsom para intentar persuadir a más latinos de votar a favor de la revocatoria.“Muchos de esos pequeños negocios que cerraron para siempre eran propiedad de personas de color”, dijo Larry Elder, el presentador de radio conservador que se ha convertido en el favorito de los republicanos entre la multitud de candidatos de la elección revocatoria, la semana pasada.En una rueda de prensa virtual, Elder se presentó junto a Gloria Romero, demócrata y exlegisladora que ahora es una ferviente defensora de las escuelas autónomas o chárter. Protagonizó una publicidad en español que la campaña de Elder envió a los votantes latinos por mensaje de texto.“Se trata de mandar un mensaje sobre cómo el Partido Demócrata ha abandonado en gran medida a los latinos”, dijo Romero. “Nos han dado por sentado”.Los votantes latinos son una fuerza en todos los rincones del estado y representan a un amplio espectro de posiciones políticas. Mientras que los liberales con formación universitaria en los centros urbanos son un elemento crucial de la base demócrata, los moderados de clase trabajadora en los suburbios de Inland Empire y Silicon Valley son esenciales para ganar en todo el estado. Y en el condado de Orange, el Valle Central y los confines al norte del estado, los votantes religiosos y los libertarios han ayudado a llevar a los republicanos al poder en distritos clave para el Congreso.Y hay señales de que los republicanos están teniendo algo de éxito para atraer a los votantes hispanos, entre ellos algunos que participarán por primera vez en unas elecciones.“Estoy cansado con cómo están las cosas”, dijo Ruben Sanchez, un obrero de la construcción que vive en Simi Valley, un bastión conservador al norte de Los Ángeles. Sánchez, que asiste a una iglesia evangélica, dijo que había votado por primera vez en 2020 y que había favorecido a Trump, sobre todo debido a sus creencias religiosas. Comentó que planeaba votar por Elder en la revocatoria. “Este gobernador y este estado no son para la gente trabajadora, para la gente a la que le importa este país”.El personal de la campaña de Newsom prometió bombardear a los votantes latinos en los días previos a la elección. La semana pasada, la campaña del gobernador lanzó un aviso donde aparecía el senador por Vermont Bernie Sanders, excandidato presidencial que se volvió tan popular entre los latinos de California que recibió el apodo de Tío Bernie.Durante las primarias presidenciales demócratas, la campaña de Sanders centró gran parte de sus esfuerzos en los votantes latinos desde el principio: abrió oficinas de campaña en vecindarios predominantemente latinos y lanzó videos para su difusión en las redes sociales. Los esfuerzos fueron ampliamente reconocidos como una especie de manual para llegar de manera efectiva a los votantes latinos, y algunos demócratas han criticado la campaña de Newsom por no hacer más para replicar ese enfoque.Más allá de estos esfuerzos, Sanders atrajo a muchos votantes latinos en gran parte por su ideología, que pedía Medicare para todos, proponía perdonar los préstamos estudiantiles y presentaba legislación para combatir el cambio climático.“Los latinos todavía tienen algunas frustraciones básicas que Bernie abordaba y no se han resuelto”, dijo Rafael Navar, quien fue el director para California de la campaña de Sanders. “Hemos tenido altas tasas de mortalidad, alto desempleo y una enorme desigualdad”.A pesar del escepticismo que despierta Newsom, muchos votantes hispanos dicen que temen lo que podría suceder si un republicano asumiera el cargo. Sin embargo, aunque les desagrada la política republicana, algunos votantes liberales no se identifican como demócratas entusiastas. La lealtad al partido, dijeron, no es tan importante para ellos como sí lo es apoyar a un candidato que atenderá sus preocupaciones de manera más directa.Ernesto Ruvalcaba, de 27 años y experto en cartografía que vive en Los Ángeles, dijo que aunque había votado en contra de la revocatoria porque Newsom “hacía el trabajo”, seguía insatisfecho.“Las cosas que hizo las pudo hacer mejor”, dijo Ruvalcaba. “Solo que los partidos son muy viejos, los dos. Necesitan una ruptura”.Jennifer Medina es reportera de política estadounidense que cubrió la campaña presidencial de Estados Unidos de 2020. Originaria del sur de California, anteriormente pasó varios años reporteando sobre la región para la sección National. @jennymedinaJill Cowan es la corresponsal de California Today, que sigue la pista de las cosas más importantes que ocurren en su estado natal todos los días. @jillcowan More

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      How Educational Differences Are Widening America’s Political Rift

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      College graduates are now a firmly Democratic bloc, and they are shaping the party’s future. Those without degrees, by contrast, have flocked to Republicans.The front lines of America’s cultural clashes have shifted in recent years. A vigorous wave of progressive activism has helped push the country’s culture to the left, inspiring a conservative backlash against everything from “critical race theory” to the purported cancellation of Dr. Seuss.These skirmishes may be different in substance from those that proceeded them, but in the broadest sense they are only the latest manifestation of a half-century trend: the realignment of American politics along cultural and educational lines, and away from the class and income divisions that defined the two parties for much of the 20th century.As they’ve grown in numbers, college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic Party to the left. Partly as a result, large portions of the party’s traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans.Over the longer run, some Republicans even fantasize that the rise of educational polarization might begin to erode the Democratic advantage among voters of color without a college degree. Perhaps a similar phenomenon may help explain how Donald J. Trump, who mobilized racial animus for political gain, nonetheless fared better among voters of color than previous Republicans did, and fared worse among white voters.President Biden won about 60 percent of college-educated voters in 2020, including an outright majority of white college graduates, helping him run up the score in affluent suburbs and putting him over the top in pivotal states.This was a significant voting bloc: Overall, 41 percent of people who cast ballots last year were four-year college graduates, according to census estimates. By contrast, just 5 percent of voters in 1952 were college graduates, according to that year’s American National Elections Study.Yet even as college graduates have surged in numbers and grown increasingly liberal, Democrats are no stronger than they were 10, 30 or even 50 years ago. Instead, rising Democratic strength among college graduates and voters of color has been counteracted by a nearly equal and opposite reaction among white voters without a degree.When the Harvard-educated John F. Kennedy narrowly won the presidency in 1960, he won white voters without a degree but lost white college graduates by a two-to-one margin. The numbers were almost exactly reversed for Mr. Biden, who lost white voters without a degree by a two-to-one margin while winning white college graduates.About 27 percent of Mr. Biden’s supporters in 2020 were white voters without a college degree, according to Pew Research, down from the nearly 60 percent of Bill Clinton’s supporters who were whites without a degree just 28 years earlier. The changing demographic makeup of the Democrats has become a self-fulfilling dynamic, in which the growing power of liberal college graduates helps alienate working-class voters, leaving college graduates as an even larger share of the party.The Democratic advantage among college graduates may be a new phenomenon, but the relative liberalism of college graduates is not. College graduates have been far likelier than voters without a college degree to self-identify as liberal for decades, even when they were likelier to vote Republican.College graduates attribute racial inequality, crime and poverty to complex structural and systemic problems, while voters without a degree tend to focus on individualist and parochial explanations. It is easier for college graduates, with their higher levels of affluence, to vote on their values, not simply on economic self-interest. They are likelier to have high levels of social trust and to be open to new experiences. They are less likely to believe in God.The rise of cultural liberalism is not simply a product of rising college attendance. In fact, there is only equivocal evidence that college attendance makes people vastly more liberal. Far from the indoctrination that conservatives fear, liberal college professors appear to preach to an already liberal choir.But it is hard to imagine the last half-century of liberal cultural change without the role played by universities and academia, which helped inspire everything from the student movements and New Left of the 1960s to the ideas behind today’s fights over “critical race theory.” The concentration of so many left-leaning students and professors on campus helped foster a new liberal culture with more progressive ideas and norms than would have otherwise existed.“If you live in a community which is more liberal, there’s a self-reinforcing ratcheting effect,” said Pippa Norris, a professor and political scientist at the Harvard Kennedy School who believes that the rise of higher education contributed to the rise of social liberalism throughout the postindustrial world.As college graduates increased their share of the electorate, they gradually began to force the Democrats to accommodate their interests and values. They punched above their electoral weight, since they make up a disproportionate number of the journalists, politicians, activists and poll respondents who most directly influence the political process.At the same time, the party’s old industrial working-class base was in decline, as were the unions and machine bosses who once had the power to connect the party’s politicians to its rank and file. The party had little choice but to broaden its appeal, and it adopted the views of college-educated voters on nearly every issue, slowly if fitfully alienating its old working-class base.Republicans opened their doors to traditionally Democratic conservative-leaning voters who were aggrieved by the actions and perceived excesses of the new, college-educated left. This G.O.P. push began, and continues in some ways today, with the so-called Southern strategy — leveraging racial divisions and “states’ rights” to appeal to white voters.The reasons for white working-class alienation with the Democrats have shifted from decade to decade. At times, nearly every major issue area — race, religion, war, environmentalism, guns, trade, immigration, sexuality, crime, social welfare programs — has been a source of Democratic woes.What the Democratic Party’s positions on these very different issues have had in common is that they reflected the views of college-educated liberals, even when in conflict with the apparent interests of working-class voters — and that they alienated some number of white voters without a degree. Environmentalists demanded regulations on the coal industry; coal miners bolted from the Democrats. Suburban voters supported an assault gun ban; gun owners shifted to the Republicans. Business interests supported free trade agreements; old manufacturing towns broke for Mr. Trump.A similar process may be beginning to unfold among Hispanic voters. The 2020 election was probably the first presidential contest in which the Democratic candidate fared better among voters of color who graduated from college than among those without a degree. Mr. Trump made large gains among voters of color without degrees, especially Latino ones. The causes of his surge are still being debated, but one leading theory is that he was aided by a backlash against the ideas and language of the college-educated left, including activist calls to “defund the police.”For some Republicans, Mr. Trump’s gains have raised the possibility that it may be easier to appeal to working-class voters of color.“It doesn’t seem quite as big of a bridge to cross as saying, ‘Let’s go back and win white suburbanites,’” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster who is writing a book on how the party might build a multiracial coalition.True or not, it’s a view that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it leads Republicans to adopt strategies aimed at making it a reality.There is no guarantee that the rising liberalism of the Democratic primary electorate or college graduates will continue. The wave of activism in the 1960s gave way to a relatively conservative generation of college graduates in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Perhaps something similar will happen today.What can be guaranteed is that the college-educated share of the population — and the electorate — will continue to increase for the foreseeable future.In 2016, Massachusetts became the first state where four-year college graduates represented the majority of voters in a presidential contest. In 2020, the state was joined by New York, Colorado and Maryland. Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut and others are not far behind. Nationwide, four-year college graduates might represent a majority of midterm voters at some point over the next decade. More

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      Latinos Shape California. Why Are So Many Sitting Out the Recall?

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      LOS ANGELES — The political power of Latinos has never been stronger in California.They are the largest ethnic group in the state and make up roughly 30 percent of registered voters. They have propelled Democratic victories in California for decades, helping the party win supermajorities in both houses of the State Legislature, where Latino senators and Assembly members hold powerful positions and pass some of the most immigrant-friendly legislation in the country.But as Gov. Gavin Newsom tries to prevail in a recall election in a matter of days, the very Latino voters he is relying on appear to be disengaged and ambivalent about the prospect of his being ousted from office.In 2018, exit polls showed Mr. Newsom with support from roughly two-thirds of all Latinos. Now, polling suggests Latinos are almost evenly split on the recall. And so far, just 15 percent of all registered Latino voters have mailed in their ballots, compared with 29 percent of white voters, according to Political Data Inc., a Sacramento-based research group.For many Latino voters, the mixed feelings stem from a continued struggle with the pandemic, as they face higher infection and death rates, as well as unemployment. For others, there is a deep disconnect with the Democratic Party and Mr. Newsom himself, a multimillionaire Napa Valley winery owner whom they view as aloof and distant.Interviews with Latino voters, strategists and advocates throughout the state reveal a frustration among Hispanics that Mr. Newsom has never tapped into. The pandemic has further entrenched inequality statewide and deepened the anger over the pervasive class divide Mr. Newsom’s wealth only highlights.Karla Ramirez, 43, a Democrat who lives in Downey, a heavily Latino suburb southeast of Los Angeles, said she believed that Mr. Newsom had generally handled the pandemic well. But Ms. Ramirez, who owns a commercial cleaning business with her husband, said she planned to sit out the race and did not have the wherewithal to pay attention to state politics with the virus still raging. Her 9-year-old daughter and her husband both tested positive for Covid-19 and have been recovering from mild symptoms.All registered voters received ballots by mail and have the option of either mailing them in, dropping them off at ballot boxes or voting in person from now until Election Day on Sept. 14. Voting by mail is no longer an option for Ms. Ramirez.“I got my ballot, and I tossed it in the trash. I don’t feel I’d be fair,” Ms. Ramirez said. “I’m busy making sure my kids get back to school and get vaccinated.”Karla Ramirez, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, said she did not plan to vote in the recall election. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesWith just one week to go before ballot boxes close, public polling suggests that Mr. Newsom will remain in office. But many see his struggle with Hispanic voters as a troubling warning sign for Democrats both in the state and nationally, a glimpse of the consequences for failing to deeply engage with a vital political force whose allegiance is up for grabs. Democrats fretted after the 2020 presidential election, when many Hispanic voters in Florida, Texas and other parts of the country swung toward President Donald J. Trump. But the problem is potentially even more consequential in a state where Latinos make up nearly a third of the electorate.“The real issue is that Governor Newsom has not engendered enthusiasm among Latino voters,” said Thomas A. Saenz, the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who has been involved in California politics for decades. “That is part of why he is threatened. They have not been motivated by his policies and his practices, and he has utterly failed to address the Latino community as a Latino community and acknowledge its importance in the state.”.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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.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;}Mr. Newsom’s campaign aides deny that they have failed to engage or listen to Latino voters. Aides point to his expansion of Medi-Cal to residents above the age of 50, including undocumented immigrants, and a lengthy moratorium on evictions during the pandemic as two key policies they say have helped thousands of Latinos in California. His campaign has repeatedly boasted of appointing Alex Padilla to the U.S. Senate, making him the first Latino from the state to serve in that body.Nathan Click, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom’s campaign, said the governor’s strategy in reaching out to Latino voters had been essentially unchanged. All along, Mr. Click said, the campaign viewed Latinos — and young Latinos in particular — as difficult but essential to reach.“We’ve known since Day 1 that voters who vote in presidential years but don’t vote in midterm elections and really don’t vote in special elections are the No. 1 target for all of our efforts,” he said.A generation ago, Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that would have barred undocumented immigrants from receiving most public services, gained widespread support among California Republicans, including Gov. Pete Wilson. The anti-immigrant measure largely drove Latino voters away from the Republican Party and into the embrace of Democrats, who have publicly credited the ballot measure as central to their rise to power.But many Latino voters are too young to remember the battle over Proposition 187 in the early 1990s and do not feel any particular loyalty to Democrats. For all the talk of Latino political potential in California, no governor in recent memory has effectively rallied Latinos to become staunch supporters.Mr. Newsom spoke to former farmworkers at a clinic in Fresno last month. Eric Paul Zamora/The Fresno Bee, via Associated Press“We haven’t adequately made the case for a long enough period of time that things are different and better, especially for young Latinos,” said Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents a heavily Latino and working-class area of San Diego in the State Assembly. “It’s as if doing no harm to Latinos has become enough for a lot of Democratic politicians.”The recall is also coming as many are still reeling from the impact of the pandemic. Latinos in California were far more likely to contract and die from the virus than were white residents. The unemployment rate among Latinos remains above 10 percent, and many Latino small-business owners have lost significant income in the last year and a half.Frank Oropeza, 27, a barber in Montebello, just east of Los Angeles, said he had voted for President Biden last year and considered himself a Democrat. But he said he had given little thought to how to vote in the recall. He said he had been torn, reading posts on social media from fellow barbers and hair stylists who were in favor of recalling Mr. Newsom, who twice shut down their businesses, and from others who viewed things differently.“I’m so easily swayed,” he said with a laugh. “It’s like, ‘Close your eyes and throw a dart.’”Mr. Oropeza said that he understood the need for some pandemic restrictions. But he was frustrated that barbers and hair stylists had been required to stop working for a second time, even after they had implemented precautions such as universal masking.The criticism is one Mr. Newsom’s opponents have jumped on, using the argument to try to persuade more Latinos to vote in favor of the recall.“Many of those small businesses that closed forever are owned by Black and brown people,” Larry Elder, the conservative talk radio host who has become the Republican front-runner in a crowded field of recall candidates, told reporters last week.At the virtual news conference, Mr. Elder appeared alongside Gloria Romero, a Democrat and former state lawmaker who is now a vocal advocate for charter schools. She was featured prominently in a recent Spanish advertisement the Elder campaign sent to Latino voters via text.“This is about sending a message about how the Democratic Party has largely abandoned Latinos,” Ms. Romero said. “We’ve been taken for granted.”Latino voters are a force in every part of the state and represent a wide spectrum of political views. While college-educated liberals in urban centers are part of the Democratic core base, working-class moderates in the suburbs of the Inland Empire and Silicon Valley are essential to winning statewide. And in Orange County, the Central Valley and the far northern reaches of the state, religious voters and libertarians have helped elect Republicans in key congressional districts.And there are signs that Republicans are having some success courting support from Hispanic voters, including first-time voters.“I am tired of the way things are,” said Ruben Sanchez, 43, a construction worker who lives in Simi Valley, a conservative stronghold north of Los Angeles. Mr. Sanchez, who attends an Evangelical church, said that he had cast his first ballot in 2020 and voted for Mr. Trump largely because of his religious beliefs and that he planned to vote for Mr. Elder in the recall. “This governor and this state are not for working people, for people who care about this country.”Officials with Mr. Newsom’s campaign have promised a blitz targeting Latino voters in the final days before the election. Last week, the Newsom campaign released an advertisement featuring Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the former presidential candidate who became so popular among many young Latinos in California that some refer to him as Tío Bernie, meaning Uncle Bernie.During the Democratic presidential primary, the Sanders campaign focused much of its outreach on Latino voters from the beginning, opening campaign offices in heavily Latino neighborhoods and releasing videos meant to be passed around on social media. The efforts were widely credited as a kind of playbook for effectively reaching Latino voters, and some Democrats have criticized the Newsom campaign for not doing more to replicate them.Beyond outreach, Mr. Sanders appealed to many young Latino voters in large part because of his ideology, calling for Medicare for all, forgiving of student loans and sweeping bills to combat climate change.“Latinos still have some core frustrations that Bernie was speaking to that have not been resolved,” said Rafael Navar, who was the California state director for the Sanders campaign. “We’ve had high death rates, high unemployment and massive inequality.”Despite the skepticism over Mr. Newsom, many Hispanic voters say they are fearful of what would happen if a Republican were to take office. Yet even as they are repelled by the Republican brand of politics, some liberal voters do not call themselves enthusiastic Democrats. Party loyalty, they said, is not as important to them as supporting a candidate who will address their concerns more directly.Ernesto Ruvalcaba, 27, a mapping specialist who lives in Los Angeles, said that while he had cast his ballot against the recall because Mr. Newsom was “getting the job done,” he remained dissatisfied.“Things he did, he could’ve done better,” Mr. Ruvalcaba said. “The parties are just really old — both of them. They just need to break up.” More

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      These Two Rumors Are Going Viral Ahead of California’s Recall Election

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      As California’s Sept. 14 election over whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom draws closer, unfounded rumors about the event are growing.Here are two that are circulating widely online, how they spread and why, state and local officials said, they are wrong.Rumor No. 1: Holes in the ballot envelopes were being used to screen out votes that say “yes” to a recall.On Aug. 19, a woman posted a video on Instagram of herself placing her California special election ballot in an envelope.“You have to pay attention to these two holes that are in front of the envelope,” she said, bringing the holes close to the camera so viewers could see them. “You can see if someone has voted ‘yes’ to recall Newsom. This is very sketchy and irresponsible in my opinion, but this is asking for fraud.”The idea that the ballot envelope’s holes were being used to weed out the votes of those who wanted Gov. Newsom, a Democrat, to be recalled rapidly spread online, according to a review by The New York Times..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.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;}The Instagram video collected nearly half a million views. On the messaging app Telegram, posts that said California was rigging the special election amassed nearly 200,000 views. And an article about the ballot holes on the far-right site The Gateway Pundit reached up to 626,000 people on Facebook, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool.State and local officials said the ballot holes were not new and were not being used nefariously. The holes were placed in the envelope, on either end of a signature line, to help low-vision voters know where to sign it, said Jenna Dresner, a spokeswoman for the California Secretary of State’s Office of Election Cybersecurity.The ballot envelope’s design has been used for several election cycles, and civic design consultants recommended the holes for accessibility, added Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County registrar. He said voters could choose to put the ballot in the envelope in such a way that didn’t reveal any ballot marking at all through a hole.Instagram has since appended a fact-check label to the original video to note that it could mislead people. The fact check has reached up to 20,700 people, according to CrowdTangle data.Rumor No. 2: A felon stole ballots to help Governor Newsom win the recall election.On Aug. 17, the police in Torrance, Calif., published a post on Facebook that said officers had responded to a call about a man who was passed out in his car in a 7-Eleven parking lot. The man had items such as a loaded firearm, drugs and thousands of pieces of mail, including more than 300 unopened mail-in ballots for the special election, the police said.Far-right sites such as Red Voice Media and Conservative Firing Line claimed the incident was an example of Democrats’ trying to steal an election through mail-in ballots. Their articles were then shared on Facebook, where they collectively reached up to 1.57 million people, according to CrowdTangle data.Mark Ponegalek, a public information officer for the Torrance Police Department, said the investigation into the incident was continuing. The U.S. postal inspector was also involved, he said, and no conclusions had been reached.As a result, he said, online articles and posts concluding that the man was attempting voter fraud were “baseless.”“I have no indication to tell you one way or the other right now” whether the man intended to commit election fraud with the ballots he collected, Mr. Ponegalek said. He added that the man may have intended to commit identity fraud. More

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      Abortion Arrives at the Center of the American Political Maelstrom

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      The Supreme Court’s decision not to block a Texas law banning most abortions left Republicans eager to replicate it. Democrats reeled, but sensed a winning issue in coming elections.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s decision not to block a Texas law sharply curtailing abortions abruptly vaulted the issue to the forefront of American politics on Thursday, reshaping the dynamics of elections in California this month, in Virginia in November and in midterms next year that will determine control of Congress and statehouses.Republicans hailed the court’s 5-to-4 decision, explained in a one-paragraph middle-of-the-night ruling, as a tremendous victory, allowing a nearly complete ban on abortions to stand in the nation’s second-largest state.For Democrats, it was a nightmare come true: A conservative Supreme Court, led by three appointees of former President Donald J. Trump, had allowed a highly gerrymandered, Republican-controlled state legislature to circumvent Roe v. Wade, the half-century-old decision that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right.Suddenly, supporters of abortion rights found themselves grappling not only with the political and policy failures that had led to this point, but also with the prospect that other Republican-controlled legislatures could quickly enact copycat legislation. On Thursday, G.O.P. lawmakers in Arkansas, Florida and South Dakota promised to do so in their next legislative sessions.Yet Democrats also embraced the opportunity to force an issue they believe is a political winner for them to the center of the national debate. After years of playing defense, Democrats say the Texas law will test whether the reality of a practical ban on abortions can motivate voters to support them.Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, a Democrat up for re-election in 2022, said people in her state had fought to protect women’s reproductive freedom and would vote accordingly. “If a Republican is going to go to Washington to roll those freedoms back, I will make it an issue,” she said in an interview. “I don’t think you should underestimate the impact that this issue has to Nevadans.”Republicans held up the Texas law as an example for the country to follow. “This law will save the lives of thousands of unborn babies in Texas and become a national model,” said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas. “I pray that every other state will follow our lead in defense of life.”Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who is considered a potential Republican candidate for president in 2024, said she had directed her office to “make sure we have the strongest pro-life laws on the books.”Senate Democrats’ campaign arm has signaled that it will use abortion rights as a cudgel against Republicans running in key states like Nevada, where Senator Catherine Cortez Masto faces re-election in 2022.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesThe court’s decision, which did not address the substance of the Texas law, creates new urgency for President Biden and congressional Democrats to do more than issue public statements vowing to defend women’s reproductive rights.“The temperature just got a lot hotter on this issue, and I certainly now expect Congress to join in these fights,” said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, the chairwoman of the Democratic Governors Association. “Our voters expect us all to do more.”Yet Senate Democrats do not have the votes to eliminate the filibuster, which would be necessary to change federal abortion law in the evenly divided chamber.In Washington on Thursday, Democratic leaders dutifully scrambled to show their determination to push back against the possibility that the Texas law could be replicated elsewhere — or to respond if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights when it rules on a Mississippi law that seeks to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, two months earlier than Roe and subsequent decisions allow.Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to bring a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would effectively codify abortion rights into federal law.And Mr. Biden pledged “a whole-of-government effort” in response to the Texas law, directing the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department to identify possible federal measures to help ensure that women in the state have access to safe and legal abortions.“The highest court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities,” Mr. Biden said. “The impact of last night’s decision will be immediate and requires an immediate response.”Vice President Kamala Harris added, “We will not stand by and allow our nation to go back to the days of back-alley abortions.”The first election that could test Democrats’ capacity to energize voters over abortion rights comes on Sept. 14 in California, where voters will determine the fate of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall effort. Mr. Newsom warned on Twitter that the Texas abortion ban “could be the future of CA” if the recall were successful.In Virginia, Democratic candidates for the state’s three statewide offices and House of Delegates pounced on the issue on Thursday. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is running to recapture the office in November, said the fight for abortion rights would help motivate Democratic voters who might be complacent after the party captured full control of state government in 2019 and helped Mr. Biden win the state last year.“We are a Democratic state. There are more Democrats,” Mr. McAuliffe said. “But this is an off-off-year, and getting Democrats motivated to come out, that’s always the big challenge.”Eyeing 2022, the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm has signaled it will use abortion rights as a cudgel against Republicans running in states like Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada and North Carolina. Democrats planning campaigns for governor next year are preparing to brand themselves as the last line of defense on abortion rights, particularly in states with Republican-controlled legislatures.“People are now waking up to the fact that the battle will now be in the states, and they recognize that the only thing, literally the only thing standing in the way of Pennsylvania passing the same ban that Texas just passed, is the veto pen of our Democratic governor,” said Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, a Democrat who has said he expects to enter the race to succeed Gov. Tom Wolf. “I’ve given up on the politicians in Washington. I don’t think we can count on them anymore.”Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who is running for his old post this year, believes abortion access will be a motivating factor for voters.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesThough Republicans have long made overturning Roe a central political goal — as a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump predicted that his eventual Supreme Court appointees would do so — there was still a palpable sense of shock among Democrats. Despite the court’s 6-to-3 conservative majority, many Democrats seemed mentally unprepared for Wednesday’s ruling.“You can’t plan for a blatantly false or unconstitutional court ruling like this,” said Representative Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who is running for his state’s open Senate seat next year.Understand the Texas Abortion LawCard 1 of 4The most restrictive in the country. More

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      The California Recall Isn't Just Gavin Newsom Vs. Larry Elder

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      The prospect of Gov. Larry Elder has jolted California’s Democrats out of their apathy. Polling on the recall has swung from a dead heat in early August to an 8.4 margin for Gavin Newsom in FiveThirtyEight’s tracker. But I want to make an affirmative argument for continuing the Newsom experiment: Something exciting is taking shape in California. The torrent of policy that Newsom and the Democratic Legislature are passing amounts to nothing less than a Green New Deal for the Golden State.To understand Newsom, both his successes and his failures, you need to see the paradox that defines his career. The knock on him is that he’s all style, no substance — a guy who got where he is by looking like a politician rather than acting like a leader. The truth is just the opposite. Newsom’s style is his problem; his substance is his redemption.[Get more from Ezra Klein by listening to his Opinion podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show.”]When Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco, his nickname was “Mayor McHottie,” and he came complete with a tabloid-ready personal life and funding from the unimaginably wealthy Getty family. His worst mistakes as governor — like attending a birthday dinner for a lobbyist friend at the luxe French Laundry, unmasked, during the depths of the pandemic — deepen those suspicions. The “Beauty,” one of his recall opponents, who fancies himself “the Beast,” called him in a $5 million ad blitz.The attacks wound Newsom because what appear to be his strengths are actually his weaknesses. Newsom is handsome in a way that comes off as just a little too coifed, like the actor you’d cast to play a politician in a movie. His personal life and social misjudgments have dogged him for decades. He doesn’t have a knack for memorable sound bites or quick connection. (A sample line from our interview: “It was not without consideration that last year we passed a number of bills to site homeless shelters and supportive housing and Homekey and Roomkey projects with CEQA waivers and as-of-right zoning.”) He’s an eager nerd who presents as a slick jock, and he’s never found a way out of that dissonance.He’s also been governing amid the worst pandemic in modern history. California has outperformed most states in health outcomes and, particularly, in economic outcomes. “We dominate all Western democracies in the last five years in G.D.P.,” Newsom said. “The G.O.P. loves G.D.P.! Twenty-one percent G.D.P. growth in the last five years. Texas was 12 percent. And our taxes are lower for the middle class in California than they are in Texas.” Basically every economic indicator you can look at in California is booming, from household income growth to the $80 billion-plus budget surplus. But it’s still been a grueling 18 months of masks, lockdowns, deaths and discord. There’s been little attention to policymaking in Sacramento.As a result, people don’t realize how much Newsom and the Democratic State Legislature have done. But in the two and a half years since Newsom became governor, they’ve more than doubled the size of California’s earned-income tax credit and Young Child Tax Credit, and added a stimulus just for Californians (though some of the neediest were left out). They expanded paid family leave from six to eight weeks and unpaid leave to 12 weeks. They added 200,000 child care slots and $250 million to retrofit child care centers. They passed legislation giving all public school students two free meals each day, funding summer school and after-school programs for two million children and creating a full year of transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds by 2025.Newsom is “three years ahead of Joe Biden in terms of pro-family policy,” Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, told me. “Any parents or grandparents who back the recall are voting against their own financial interest, I’d say.”Housing has been harder, in part because you need to do more than just spend money. Ben Metcalf, who led California’s Department of Housing and Community Development for three years under Gov. Jerry Brown and one year under Newsom, recalls that “when Newsom first arrived, I was excited by his vision, but then dismayed by his inability to effectively deliver and get the Legislature to do what he wanted. Brown knew how to wield power. He knew the points of inflection. He had a team of people he could rely on.”You hear unflattering comparisons with Brown often when you ask around about Newsom. Brown was a more disciplined and experienced leader. He chose his priorities carefully, and he did what he promised. The surplus Newsom is spending is a gift bequeathed by Brown, who persuaded California’s voters to sharply raise taxes on the wealthiest residents. But Brown did little to address the state’s housing affordability crisis and neither did the Legislature.Nancy Skinner, a state senator who’s been a leader on housing, told me that “our shortage has been decades in the making.” The mantra, she said, was to just leave it to the cities. “For years, the Legislature just urged city governments to be more responsive. We tried to create some incentives. And only in the last five years did we realize this is a statewide crisis and we can’t just leave it to local governments to get it fixed. It took the Legislature a long time to get to the place of realizing the urging and carrots didn’t do it. We have to do the mandates.”Newsom, to his credit, prioritized housing from the beginning. Early in his term, in 2019, he sued the city of Huntington Beach for allegedly falling short on its housing commitments and threatened to sue dozens more. He made housing the primary focus of his 2020 State of the State speech. But the initial consensus was that he overpromised and underdelivered. There were widespread frustrations that he wasn’t tough enough with the Legislature and his interventions were often ineffective. He remains far behind his goal of building 3.5 million new housing units by 2025.“I said the 3.5 million houses was a stretch goal,” he protested to me. “I said in trying to achieve it, we’d find what we were capable of!”To be fair, Newsom couldn’t have predicted that the pandemic, which descended on California just weeks after his big housing speech, was coming. Still, in February, I was furious watching California’s political class, including Newsom, fail and fail again to pass major housing legislation. But when the facts change, so must your mind. The Legislature just passed, and Newsom will sign, a series of housing bills that achieve something I never expected to see in California: the end of single-family zoning. S.B.9 allows homeowners to divide their properties into two lots and to build two homes on each of those lots. It won’t solve the housing crisis, but it’s a start.Newsom and other Democrats are also finally appreciating the depth of the anger even liberals feel about homelessness. “People can’t take the tents and open-air drug use,” Newsom said to me. “They can’t. Nor can I. They want the streets cleaned up. They want more housing. They don’t care about task forces or bills. I think that sense of urgency coming out of Covid sharpens our edges. The five- to 10-year plans, no one is interested in that anymore. What’s the five- to 10-month plan?”In Newsom’s case, it’s using the state’s budget surpluses to drive a $12 billion investment over two years in permanent residences and mental health care for the homeless. How well it works remains to be seen, but no other state is investing in housing at anything like this scale or speed.What’s most encouraging to me is a broader change you can sense in the politics of this issue. At every level of power in California, the state’s political actors have realized they need to find ways to build. Inaction is no longer a viable option. Even the politicians who oppose development have to pretend to favor it. There’s no illusion that the tent cities can continue, nor that they can be cleared without offering housing to their residents. Politics isn’t just about policy. It’s also about will, coalitions and a sense of consequences. That’s what feels different in California right now. And Newsom deserves some credit for that.“The reason we began suing cities was to provide air cover,” Newsom told me. “I can’t tell you how many mayors privately thanked me even as they publicly criticized me for those lawsuits. We’re trying to drive a different expectation: We will cover you. You want to scapegoat someone, scapegoat the state. We haven’t had that policy in the past. Localism has been determinative. And that’s part of what’s changing.”This is why I disagree with those, like the economist Tyler Cowen, who argue that a Republican victory in the recall would be a healthy wake-up call for California Democrats, with little downside because Elder would be checked by the Legislature. The political system has already woken up. But the politics of housing are miserable, and there’s much more yet to do. To wreck the governing coalition that is finally making progress would be madness.“If Gavin were recalled, that’d be disastrous for housing policy in this state,” Brian Hanlon, the president of California YIMBY, a pro-housing group, told me. “The Legislature, I believe, could override Larry Elder’s vetoes on key bills. But all of these hard-fought housing bills that we are not passing with a supermajority cannot survive an Elder veto. All that would die.”“I also think that if the recall succeeds, in part due to housing, the overall situation in Sacramento would just be chaotic,” Hanlon added later. “It’ll be a lost year as Democrats and the Legislature work to retake the governor’s office in 2022.”Metcalf, the former head of the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, has moved from dismayed to impressed by Newsom’s record on housing. “We’re beginning to see Newsom find the levers to pull,” he said. “We’re seeing him figure out how to get the Legislature to do what he wants. We’re just getting there with Newsom, which would make it very painful to lose him now.”Every California politician brags that if California were a country, it would be the world’s fifth-largest economy. On climate, though, that’s a point of leverage, a way California can try to use its economic might to push the world to decarbonize faster. “There is no peer on California’s climate leadership,” Newsom told me. “We move markets. We move policy globally, not just nationally.”The first part of Newsom’s climate agenda is a series of executive orders setting aggressive decarbonization targets and standards. They include orders mandating that all new passenger cars sold in the state are zero-emission vehicles by 2035, a pledge to conserve 30 percent of the state’s land and waters by 2030, and directives to the California Air Resources Board to map out a pathway to carbon neutrality by 2035 and an end to oil extraction by 2045.California has, in the past, used access to its markets to transform the products that are sold globally — our tight fuel economy standards became the de facto national standard, and our subsidies for electric vehicles laid a foundation for that market to boom. Newsom wants to do that again, but for far more than just cars.I am, to be honest, skeptical of far-reaching targets and ever more aggressive decarbonization goals. It’s always easier to promise sweeping change in the future. But you can’t build a different future without planning for it now. What matters is whether these orders really do shape public and private decisions in California over the next decade. If Newsom or a like-minded successor remains governor, they have force. But they are instantly vulnerable if he loses office to Elder or anyone else.The second part of Newsom’s climate agenda is, well, money. The California Comeback Plan that Newsom signed this year put nearly $8 billion toward electric vehicles and climate resilience. Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who tracks state climate policies, said that “spending in the billions on climate is basically unheard of at the state level. No other state is doing anything remotely close to this scale.”I could keep going, and Newsom certainly did. He’s got a whole health care agenda meant to integrate physical and mental care called CalAIM that he gets extremely animated talking about (“If you could see me, I’m smiling, I’m so excited by this!”). He also has a plan to let the state bargain for prescription drugs on behalf of not just its public insurance programs but also any private insurers that want to join. He’s trying to convert the Valley State Prison into a rehabilitation center modeled on the Norwegian prisons that progressives admire. He’d love to tell you about his immigration ideas.It’s really a blizzard of plans. Newsom sees what he’s doing as “raising the bar of expectations.” He told me a quote, often attributed to Michelangelo, that he repeats to his staff: “The biggest risk is not that we aim too high and miss it. It’s that we aim too low and reach it.” He admitted they roll their eyes at this. But it is, for him, a strategy. “We’ve stretched the mind and I don’t think it goes back to its original form.”Perhaps. I’ve spoken to Newsom allies who worry that he’s attempting too much and that it could end with him achieving too little. Every one of these ideas will face serious implementation challenges. Transitional kindergarten, for instance, will require the state to produce 12,000 credentialed pre-K teachers and 20,000 more teacher’s aides in the next four years, according to Fuller. It’s going to require a decade of patient political work on housing to reverse California’s affordability crisis. Newsom’s health care agenda alone would preoccupy a traditional term, but his administration hasn’t done much to communicate its vision. When I asked a leading doctor at the University of California at San Francisco about it, he had no idea what it was.So there are challenges still to come — many of them. But I’d like to see Newsom and the Democratic Legislature get the chance to face them. If they succeed, they will make California the progressive beacon it’s long claimed to be.Additional reporting by Roge Karma.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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      Want to Know Who Might Run for Governor? Check the N.Y. State Fair.

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      Amid cows and crowds, the State Fair became a destination for potential challengers to Gov. Kathy Hochul, including Letitia James, the state attorney general.As Gov. Kathy Hochul sampled a sandwich at the New York State Fair on Sunday, touring the Syracuse-area spectacle like other governors before her, she overtly embraced her role as the state’s new leader — and implicitly set down a marker for 2022, when she intends to seek election to a full term as governor.Two days later, the New York City public advocate, Jumaane D. Williams, was in town, observing the cows and swinging by a butterfly garden. On Wednesday, it was Attorney General Letitia James’s turn.Ms. James greeted attendees, admired a butter sculpture and, like Mr. Williams, stoked fresh speculation about future political ambitions — and whether those ambitions included a run for governor.All three New York Democratic officials have visited the fair before. But the pilgrimages this week — not unlike a presidential hopeful’s early visits to Iowa — took on fresh resonance, offering a very public reminder of a nascent political contest that has been brewing behind the scenes.After more than a decade of governors’ races that were dominated and defined by the now-disgraced former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s political class is quietly beginning to plan for a different — and possibly, fiercely contested — primary campaign next year.While Ms. Hochul, New York’s first female governor, has been in office for just over a week, the primary machinery is already whirring to life, with hiring, polling and political gamesmanship picking up speed. One poll had extensive questions about Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has not ruled out running for governor.The most concrete activity among Democrats surrounds Ms. Hochul. She has already brought on strategists with national and New York experience; Tucker Green, a major Democratic fund-raiser, has also recently joined her campaign team as Ms. Hochul works to cement fund-raising strength, often an advantage for a sitting governor. The governor is making other decisions about her campaign infrastructure and will have more personnel announcements after Labor Day, an adviser to Ms. Hochul said.Many New York Democrats expect Ms. Hochul to be a powerful contender, boosted by the advantages of incumbency, the statewide network she has already assembled and an outpouring of good will for a new governor who has moved urgently to restore some of the norms and relationships that crumbled under the previous chief executive.But the field will also be shaped by Ms. Hochul’s track record as she navigates a series of staggering challenges facing the state.“We don’t know who is going to be in it,” said Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a New York Democrat. “Who is going to be in it will be defined by Kathy Hochul’s leadership.”On Wednesday, Ms. Hochul announced that Kathryn Garcia — a former mayoral candidate who had been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor herself — had been appointed director of state operations.Perhaps the biggest uncertainty in the race is whether Ms. James will run. Some of her advisers, including some at the Hamilton Campaign Network, which was heavily involved in Ms. James’s previous runs, are beginning to have conversations about who could join a potential James bid for governor, according to people familiar with the discussions — part of an effort among Ms. James’s allies to keep her options open.“We do not comment about our clients,” the company said in a statement.“Tish would be an excellent governor,” said John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union, who lauded her “courageousness” in spearheading the investigation that led to Mr. Cuomo’s resignation. “She has a demonstrated record of steadfast support for working people.”A critical report by Letitia James, the state attorney general, led to the resignation of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last month.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesPeople who have spoken with Ms. James in recent weeks have not gotten the impression that she has made a decision, but one of those people said Ms. James indicated she would like to make a call sometime this fall, ahead of the Democratic State Convention slated for early next year. Others have the broad sense that she would be inclined to see how Ms. Hochul’s early months as governor proceed.Asked about those discussions, a representative for Ms. James said that the attorney general is “fully focused on her work protecting and defending the rights of New Yorkers and plans to continue taking on the big fights that matter.”There has been a flurry of activity in other potential candidates’ camps, too.Recently, Anna Greenberg, Mayor de Blasio’s longtime pollster, conducted a survey testing the mayor’s appeal outside of New York City and the potency of particular messages about him.One Westchester resident, who took notes as he was polled on Tuesday, said that questions tested the appeal of several potential candidates for governor, including Ms. Hochul, Mr. Williams, Ms. James and Mr. de Blasio.Then, several specific messages about Mr. de Blasio — questions that were not raised about the other potential candidates — were tested.Among other things, the questioner discussed Mr. de Blasio’s record of battling Mr. Cuomo over his response to the pandemic, his efforts to provide legal services to New Yorkers facing evictions and his work on police reform and universal prekindergarten. Then the pollster asked if those facts made the respondent more or less inclined to support him.A spokesman for Mr. de Blasio declined to comment.On Long Island, Steven Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, has hired J.J. Balaban and Brandon L. Davis, veteran Democratic political strategists and ad makers, and brought on the national firm GPS Impact as he contemplates a run for governor.Representative Thomas Suozzi, a Long Island Democrat, is also thought to be seriously considering a run. But he intends to assess how Ms. Hochul performs and wants to accomplish his goals in negotiations in Congress over the federal deduction for state and local taxes, according to one Long Island Democrat with knowledge of Mr. Suozzi’s intentions, granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.In recent weeks, Mr. Williams has said publicly that he is exploring a bid for governor, and privately he has told at least one person that he has already decided to run — withholding his plans because he does not want to announce it so close to Ms. Hochul’s swearing-in.In a brief interview, Mr. Williams said he thinks it is important to give the sitting governor time “to get her bearings,” and for the state to “take a moment to recognize the historic nature of the first woman governor.”“There’s definitely time to have those conversations in the near future,” Mr. Williams said. “And I have said I am considering, but it is important that we allow that time period before we dive deep into those questions.”Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, is exploring a run for governor.Chery Dieu-Nalio for The New York TimesJay S. Jacobs, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, suggested that there could be risks for candidates announcing any intentions so soon after Ms. Hochul assumed the governorship.“Right now it would be premature and probably unseemly,” he said. “You have to have a reason, and I think that means you have to give the current governor a little bit of time. Then you can distinguish yourself from her, if you choose to run.” More

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      Kathy Hochul Wants to Make One Thing Clear: She Is Not Cuomo

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      In her first acts as New York’s new governor, Ms. Hochul has sought to distance herself from her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned under pressure.ALBANY, N.Y. — In her first days as governor of New York, Kathy C. Hochul has gone to great lengths to demonstrate that whatever kind of leadership style she might adopt, it will be far from that of her disgraced predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo.She immediately began providing a more complete coronavirus death toll in New York, releasing figures used by the C.D.C. that put the total at roughly 55,400, which is 12,000 more than the state figures that the Cuomo administration had regularly cited.She introduced a new ethics training requirement for all state employees, and pointedly said the state’s sexual harassment training would have to be done in person — a subtle jab at Mr. Cuomo following allegations that he never completed the state-mandated training.She replaced most of Mr. Cuomo’s inner circle with top staffers of her own. She made a point of meeting with elected officials who warred with Mr. Cuomo, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, even posting a picture on Twitter showing her laughing with the mayor over pastries.In her first week in office, Ms. Hochul has moved intently to disassociate herself from Mr. Cuomo, pursuing policies and a style of governing that cast her as the revitalizing antithesis of her predecessor.She has even gone so far as to avoid his name in her 11-minute public address on Tuesday, and, in the subsequent media blitz, has made mention of Mr. Cuomo by name only three times since taking office.Ms. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, seems focused on carving out her own space as she fills out the remainder of Mr. Cuomo’s term, which expires at the end of 2022. But Ms. Hochul may also be driven by political reasons: Future opponents, including Republicans and Democratic primary challengers, are likely to portray her as an entrenched member of the Cuomo machinery and argue that voters deserve a clean break from him.But Ms. Hochul clearly intends to portray herself as the clean-break candidate.“It’s no secret that the governor and I were not close,” Ms. Hochul told NY1 on Thursday, an assertion she has made several times this week. “He had his own tight inner circle. I created my own space.”Ms. Hochul, a Democrat and former congresswoman from Buffalo who served as Mr. Cuomo’s lieutenant governor since 2015, succeeded Mr. Cuomo when he resigned following a state attorney general investigation that concluded that he sexually harassed several women.Almost immediately, Ms. Hochul promised to open a new chapter of transparency and collaboration in state government. That broad proclamation was seen as an inherent rebuke of Mr. Cuomo, who ruled Albany with a heavy hand, using the power and influence he had amassed over more than a decade.How exactly she intends to do that remains to be seen.Ms. Hochul has so far been cautious in setting expectations for the first few months of her administration. She has singled out a handful of immediate problems she can be seen as taking decisive action on during a time of crisis — such as instituting a mask mandate in schools, or helping to expedite getting stalled relief money to struggling renters, landlords and undocumented immigrants.“She’s been smart about thematically separating herself from Cuomo without having to take any big lifts,” said John Kaehny, the executive director at Reinvent Albany, a government watchdog. “They’re picking simple things that the public can understand that are pretty unassailable from the policy perspective, like the mask mandate and releasing the C.D.C. data, and that is going to get her applause.”Ms. Hochul said that she consulted with teachers, school boards, superintendents and parent-teacher associations before issuing a mask mandate for students.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesIndeed, Ms. Hochul did not unveil a grand vision of government or sweeping policy agenda in her first address on Tuesday. Instead, she outlined a narrow, yet urgent, set of priorities she would tackle: responding to the coronavirus and its fallout, and bringing more accountability to Albany. The actions she took this week on those fronts were seen as swift, but also as not-so-subtle admonishments of Mr. Cuomo.Richard N. Gottfried, the longest-serving member of the Assembly and the chairman of its health committee, called the expanded disclosure of Covid deaths “a very refreshing change.” Mr. Gottfried said he received a call from Ms. Hochul’s office to brief him on what the governor would announce in her first address, something he said was unimaginable under Mr. Cuomo.“Maybe it was only symbolic, but symbols at this point are what we go on,” said Mr. Gottfried, a Democrat who has served under nine governors. “Getting a call like that was an unusual and welcome experience.”Despite the early symbolic and stylistic changes, Ms. Hochul still faces hurdles in ridding the State Capitol of the last vestiges of the Cuomo era.One of the main rallying cries among Republicans, and even some Democrats, has been for Ms. Hochul to dismiss Mr. Cuomo’s top health official, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, for his potential involvement in obscuring the nursing home death toll and stonewalling health data from the Legislature last year.Ms. Hochul has not said whether she would retain Dr. Zucker, saying only that she would take up to 45 days to interview Mr. Cuomo’s cabinet officials before making a determination. The decision is complicated by the thorny optics of removing a health commissioner during a pandemic and the practical concerns of finding a replacement since so many health officials have left the state Health Department in recent months.For his part, Dr. Zucker said this week that he was “thrilled” to have Ms. Hochul as governor, suggesting that he was constrained under Mr. Cuomo from publicly disclosing certain death data.“Her leadership allowing me and all of D.O.H. to get the data out is refreshing,” Dr. Zucker said on Thursday. “Her commitment, as she has said, to transparency is revitalizing.”Another holdout from the Cuomo administration is his budget director, Robert Mujica, a close ally of Mr. Cuomo’s who has helmed the state’s finances with an iron grip since 2016 and would play a crucial role as Ms. Hochul prepares to assemble her first state budget.Mr. Mujica is lauded by supporters for his experience and competence, but derided by critics for the opaque manner in which they say he has managed the state’s coffers. His influence in state government is far-reaching: He sits on more than 30 state boards, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.It remains unclear whether Mr. Mujica will remain in the Hochul administration, but he has worked closely with some of Ms. Hochul’s recently recruited staffers, including her transition director, Marissa Shorenstein, and her counsel, Elizabeth Fine.State Senator Jessica Ramos, a Democrat from Queens, who has met with Ms. Hochul three times since Mr. Cuomo announced his resignation, including at a private meeting Ms. Hochul held with Latino legislators on Thursday, said Ms. Hochul had a “completely different and distinct approach to government.”The outreach by Ms. Hochul, who represented a Republican-leaning district in Congress and is regarded as a Democratic centrist, was noteworthy.“That goes to show, because, ideologically, I would argue I’m actually much more closely aligned with Cuomo than Hochul,” said Ms. Ramos, a member of the party’s left wing. “Unfortunately, her predecessor had chosen to isolate himself and hardly interacted with New Yorkers, whereas Kathy Hochul clearly likes people, and wants to talk to people and walks our streets to do so.”Before Ms. Hochul ordered a universal mask mandate in schools statewide — a divisive issue that Mr. Cuomo was seen as wanting to avoid and had left up to school districts — she held an hourlong Zoom meeting to hear from teachers, school boards, superintendents and parent-teacher associations statewide.Andrew Pallotta, president of the New York State United Teachers union, who was on the call, said Ms. Hochul had “opened up lines of communication,” describing her approach as “a breath of fresh air.”“You can’t ask for more,” Mr. Pallotta said. “It wasn’t, ‘Let me get somebody to be on this call, and then they’ll get back to me and we’ll put 12 committees together.’ It wasn’t that way at all. It was, ‘Here’s the person leading the state actually listening and responding.’”That sentiment was echoed by some county executives, who often learned about Mr. Cuomo’s coronavirus directives through his televised briefings rather than directly from his office.Anthony J. Picente Jr., the executive of Oneida County, who crossed party lines to endorse Mr. Cuomo in 2014, said the consensus among his colleagues was that there would be a “better relationship, at least in terms of communication and openness.”“We carry out what the state Health Department requires and yet were never consulted, never talked to, never a part of the overall discussions and left to pick up the pieces,” he said. “I really believe that’s not going to be the case with Governor Hochul.”Taken together, Ms. Hochul’s first moves as governor could notch her short-term policy wins, earn her good will among stakeholders and differentiate her from Mr. Cuomo to voters still getting to know her, especially as she prepares to run for governor next year.But while union leaders and legislative leaders have welcomed Ms. Hochul’s self-described collaborative approach, some government watchdogs have been more skeptical, expressing cautious optimism while waiting to see just how far Ms. Hochul will go to root out graft in Albany.“It’s a good start,” Mr. Kaehny, the government watchdog director, said. “But everything she’s doing is building up for the June 2022 primary and we’re seeing things through that prism.”Republicans, including one of their leading candidates for governor, Representative Lee Zeldin, have been less forgiving. They have sought to directly link Ms. Hochul to Mr. Cuomo’s cloud of scandals, arguing that it was disingenuous of her to distance herself from him after promoting and supporting his agenda as his second in command.“Ms. Hochul needs to look as though she’s ushering in a new era in Albany, but there will be reminders all along the way that she was, at least ostensibly, Andrew Cuomo’s partner in government for going on seven years,” said William F. B. O’Reilly, a Republican political consultant in New York. “His musk won’t dissipate quickly.”The business community appears encouraged by the team Ms. Hochul has so far assembled. Karen Persichilli Keogh, her top aide, who most recently worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Ms. Fine, who advised President Bill Clinton, are both seasoned political hands with experience in New York and Washington.“She has hit the ground running, acting like a governor, not a politician, which is what we need right now,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business lobbying group. “Yes, a clean break from Cuomo, but continuity where it is necessary for government to meet the health and economic challenges.” More