Democratic Party

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Top Mayoral Rivals Attack Adams and Clash on Policing and Ethics

      by

      The debaters’ focus on Mr. Adams, centering on questions of his residency, reflected his front-runner status in the race for New York City mayor.The top Democratic candidates in the New York City mayor’s race clashed sharply over political visions and personal ethics in a debate that began with sustained attacks against one candidate, Eric Adams, over questions of his residency and transparency.Two days before early voting begins and less than two weeks before the June 22 Democratic primary that will almost certainly decide the city’s next mayor, five leading contenders gathered on Thursday for an in-person, penultimate debate that centered on issues of public safety, managing the mayor’s relationship with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and qualifications to lead the nation’s largest city.The one-hour debate arrived at an unsettled moment in an extraordinarily consequential race, as several contenders battled controversies, while sparse public polling shows a tight and unpredictable contest that will be settled by ranked-choice voting.It began on a highly contentious note, as four of the five candidates onstage were asked whether they believed that Mr. Adams, who is considered the leading candidate, indeed lived in New York City, following a Politico New York report that Mr. Adams used conflicting addresses in official records, and that he was spending nights at Brooklyn Borough Hall in the homestretch of the campaign.Mr. Adams, who has said that he moved into Borough Hall for a time after the pandemic hit to focus on the workload, has said his primary residence is an apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. He also co-owns a co-op with his partner in Fort Lee, N.J.“Eric, unfortunately, has not only been not straightforward, but he’s been hypocritical,” charged Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate and perhaps Mr. Adams’s most persistent critic on the stage on Thursday. “He spent months attacking me for not being a New Yorker. Meanwhile, he was attacking me from New Jersey.”Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, alluded to other controversies including investigations of Mr. Adams’s fund-raising practices, and said that “the issue is honesty.”“I served as a police officer in Brooklyn, I became a state senator elected from Brooklyn and now I am the Brooklyn borough president,” Mr. Adams shot back. Taking a swipe at Mr. Yang, who spent part of the pandemic at a weekend home in the Hudson Valley in New York, he continued, “I know what people are concerned about on the ground because I’m on the ground. I don’t live in New Paltz, I live in Brooklyn.”Mr. Adams’s participation in the debate, co-hosted by WCBS-TV, had been in question. He indicated on Tuesday that he would skip the event, saying he would instead attend a vigil for a 10-year-old killed in gun violence in Queens. On Thursday, he reversed course. In between, a firestorm ensued tied to questions surrounding Mr. Adams’s residency.Beyond the substance of the questions, the fusillade of attacks also reflected Mr. Adams’s standing in the race: He has increasingly led available surveys as he presses a message that he says is focused on issues of both public safety and criminal justice. More than any other candidate, Mr. Adams has discussed issues of rising gun violence and other crime, at a time when polls show public safety to be a top priority for New York Democratic voters. At the debate, the contenders focused on issues of gun violence as well as hate crimes.“We have seen an uptick in anti-Asian hate crime, but we’ve also seen an uptick in anti-Semitism,” said Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, who was a far more forceful presence in Thursday’s debate than she has been in previous contests. She went on to sketch out plans for confronting mental illness and homelessness as part of the solution. And as in previous debates, some of the clearest distinctions in the field emerged over issues of public safety, as Ms. Wiley staked out some of the most left-leaning positions on the stage.Asked about the idea of taking guns away from New York Police Department officers, every candidate except for Ms. Wiley said no. She did not answer directly, instead discussing the importance of “smart policing.”“I am not prepared to make that decision in a debate,” she said, even as she also said that “the mayor’s job is safety. Safety is job one, and I’m going to keep New Yorkers safe when I’m mayor.”The answer stood in contrast to one offered by Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, who, like Ms. Wiley, has sought to appeal to the most progressive voters in New York.“We’re not taking guns away from the police,” Mr. Stringer said flatly. “We’re going to make sure that we create a police force that focuses on rooting out violent crime, and at the same time ensures the civil rights of our young people.”Ms. Wiley also argued passionately that investments in the social safety net, especially a proposal for more trauma-informed care in schools, would go a long way toward preventing violence like the shooting in Queens.“Justin Wallace is not dead because we don’t have enough police officers,” she said, referencing the 10-year-old. “He is dead because we have never in this city done the very thing that communities like in the Far Rockaways, or Washington Heights or Mott Haven, have been asking us for, which is trauma-informed care in our schools, which is in my plan.”Mr. Yang offered an impassioned critique of a law enforcement system that would allow people who have been arrested several times to remain unsupervised, citing a man who was accused of punching an Asian woman, one incident in a long series of arrests..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;}“New Yorkers deserve to be safe on our own streets,” he said. “We have to get people who need help, the help that they need, regardless of whether they have the capacity to raise their hands and seek it.”On the whole, the debate was more civil and less chaotic than the previous matchup, which at times devolved into a brawl. Certainly, there were key areas of agreement: All five of the candidates onstage said that New York should consider renaming sites that had been named for slaveholders.But clear differences were on display, too, on policy and politics. The candidates clashed over the most effective way to deal with Mr. Cuomo, given that governors and mayors in New York historically have had tense relationships.“I’ve had a number of calls with Governor Cuomo, I worked with his brother at CNN, I can work with Governor Cuomo, but I can work with anyone who’s going to help us deliver for the people of New York,” said Mr. Yang, a former CNN contributor. “Our interests are the same because the state’s recovery relies upon New York City’s recovery.”“Andrew, your approach is naïve,” Mr. Stringer replied. “This is not how Albany works, Albany will go after you. Albany will collapse you if you don’t understand that the forces around the state do not want us to get the funding that we deserve.”Mr. Stringer has cast himself as a seasoned government hand with a slate of progressive policies. His ability to engage younger left-wing voters, though, was hampered after a woman earlier this spring accused him of making unwanted sexual advances during a 2001 campaign, allegations he denied.Last week, a second woman accused Mr. Stringer of making unwanted sexual advances when, she said, she worked at a bar he co-owned decades ago. Mr. Stringer said he did not recall Teresa Logan, the woman making the allegations, but said he apologized if he had met her and made her uncomfortable.“I want to be held accountable to anyone who wishes, the press or otherwise, to investigate what took place 30 years ago and 20 years ago,” he said. “Unfortunately, in the middle of a campaign, it has been a struggle to find a way to communicate that. Now it’s up to the voters to look at my 30-year record of service and personal history and make a decision as to who’s best qualified for mayor.”“It takes two to view any sexual conduct as welcome,” Ms. Wiley interjected. Mr. Stringer said he agreed. Ms. Wiley is seeking to emerge as the standard-bearer for the left wing of the Democratic Party, part of her effort to build a coalition that includes voters of color from across the ideological spectrum as well as white progressives.Over the last week, prominent progressive lawmakers and leaders have made a major push to consolidate around her campaign: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backed her last weekend; Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate, did the same on Wednesday.Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, had also been battling for support from the left-wing grass-roots, but amid a campaign uprising and fight over unionizing efforts, she terminated dozens of workers this week, according to the union. She was not invited to participate in Thursday’s debate, nor were two other candidates who have participated in prior debates: Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary, and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive.Natalie Prieb contributed reporting. More

    • 75 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Senator Joe Manchin Has a Point

      by

      With an opinion piece in The Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday, Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, effectively killed his party’s ambitious voting-rights reform twice over. First, he said he would vote against the bill in question — the so-called For the People Act. (In a Senate split 50-50, his defection looks decisive.) Second, he promised to defend existing Senate filibuster rules, which allow Republicans to prevent the bill from coming to a vote in the first place.For Democrats, the op-ed held more insult than injury. Mr. Manchin’s position has been clear for months. What is new is the grounds for it: Low partisanship, he implied, not high ideals, is the source of his colleagues’ vision.He has a point.The vision of voting rights that worries Mr. Manchin was succinctly captured in a communiqué that arrived last month in the inboxes of those who support the Brennan Center for Justice at the N.Y.U. School of Law. New laws proposed or passed in Republican-controlled states — Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona — have cracked down on early voting, voting by mail and the use of unmanned drop boxes, the email warned. “Nobody,” it stressed, “should erect barriers that would curb the freedom to vote. Period.”It is a stirring exhortation, but does it make any sense? Democracy is a system, a set of procedures — not just a mood or a dream. Barriers and curbs are what it is built out of. If you don’t have them, you don’t have a democracy. The important thing is that they be reasonable.The definition of reasonableness is proving elusive. When Republicans in the Texas Legislature were on the verge of passing their new voting law at the end of May, Democrats staged a walkout, denying the chamber a quorum and stalling the bill’s passage. Observers disagree about whether these Texan tactics are protecting democracy or sabotaging it.The Democrats who control both houses of the U.S. Congress discuss the conflict over voting in apocalyptic terms. The For the People Act aims to extend the voting practices that Republicans have been curtailing. Democrats describe Republicans’ tighter regulation as “disenfranchisement” and even “voter suppression.” Representative John Sarbanes, the Maryland Democrat who introduced the House version of the For the People Act, H.R. 1, has spoken of the bill as a way of addressing “the need for comprehensive, structural democracy reform.”That is the wrong way to look at the For the People Act. It has none of the hallmarks of a revolution in voting rights. It does not open the vote to new classes of people as the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments did. Those amendments granted the vote to ex-slaves and nonwhites (1870), women (1920) and 18-year-olds (1971). (The new bill does seek to disqualify states from permanently denying the vote to felons, though that would most likely require a constitutional wrangle over the 14th Amendment.)Since real voting-rights breakthroughs, by definition, admit people from outside the political system, they shatter political coalitions and produce bipartisan votes. Women’s suffrage did that a century ago. So did civil rights in the 1960s. By contrast, the new election bills, on both sides, are among the most partisan in memory. H.R. 1 got no Republican votes. On initial passage, Texas’ Republican-sponsored bill got no Democratic support in either chamber.You will find good ideas in the Democrats’ bills (like making Election Day a national holiday, and backing up electronic ballots with paper ones, to facilitate recounts) and just as many in the Republicans’ (Texas’ bans the public funding of third-party ballot distribution). What you won’t find is a single innovation that works against the partisan interests of its sponsors. When Mr. Manchin writes in his op-ed that the argument over voting rights “is not about finding common ground, but seeking partisan advantage,” he does not lack for evidence.Democrats are offering something different than what they say: not an expansion of voting rights but a relaxation of voting regulations. The For the People Act would codify the looser rules many states adopted in order to conduct the 2020 elections in the midst of a pandemic. That election had the largest turnout rate (66.3 percent) since 1900, and strengthened Democrats. But the looser rules were not so much triumphs of reason as concessions to Covid-19. The conditions that made the new rules seem normal or common-sensical no longer obtain. We might want those rules. But we don’t need them.There is always a paradox when it comes to democratic elections. They must be opaque, in order to guarantee ballot secrecy and prevent intimidation. But they must also be transparent, in order to prevent fraud. The perennial danger is that some actor with a partisan interest might interpose himself in one of the opaque spaces to make the contest less fair.At the crudest level, a politician can use private pressure as a way to render himself unaccountable to an electoral verdict. That is what President Donald Trump did when, on Jan. 2, two months after his electoral defeat, he phoned the Georgia secretary of state to seek the reversal of its results in that state. (“Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”) Certain reforms urged by Democrats are meant to pre-empt abuses and irregularities specific to the Trump era. Title X of H.R. 1, for instance, includes requirements that presidents and vice presidents disclose their tax returns.The basic practice that Republicans seek to curb is ballot harvesting: Whenever voting happens elsewhere than at a voting booth, third parties are responsible for conveying voters’ intentions to authorities. Obviously, bringing couriers into the voting system can increase turnout — consider “shut-in” older people in nursing homes and elsewhere. Just as obviously, ballot-harvesting increases opportunities for fraud — consider the same older people, chatting about their voting preferences as they plan to hand their votes to a partisan political activist. Some states authorize only relatives or caregivers to deliver votes; others, like California, have no such restrictions, opening the way for activist groups.It is largely to prevent ballot harvesting that most states used to allow absentee voting only in extraordinary circumstances. The prevailing understanding was that, other things being equal, a slightly lower rate of participation was a price worth paying for an election less susceptible to corruption. Absent a pandemic, there is a coherent case that there should never be absentee or mail-in balloting.It is striking that reformers in both parties have so little to say directly about what is arguably the biggest problem for the country’s electoral integrity: the dragging out of vote-counting till long after Election Day. Nothing did more to escalate tensions in the days immediately following last Nov. 3 than the indeterminate results in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, as Americans waited for who-knows-how-many votes to come in from who-knows-where.Except in extraordinary cases like the Florida recount of 2000, there is no valid reason for long counting lags. They seldom happened even when vote counting was much more primitive than it is today.An election in which votes are still being received even as counts are being made public is, ipso facto, an election vulnerable to manipulation. When political operatives understand that they need only a few votes from their allies in District X to put them over the top, occasions arise for malfeasance on one side and paranoia on the other. The result can be lawsuits meant to muddy the count, desperate searches for new sources of votes and back-room chicanery of the sort in which Mr. Trump tried to involve the Georgia secretary of state.Maintaining wide and equal access to ballots is a democratic necessity. If it were the only necessity, the For the People Act would be unobjectionable, and Mr. Manchin’s misgivings idle. But there is a second necessity: simplicity. The public will trust a voting system only to the extent that it is comprehensible and resistant to manipulation. Multiplying the methods, platforms and times of voting adds complexity. And in a democracy, complexity is often corruption waiting to happen.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

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      How Trump’s Political Legacy Is on the Ballot in the Virginia Governor’s Race

      by

      Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, will try to tie his opponent, Glenn Youngkin, to former President Donald Trump, while Mr. Youngkin will try to sidestep Mr. Trump but not reject him.CHESAPEAKE, Va. — There is a far-reaching and oh-so-familiar shadow stretching across Virginia’s political landscape that could have profound implications for the election of a new governor, a contest that figures to be the only major competitive race in the country this fall.Former President Donald J. Trump won’t be on the ballot in Virginia, but his political legacy will be.Glenn Youngkin, an affable former private equity executive, is testing whether a Republican can sidestep Mr. Trump without fully rejecting him and still prevail in a state where the former president lost re-election by 10 points but where he remains deeply popular with conservative activists.And in what could be an equally revealing strategy, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat seeking to reclaim his old job, is going to determine whether linking Republicans to Mr. Trump — a tactic that helped turn Virginia’s suburbs a deeper blue during the last four years — is as potent when he’s no longer in the Oval Office, or even on Twitter.Both questions reflect a larger issue: how strong a tug the country’s polarized and increasingly nationalized politics can have on an off-year state race of the type that is usually consumed by debates over taxes, transportation, education and the economy.It’s a real-life political science experiment that is all the richer because it’s taking place in a state that was once solidly conservative, and where for many years it was the Democrats who had to distance themselves from their national party.But Virginia, which supported only Republicans for president from 1964 until 2008, is a state transformed thanks to its expansive metropolitan growth. George W. Bush was the last G.O.P. presidential nominee to carry the state, and Democrats control every statewide office and both state legislative chambers.If Republicans are to win back the governorship and reclaim a foothold in this increasingly Democratic state, this would seem to be the year.Mr. Youngkin is leading a unified party, can saturate the airwaves using millions of dollars from his own fortune and has never run for office, let alone cast a vote as a lawmaker, denying opposition researchers the grist for attack ads. That’s to say nothing of Virginia’s decades-long history of electing governors from the opposite party of whoever won the White House the previous year.That’s a challenge that Mr. McAuliffe takes seriously.After he clinched an easy victory in the Democratic primary Tuesday night, Mr. McAuliffe — who is seeking to replace Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who is constitutionally barred from seeking another term — sought to rouse his party by warning them that Mr. Youngkin’s ability to self-finance is a threat that must be taken seriously. “There are 75 million reasons why Glenn Youngkin could win,” Mr. McAuliffe told supporters, alluding to how much the Republican could spend on the campaign.If Mr. Youngkin is able to spend enough money to define himself to voters before Democrats do it, and if President Biden’s popularity wanes by November — as it did with former President Barack Obama in 2009, the last time Republicans won the governorship here — Mr. Youngkin will be positioned to at least make the race close.In contrast to the last two Virginia governor’s races, the G.O.P.’s conservative and more establishment-aligned factions are united behind Mr. Youngkin.“This is totally winnable for Republicans,” said Jerry Kilgore, a former state attorney general and a Republican who once ran for governor himself. “But if he loses, there will be a lot of depressed people, because there’s a lot of optimism right now.”To prevail, Mr. Youngkin will have demonstrate some Simone Biles-like footwork when it comes to answering for his party’s brand and, in particular Mr. Trump, the former and potentially future standard-bearer.“I don’t think he’s coming this year,” Mr. Youngkin said in response to a question of whether he wanted Mr. Trump to campaign with him.Standing outside a country-music-themed bar in the Tidewater region in the state’s southeast, where he grew up before amassing his fortune at the Carlyle Group in Washington, Mr. Youngkin was plainly more interested in contrasting his lack of political experience with Mr. McAuliffe’s decades as a party insider.And after recently winning a hard-fought Republican nomination contest, Mr. Youngkin also appeared mindful of Mr. Trump’s grip on the party and did not want to slight a party leader who is famously sensitive to slights.“I don’t think his schedule is — I think he has his schedule and is set to go to other places,” Mr. Youngkin tried again.But, he was asked a second time, did he want to stand with Mr. Trump in Virginia?“I think if he were to come, fine; if he doesn’t come, fine,” Mr. Youngkin said, settling on an answer. (In a separate interview, the exuberant Mr. McAuliffe said of Mr. Trump and Virginia: “I’d pay for the gas for him to come.”)Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee for governor, is determined to link his rival to Mr. Trump, a president the state’s voters rejected.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesMr. Youngkin was more direct when asked if he still thought Mr. Trump was the leader of the G.O.P. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a leader of our party,” he said.That answer triggered an unprompted clarification from an aide, who requested anonymity to say that what the candidate had meant was “that the Republican Party does not solely rely on one individual or leader” and that “Glenn really is the leader of the Republican Party in Virginia, as the party truly has come together around him.”If he’s not willing to fully break with Mr. Trump — in fact, he gladly accepted the former president’s endorsement the day after claiming the nomination — Mr. Youngkin clearly wants to project a sunnier style of politics to the suburban voters who will decide Virginia’s election.“I believe that Virginians are like Americans, are ready to come out of this pandemic and are ready to look ahead and think about hope and optimism and opportunity and not spend time basically tearing each other down,” he said.Mr. McAuliffe, though, is determined to remind this state’s voters of the president they twice rejected. In his victory speech Tuesday, he cited Mr. Youngkin’s warmer words for Mr. Trump during the Republican nomination process. And in his final barnstorming tour of Virginia before the primary concluded, he ignored his intraparty rivals and lashed Mr. Youngkin to the former president.Asked in an interview why he was still focused on Mr. Trump, Mr. McAuliffe said: “He may be out of office, but he’s the most powerful person in the Republican Party,” pointing to the Senate G.O.P.’s filibustering of a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.“Are you kidding me?” he said, adding: “This man is as big with the Republican Party as he’s ever been. He has dominance over this party.”Whether that’s enough to deter Virginians from electing a Republican governor is another question, though.“As many people that died with Covid, including my mother — yes; yes, it’s still powerful,” Gaylene Kanoyton, a state Democratic Party official, said when asked whether invoking Mr. Trump was a successful strategy. “Our families and friends would have still been here if we had a different president.”Other Democrats, though, are skeptical that waving the bloody flag of Trumpism will prove sufficient with voters who are eager to move on from his presidency.“Talking about Trump in 2021 is really stale and won’t be enough to win swing voters,” said Ben Tribbett, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist, noting that even when Mr. Trump was president, Democrats had still used much of their advertising budget to highlight policy issues.The question of how much Mr. Trump can be weaponized may be determined by whether he shows up in Virginia.If he doesn’t, Mr. McAuliffe’s advertising campaign and stump speech attack lines may offer the best evidence. Already, the former governor is pairing his references to Mr. Trump with efforts to portray Mr. Youngkin as culturally out of step with a state that just eliminated the death penalty, imposed stricter gun laws and legalized marijuana.“He’s proud of being a lifelong member of the N.R.A. — brags about it; I brag that I’m the first Democratic nominee to get an F rating,” Mr. McAuliffe said.Ultimately, the governor’s race in Virginia may turn on whether a lavishly funded candidate can win without making any concessions to the political nature of his state. That’s what Republican governors like Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts have done to win in blue states and what Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, did to win in deep-red Louisiana.Asked where he differs from his party, Mr. Youngkin did not offer up any specific issue but said his emphasis was on jobs, schools and public safety.Yet he called his politics “conservative,” declined to say whether he supported same-sex marriage and answered a question about background checks for gun purchases by criticizing more aggressive restrictions.“Virginians don’t want a government to ban guns; they don’t want a government to ban ammunition; they actually don’t want a government to come seize people’s guns,” he said before adding that “having background checks for criminals to make sure that criminals do not get guns is something people want.”Asked about the race and identity issues galvanizing his party’s base, Mr. Youngkin denounced “identity politics” but then made sure to introduce a reporter to the Republican nominees for lieutenant governor — Winsome Sears, a Black woman — and for attorney general: Jason Miyares, the son of a Cuban immigrant.“This is the ticket; this is the ticket,” Mr. Youngkin said. “This is the Republican Party in Virginia.”For Democrats, particularly those who remember the contortions of their own candidates in an earlier day, Mr. Youngkin’s reluctance to accommodate the leftward drift of the state is something no amount of money can overcome.“Republicans in Virginia have to show they’re a different kind of Republican, and so far that’s not the Youngkin approach,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Virginia-reared Democratic strategist. “But their base won’t let their candidates create distance from the party or Trump.” More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      In the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race, Being Second Might Be Good Enough to Win

      by

      Political campaigns are considering cross-endorsements and vying for the No. 2 spot on voters’ ballots.In the fiercely competitive world of New York City politics, it is hard to imagine a candidate embracing a strategy to be voters’ second choice. Yet in the volatile, crowded race for mayor, such a gambit might actually pay off.The reason? Ranked-choice voting.The introduction this year of the ranked-choice system — allowing the selection of up to five choices for mayor, ranked in preferential order — has inserted a significant measure of unpredictability into an election still unsettled by the pandemic.With the June 22 primary less than two weeks away, campaign officials for the leading Democratic candidates are still trying to figure out how best to work the system to their advantage.Some campaigns have hired staffers who have experience with ranked-choice voting. They are weighing the risks of making a cross-endorsement with a rival. And candidates are openly reaching out to voters committed elsewhere, hoping to become their second choice.When Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, recently lost an important endorsement from his friend John Liu, a state senator, he was unbowed. He called on Mr. Liu to rank him second, behind a key opponent, Andrew Yang.“I’m going to need No. 2 voters, and I’m hoping that I can get him to endorse me as No. 2,” Mr. Adams said.Even before Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary, entered the race last year, an “electability” presentation to potential backers extolled how his “broad appeal makes him a natural second and third choice for voters.”New York City approved the switch to a ranked-choice system in a 2019 referendum; it was designed to give voters broader influence by allowing them to back their top choice while still weighing in on the race’s other candidates — lessening the chances of a scenario where two popular candidates split the vote and a candidate without broad support wins.If a candidate does not initially win a majority of the votes, the rankings come into play. The last-place candidate is eliminated in a series of rounds, with that candidate’s votes reallocated to whichever candidate their supporters ranked next. The rounds continue until there are two candidates left, and the winner has a majority.The winner will still need to appear as the first choice on as many ballots as possible. But with 13 Democratic candidates diffusing the vote, securing the second spot on other ballots could be just as important, and could elevate a candidate with fewer first-place votes into the lead.How Does Ranked-Choice Voting Work in New York?New Yorkers voting in the June 22 primary for mayor will use ranked-choice voting for the first time this year. Confused? We can help.Uncertainty over how voters will approach the new voting system is making many of the campaigns nervous.“We’re in uncharted territory, and our campaign has done everything it can to ensure that we get as many votes as we can get,” said Chris Coffey, a campaign manager for Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate.In most cases where ranked-choice elections have been held, the candidate who is ahead in the first round prevails. But there have been exceptions, including the 2010 mayoral election in Oakland, Calif., where Jean Quan won despite placing second in the first round. Ms. Quan, the city’s first female mayor, collected more second- and third-choice votes than her top rival, boosting her to victory.Ms. Quan had openly supported the candidate who placed third, Rebecca Kaplan, as her second choice and believes that the friendly gesture helped her with voters.“I knew there was a risk of helping Rebecca, but I thought it was more important to beat the front-runner,” she said in an interview.Those types of alliances have been rare in New York.A campaign adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning said that a cross-endorsement would only work if the other candidate was unquestionably lower in the standings. “You have to know that you’re going to beat the person you’re cross-endorsing — that’s rule No. 1,” the adviser said.Indeed, the campaigns of Mr. Yang and his chief rival, Mr. Adams, both considered trying to craft a cross-endorsement deal with Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, according to two people familiar with the plans. But her recent rise in the scant public polling available has made that proposition more unlikely.“We’re not overthinking our ranked-choice strategy,” said Lindsey Green, a spokeswoman for Ms. Garcia. “The goal is still to get as many No. 1 votes as we can and to win outright.”Kathryn Garcia, a veteran of city government, was thought to be a target of her rivals for a friendly co-endorsement, but her rise in polling has made that more unlikely.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesOnly two of the leading mayoral candidates, in fact, are even willing to list a second choice: Mr. Yang backs Ms. Garcia; Mr. Donovan, the former federal housing secretary, supports Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.The only known cross-endorsement pact was between Joycelyn Taylor, a businesswoman, and Art Chang, an entrepreneur, two Democrats who have shown little support in polling and fund-raising, and stand little chance of winning.The mayoral primary will be the first citywide contest in New York City to use ranked-choice voting, and the new system was expected to change the race’s dynamics.Most mayoral primaries typically feature bruising campaigns; ranked-choice was supposed to discourage that, with candidates wary of alienating each other’s base. That had largely been true this year, but the level of sniping and negative campaigning has increased in recent weeks.One thing is certain: There will be no costly runoff this year; whoever emerges as the winner will be the Democratic nominee, even if that person did not get 50 percent of the initial vote.But the voting system also has its quirks.Assuming no one wins a majority in the first round, the city’s Board of Elections must completely receive and process mail-in ballots before it begins the ranked-choice tally. That is expected to take weeks, and officials have cautioned that a victor may not be declared until mid-July.“Ranked-choice voting has definitely added an unpredictability to the race,” said Ester Fuchs, a politics professor at Columbia University. “The candidates would like to figure out how to maximize their chances of winning, and they haven’t been able to figure it out.”.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. Yang, who has strong name recognition and centrist views, has tried to evoke a cheerful image on the campaign trail. He said recently on MSNBC that the voting system rewards candidates like him with “broad appeal.”Mr. Yang is working with Bill Barnes, a veteran of San Francisco government, which uses ranked-choice voting, and Billy Cline, who worked on the campaign of London Breed, that city’s first Black female mayor.Mr. Adams, who appears to be the front-runner in the race, is working with Evan Thies, a media strategist who has experience with the issue, and Ben Tulchin, a San Francisco-based pollster from Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.At the same time, progressive groups and the city’s powerful teachers’ union are urging New Yorkers not to rank Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams at all.“Any appearance on your ballot, even as your fifth choice, can get them elected,” the United Federation of Teachers recently told its members.Our City, a super PAC backed by progressive groups, is also arguing that anyone else would be better than Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams.“The rest of the candidates — we don’t feel like they’re completely unreachable for progressive issues,” said Gabe Tobias, who is running the PAC. “Adams and Yang are unreachable. That’s a situation where we couldn’t win any of the things we want to win.”Andrew Yang,who has mostly evoked a cheerful image during the campaign, said that ranked-choice voting rewards people like him with “broad appeal.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesOver the last few weeks, more endorsements have been given in ranked-choice format: The Working Families Party had endorsed the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, first; Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive, second; and Ms. Wiley third. But the group withdrew its support for Mr. Stringer and Ms. Morales after their campaigns became mired in controversy, and it is now supporting only Ms. Wiley.Daniel Rosenthal, a state assemblyman, and two Jewish groups in Queens just ranked Ms. Garcia second. Their first choices were split between Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams.Representative Adriano Espaillat, the first Dominican-American to serve in Congress, also recently endorsed Mr. Adams first and Ms. Wiley second. (He rescinded his initial endorsement of Mr. Stringer after allegations emerged that Mr. Stringer had sexually harassed a woman working on his 2001 campaign for public advocate. Mr. Stringer denies the allegations.)The system allows voters to hedge their bets and rank multiple candidates — extending the odds of casting a winning vote for someone agreeable, even if not preferable. A voter could, for instance, rank three left-leaning candidates — Ms. Wiley, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Morales — guaranteeing that one would get their vote in a late round.The same scenario could present itself to a voter who wanted to support a Black candidate, and rank only the four major Black Democrats: Mr. Adams, Ms. Wiley, Ms. Morales, who identifies as Afro-Latina, and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive.Yet some Black leaders are also concerned that minority and working-class voters might not rank more than one candidate because there has not been enough public education about the process. More than half of voters say they will pick a second choice; 30 percent said they would only pick one choice, according to a Fontas Advisors poll in May.Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a good government advocacy group, said that ranked-choice voting eliminates the need for an expensive runoff election, which could take just as long to find a winner.“Democracy takes time, and every vote counts,” she said. “Accurate and fair election results are worth waiting for.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      How Far Are Republicans Willing to Go? They’re Already Gone.

      by

      Determined to enforce white political dominance in pivotal states like Georgia, Arizona, Texas and North Carolina, Republicans are enacting or trying to enact laws restricting the right to vote, empowering legislatures to reject election outcomes and adopting election rules and procedures designed to block the emergence of multiracial political majorities.Republicans “see the wave of demography coming and they are just trying to hold up a wall and keep it from smashing them in,” William Frey, a senior fellow at Brookings, told CNN’s Ron Brownstein. “It’s the last bastion of their dominance, and they are doing everything they can.”The actions of Republican state legislators to curtail absentee voting, limit days for early voting and seize control of local election boards have prompted 188 scholars to sign a “Statement of Concern: The Threats to American Democracy and the Need for National Voting and Election Administration Standards,” in which they assert:We have watched with deep concern as Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures.Among statutes Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed or are in the process of approving are “laws politicizing the administration and certification of elections” thatcould enable some state legislatures or partisan election officials to do what they failed to do in 2020: reverse the outcome of a free and fair election. Further, these laws could entrench extended minority rule, violating the basic and longstanding democratic principle that parties that get the most votes should win elections.The precipitating event driving the current surge of regressive voting legislation in Republican-controlled states is Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020 and the widespread acceptance on the right of Trump’s subsequent claim that the presidency was stolen from him. The belief among Republicans that Trump is essential to their drive to slow or halt the growing power of nonwhite voters aligned with the Democratic Party has powered the broad acquiescence to that lie both by people who know better and by people who don’t.Virginia Gray, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, argued in an email that for Republicans, “the strongest factors are racial animosity, fear of becoming a white minority and the growth of white identity.” She noted that Tucker Carlson of Fox News articulated Republican anxiety during his show on April 8:In a democracy, one person equals one vote. If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.Trump, Carlson and their allies in the Republican Party, Gray continued,see politics as a zero-sum game: as the U.S. becomes a majority-minority nation, white voters will constitute a smaller portion of the voting electorate. So in order to win, the party of whites must use every means at its disposal to restrict the voting electorate to “their people.” Because a multiracial democracy is so threatening, Trump supporters will only fight harder in the next election.Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg, law professors at the University of Chicago, make the case in their 2018 paper, “How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy,” that in the United States and other advanced democracies, the erosion of democracy will be gradual and stealthy, not an abrupt shift to authoritarianism.“Is the United States at risk of democratic backsliding? And would the Constitution prevent such decay?” Huq and Ginsburg ask:There are two modal paths of democratic decay. We call these authoritarian reversion and constitutional retrogression. A reversion is a rapid and near-complete collapse of democratic institutions. Retrogression is a more subtle, incremental erosion to three institutional predicates of democracy occurring simultaneously: competitive elections; rights of political speech and association; and the administrative and adjudicative rule of law. We show that over the past quarter-century, the risk of reversion in democracies around the world has declined, whereas the risk of retrogression has spiked. The United States is neither exceptional nor immune from these changes.In an email, Ginsburg wrote that there are two forces that lead to the erosion of democracy: “charismatic populism and partisan degradation, in which a party just gives up on the idea of majority rule and seeks to end democratic competition. Obviously the U.S. has faced both forces at the same time in Trumpism.”From a different vantage point, Sheri Berman, a political scientist at Barnard, argues that there is a crucial distinction to be drawn in examining the consequences of Republican tampering with election administration, with one more dangerous than the other. In an email, Berman writes:The downward spiral refers to attempts by Republicans to do two related things. First, effectively making voting more difficult by, for example, restricting voting by mail, shrinking voting times and places, adding ID requirements and so on. The second is injecting partisanship into the electoral oversight process. As potentially harmful as the first is, the latter is even more worrying.In other circumstances, Berman argues, one could imagine “having a good faith debate about the conditions under which mail-in ballots are distributed and counted, whether ID should be required to vote and if so of what type, etc.”But in the current contest, “these concerns are not motivated by a general desire to improve the quality of our elections, but rather by false, partisan accusations about the illegitimacy of Biden’s victory and so good faith discussions of reform are impossible.”The Republican initiatives to inject partisanship into the oversight process, in her view,are even more straightforwardly dangerous: elections are democracy’s backbone, anything that subjects them to partisan manipulation will fatally injure its functioning and legitimacy. The officials who oversee elections are democracy’s referees — once they lose their objectivity, the entire game loses its legitimacy. Republican attempts, accordingly, to diminish the objectivity of the electoral oversight process by, for example, giving more power to legislative branches and elected politicians over it, are direct attempts to rig the game so that, should Democrats win another election that Republicans consider contested, the outcome can be manipulated. There is simply no way democracy can function if those designated to oversee its most basic institution are motivated by partisan rather than legal and constitutional concerns.Among those I consulted for this column, there was wide agreement that democratic backsliding is a process difficult for the average voter to detect — and that one of the crucial factors enabling the current procedural undermining of democracy in the states is that voters have little interest in or understanding of election rules and regulations.“Democratic erosion is subtle and slow, often nearly imperceptible until it’s too late,” Robert Blair, a political scientist at Brown, wrote in an email:The U.S. will not become an autocracy. Political parties will not be banned; elections will not be canceled or overturned willy nilly. But the U.S. may increasingly become a “democracy with asterisks,” one in which the playing field is tilted heavily in favor of whichever party writes the rules of the game.Blair is decidedly pessimistic about the likelihood that American voters will succeed in opposing the degradation of the system:I have very little faith in the American public as a bulwark against these threats. In general Americans do not prioritize democratic principles in our vote choices, and we are alarmingly willing to tolerate antidemocratic ideas and actions by co-partisans. Polarization seems to make this worse. If American democracy is at risk, citizens will not save it.Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, stressed this point in an email:“We all grow up knowing that the person who wins more votes should win the election,” Hopkins continued,but none of us grow up knowing anything about how to handle provisional ballots or which allegations of voter fraud are credible. Relatively few people are equipped to directly evaluate claims that an election was fraudulent, so voters necessarily rely on politicians, media commentators and other elites to tell them if something ran afoul. In fact, it’s precisely the public’s general commitment to democracy that can be used against democracy by political leaders willing to lie about elections.The low visibility and lack of public understanding of arcane shifts in election law — for example, the shift of responsibility for determining winners and losers from election officials to state legislatures — greatly empowers partisan elites.Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America think tank and one of the organizers of New America’s “Statement of Concern,” wrote by email:A longstanding finding in political science is that it is elites who preserve democracy, and elites who destroy democracy. Overwhelming majorities of voters support democracy in the abstract, but if they are told by elites that “the other party is trying to destroy democracy and these emergency measures are needed to preserve democracy by keeping the other side out of power,” most partisan voters are going to follow their leaders and support anti-democratic changes. This is especially the case in a highly-polarized binary political system in which the thought of the opposing party taking power seems especially odious and even existential.Like many of the co-signers of the “Statement of Concern,” Drutman has no expectation that the Supreme Court would step in to block states from tilting the partisan balance by tinkering with election rules and procedures:The conservative Supreme Court has given states wide latitude to change electoral laws. I don’t see how a 6-3 conservative court does much to interfere with the ability of states to choose their own electoral arrangements. The conservative majority on the Court has clearly decided it is not the role of the Supreme Court to place reasonable boundaries on the ability of partisan legislatures to stack elections in their favor.Laura Gamboa, a political scientist at the University of Utah, is less harsh in her assessment of the citizenry, but she too does not place much hope in the ability of the American electorate to protect democratic institutions from assault:I don’t think Americans (or most other people) have a normative preference for dictatorship. Overall, people prefer democracy over authoritarianism. Having said that, polarization and misinformation can lead people to support power grabs. Research has shown that when a society is severely polarized and sees the out-group (in this case out-party) as “enemies” (not opponents), they are willing to support anti-democratic moves in order to prevent them from attaining power. More so, when they are misled to believe that these rules are put in place to protect elections from fraud.More important, Gamboa argued that the corrosion of political norms that protect democratic governancecan definitively evolve into a broader rejection of the rule of law. Institutions do not survive by themselves, they need people to stand by them. This type of manipulation of electoral laws undermines the legitimacy of elections. Rules and norms that were once sacred become part of the political game: things to be changed if and when it serves the political purpose of those in power. Once that happens, these norms lose their value. They become unreliable and thus unable to serve as channels to adjudicate political differences, in this case, to determine who attains and who does not attain power.The fact that public attention has been focused on Trump’s claim that the election was stolen, the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and Republican stonewalling against the creation of a commission to investigate the attack on Congress, helps mask the fact that the crucial action is taking place across the country in state capitols, with only intermittent national coverage, especially on network television.These Republican-controlled state governments have become, in the words of Jacob Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington, “Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding,” the title of his April paper.Grumbach developed 61 indicators of the level of adherence to democratic procedures and practices — what he calls a “State Democracy Index” — and tracked those measures in the states over the period from 2000 to 2018. The indicators include registration and absentee voting requirements, restrictions on voter registration drives and gerrymandering practices.Grumbach’s conclusion: “Republican control of state government, however, consistently and profoundly reduces state democratic performance during this time period.”The results, he writes,are remarkably clear: Republican control of state government reduces democratic performance. The magnitude of democratic contraction from Republican control is surprisingly large, about one-half of a standard deviation. Much of this effect is driven by gerrymandering and electoral policy changes following Republican gains in state legislatures and governorships in the 2010 election.In terms of specific states and regions, Grumbach found that “states on the West Coast and in the Northeast score higher on the democracy measures than states in the South,” which lost ground over the 18 years of the study. At the same time, “states like North Carolina and Wisconsin were among the most democratic states in the year 2000, but by 2018 they are close to the bottom. Illinois and Vermont move from the middle of the pack in 2000 to among the top democratic performers in 2018.”Grumbach contends that there are two sets of motivating factors that drive key elements of the Republican coalition to support anti-democratic policies:The modern Republican Party, which, at its elite level, is a coalition of the very wealthy, has incentives to limit the expansion of the electorate with new voters with very different class interests. The G.O.P.’s electoral base, by contrast, is considerably less interested in the Republican economic agenda of top-heavy tax cuts and reductions in government spending. However, their preferences with respect to race and partisan identity provide the Republican electoral base with reason to oppose democracy in a diversifying country.At one level, the Republican anti-democratic drive is clearly a holding action. A detailed Brookings study, “America’s electoral future: The coming generational transformation,” by Rob Griffin, Ruy Teixeira and Frey, argues that Republicans have reason to fear the future:Millennials and Generation Z appear to be far more Democratic leaning than their predecessors were at the same age. Even if today’s youngest generations do grow more conservative as they age, it’s not at all clear they would end up as conservative as older generations are today.In addition, the three authors write, “America’s youngest generations are more racially and ethnically diverse than older generations.”As a result, Griffin, Teixeira and Frey contend,the underlying demographic changes our country is likely to experience over the next several elections generally favor the Democratic Party. The projected growth of groups by race, age, education, gender and state tends to be more robust among Democratic-leaning groups, creating a consistent and growing headwind for the Republican Party.From 2020 to 2036, the authors project that the percentage of eligible voters who identify as nonwhite in Texas will grow from 50 to 60 percent, in Georgia from 43 to 50 percent, in Arizona from 38 to 48 percent.As these percentages grow, Republicans will be under constant pressure to enact state legislation to further restrict registration and voting. The question will become: How far are they willing to go?I posed that question to Terry Moe, a political scientist at Stanford. His reply:As for whether this electoral manipulation will “devolve into a broader rejection of the rule of law,” I would say that the Republican Party has already crossed the Rubicon. For four years during the Trump presidency, they defended or ignored his blatant abuses of power, his violations of democratic norms, and his attacks on our democratic institutions, and they routinely circled the wagons to protect him. They had countless opportunities to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law, and they consistently failed to do so.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

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Dianne Morales Faced a Campaign Uprising. Will It Matter to Voters?

      by

      Dianne Morales Faced a Campaign Uprising. Will It Matter to Voters?Ms. Morales is running for New York City mayor on a platform of tackling inequality and shifting resources away from policing. But her campaign has been marred by defections and dysfunction.Dianne Morales campaigned last month at a barber shop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. She is running on a leftist platform and advocates cutting $3 billion from the N.Y.P.D.’s budget.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesThe New York City mayoral race is one of the most consequential political contests in a generation, with immense challenges awaiting the winner. This is the eighth in a series of profiles of the major candidates.June 9, 2021Dianne Morales arrived at a racial justice protest in April, as she had done many times before. This one, however, was different: she was still a Black woman, a mother, an activist — but now, she had become well-known as a mayoral candidate, too.She was a familiar sight at the Barclays Center, hugging friends and greeting supporters, while a handful of aides flanked her. One speaker warned that the protest was not a “campaign stop.” So Ms. Morales asked a campaign staffer, outfitted in a loud purple T-shirt emblazoned with “DIANNE MORALES FOR N.Y.C. MAYOR,” to turn the shirt inside out.“I don’t want this to be political — this isn’t just a moment for us,” she said that evening.From the beginning of her campaign for mayor, Ms. Morales set out to establish herself as the activist-candidate-next-door, the person riding the bus instead of advertising on the side of it. Her long-shot candidacy sought to tap into the zeitgeist of last summer, when the pandemic and protests against police brutality shined a light on New York’s stark racial and economic inequities.Ms. Morales’s values attracted left-leaning voters to her campaign, but she is struggling to explain why her own staff has abandoned her weeks before the June 22 primary.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesBut in recent weeks, Ms. Morales’s campaign has been stalled by its own dysfunction. Two high-level staffers resigned following staff misconduct, six more were terminated and most remaining staff members, who have formed a union, are on strike. At least four political groups, including the Working Families Party, have rescinded their endorsements, donations slowed to a crawl and her senior adviser has joined a rival campaign.Over the weekend, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Maya Wiley, Ms. Morales’s ideologically closest opponent. The endorsement was the most significant sign that progressive leaders see Ms. Wiley as their last, best hope to prevent a more centrist candidate from becoming mayor.Ms. Morales, who staked a claim to the “inherently radical” nature of her campaign, is now struggling to explain why her own staff has abandoned her weeks before the June 22 primary and why one of the most prominent left-wing leaders in the country is not supporting her.Still, she is marching on, holding campaign events and filming an ad in the wake of the walkout. She addressed the accusations last week during a mayoral debate, highlighting her decades of experience as a manager of the operations and staffs of large nonprofits and stressing that she had acted quickly to address personnel concerns.“We responded, we addressed it and we are moving on, moving forward on this campaign, and I’m looking forward to that,” she said.Nia Evans, Ms. Morales’s deputy campaign manager, spoke at a rally in favor of the campaign staff’s new union late last month.Anna Watts for The New York TimesHer career path, largely in education and nonprofits, stands out in a field of lawyers, politicians and businessmen. Her background — working class, Afro-Latina, first-generation college graduate — has helped her appeal to traditionally underrepresented groups. And her campaign, with the most left-leaning platform in the race, has drawn in supporters who believed she would eschew politics as usual.‘She may compromise, but she doesn’t lose’A native of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Ms. Morales, 53, was raised by Puerto Rico-born parents. Her mother worked as an office manager for a union, and her father as a building manager. Finances were so tight that Ms. Morales shared a bed with her grandmother until she left for college.She attended Stuyvesant High School, where one of her teachers was the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt, and Dartmouth College. Ms. Morales has said that she was sexually assaulted during her first week on campus, and she left Dartmouth at the end of her freshman year, eventually graduating from Stony Brook University, on Long Island. After college, she worked as a waitress and a special-education teacher; she later received master’s degrees, in social administration and education administration, from Columbia and Harvard.Ms. Morales then spent two years at the city’s Department of Education, under Michael Bloomberg, as chief of operations and implementation in the Office of Youth Development. She held leadership positions at various nonprofits like The Door, a youth development organization, and Phipps Neighborhoods, the social services arm of Phipps Houses, a housing development group, where she served as chief executive for a decade before filing to run for mayor.She raised her two children in Brooklyn; both graduated from public schools. Ms. Morales has been transparent about struggles her family has faced: her son, 22, was punched by a police officer at a protest, her daughter, 20, was sexually assaulted, and Ms. Morales had to sue the D.O.E. for what she said was a lack of services provided for her daughter’s learning disability. The city provided the services Ms. Morales requested after six years. In the interim, she placed her daughter in a private school.Ms. Morales officially kicked off her campaign last November, after months of heavy involvement in a mutual aid group in Bedford-Stuyvestant, Brooklyn.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times“There’s a fierceness about her, and you want that on your side,” said Lutonya Russell-Humes, a professor and longtime friend of Ms. Morales. “She just doesn’t lose. She may compromise, but she doesn’t lose.”She has talked about how after a career in advocacy work, she wanted to tackle inequity in a bigger, broader way. So in 2019, she filed to run for mayor. Ms. Morales said she was moved to act in part by her disappointment over Donald J. Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, and she pledged to run a campaign that would be heavy on ethics, respect and dignity.She officially kicked off her campaign in November 2020, amid months of heavy involvement in a mutual aid group in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she coordinated food distribution efforts, organized a community fund-raiser, and later arranged for vaccine appointments.As a candidate, Ms. Morales has advocated for rent relief, hazard pay and the release of vulnerable people from Rikers Island. Her staff grew from about a dozen to nearly 100 aides this spring, as Ms. Morales continued to push her central proposal: cutting $3 billion from the police budget, which she says would ultimately lead to greater protection of New Yorkers, especially Black and Latino residents.Facing the progressive paradoxAlmost immediately, Ms. Morales faced the same paradox that has confronted politicians and activists in the progressive left at large: Members of the communities they say they speak for — especially Black and brown New Yorkers — do not always agree with the agendas they propose.Last year, many Black and Latino council members were hesitant to vote yes on a proposal that included, among other things, a pledge to cut $1 billion from the N.Y.P.D., worried that shrinking the police force would adversely affect underserved neighborhoods already marred by violence. Several Black council members vehemently opposed the proposed cut, calling the movement “political gentrification” or likening it to “colonization.”A recent NY1/Ipsos poll found that 72 percent of likely Democratic primary voters supported an increased police presence, following an uptick in high-profile incidents of violent crime. Ms. Morales said that many constituents she has spoken to wanted more access to resources and community programs, services she said could be funded by cuts to the police department’s budget.Ms. Morales has appealed to members of traditionally underrepresented groups, some of whom say they find her more accessible than past candidates for mayor.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesHer plan for her first 100 days in office includes a citywide rent moratorium for individuals and small businesses, ending the N.Y.P.D.’s relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and providing immediate housing, through hotels and city-leased properties, for homeless people.The funding for her policies is largely contingent on increasing taxes on wealthy New Yorkers, and reimagining the city’s budget, cutting bloat and overspending.“I don’t think she identifies as a socialist, but a lot of socialists really like Dianne,” State Senator Jabari Brisport said in March, around the time he endorsed Ms. Morales.Still, Ms. Morales has battled questions of ideological consistency among activists on the left. She supported charter schools, which many progressives believe exacerbate inequality, as recently as last year. And an old interview in which she admitted to voting for Governor Andrew M. Cuomo in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor instead of his progressive challenger, Cynthia Nixon, made waves.“I’m one of those people that was at the point of feeling like the government wasn’t having an impact on my life on a day-to-day basis, and I went with the familiar,” she said in an interview with The New York Times. “It’s definitely not something I feel great about.”She’s also faced plenty of scrutiny around her term as the chief executive of Phipps Neighborhoods: Tenant activists deemed its umbrella organization, Phipps Houses, one of the worst evictors in New York City in 2018 and 2019. (A Phipps spokesperson said the organization followed through with evictions on less than 1 percent of its tenants each year.)She emphasized the separation between the development group and the organization she led. “I’m very deeply proud of the work I did,” she said in an interview. “But it’s also true that Phipps Houses is a serious evictor. Those two things are true at the same time.”.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;}In addition to concerns about Phipps’ reputation, Ms. Morales’s reported take-home pay, nearly $350,000 in 2018, was an eye-popping figure for a candidate who has strongly emphasized her working-class identity, though even as chief executive, Ms. Morales was not the highest paid employee at the organization — filings show that at least three men earned more than she did.“I’m not going to apologize for making a decent living and being able to provide for my family,” Ms. Morales said. Since she stepped down from that position in January 2020, she says, she has not collected a salary. Ms. Morales has been transparent about struggles her family has faced. She and her son celebrated his graduation from college last month.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesA leftist candidate in a liberal townRunning for major office as a leftist is no easy feat, even in a town as overwhelmingly Democratic as New York City. As last summer’s uproar over police brutality, social justice and inequality began to cool, polls mostly placed Ms. Morales in the single-digits, despite some indications that voters were looking for a progressive candidate.She became increasingly focused on capturing voters who felt either excluded by or disappointed with their current representation: people on the front lines of protests and the pandemic.“It’s surprising to me, given what the appetite felt like a year ago,” Ms. Morales said. “It felt like we were ready for a little bit more of rebel revolution. And now it feels kind of like, we’re like, ‘OK, that’s nice.’”Gabe Tobias, manager of Our City, a super PAC that supports progressive candidates, pointed to the recent elections of Mr. Brisport and Representative Jamaal Bowman as proof that left-leaning candidates can win. “People in New York are open to voting for people on the left if they like the candidate,” he said. “But the candidates aren’t rallying people.”Still, Ms. Morales had a devoted, even if small, following that she thought she could grow. Fervent supporters defended her when an investigation by The City last month revealed that in 2002, Ms. Morales paid a $300 bribe to a corrupt water inspector to erase a $12,000-plus water meter bill and then lied twice to city investigators.She was working as a senior employee at the Department of Education at the time, and investigators recommended that she be fired. Instead, Ms. Morales resigned. The water bill turned out to have been fraudulently inflated, and the inspector was later convicted of misconduct.Ms. Morales sought to turn the negative press into a moment that, once again, reinforced her theme of being an ordinary New Yorker. In a statement, she cast herself as a victim, and emphasized how many people were vulnerable to similar scams: “When I say I know what it means to be a New Yorker, I mean it.”The day after her statement appeared was her best fund-raising day on record: she received over $50,000 from 1,225 people.Throughout the race, Ms. Morales has sought to be seen not as politician or a manager, but as a public servant who is still connected to the public. Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesThen, later in May, Whitney Hu, Ms. Morales’s campaign manager, and Ifeoma Ike, her senior adviser, resigned to protest what they called weeks of inaction regarding two staff members accused of discrimination and sexual harassment. (Ms. Hu and Ms. Ike did not respond to requests for comment; Ms. Ike has since joined Ms. Wiley’s campaign.) The two accused staff members have since been terminated. Allegations of poor management, discrimination, lack of pay and health care and a hostile work environment had plagued the campaign for weeks.Some of her staff members said they felt she was not living up to the lofty ideals she espoused on the campaign trail: A candidate who immediately called for the resignations of Mr. Cuomo and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller and mayoral candidate, over allegations of sexual misconduct, was now accused of not addressing it among her own staff.Many of the 90-plus members of the staff moved to unionize, striking after Ms. Morales fired four employees associated with the organizing effort and did not provide a reason. Less than two weeks before the mayoral primary, the strike is still underway, and union members have reported being locked out of work accounts.Ms. Morales recognized the union, but she said she could not agree to many of its demands, some of which — such as for workers to be paid severance after the campaign’s end — she contended violated campaign finance laws. (The Campaign Finance Board handbook disputes this.)“I’m supportive of the organizing, I’m supportive of folks making good trouble, but I can’t actually tolerate disruptive, undermining behavior, and I think that is an issue that we have to deal with,” she said.The fallout has been particularly damaging for Ms. Morales, whose progressive base of supporters may be less likely to forgive what they see as ethical transgressions.“Was there anything that could’ve been done differently? I guess so,” said Peter Ragone, a political adviser who has worked on more than two dozen campaigns. “No candidate or their advisers has ever had to manage their way through something like this, so of course it’s a mess,” he added.But Ms. Morales has embraced the tension within her campaign. In a recent interview with NY1 about the unionization effort, she said: “It’s a beautiful and messy thing.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Ciattarelli Defeats Trump Loyalists in G.O.P. Primary to Take on Murphy

      by

      Jack Ciattarelli won New Jersey’s Republican primary and will face Philip D. Murphy, the Democratic incumbent, in November.Jack Ciattarelli, a businessman and former lawmaker, beat back challenges from candidates loyal to former President Donald J. Trump to win Tuesday’s Republican primary in New Jersey, setting the stage for one of only two governor’s races in the nation in November.Mr. Ciattarelli, a moderate former assemblyman making his second bid for governor, will now face Gov. Philip D. Murphy, who ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination and is hoping to ride high approval ratings for his handling of the pandemic to a second term.Democrats control all branches of government in New Jersey and outnumber Republicans by nearly 1.1 million voters.Still, Mr. Murphy’s run is dogged by nearly a half-century of history: The last Democrat to be re-elected governor in New Jersey was Brendan T. Byrne, in 1977.Mr. Murphy’s favorable ratings have slipped by about seven percentage points since the start of the second wave of the pandemic in October 2020, according to a new Rutgers-Eagleton Poll, but are still at a robust 47 percent.“He’s in a solid position that any politician would envy,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling.Mr. Murphy’s handling of the pandemic earned high marks from 31 percent of residents, according to the poll. But only 7 percent said he deserved an “A” grade on tax policies, a perennial, bread-and-butter voter issue in New Jersey, where residents pay some of the highest taxes in the country.Mr. Ciattarelli’s showing among his Republican base is considered likely to dictate the tenor and policy focus of the campaign. The election will come nearly a year into the first term of President Biden, a Democrat, making it an early bellwether of the electorate’s mood as the midterm congressional elections approach. Virginia is the only other state with a race for governor.“What happens really influences the direction of the Republican Party going forward,” Dr. Koning said, adding that the election will indicate whether, in New Jersey, Republicans will “continue to follow the moderation that the party has been known for” or “become more nationalized toward Trumpism.”Less than two hours after polls closed, Mr. Ciattarelli was declared the winner by The Associated Press. He had captured 49.6 percent of the vote in the four-man race for the Republican nomination by late Tuesday. His win comes four years after a second-place primary finish behind Kim Guadagno, the then-lieutenant governor.“Tonight New Jerseyans showed they are ready for a change, and we are just getting started,” Mr. Ciattarelli, 59, said in a statement. “The fact is, after four years of Murphy’s failed leadership, our state is struggling.”“We will make New Jersey more affordable by lowering property taxes,” he added. “We will create jobs. We will bring Main Street small businesses back to life. We will reduce the size and cost of government.”The Republican primary was seen as a test of the potency of Mr. Trump’s combative brand of politics among New Jersey’s party faithful, and the public discourse often touched on themes from the former president’s divisive term: the politics of mask wearing and the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s win.“We all know Trump won,” Hirsh Singh, an aerospace engineer and self-described Trump Republican who was running his fourth recent campaign for office, said as he faced off against Mr. Ciattarelli in the only public debate of the primary. Only Mr. Singh and Mr. Ciattarelli qualified for public financing, making them eligible for the debate.But it was Philip Rizzo, a pastor and real estate developer who also aligned himself with Mr. Trump, who was in second place late Tuesday with nearly 26 percent of the Republican vote, four percentage points ahead of Mr. Singh.Brian Levine, a former mayor of Franklin, N.J., finished fourth.Turnout was low, with fewer than 1 in 5 registered Republicans voting.Political analysts said the results could pressure Mr. Ciattarelli to strike national themes popular with Trump supporters instead of the good government and fiscal responsibility motifs that are more likely to resonate with mainstream Republicans and the state’s 2.4 million independent voters.Mr. Ciattarelli in 2015 called Mr. Trump a “charlatan.” In last month’s debate, when asked if he supported the former president, he said, “I supported Donald Trump’s policies.”“If he’s got to look over his shoulder every time something happens to make sure the Trump wing of the party is still with him, that’s going to be a serious constraint for him,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.But Benjamin Dworkin, director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University, said Republicans were likely to quickly coalesce around their candidate.“There’ll be some day-after stories about whether he received a high enough percentage of the vote,” Dr. Dworkin said. “But that’s not going to matter by Day 3.”Jack Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman, beat three opponents to win the Republican primary for governor. Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesAll 120 legislative seats were also on Tuesday’s ballot.One of the most fiercely contested Democratic primaries was in Bergen County, for a seat held by Senator Loretta Weinberg, a liberal icon who announced in January that she was retiring. Her exit set up a match between two former allies in the Assembly, Valerie Vainieri Huttle and Gordon Johnson. Without a primary opponent, Mr. Murphy has had a healthy head start in the campaign.By last week, he had spent $7.25 million, outpacing spending by all the Republican candidates combined, according to New Jersey’s Election Law Enforcement Commission.He has used the advantage to promote a range of first-term policy wins, including equal pay for women, a $15 minimum hourly wage, a new tax on income over $1 million and legalized marijuana.“The choice in November is clear,” Mr. Murphy said in a statement soon after the polls closed Tuesday. “It’s a choice between standing for higher wages or going back to an economy that only worked for the wealthy and well connected.”In November, the state borrowed $3.67 billion to plug an expected gap in revenue, enabling Mr. Murphy to propose an election-year budget that calls for no new taxes and few cuts, and sets aside extra funds for the state’s strapped pension program.But the governor, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs investment banker, also pushed through a $14 billion package of corporate tax breaks in less than a week, a move that irked his progressive base.Mr. Murphy’s political maneuvers were seen as helping him broker at least a temporary peace with the Senate’s Democratic president, Stephen M. Sweeney, and a onetime archrival, George Norcross III, an insurance executive and South Jersey power broker. Mr. Norcross benefited greatly from tax incentives passed under Mr. Murphy’s Republican predecessor, Chris Christie, leading to frequent criticism by Mr. Murphy — and a contentious investigation — during the first two years of his term.“Everybody recognized they’re on the same ballot this year,” Dr. Dworkin said. “There’s a détente for now.”Mr. Murphy may yet find himself haunted by another voting quirk in New Jersey: It has been more than three decades since voters elected a governor who hailed from the same party that won the White House in the year after a presidential contest.But the Democrats’ enrollment edge in New Jersey has expanded rapidly, and many voters not affiliated with either of the two dominant parties are considered social moderates.“New Jersey’s electorate is blue and getting bluer,” Dr. Dworkin said. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Terry McAuliffe Wins Democratic Nomination for Governor in Virginia

      by

      Mr. McAuliffe, who previously served as governor, overcame four rivals, benefiting from the support of the party establishment. His victory set up a general election race against a wealthy Republican, Glenn Youngkin.MCLEAN, Va — Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe captured the Democratic nomination for his old job on Tuesday, easily dispatching four party rivals to set up an expensive general election that will test how liberal Virginia has become and present the first major referendum at the ballot box on the Democratic Party under President Biden.Mr. McAuliffe was winning more than 60 percent of the vote when The Associated Press declared him the winner less than an hour after the polls closed. Jennifer Carroll Foy, a former state lawmaker, was running a distant second with about 20 percent, followed by State Senator Jennifer McClellan, Lt. Gov Justin Fairfax and state Delegate Lee Carter.“We are a different state than we were eight years ago and we are not going back,” Mr. McAuliffe said after taking the stage alongside his successor, Gov. Ralph S. Northam, and other elected Democrats. Coming the year after the presidential election, and with few other significant contests on the ballot, Virginia’s governor’s races are always seen as a political temperature check on the party that just won the White House. And 2021 could prove particularly revealing here.Mr. McAuliffe will face the Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former private-equity executive and first-time candidate, in November.Positioning himself as a political outsider and having already spent $12 million of his own fortune, Mr. Youngkin is poised to make Virginia the most competitive election in the country this fall. He’s linking Mr. McAuliffe and Mr. Northam to argue that Virginia Democrats have taken a moderate state sharply to the left since gaining total control of the State Capitol.Recognizing the threat Mr. Youngkin poses, Mr. McAuliffe devoted a significant part of his victory speech to attacking his opponent, linking the financier to former President Donald J. Trump and outlining his conservative views on cultural issues.Warning Democrats not to be complacent, the former governor said “there are 75 millions reasons why Glenn Youngkin could win,” a reference to the amount of money the Republican could spend on the race. “Remember, folks, it could work.”In one promising sign for Democrats after what was a fairly sleepy primary, during which Mr. McAuliffe was never at serious risk, turnout Tuesday was robust. About 500,000 Virginians cast a ballot, a number far closer to the 2017 primary, when Democrats won the governorship, than in 2009, when they were routed. Virginia Republicans, however, are at a low ebb. Not only are they shut out of every statewide office, but, like in other Democratic-leaning states, they are also struggling with how to navigate the dominating presence of Mr. Trump, who remains beloved among party activists but is despised by the broader electorate.Further complicating matters for Republicans here, both Mr. Northam, who by state law cannot succeed himself, and Mr. Biden are popular with Virginia voters. The president carried the state by 10 points last year. And just two years after a blackface scandal that nearly drove him from office, Mr. Northam, who succeeded Mr. McAuliffe, was perhaps Mr. McAuliffe’s most important supporter in the primary, appearing with him in television commercials and on the campaign trail.Indeed, Tuesday’s results represented an emphatic vote of confidence among Democrats in their last two governors.Virginia’s governor’s races are always seen as a political temperature check on the party that just won the White House the year before.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThe results also marked a moment of vindication for Mr. Northam, underscoring his political recovery in a party whose leaders, including Mr. McAuliffe, once called for his resignation. And the outcome was even sweeter for Mr. McAuliffe, who deferred his presidential ambitions to Mr. Biden, for now at least, to try to reclaim the governorship four years after leaving Richmond with some of his plans stymied by a statehouse then controlled by Republicans.The exuberant former fund-raiser and national party chair could barely conceal his glee before Tuesday, as he barnstormed Virginia in the days leading up to the primary by ignoring his Democratic opponents, lacerating Mr. Youngkin and going viral with dance moves that were more enthusiastic than artful.Mr. McAuliffe’s easy victory also highlighted the enduring strength of the Democrats’ moderate wing in a state that has turned a deeper shade of blue in the last decade. The former governor’s opponents, particularly Jennifer Carroll Foy and Lee Carter, ran to his left, arguing that a 64-year-old wealthy white man with pro-business inclinations was out of step with the party. Three of Mr. McAuliffe’s primary rivals are Black: Ms. Carroll Foy, Jennifer McClellan, a state senator, and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax.With Mr. Trump refusing to acknowledge defeat and the country only recently starting to fully emerge from the pandemic, though, the primary was obscured and Mr. McAuliffe’s rivals were starved of political oxygen. The once and potentially future governor also helped himself by claiming early and broad support from the state’s Democratic establishment, including a number of leaders in the Black community. And with all four of the other candidates remaining in the race to the end, none of them were able to coalesce what opposition there was to Mr. McAuliffe.His rivals hoped the contest would mirror the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, when former President Barack Obama emerged as the next-generation hope of the party and defeated the standard-bearer of the old guard, Hillary Clinton, whose campaign Mr. McAuliffe chaired. But this primary more closely approximated last year’s presidential primary, when a coalition of moderate whites and Black Democrats rallied to the moderate candidate they knew.“Terry is a little more experienced,” said John Eley III, a McAuliffe supporter and member of the Newport News School Board. “Coming out of the pandemic you really need someone with experience to take us forward and continue to move Virginia in the right direction.”Jennifer Carroll Foy, a member of the state’s House of Delegates, ran to the left of Mr. McAuliffe.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThe question for Virginia voters this fall is whether they’ll favor a former governor with decades of high-level political experience — Mr. McAuliffe would be only the second person in state history to win nonconsecutive terms — or somebody who’s never before been on the ballot.A Hampton Roads native who, like Mr. McAuliffe, now lives in the affluent Washington suburbs, Mr. Youngkin is casting himself as somebody who will bring a businessman’s touch to state government. The former head of the global investment firm the Carlyle Group, Mr. Youngkin poses a challenge to Democrats because of both his willingness to spend his own cash on the race and his lack of a voting record that can be targeted.His hope is that, two years after Virginia Democrats won the state House and took full control of the State Capitol, voters will want to put a check on what is now the majority party here.“Terry McAuliffe and his sidekick, Ralph Northam, have been pursuing a politics of extremism and political division,” Mr. Youngkin said at a rally in Richmond last month. Mr. Youngkin, however, has accepted an endorsement from Mr. Trump, and Mr. McAuliffe has made clear he will try to tie his Republican rival to a former president whose incendiary style of politics is repellent in Virginia’s vote-rich suburbs.He also will have to dig deep into his donor list to keep pace with his self-financing opponent, something Virginia Democrats predicted he would do with relish. “Terry will raise whatever it takes, he’ll raise $70 to $100 million if he has to,” said Richard Saslaw, the State Senate Majority Leader. Beyond the governor’s race, Republicans have elevated a Black woman who served in the state House, Winsome Sears, as their nominee for lieutenant governor and a Cuban American state legislator, Jason Miyares, to run for attorney general.In another sign of Mr. Northam’s popularity with his party, Democrats nominated his preferred candidate, state Delegate Hala Ayala, for lieutenant governor. Democrats also renominated Attorney General Mark Herring to what would be his third term. More