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      We Underestimated Trump Before. It Didn’t Go Well.

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      Sometimes, and much to our detriment, we find real events are simply too outlandish to take seriously.Many professional Republicans, for example, initially dismissed the movement to “Stop the Steal” as a ridiculous stunt.“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” an anonymous senior Republican official told The Washington Post a few days after Joe Biden claimed victory:He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.Republicans went ahead and humored the president, who then urged his followers to assault the Capitol and try to void the election results in his favor.Now, 10 months after the election, “Stop the Steal” is something like party orthodoxy, ideological fuel for a national effort to seize control of election administration and to purge those officials who secured the vote over Donald Trump’s demand to subvert it. Assuming that he is in good health, Trump will almost certainly run for president in 2024, and if he does, he’ll do so in a Republican Party pacified of any resistance to his will to power.The upshot is that we are on our way to another election crisis. Or, as the election law expert (and frequent New York Times contributor) Rick Hasen has written in a new paper on the risk of election subversion, “The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly, and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules.”Despite the danger at hand, there doesn’t appear to be much urgency among congressional Democrats — or the remaining pro-democracy Republicans — to do anything. The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has passed a new voting rights act aimed at the wave of restrictive new election laws from Republican state legislatures, and Democrats in the Senate have introduced a bill that would establish “protections to insulate nonpartisan state and local officials who administer federal elections from undue partisan interference or control.” But as long as the Senate filibuster is in place — and as long as key Democrats want to keep it in place — there is almost no chance that the Senate will end debate on the bill and bring it to the floor for a simple majority vote.It’s almost as if, to the people with the power to act, the prospect of a Trumpified Republican Party with the will to subvert the next presidential election and the power to do it is one of those events that just seems a little too out there. And far from provoking action, the sheer magnitude of what it would mean has induced a kind of passivity, a hope that we can solve the crisis without bringing real power to bear.It is here that I am reminded of a previous existential threat to American democracy and how one group of Americans struggled to accept the unthinkable even as it unfolded right before their eyes.On Nov. 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The plurality popular vote winner in a four-way race — the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic Party fielded separate candidates, Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge, while conservative Southern unionists coalesced behind the Tennessee Senator John Bell under the Constitutional Union party — Lincoln won a solid majority of electoral votes, 180 out of a total of 303. But his was a sectional victory; not only did Lincoln not win a single Southern electoral vote, but in 10 of the 11 states that became the Confederacy there wasn’t even a Lincoln ballot to cast.The new Republican president was also a specifically Northern president, with a coalition united by its antislavery beliefs. “The country had committed itself electorally to a party which opposed slavery, at least to the extent of agreeing with Lincoln that the institution must ‘be placed in the course of ultimate extinction,’” the historian David M. Potter explains in “The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848 to 1861.”South Carolina, with its heavy concentration of enslaved people and deep-seated pro-slavery sentiment, took the first steps toward leaving the Union, passing a bill that set the date for a convention where elected delegates would debate secession. The speed of South Carolina’s action, Potter notes, “accelerated the tempo of the disunion movement in a decisive way.” In short order, the legislatures of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida announced similar conventions.Secessionists had momentum but, as the historian Russell McClintock writes in “Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession,” “Republicans showed no anxiety about disunion before the election and remarkably little after it.” Lincoln’s first concern, after celebrating his victory, was cabinet selection and the question of patronage since, as McClintock explains, “the individuals Lincoln chose as his advisers would strongly suggest which way he was leaning in his attitude toward the gathering storm in the South and would have great influence over his policy.”Republican-aligned newspapers were nonplused by events in the South. “South Carolina may fume and fulminate, and call conventions and pass resolutions till the crack of doom,” wrote one correspondent in The Chicago Tribune, but “up to this writing nobody is scared that we know of.”Similarly, wrote a like-minded Boston editor, “Almost the only topic of political interest just now, is the rumored insane attempt of a few hotheaded fanatics, to induce the people of a few slave states to secede from the American Union. There is in this nothing new, unexpected, or alarming.”After all, pro-slavery ideologues had threatened disunion in response to policy and political defeats for decades. If the South did not act before, why would it act now?In fact, many Republicans believed the South needed the Union to maintain slavery. In “The Republic in Crisis, 1848-1861,” the historian John Ashworth summarized the Republican view. “How would slave insurrections be put down without federal forces? How could the slaveholders secure the loyalty of the nonslaveholding whites in their own localities?” And, most important, “How could the slaveholders cater to the economic ambitions of the nonslaveholding whites, who because of the inadequacies of the slave system were denied any real economic opportunity?”In short, there was no way the slaveholding South could sustain itself on its own.There was also, for Republicans, the matter of sectional pride. In the past, threats of disunion were part of a Kabuki theater of negotiations. Here’s McClintock: “Southerners demanded political advantages, Northerners balked, Southerners threatened to secede, and Northern Democrats gave in and voted with the Southerners.” The Republicans who scoffed at this latest threat of secession were saying, in essence, that the North would no longer play this game. “Since this is not the first time such cries are heard — since, indeed, they have been long-sounding in our ears, so that their exact value is perfectly understood from the very beginning — there seems no longer excuse or apology for hearkening to them,” the staunchly antislavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts said. “They are to be treated as threats, and nothing more.”Unfortunately for Sumner and the Republicans, their confidence was misplaced. Yes, there were Southern unionists, and yes, there were serious political tensions within the seceding states. But the secessionists had the initiative, and within 90 days of Lincoln’s election they had, as Potter writes, “won ten legislative decisions to hold elections for state conventions, held seven such elections, gained majorities in each, assembled seven conventions, voted seven ordinances of secession, and also took the first steps toward formation of a southern confederacy.”When Republicans finally turned to face the crisis, in December, there were few options at hand. Lincoln would not take office for another three months, Congress had just come back into session, and the outgoing Buchanan administration was divided and in disarray, beset by resignations as some members — like Howell Cobb, of Georgia, the secretary of the Treasury — stood with their states and others stood with the Union.There was obviously no appetite, among Republicans, for disunion. There was also no appetite for compromise, even as a few lawmakers — led by John Crittenden of Kentucky, a Whig — tried to forge one last agreement to satisfy the sections and secure the Union. His proposal, a set of constitutional amendments and congressional resolutions, would have shielded slavery from federal power and congressional interference, reinstating the Missouri Compromise by writing it into the Constitution itself.Republicans were not interested. For the past decade, the Northern lawmakers had made concessions to the South. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was one; Whig support for James Buchanan over the Republican John C. Fremont in the 1856 election was another. “From the standpoint of a sincere Unionist,” Potter writes, “there was something self-defeating about getting the Union temporarily past a crisis by making concessions which strengthened the disunionist faction and perpetuated the tendency toward periodic crises.”The only option left was confrontation, and when Lincoln finally took the reins of state on March 4, 1861, he made it clear that this was the path he would take. “I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual,” Lincoln famously said in his first inaugural address:Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.I am not making a direct analogy between the Civil War era and current American politics. There is nothing, yet, that divides us as starkly as slavery did in the 1840s and 1850s. Nor is the crisis of democratic integrity as acute now as it was during the secession crisis. But the value of studying history is that we can see how previous generations of Americans faced the challenges of their time. No one knows, in the moment, how the story ends, and we can use that insight to try to understand the options available to our forebears as they lived through their present.Republicans had good reason to ignore threats of secession. But they also had reason to heed them. With Lincoln’s election, the slave-owning South had lost its almost total grip on federal power. Sectional tensions had never been stressed in this way before, and Southern panic was palpable. Republicans could not have stopped secession, but they might have been able to better prepare for whatever confrontation lay on the horizon.It is impossible to say where we stand in relation to our own crisis. Perhaps the worst is yet to come; perhaps we’ve already sailed through. Either way, we should secure our elections against whatever threat might materialize because if there is anything our history tells us, it’s that everything looks settled until one day it isn’t.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Frances T. Farenthold, Liberal Force in Texas and Beyond, Dies at 94

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      Known as Sissy, she was an advocate for racial parity and women’s rights, and her name was placed in nomination for the vice presidency in 1972. Tragedy trailed her.The year was 1968, the place Corpus Christi, Texas. The scene was a victory party for a Democratic candidate, elected to the Texas House of Representatives the night before.At the party, a man approached Frances T. Farenthold, a prominent local resident.“Mrs. Farenthold,” he said, “I had the pleasure of voting for your husband yesterday.”“Thank you very much,” she replied. “But I think you’ll discover that you voted for me.”“Well, hell,” the man said, “if I’d known that, I never would have voted for you.”Ms. Farenthold, a politician, feminist, lawyer and human-rights advocate who died at 94 on Sunday at her home in Houston, became quite accustomed to incredulity on her election and long afterward during her half-century on the national stage.The victory that night of Ms. Farenthold, widely known by the childhood nickname Sissy, had been no small trick. On her election, she became the only woman in the 150-member chamber and one of just two in the Texas legislature. (The other, in the State Senate, was the Democrat Barbara Jordan, the eloquent Black lawyer who went on to serve in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979.)Throughout her career, Ms. Farenthold met with casual condescension — the news media perennially described her as a mother of four — and overt discrimination: As a legislator she was shut out of committee meetings held at an all-male private club in Austin.Yet during her two terms in the Texas House, from 1969 to 1973, she helped improve legislative transparency in the wake of a government stock-fraud scandal and spearheaded the passage of a state equal rights amendment.Ms. Farenthold being applauded after she was voted the first chairwoman of the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1973. Associated PressShe would earn renown far beyond her state, becoming, The Texas Observer wrote in 2007, “a near-cult symbol of the Texas that might be.”Ms. Farenthold was a two-time candidate for the Texas governorship, the first chairwoman of the National Women’s Political Caucus, a college president and a nominee for the vice presidency of the United States a dozen years before Geraldine A. Ferraro became the first to be chosen for that office by a major party.In 1975, a Newspaper Enterprise Association panel named Ms. Farenthold one of the 50 most influential women in America, along with Coretta Scott King; Gloria Steinem; Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post; and the congresswomen Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm.“Even by Texas standards, she is something big,” the Washington Post columnist David S. Broder wrote in 1972.Ms. Farenthold’s characteristic self-confidence seemed born of charmed circumstance: A child of privilege, she was educated at an elite private high school and an elite college; flourished in law school, where she was one of three women in a class of 800; successfully resumed her legal career after rearing her children; and was long married to a European nobleman.But as news articles often noted, she also exuded an air of sorrow. A “melancholy rebel,” the Texas journalist Molly Ivins called her.She had reason to be. For all her advantages, Ms. Farenthold had also known repeated, almost unfathomable loss.Daughter of a ‘Southern Belle’Mary Frances Tarlton was born in Corpus Christi on Oct. 2, 1926, to an eminent Democratic family. Her paternal grandfather, Benjamin Dudley Tarlton, had been a member of the Texas House and chief justice of what was then the Second Court of Civil Appeals, in Fort Worth.Her father, Benjamin Dudley Jr., was a district attorney; her mother, the former Catherine Bluntzer, was, as Ms. Farenthold described her, a “Southern belle.”Owing to the efforts of a slightly older brother, Benjamin Dudley III, to pronounce the word “sister,” the infant Mary Frances would be known to the end of her life as Sissy.When Sissy was 2, and Benjamin 3, he died from complications of surgery to remove a swallowed coin. Her parents’ grief suffused the household ever after, she said.Sissy had her own childhood struggles: She suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia and did not learn to read until she was nearly 10. “I’ll never forget wearing the dunce cap in the corner of the classroom,” Ms. Farenthold told People magazine in 1976.But exercising the forward momentum that would be a hallmark of her adult life, she made herself into a scholar. After attending the Hockaday School, a girls’ preparatory academy in Dallas, she entered Vassar at 16.At 19, having earned a bachelor’s degree in political science there, she enrolled in law school at the University of Texas, where her eyes were opened to gender inequality.“I had never heard of differences in income between men and women for the same work, or of women having difficulty getting into grad school,” Ms. Farenthold told The Christian Science Monitor in 1973. “But there the students would make bets on how long it would be before I would be married, and whether I would make it for six weeks.”She received her law degree in 1949 and joined her father’s firm in Corpus Christi. The next year she married George Edward Farenthold, a Belgian-born baron who became a Texas oilman.She forsook the law for more than a decade to rear their five children. Her father, however, continued to pay her bar association dues: He knew she would be back.In 1960, Ms. Farenthold’s 3-year-old son Vincent bled to death after a nighttime fall that went unheeded. Like several of the Farenthold children, he suffered from von Willebrand disease, a clotting disorder.“For years after that, if I heard a child cry, it would just tear me up,” she told Texas Monthly in 1992. Yet she was determined, she said, not to reprise her parents’ perpetual mourning.She returned to work in 1965, becoming the director of legal aid for Nueces County, of which Corpus Christi is the seat. The class and racial inequities she encountered there, she said, would catalyze her political career.“In our society we believe in attacking the powerless — punishing people for being poor and dependent and having to be supported by public funds, while powerful men are embezzling public money to make themselves rich,” Ms. Farenthold told The Guardian in 1973. “I want equal justice.”Voters Sent a WomanHer first House campaign was run on the slimmest of budgets. She refused to advertise on billboards in any case, because she believed they ravaged the landscape. Instead, her supporters fashioned campaign signs from coffin lids and affixed them to the roofs of cars.An opponent’s sign, meanwhile, read “Send a man to do a man’s job.”“No race could be as difficult as the one in ’68 was,” Ms. Farenthold told The Chicago Tribune in 1973, “because I was breaking the ice. No woman had run before in the south of Texas.”Yet on the strength of her reformist populism — she decried the business interests that she felt were running state government — she wonMs. Farenthold in 2009. The Texas journalist Molly Ivins called her a “melancholy rebel.” She had reason to be.Matt Carr/Getty ImagesIn her second term, Ms. Farenthold became known as a member of the Dirty Thirty, a bipartisan reformist group of state legislators convened in response to the Sharpstown scandal of 1971-72. In that scandal, senior government officials — among them Gus F. Mutscher Jr., the Democratic speaker of the state House, and Governor Preston E. Smith, also a Democrat — were accused of being allowed to buy stock under highly favorable terms through a Houston banker, Frank Sharp, in exchange for political favors.The Dirty Thirty (the name, proudly adopted, was an epithet hurled by an opponent) helped bring about greater transparency in state government proceedings, which had often been held behind closed doors with capricious record-keeping and little formal debate.In 1971, with Ms. Jordan and a House colleague, Rex Braun, Ms. Farenthold sponsored the Texas Equal Rights Amendment. The bill, which prohibited discrimination based on “sex, race, color, creed or national origin,” passed in both chambers. It was approved by voters in 1972.Ms. Farenthold unsuccessfully sought the governorship in 1972 and again in 1974. (The first woman to hold that post in Texas was Miriam A. Ferguson, in the 1920s and ’30s; the second was Ann W. Richards, from 1991 to 1995.)Ms. Farenthold earned 28 percent of the vote in the 1972 Democratic gubernatorial primary, finishing second to Dolph Briscoe Jr., a wealthy rancher, who failed to earn a majority. He prevailed in a runoff, went on to win the governorship and was re-elected in 1974.Three days after Ms. Farenthold’s runoff defeat, the body of her 32-year-old stepson, Randy Farenthold, from her husband’s prior marriage, was found in the Gulf of Mexico near Corpus Christi. His hands were bound and a concrete block was chained round his neck.The younger Mr. Farenthold, described in the press as a millionaire playboy, had been scheduled to testify in the federal trial of four associates alleged to have defrauded him of $100,000 in a money-laundering scheme reported to involve organized crime. (One of them, Bruce Bass III, was indicted in the murder in 1976 and received a 16-year sentence in a plea agreement the next year.)Her Name in NominationIn July 1972, at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Ms. Farenthold’s name was placed in nomination for the vice presidency by Ms. Steinem. The nomination was seconded by Fannie Lou Hamer, the African-American civil-rights activist.It was not the first time that a woman had been nominated for the vice presidency by a major party: Lena Springs, a Democrat, had her name placed in nomination in 1924, as did the Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross four years later.But Ms. Farenthold was the first to garner significant support, earning votes from more than 400 delegates, enough to finish second, ahead of notables like Birch Bayh, Jimmy Carter, Edward M. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy.“That was the first time I was supported because I was a woman,” she later said. “I had always been supported despite the fact.”(The winner was Thomas F. Eagleton, who would step down as George S. McGovern’s running mate after it was learned that he had been treated for depression. He was replaced by R. Sargent Shriver Jr.)Ms. Farenthold left electoral politics after her 1974 gubernatorial loss.“What I discovered,” she told The Texas Observer in 2007, “was that political office was a life of constant moral compromise. And I didn’t enter politics with the purpose of compromising my morality.”In 1976 she became the first woman to serve as president of Wells College, a small liberal-arts college, then for women only, in Aurora, N.Y. During her four-year tenure, she balanced its budget, expanded student recruitment and founded the Public Leadership Education Network, a national organization that prepares women for vital public-policy roles.As if in fealty to her Texas roots, Ms. Farenthold also studied the feasibility of enriching Wells’s coffers by tapping the vast reserves of natural gas that lay beneath the campus. In late 1980, after she had left, Wells College heeded her recommendation: It drilled — and struck gas.Returning to Texas, she practiced law in Houston and taught at the University of Houston and at Texas Southern University, a historically Black institution in the city.In 1989, her youngest child, Jimmy, disappeared, at 33. Jimmy, who was Vincent’s identical twin, was said never to have gotten over his brother’s death; by the time he was a young man he was addicted to drugs and drifting around Texas. Despite extensive searches, he was never found and is presumed dead. (The family held a funeral for him in 2005.)Ms. Farenthold’s marriage ended in divorce. She is survived by her son George Farenthold II, who said the cause of death was Parkinson’s disease; another son, Dudley; a daughter, Emilie C. Farenthold; a sister, Genevieve Hearon; three grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a step-grandson, Blake, the son of Randy Farenthold. A younger brother, Dudley Tarlton, was killed in a helicopter crash in 2003.(Blake Farenthold is a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas who did not seek re-election in 2018 after it was revealed that he had paid $84,000 of taxpayers’ money to settle a sexual harassment suit against him.)Ms. Farenthold’s many laurels include a lifetime achievement award, named for Ms. Ivins, from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.Her work in later years included agitating for gay rights and against South African apartheid, the Iraq War and the torture of detainees at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay. She served as chair of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank in Washington, and as a human-rights observer in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq and elsewhere.There remained much to do — enough for a lifetime, as Ms. Farenthold made plain in a 2009 public-television interview.“I’ve always said,” she declared, “on the way to my funeral, if we passed a demonstration, I’ll probably jump out.” More

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

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

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

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

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      Redrawing the Map in New York

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

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

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

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

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

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

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