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      Democrats Were Lukewarm on Campaign Biden. They Love President Biden.

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      Joe Biden never captured the hearts of Democratic voters in the way Barack Obama once did. But now that he is in office, he is drawing nearly universal approval from his party.The old cliché has it that when it comes to picking their presidential candidates, Democrats fall in love. But the party’s primary race last year was hardly a great political romance: Joseph R. Biden Jr. drew less than 21 percent of the Democratic vote in the Iowa and Nevada caucuses and a dismal 8.4 percent in the New Hampshire primary.While Mr. Biden went on to win his party’s nomination, he was never widely seen as capturing the hearts of Democratic voters in the way Barack Obama and Bill Clinton once did. For many of his supporters, he seemed simply like their best chance to defeat a president — Donald J. Trump — who inspired far more passion than he did.Yet in the first few months of his administration, Mr. Biden has garnered almost universal approval from members of his party, according to polls, emerging as a kind of man-for-all-Democrats after an election year riddled with intraparty squabbling.He began his term this winter with an approval rating of 98 percent among Democrats, according to Gallup. This represents a remarkable measure of partisan consensus — outpacing even the strongest moments of Republican unity during the presidency of Mr. Trump, whose political brand depended heavily on the devotion of his G.O.P. base.And as Mr. Biden nears his 100th day in office, most public polls have consistently shown him retaining the approval of more than nine in 10 Democrats nationwide.Pollsters and political observers mostly agree that Mr. Biden’s popularity among members of his party is driven by a combination of their gratitude to him for getting Mr. Trump out of office and their sense that Mr. Biden has refused to compromise on major Democratic priorities.“He has this ability to appeal to all factions of the party, which is no surprise to the centrists, but somewhat of a surprise to the progressives,” Patrick Murray, the director of polling at Monmouth University, said in an interview.During the primary, Mr. Biden was the establishment figure, a Washington centrist in a diverse field that included a number of younger and more progressive rivals. While he won a plurality of Democrats, he struggled to win support from the party’s younger and more liberal voters.But as president, he has been governing much like a progressive without abandoning his longtime public identity as a moderate.“He has found a winning formula, at least for now,” said David Axelrod, who served as a chief strategist to Mr. Obama. “His tone and tenure reassure moderates and his agenda thrills progressives.”To that end, Mr. Biden has avoided taking up liberals’ most politically thorny proposals — like expanding the Supreme Court or canceling $1 trillion in student debt — while sticking to a public posture of bipartisan outreach and measured language. But his policy agenda has given progressives plenty to cheer, including the dozens of executive orders he has signed and the ambitious legislative agenda he has proposed, beginning with the passage of one of the largest economic stimulus packages in American history.Some progressives say the crises facing the country and the urgency of solving them have helped Mr. Biden, who was being evaluated against what Democrats saw as months of inaction by the previous administration.“Democrats were demanding shots in the arms and true economic help from the government,” said Faiz Shakir, who is a political adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders and managed Mr. Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. “There was incredible unity in the Democratic Party of rising to the moment and acting quickly.”Mr. Shakir pointed to the passing of a popular $1.9 trillion relief package shortly after Mr. Biden took office, a bill he muscled through without any Republican support — opting for Democratic unity over bipartisan compromise. The president’s embrace of stimulus payments as part of that legislation — a policy that put money in the pockets of 127 million Americans — within weeks of taking office certainly didn’t hurt his standing, Mr. Shakir said.“It just had so many benefits for so many people,” he said.That bill was especially well liked within Mr. Biden’s party: A Quinnipiac University poll conducted just before it passed found that it enjoyed support from 97 percent of Democrats. As a result, the president has been able to unify his party around major initiatives tied to liberal investments in the social safety net.“The Democratic Party has shifted itself,” Mr. Murray said. “It has become more progressive, and you even have centrists who are on board with a few things that they wouldn’t have been happy with a few years ago.”But Mr. Biden may also be benefiting from some forms of progress that were not entirely of his own making. Millions of Americans are being vaccinated daily, moving the country closer to emerging from the coronavirus pandemic. As the United States moves slowly but steadily toward herd immunity, forecasters anticipate a quickly expanding economy, with even Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, predicting a financial boom that could last into 2023.Mr. Biden took steps to hasten virus vaccine production, but some of his political success on that front can be attributed to savvy public positioning. By tamping down expectations for vaccine distribution during his first weeks in office, when Mr. Biden beat his own expectations, his team conjured an image of a White House working overtime to leave the efforts of the previous administration in the dust.Though Mr. Trump laid the groundwork for widespread vaccine production with his Operation Warp Speed program, it is Mr. Biden who may be reaping the political benefit from that push — especially within his own party.Indeed, Democrats’ antipathy for Mr. Trump has a lot to do with their fondness for the new president, said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “Democrats utterly detested Donald Trump and Joe Biden saved them from Donald Trump, and so they love him,” Mr. Ayres said. “If you look at the overall job approval, not just among Democrats, Biden’s job approval is the inverse of Donald Trump’s.”Mr. Biden is hardly the first president to enjoy broad support from his party upon taking office. It is typical for commanders in chief to start their first term with a broadly positive approval rating, as Mr. Biden did, although that is always subject to the pull of gravity after the first few weeks are over.But in the history of Gallup polling going back to the mid-20th century, Mr. Biden is the first president to have started his term with the approval of more than 90 percent of partisans.To a degree, this reflects the fact that as the two major parties have grown more entrenched in their ideological identities, voters at the center have become slightly less likely to identify with either one. As a result, there has been a recent uptick in the share of Americans calling themselves political independents.“The partisan tribalism is such that you really are, in many ways, a true believer if you’re still going to call yourself a Democrat or a Republican,” Mr. Murray said. “What you’re left behind with is people who are going to be more staunch in their partisanship.”Just a few decades ago, a president with sky-high approval within his party would also be relatively popular outside it. But Mr. Biden’s approval rating, though positive over all, remains low among Republicans and stuck in the low-to-mid-50s among independents.“If you go back a generation and somebody has a 95 percent approval rating within their own party, that probably means they have about 50 percent approval among voters in the other party,” Mr. Murray said. “We don’t have that. We have this partisan split. His overall job rating is just above 50 percent. It’s still positive, but we would expect in former days that that would translate to a 60-percent approval rating.” More

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      Can These Democratic Pollsters Figure Out What Went Wrong?

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      Five competing Democratic polling firms put their heads (and their data) together about 2020.Everybody agrees the polls missed the mark in 2020, as they had four years earlier. But nobody’s certain why.In search of answers, five competing Democratic polling firms have decided to put their heads (and their data) together, forming a group that will undertake a major effort to figure out what went wrong in 2020 — and how the polling industry can adjust.The team released a memo today announcing the project and offering some preliminary findings that seek to address why polls again underestimated support for Donald Trump. But over all, the message was one of openness and uncertainty. The big takeaway: Things need to change, including the very nature of how polls are conducted.Innovation aheadThe authors wrote that their analysis thus far had pushed them toward thinking that pollsters must take a boldly innovative approach when mapping out the road ahead.“We know we have to explore all possibilities,” Fred Yang of Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, one of the five firms involved in the study, said in an interview today.That will probably mean embracing some tools that had been considered too untested for mainstream public polling: Officially, the survey-research community still considers live-interview phone calls to be the gold standard, but there is growing evidence that innovative methods, like sending respondents text messages that prompt them to respond to a survey online, could become essential.And it could also mean going back to some methods that have become less common in recent decades, including conducting polls via door-to-door interviews, or paying respondents to participate.“We are going to put every solution, no matter how difficult, on the table,” the memo read.The consortium of Democratic firms plans to release a fuller report this year; so will a number of traditional survey-research institutions. The American Association for Public Opinion Research, which undertook a widely discussed post-mortem analysis in 2016, is already at work on another. AAPOR is a bastion of polling traditionalism, but if the Democratic groups’ preliminary report is any indication, even the association’s coming analysis might acknowledge that the industry should embrace more experimental approaches to data collection.In a separate analysis released late last month, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight found that traditional, live-interview phone polls weren’t meaningfully more accurate than others. In fact, out of dozens of polling firms analyzed, none of those with the lowest average error had exclusively used live-interview phone calls (and some hadn’t used them at all). Two of the three most accurate firms were Republican-aligned companies that are held in suspicion by most leaders in the social-science world, partly because they use methods that have long been considered suspect — including robo-calling, as well as newer techniques like contacting respondents via text message.What drove polling errorThe Democratic firms’ memo said polls had slightly missed the mark when determining the makeup of the electorate last year. This means they misunderstood, to some degree, who was likely to vote and who wasn’t: a crucial “X” factor in pre-election polling.Among so-called low-propensity voters — that is, the ones pollsters consider the least likely to turn out — Republicans proved four times as likely as Democrats to actually end up casting a ballot in November. This can be taken as another indication of how effective Donald Trump was at expanding the Republican electorate, and pollsters’ difficulties accounting for that, particularly among white voters without college degrees and those in rural areas.Tellingly, the researchers found that voters who considered Trump “presidential” were underrepresented in polls.But a greater source of concern was so-called measurement error. That’s a fancy way of saying polls have had trouble figuring out what percentage of people in certain demographic groups plan to vote for one candidate over the other.The report proposed some explanations for why there was significant measurement error in 2020 pre-election polling, and it landed on two big potential culprits. One was the higher prevalence of anti-institutional views (sometimes referred to as “social distrust”) among Trump supporters, meaning those voters would be less willing to respond to official surveys. The second explanation was the lower incidence of pandemic-related fears among Trump voters, meaning they were more likely than Biden voters to be willing to turn out to vote.“What we have settled on is the idea there is something systematically different about the people we reached, and the people we did not,” the report’s authors wrote. “This problem appears to have been amplified when Trump was on the ballot, and it is these particular voters who Trump activated that did not participate in polls.”New York Times PodcastsThe Improvement Association: A true story about election fraudWhy do election fraud allegations live on, even after they’ve been debunked? In our new audio series with Serial Productions, we went to one rural county to try to find out. Listen to the first episode now.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      How a Very Weird Quirk Might Let Michigan Republicans Limit Voting Rights

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      State Republicans are pushing a voting law that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said she will veto. But a rarely used option for a voter-driven petition could allow the G.O.P. to circumvent her veto.At first glance, the partisan battle over voting rights in Michigan appears similar to that of many other states: The Republican-led Legislature, spurred by former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about election fraud, has introduced a rash of proposals to restrict voting access, angering Democrats, who are fighting back.But plenty of twists and turns are looming as Michigan’s State Senate prepares to hold hearings on a package of voting bills beginning Wednesday. Unlike Georgia, Florida and Texas, which have also moved to limit voting access, Michigan has a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who said last month she would veto any bill imposing new restrictions. But unlike in other states with divided governments, Michigan’s Constitution offers Republicans a rarely used option for circumventing Ms. Whitmer’s veto.Last month, the state’s Republican chairman told activists that he aimed to do just that — usher new voting restrictions into law using a voter-driven petition process that would bypass the governor’s veto pen.In response, Michigan Democrats and voting rights activists are contemplating a competing petition drive, while also scrambling to round up corporate opposition to the bills; they are hoping to avoid a replay of what happened in Georgia, where the state’s leading businesses didn’t weigh in against new voting rules until after they were signed into law.The maneuvering by both parties has turned Michigan into a test case of how states with divided government will deal with voting laws, and how Republicans in state legislatures are willing to use any administrative tool at their disposal to advance Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud and pursue measures that could disenfranchise many voters. The proposal puts new restrictions on how election officials can distribute absentee ballots and how voters can cast them, limiting the use of drop boxes, for example. “These bills contain some of the most outlandish voter suppression ideas that Michigan has ever seen,” said State Senator Paul Wojno, the lone Democrat on the Michigan Senate’s elections committee. “We’ll find out if what was adopted in Georgia may have backfired, causing legislation like this to be put under a bigger microscope.”Michigan’s two largest companies, the iconic automakers Ford and General Motors, have not weighed in on the proposals specific to the state. But both have indicated they opposed changes to Michigan’s election laws that would make voting harder — an apparent effort to get ahead of the issue, rather that come under pressure after laws are passed, as happened to two big Georgia-based companies, Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines.On Tuesday, GM posted a statement calling on the state legislature to ensure that any new voting law protect “the right for all eligible voters to have their voices included in a fair, free and equitable manner.’’“Anything less falls short of our inclusion and social justice goals,’’ it added, an apparent shot across the bow of G.O.P. lawmakers.The Republican push to tighten Michigan’s election laws comes as the state faces a major spike in coronavirus cases, with the number nearing the peak in late December. Ms. Whitmer, who declined to be interviewed, on Friday called for a two-week pause in youth sports, in-person school and indoor dining and asked President Biden for more vaccine. Republican opposition to Ms. Whitmer in Michigan has intensified during the pandemic.Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said last month she would veto any bill imposing new restrictions on voting.Matthew Hatcher/Getty ImagesMichigan is one of just nine states that allow voters to petition lawmakers to take up a piece of legislation; if passed, the law is not subject to a governor’s veto. If the Legislature does not pass the bill within 40 days of receiving it, the measure goes before voters on the next statewide ballot. It is a rarely used procedure: Lawmakers have passed only nine voter-initiated bills since 1963, according to the state Bureau of Elections.But last month, Ron Weiser, the state’s Republican Party chairman, told supporters in a video reported on by The Detroit News that the state party planned to subsidize a petition drive to cut Ms. Whitmer out of the lawmaking process.To do so would require 340,047 voter signatures, or 10 percent of the vote in the last governor’s election. Mr. Weiser said that the signatures would be gathered through county committees with party funding. So far, the signature gathering has not begun, nor has the secretary of state’s office received a proposed bill needed to start a petition drive, as required by law.A spokesman for the state G.O.P., Ted Goodman, said the party could easily gather the needed signatures for the initiative if Ms. Whitmer vetoes a bill that emerges from the Legislature. “We’re confident we can ensure election integrity reforms ahead of the 2022 elections,’’ Mr. Goodman said.A preview of what might be in a voter-initiated bill was suggested by a package of 39 bills to change the state’s voting laws that Republicans in the State Senate introduced on March 24. Democrats denounced most of the proposals.The package would prohibit the secretary of state from mailing unsolicited applications for absentee ballots to voters, require voters to mail in a photocopied or scanned ID to receive an absentee ballot, and restrict the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, among other rule changes. These measures would roll back some of the expanded access to absentee ballots that Michigan voters approved, by a two-to-one margin, in a 2018 vote to amend the Constitution.The bills also include some provisions to make voting easier, such as adding an extra day of early voting on a Saturday and allowing 16-year-olds to preregister to vote.But the bulk of proposed changes would impose new hurdles to absentee voting, after Mr. Trump and Michigan Republicans last year spread misinformation about wide fraud and “irregularities” in the use of mail ballots. They particularly targeted Detroit, the state’s largest city, which has a majority-Black population.Ron Weiser, left, Michigan’s Republican Party chairman, with Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman. Mr. Weiser said the state party planned to subsidize a petition drive to collect the signatures necessary to circumvent a veto by the governor.David Guralnick/Detroit News, via Associated PressIn November’s election, 3.3 million absentee ballots were cast in the midst of a pandemic, out of 5.5 million total votes. Citing scores of audits, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, called the election one of the most secure in Michigan history. Ms. Benson said only 15,300 absentee ballots were rejected, less than 0.5 percent, for reasons such as arriving too late. Mr. Biden carried Michigan by 154,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points.Ms. Benson refused to appear last week before a legislative hearing on the 2020 election, saying it could “further the lies” that undermine faith in voting. The secretary of state has proposed her own election changes, including making Election Day a holiday and allowing clerks two weeks before that date to open absentee ballots and begin processing them; the goal is to shorten the wait for results — one factor that fed misinformation about the 2020 outcome.Despite the courts’ near-universal rejection of claims of fraud, including the Michigan Supreme Court, Ruth Johnson, a Republican state senator and former secretary of state, said there was a “lot of gaming of the system.”“There was more cheating last year in an election than I’ve ever seen in Michigan,” said Ms. Johnson, who is chairwoman of the State Senate’s elections committee.Ms. Johnson, who represents a district in the Detroit suburb of Oakland County, said the suite of Republican voting bills would receive a fair hearing before her committee and said there was “no predetermined outcome” about which ones would be advanced to the full Senate.Michigan Democrats are working under the presumption that they will have to fight off both the legislative proposals and a major petition drive.Lavora Barnes, the party chairwoman, said she was weighing plans that include a competing petition drive and tailing Republican signature gatherers to speak directly to voters and counter G.O.P. claims. She said Democrats might also argue in court that the new voting legislation violates the state Constitution.“We will have our grass-roots folks on the ground making sure folks are educated about what they are signing,” Ms. Barnes said. “I’m imagining a world where they are standing out in front of folks’ grocery stories and we are actively communicating on the ground during that entire process.”Republicans’ proposed measures would roll back some of the expanded access to absentee ballots that Michigan voters approved by a two-to-one margin in 2018.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesNancy Wang, the executive director of a group called Voters Not Politicians, which drove support for the 2018 constitutional amendment, said she was preparing a campaign to pressure Michigan corporations to oppose any new restrictions on voting before a law is passed.“We’re making it known what is happening and what the impact would be if these bills were to pass,” Ms. Wang said. “We’re trying to get the same result they had in Georgia, but earlier.”Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, said last Friday that the company supports “initiatives that promote equitable access and do not disproportionately affect any segment of the population.’’ Michigan Democrats said the prospect of a citizen initiative to bypass the normal lawmaking process would serve to allow a fraction of the state’s white population to disenfranchise Black voters.“It feels almost criminal to me,’’ said Sarah Anthony, a state representative from Lansing. “As an African-American woman who has worked for years now to expand the right to vote, to mobilize and educate people about why it’s so important to vote, and to lower barriers to people, and now be in the Legislature and see these crafty ways that folks are trying to strip us of the right to vote, words can’t describe it.’’ More

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      10 Weeks to the Finish Line: The N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race Heats Up

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      With the primary weeks away, candidates are sharpening their attacks, ramping up in-person events and preparing to spend the millions of dollars that they have stockpiled.It was opening day for Coney Island’s famed amusement parks, long shuttered during the pandemic, and Andrew Yang — the 2020 presidential candidate who has shifted his personality-driven campaign to the New York City mayoral race — was in his element.“Coney Island is open for business!” he declared on Friday, pumping his fists as he made his way down a windswept boardwalk. “New York City! Can you feel it?”What it felt like was a campaign event, and Mr. Yang was not the only mayoral candidate to take advantage. Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, mingled along the midway, playing games with his family; Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, rode bumper cars and visited small businesses.New York faces immense challenges on the road to recovery from the pandemic. Thousands of deaths, economic devastation, rising violent crime and deep racial and socioeconomic inequality complicate the city’s path forward at every turn, making the upcoming mayor’s race the most consequential city contest in at least two decades. Now, as the city slowly comes back to life amid warmer weather and coronavirus vaccinations, the race is entering a new, increasingly vigorous phase.After months of conducting virtual fund-raisers and participating in an endless round of online mayoral forums, candidates are sharpening their attacks, ramping up their in-person campaign schedules and preparing to spend the millions of dollars that several contenders have stockpiled but few have spent on public advertising.About 10 weeks before the June 22 Democratic primary that is likely to determine the next mayor, four candidates currently make up the top tier of contenders, according to available polling and interviews with elected officials and party strategists. There is Mr. Yang, the undisputed poll leader; Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Mr. Stringer; and Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and a former MSNBC analyst.But the race appears fluid enough for a candidate to break out late like Mr. de Blasio did in 2013, with many undecided voters only now beginning to consider the race, according to interviews with New York Democrats across the city and some polling data.A confluence of factors — focus on vaccination efforts and debates over reopening, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s crises in Albany, and political burnout following the presidential campaign — have overshadowed civic discussion on a range of issues that will shape the city’s post-pandemic recovery.The candidates are racing to change that.“You can feel it beginning to really heat up,” said Representative Greg Meeks, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Queens Democrats, saying he believed the race would intensify further as the month goes on.The next mayor, who will assume responsibility for a 300,000-person city work force, will inherit a series of staggering challenges. The race will test whether voters are in the mood for a candidate who exudes managerial competence, one who is a booster for the city, someone with the most boldly ambitious ideas, or the contender who best offers a mix of all three approaches.The arrival of ranked-choice voting in New York City, in which voters can support up to five candidates in order of preference, has added another layer of unpredictability into the contest.Many of the campaigns expect that the race will kick into high gear in May, when more contenders are expected to buy television ads and unions will accelerate in-person pushes. A series of official debates will also begin next month, and some campaigns are starting to think about debate preparations. Mr. Yang knows he is likely to be a focal point of that strategizing.Indeed, a number of Mr. Yang’s opponents are intensifying their attacks on his candidacy.Mr. Stringer has sought to brand Mr. Yang as a politically inexperienced promoter of ill-conceived ideas, like a casino on Governors Island. Mr. Adams has ripped into Mr. Yang for leaving the city during the pandemic. And Ms. Wiley has criticized how Mr. Yang has discussed issues like stimulus spending, while a Wiley campaign aide compared him to a “mini-Trump,” a serious accusation in Democratic politics.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, has a significant war chest and a roster of prominent endorsements.James Estrin/The New York TimesMr. Yang’s advisers — along with an aggressive group of “Yang Gang” supporters active online — have defended him at every turn, arguing that the attacks simply illustrate his standing in the race, and cast him as a proud political outsider with fresh ideas.The field includes several candidates of color, and Mr. Yang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants, has worked intensely to engage Asian-American voters. Another significant question in coming weeks will be which candidate resonates with the largest number of Black voters. Mr. Adams, a Black former police officer and a veteran Brooklyn official, is well positioned to make his case, but he is not alone.Raymond J. McGuire, a Black former Citigroup executive who has campaigned heavily in vote-rich southeast Queens, went to Minneapolis this past week with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, to attend the trial over George Floyd’s death.And on Friday, Ms. Wiley — a Black woman who already had the backing of the powerful Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union — was endorsed by Representative Yvette Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat and member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Dianne Morales, the most progressive candidate in the race, identifies as Afro-Latina and has sparked intense interest among left-wing grass-roots activists.Mr. Stringer, with his significant war chest and roster of prominent endorsements, is competing for the city’s most progressive voters along with Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales. Left-wing activists, alarmed by the perceived strength of Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams — two more centrist candidates — are strategizing about how to elevate a contender or group of contenders more aligned with their vision.A number of organizations, from the left-wing Working Families Party to the United Federation of Teachers, are in the midst of endorsement processes, which could help voters narrow down their preferred candidates. Decisions may come as soon as this week.There is still time for the race to evolve. Ms. Garcia is deeply respected by some of the people who know City Hall best. Mr. McGuire and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, have aired television ads and have super PACs aiding them, a dynamic that could boost their ability to compete, though neither has yet caught fire.Mr. McGuire, in particular, was embraced as a favorite of the business community early on — with the fund-raising to prove it — but there are growing signs that other candidates may also be acceptable to the city’s donor class.Mr. Yang has been courting Mr. McGuire’s donors, encouraging them to take something of a portfolio management approach by investing in multiple candidates who are supportive of the business community, according to someone with direct knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. The Yang campaign declined to comment.Lupe Todd-Medina, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGuire, suggested there had been such “rumors” before, but pointed to his significant past fund-raising hauls despite that chatter.“Ray is a serious candidate who has built and led the kind of teams New York will need for an inclusive comeback,” she said.In contrast to his energetic but failed presidential bid, which was centered in part on a pitch for universal basic income, Mr. Yang’s mayoral race is defined less by any particular policy platform and more by a political idea. He wants to be the chief cheerleader for the city’s comeback, a message that his team believes cuts a sharp contrast with the current mayoral administration. Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and a former MSNBC analyst, has the backing of the powerful Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.Mark Lennihan/Associated PressFrom the beginning of Mr. Yang’s campaign, he has pursued perhaps the most aggressive in-person schedule of anyone in the race, contracting Covid and a kidney stone along the way. He has commanded attention at ready-made campaign events that other candidates have not matched.When the movies reopened, he and his wife caught a film. He was at Yankee Stadium on opening day, and at Citi Field for the Mets’ home opener. Last week he appeared with Huge Ma — better known online as “TurboVax” — who is beloved by some New Yorkers for his Twitter feed and a website that helps people find vaccine appointments.The question for Mr. Yang is whether that attention translates into votes — and rivals are aware that it could. Mr. Yang has no government experience, he has never voted for mayor and his record of business success is uneven. Many New Yorkers — elected officials, voters and party leaders — have serious questions about his managerial capabilities and the depth of his city knowledge.Some left-wing leaders are beginning to discuss what it would take to stop him. So far, no serious anti-Yang effort from them or from unions supporting other candidates has materialized.Then there is Mr. Adams, who has secured several major union endorsements and has worked to build ties to a range of key constituencies across the city. Mr. Adams, who has long pushed for meaningful policing changes, has been notably outspoken about the rise in shootings, an approach that may resonate with voters who are especially attuned to the spike in violent crime.“I would like to see the actual mayoral candidates begin to talk more about how they’re going to address the gun violence,” said Jumaane D. Williams, the city public advocate, who has not endorsed a contender. “Out of everyone, he may have been talking about it the most. My hope is that we see more and more folks talk about it.”Representative Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat whose district includes a slice of Queens, cited Mr. Adams’s work on both police reform and public safety in explaining why he endorsed him last week.Back at Coney Island, Mr. Yang declared victory after procuring a hot dog from Nathan’s: ketchup and mustard, no relish or sauerkraut.“Delicious,” he proclaimed. As he chewed, the conversation turned to campaign strategy in the weeks ahead.“I feel a little bit bad for the TV watchers of New York City because they’re about to be bombarded by a bunch of political ads,” he laughed. “I think my campaign will, for better or for worse, be part of that.” More

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      ‘Sense of Disappointment’ on the Left as the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race Unfolds

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      Even as New York has veered toward the left, two more-moderate candidates, Andrew Yang and Eric Adams, lead the mayoral race.Over the last year, New York politics have appeared to lurch ever leftward. First came the primary victories last summer in a series of House and state legislative races, then the legalization of recreational marijuana, and just this week, a state budget agreement that would raise taxes on the wealthy and create a $2.1 billion fund to aid undocumented workers.But in the New York City mayor’s race, the two candidates who have most consistently shown strength are among the most moderate in the field.The sustained polling leads of Andrew Yang followed often by Eric Adams have made some left-wing activists and leaders increasingly alarmed about the trajectory of the race, leaving them divided over how to use their considerable influence to shape its outcome before the June 22 primary.“From my perspective on the left in New York, there’s definitely a little sense of disappointment around how the race is shaping up right now,” said Matthew Miles Goodrich, who is involved with the Sunrise Movement, an organization of young climate activists. “There seems to be a mismatch between who is leading in the New York City mayoral race and the tenor of the times that we’re supposed to be living in.”The mayoral field still reflects the leftward shift of many Democrats in the city, with many voters just beginning to tune into the race. Scott M. Stringer and Maya Wiley, two of the most progressive candidates in the race, are generally discussed as part of the field’s top tier, with the expected resources to be competitive through the end, and perhaps to break out in a meaningful way. Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, has undeniably captured real grass-roots energy.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, is one of the most left-wing candidates in New York’s mayoral race.David Dee Delgado/Getty ImagesBut for now, no one doubts that Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate, and Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, are in especially strong positions, with Mr. Yang in particular consistently topping polls.That emerged as a significant concern at a private meeting on Wednesday of representatives from several prominent left-wing organizations, including Our City, Democratic Socialists of America, Sunrise and other groups, according to two people familiar with the meeting. A consensus emerged that the left needed to mobilize urgently around the city elections, according to one of those people.Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang embrace progressive positions on a wide range of issues, and their allies say that they are well within the mainstream of the Democratic Party — far more so, they argue, than some left-wing activists are. And on Friday afternoon, as he campaigned in Coney Island, Mr. Yang heaped praise on the new state budget as well as marijuana legalization.But it is also true that they are relatively friendly toward the business and real estate communities. And on the spectrum of mayoral candidates, they are also more moderate on policing matters, even as they promote criminal justice reform. (Indeed, Mr. Adams, a Black former police officer who says he has experienced police brutality himself, spent much of his career urging changes in the system, but he is also a onetime Republican who speaks often about the constructive role he believes policing can play in promoting public safety.)Those stances are sharply at odds with the anti-real estate, anti-corporate and “defund the police” rhetoric that has animated the left-wing New York scene in recent years — and in particular after the killing of George Floyd last May — but that has largely been untested in a citywide race.As more voters tune in, the contest will offer the clearest picture yet of the political mood of a large, racially diverse city on issues surrounding economic recovery, a rise in violent crime and deep inequality that the coronavirus pandemic has only worsened.Across the city, younger left-wing activists have been part of a coalition that has shaped legislative and House races. But that contingent has not been determinative in statewide races for governor or, at a national level, in the presidential campaign, where moderate Black voters and other older, more centrist voters played a decisive role in giving President Biden the nomination.Even as some activists worry about the state of the mayor’s race, many are struggling to coalesce behind one of three candidates most consistently mentioned as progressive contenders: Mr. Stringer, the well-funded city comptroller who boasts a raft of endorsements from left-wing lawmakers; Ms. Morales, who is perhaps the most left-wing candidate in the race; and Ms. Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who on Friday was endorsed by Representative Yvette Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat.Maya Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was endorsed on Friday by Representative Yvette Clarke of New York, a Brooklyn Democrat.Eduardo Munoz/Reuters“The progressive community in New York is divided,” said Mr. Goodrich, who favors Mr. Stringer. “No one has emerged as the clear, viable progressive hero, progressive champion. That’s made it tough for anyone to break out.”The race for city comptroller offers a sharp contrast: Some of the nation’s most prominent progressives, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have lined up behind City Councilman Brad Lander. They have not yet engaged in the mayor’s race, and it is not clear that they will.To many on the left wing of the New York political spectrum, the victory of either Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams would represent a loss for a movement that has gathered strength since Ms. Ocasio-Cortez toppled Representative Joseph Crowley, the Queens County Democratic leader, in the 2018 primary.Certainly, there is still plenty of time for the most liberal voters in New York to unite around a candidate or slate of candidates; under the city’s new ranked-choice system, voters rank up to five candidates in order of preference. If a candidate garners more than 50 percent of the vote, that candidate wins. If not, the last-place candidate falls out of the race, and the voters who made that candidate their first choice get their second-choice votes counted instead. The runoff continues until there is a winner.A number of lawmakers and other Democrats have offered ranked-choice endorsements — especially of Mr. Stringer and Ms. Morales — and organizations that are currently weighing endorsement decisions could make the same call or support a slate of candidates.Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, is perhaps the most leftward leaning Democrat among the leading mayoral candidates.Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesThe Working Families Party is in the process of deciding its endorsement, which could be influential and come as soon as next week. Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams are among the candidates participating in that process along with other more left-wing contenders, according to some familiar with the conversations.Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams each claim to be the most attuned to New Yorkers’ concerns around the economy, reopening the city and the balance of public safety and police reform.Mr. Adams has also cast himself as a business-friendly candidate who sees no need to demonize real estate. “I am real estate,” Mr. Adams, who owns a multifamily property in Brooklyn, has said. Mr. Adams also previously led an organization that advocated criminal justice reforms within the New York Police Department.“It seems like he’s happy to tinker around the edges and continue to play the inside game with the N.Y.P.D., and I just don’t think that that has been effective,” said Charles Khan, the organizing director for the Strong Economy for All Coalition.Mr. Adams’s team argues that substantively, on issues from housing to taxes, he has many of the same goals as the most deeply progressive activists. The difference, the team says, is a matter of tone. Advisers also argue that he has done more than any other candidate to personally press for police reform.“Eric is not new to this, he has been in the fight for police reform for over 30 years and has the know-how to reform the N.Y.P.D. the right way and keep New York City safe,” said Madia Coleman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams. “No one in this race has fought harder or delivered more for people of color than Eric Adams.”Mr. Yang, for his part, has floated the idea of giving tax incentives to corporations and individuals who return to the office five days a week and has suggested he feels the needs of businesses in his “bones.” He has also been a proponent of having more police patrolling the subways and, like Mr. Adams, is comfortable emphasizing the role he sees for the police in public safety“We’re proud to be leading among progressive voters,” Sasha Neha Ahuja, a campaign manager, said in reference to internal polling. “Clearly Andrew’s message of cash relief, job creation and rebuilding a safe and vibrant city is resonating deeply within the base and across the city.”Mr. Yang is also being advised by Tusk Strategies, which has emerged as an issue for some progressives. The consultancy has worked closely with Uber and the Police Benevolent Association, the union that endorsed President Donald J. Trump for re-election.A spokesman for Tusk said the consultancy hasn’t worked for either organization in over a year.“As an advocate and as a Black man, why the hell would I want to trust Andrew Yang after that?” said Stanley Fritz, the state political director for Citizen Action of New York.It is unclear how the talk among progressives about mounting a campaign to stymie the rise of two well-funded candidates will manifest itself. So far, it has been just talk.“I do think there is an effort congealing to not only push back on Yang but to push back on Eric Adams as well,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, which is supporting Mr. Stringer. “Both of them are not really aligned with the progressive movement.” More

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      In the Virginia Governor’s Race, Can Anyone Take On Terry McAuliffe?

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      Once again, the state is shaping up to be a case study in the complexities around the politics of race and power.Two years ago, when a racist blackface picture emerged from the 1980s that appeared to include Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, the blowback was swift and severe. There were mounting calls for his resignation.But in the end, polls showed that most voters said he shouldn’t step down — and some of his most unwavering support came from Virginia’s Black voters. He weathered the scandal, and he’s still on the job.There are now exactly two months until the Democratic primary election that will most likely determine Northam’s successor, as the state has become decidedly blue (the Democratic candidate has won all 13 statewide elections there since 2012). And once again, Virginia is shaping up to be a case study in the complexities around the politics of race and power.Northam, who continues to enjoy widespread approval, particularly from Black voters, on Thursday endorsed Terry McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor and one of the two white candidates in a five-person Democratic field. McAuliffe directly preceded Northam in the governor’s mansion and now wants to succeed him, too.In a statement, Northam portrayed McAuliffe as a strong steward of the economy during his four years in charge. “It’s critical that our next governor has the plans and experience to continue the fight to rebuild Virginia into a stronger, more equitable future,” he said. “That’s why I am so proud to support Terry McAuliffe to be our next governor.”A former banking executive, prolific Democratic fund-raiser and onetime chair of the Democratic National Committee, McAuliffe was prevented from running for re-election in 2017 because Virginia does not allow its governor to serve consecutive terms.There’s been scant polling in this race, but McAuliffe is regarded as a clear front-runner, partly because of his formidable connections and résumé, and partly because his challengers have similarities — albeit some superficial — that could split their support. Aside from Lee Carter, a 33-year-old Marine veteran and member of the House of Delegates, the three other candidates — Jennifer McClellan, Jennifer Carroll Foy and Justin Fairfax — are Black, younger than McAuliffe and generally to his left.Like Northam four years ago on the crooked road of the Virginia campaign trail, and Joe Biden last year in the presidential race, McAuliffe has been deliberate about outflanking his less-established Black opponents. He has emphasized his ties to the Black elite in Virginia politics, and from the day he announced his candidacy he has ensconced himself in endorsements from Black officials.But on Tuesday, in a televised debate, McAuliffe faced attacks from a unified team of rivals, and things boiled over when Fairfax, the state’s lieutenant governor, criticized him for calling in 2019 for Fairfax’s resignation. As Northam was engulfed in his own scandal, two women publicly accused Fairfax of sexual assault. Fairfax denied the allegations and, like the governor, managed to remain in office, mostly by just moving on.At the debate Fairfax went all the way after McAuliffe, reminding voters of the long and disgraceful history in America of false accusations and violence by white people toward Black men. “He treated me like George Floyd, he treated me like Emmett Till — no due process, immediately assumed my guilt,” Fairfax said. “I have a son and I have a daughter, and I don’t want my daughter to be assaulted; I don’t want my son to be falsely accused. And this is the real world that we live in. And so we need to speak truth to power, and we need to be very clear about how that impacts people’s lives.”But even before that, Fairfax had partly undercut his own argument by pointing out that it wasn’t just McAuliffe: All of his Democratic rivals onstage had called for him to resign in 2019.Besides, as the Times reporter Astead Herndon observed on Twitter, “‘what happened to me is like what happened to George Floyd and Emmett Till’ is not a thing a living person can say.”McClellan, a state senator, picked up on the theme of racial justice but went after McAuliffe on substantive policy grounds. She said he had underfunded the state’s parole system as governor, and called him a latecomer to the movement for justice reform.McAuliffe pushed back by pointing to his order restoring voting rights to more than 200,000 felons in 2016, and said he supported equipping all police officers in the state with body cameras — two major goals of civil rights advocates.For now, Fairfax has been unable to define his candidacy aside from the allegations against him, leading some close observers to anticipate that the next few weeks will be a face-off between McClellan and Carroll Foy, a former state delegate. If one emerges as the clear alternative to McAuliffe, it would most likely be because she persuaded enough major funders to come out of the woodwork to back her campaign and provide much-needed advertising dollars.As one Democratic insider in Virginia put it to me in a phone chat on Thursday: “McClellan has a track record to sell. Carroll Foy has a track record and an approach to sell. But if they’re only selling it on Twitter, then Terry McAuliffe will be the nominee.”On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Democrats Are Torn Over Working With G.O.P. After Capitol Riot

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      An uneasy détente has emerged between congressional Republicans and Democrats after the Jan. 6 attack, but relationships are badly frayed.WASHINGTON — When a Republican lawmaker approached Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat, on the House floor recently with a routine request that she sign on to a resolution he was introducing, she initially refused.Ms. Escobar personally liked the man, a fellow Texan, and she supported his bill. But she held the Republican, who had voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election just hours after rioters stormed the Capitol, partly responsible for the deadly attack and questioned whether she could work with him.Moments after declining, however, Ms. Escobar had second thoughts.“Go ahead and count me in,” Ms. Escobar recalled telling the man, whom she declined to identify in an interview. “But I just want you to know that what you all did — I haven’t gotten past it. And it was wrong, and it was terrible. And it’s not something that I think we should gloss over.”In the immediate aftermath of the assault on the Capitol that left five dead, irate Democrats vowed to punish Republicans for their roles in perpetuating or indulging former President Donald J. Trump’s fiction of a stolen election that motivated the mob that attacked the building. There was talk of cutting off certain Republicans entirely from the legislative process, denying them the basic courtesies and customs that allow the House to function even in polarized times.Democrats introduced a series of measures to censure, investigate and potentially expel members who, in the words of one resolution, “attempted to overturn the results of the election and incited a white supremacist attempted coup.” But the legislation went nowhere and to date no punishment has been levied against any members of Congress for their actions related to Jan. 6.What has unfolded instead has been something of an uneasy détente on Capitol Hill, as Democrats reckon with what they experienced that day and struggle to determine whether they can salvage their relationships with Republicans — some of whom continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Biden’s victory — and whether they even want to try.“I don’t want to permanently close that door,” Ms. Escobar said. “But I can’t walk through it right now.”Republicans have felt the breach as well. Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, who did not vote to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory but joined a lawsuit challenging the election results, said feelings ran raw after the mob violence at the Capitol.“I had some candid conversations with members that I have a good relationship with. There was a lot of heated emotion,” Mr. Waltz said. Still, he said, “I didn’t experience a freeze.”He recently teamed up with Representative Anthony G. Brown, Democrat of Maryland, to round up 70 Republicans and 70 Democrats for a letter to the Biden administration laying out parameters for an Iran nuclear deal.The dilemma of whether to join such bipartisan efforts is particularly charged for centrist Democrats from conservative-leaning districts, who won office on the promise of working with Republicans but say they find it difficult to accept that some of those same colleagues spread lies that fueled the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812.Adding to the tensions, most Republicans insist that they did nothing wrong, arguing that their push to invalidate the election results was merely an effort to raise concerns about the integrity of the vote. Some have reacted angrily to Democrats’ moves to punish them.Days after Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri, voted to throw out electoral votes for Mr. Biden, an aide to Representative Cindy Axne, Democrat of Iowa, curtly rebuffed a request from his office to discuss writing insurance legislation together.Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri, voted to throw out electoral votes for President Biden.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Our office is declining to work with your office at this time, given your boss’s position on the election,” the aide wrote in an email to an aide to Mr. Smith.Mr. Smith later sought to turn the tables on Ms. Axne, posting the email on his official Twitter account after she highlighted her work with Republicans.“That’s odd,” Mr. Smith wrote, appending a screenshot of the exchange. “This is the last message my staff got from you. Are you no longer kicking Republicans off your bills?”A spokesman for Mr. Smith did not respond to a request to elaborate on the incident.Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, who was in the House gallery on Jan. 6, said she had taken it upon herself to try to facilitate a reconciliation — or at least an airing out of differences.“It’s been a really challenging time,” she said. “Literally, people were murdered in our workplace. For some people, that is deeply troublesome, and for some people, they want to move on faster than others are ready.”In the days after the attack, the wounds it laid bare seemed almost too deep to heal. As the mob tore closer to lawmakers on Jan. 6, Representative Dean Phillips, a mild-mannered Minnesota Democrat known for fostering bipartisan relationships, shouted at Republicans, “This is because of you!”Afterward, lawmakers nearly came to blows on the House floor and got into heated arguments in the hallways. Some Democrats were so nervous that their Republican colleagues might draw weapons on the floor that House leaders set up metal detectors outside the chamber, drawing loud protests from gun-toting lawmakers in the Republican Party.Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Administration Committee, released a review of Republicans’ incendiary remarks on social media before the attack.Some Democrats, particularly the most progressive lawmakers from safe districts who rarely found occasion to work with Republicans even before the riot, have pressed to penalize the G.O.P. systematically in its aftermath, arguing that there can be no return to normalcy. A spreadsheet of Republicans who voted to overturn the election, outlining how many states’ electoral votes they moved to cast out, has circulated widely among Democratic offices.Lawmakers and their staff members were evacuated from the House chamber on Jan. 6.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressBut there has been little action to truly cut Republicans out of the work of Congress. When Representative Sean Casten of Illinois moved to punish a Republican who had voted to overturn the election results by forcing a recorded vote on his bill to rename a post office — the kind of measure that normally sails through unchallenged — only 15 other Democrats joined Mr. Casten in opposing it. As some rank-and-file Democrats sought to expel the Republican conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the move was “not a leadership position.” (Leaders did, however, take the unusual step of stripping Ms. Greene of her committee seats.)The reluctance stems, at least in part, from politics. Democrats owe their majority to a group of lawmakers from competitive districts who say their constituents elected them to work with Republicans to get legislation done.“Retreating or closing myself off to any kind of conversations or working with folks on the other side of the aisle — it doesn’t feel like an option for me,” said Representative Sharice Davids, the only Democrat in the Kansas congressional delegation. “Even when it feels hard.”Representative Susan Wild, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was in the House gallery on Jan. 6 and had what she believed was a panic attack as she crouched on the floor and heard the noise from the mob grow closer. But she said in an interview that she had “moved past the election issue,” adding that she was “not one to hold grudges.”“I haven’t talked to a single Republican about that day. Nothing. At all,” said Ms. Wild, who has resumed working with Pennsylvania Republicans on legislation, even though most of them voted to overturn the election. “I don’t want it to get in the way of other things that I want to work on with them. I know that it would, because I would be angry.”Many House Republicans have refrained from discussing the attack, while some have tried to rewrite history and argue that they never claimed the election was “stolen,” despite their objections. One tried to remove mentions of the assault from a resolution honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol that day. Some have continued to deny that Mr. Biden was legitimately elected, while still others have sought to deflect attention from the riot or downplay the factors that drove it.When the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing recently to examine domestic extremism in the military, Representative Pat Fallon, Republican of Texas, complained that the session was “political theater” and a waste of the panel’s time.The chairman, Representative Adam Smith of Washington, tartly replied that the topic deserved discussion, since “20 percent of the people that have been arrested from the Capitol Hill riots had a history of serving in the military.”Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois, the top Republican on the Administration Committee, objected to Ms. Lofgren’s report cataloging his colleagues’ incendiary social media posts. One Democrat, Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois, recently removed a Republican from a bill the two had worked on together for years, in line with his new policy of collaborating only with lawmakers who publicly state that Mr. Biden was legitimately elected.But he said he had drawn some optimism from a blunt conversation with Representative Jody B. Hice, Republican of Georgia, whom he has worked with on environmental issues, about a speech Mr. Hice gave questioning his state’s electoral votes for Mr. Biden.Mr. Hice said in a statement that he was proud that he and Mr. Schneider could “put aside our differences” on “many of the hot-button political debates of the day” to work together.Still, Mr. Schneider said that many other Republicans were still questioning Mr. Biden’s legitimacy — and that some were even continuing to put lawmakers at risk with incendiary remarks.“The fact that there is — how many at this point? — that it’s not an insignificant number who are still trying to have it both ways, makes it harder to get something done in Congress,” he said. More

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      Oh Se-hoon Wins Seoul Mayoral Election

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      Conservative opposition candidates won two mayoral races that were seen as a referendum on President Moon Jae-in and a bellwether for next year’s presidential contest.SEOUL — In his last year in office, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has seen his approval ratings in a tailspin. His trademark North Korea diplomacy remains in tatters. Citizens are fuming over his ​repeatedly ​botched attempts to arrest soaring housing prices.And on Wednesday, voters in South Korea’s two biggest cities dealt another crushing blow to the beleaguered leader.Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party lost the mayoral elections in Seoul and Busan to the conservative opposition, the People Power Party. Critics are calling the results of the two by-elections a referendum on Mr. Moon and his government.“The people vented their anger at the Moon government through these elections,” said Kim Chong-in, head of the People Power Party, referring to large margins by which its candidates won.​South Korea’s Constitution limits Mr. Moon to a single five-year term. But he had hoped that a candidate backed by his party would succeed him in the presidential election next March and continue his progressive legacy, including a policy of engagement toward North Korea.Wednesday’s mayoral elections showed that the Democratic Party faces steep challenges as voters once loyal to Mr. Moon — especially those in their 20s and 30s — abandon it in droves.Oh Se-hoon, the People Power Party candidate, won the race in Seoul, the capital city ​of 10 million people. He routed Park Young-sun, the Democratic Party candidate and a former member of Mr. Moon’s cabinet, by more than 18 percentage points, according to voting results announced by the National Election Commission.The Seoul mayor is considered South Korea’s second-most powerful elected official after the president.In Busan, on the southeastern tip of the ​Korean Peninsula, Park Heong-joon, another candidate affiliated with the opposition party, ​​beat his Democratic Party rival by another large margin, according to the commission.A polling station on Wednesday in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, which also held a by-election for mayor.Yonhap/EPA, via ShutterstockThe by-election in Seoul was called after Park Won-soon, the former mayor, died by suicide last year following accusations of sexual harassment. The former mayor of Busan, Oh Keo-don, stepped down ​last year ​amid accusations of sexual misconduct from multiple female ​subordinates.The former mayors were both members of ​Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party and the president’s close allies. Their downfall ​weakened the moral standing of Mr. Moon’s progressive camp, which ​has cast itself as a ​clean, ​transparent​ and equality-minded alternative to ​its conservative opponents. Mr. Moon’s two immediate predecessors — Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak — were both conservatives and are now in prison following convictions on corruption charges.Mr. Moon was elected ​in 2017, ​filling the power vacuum created by Ms. Park’s impeachment. As a former human rights lawyer, he enthralled the nation by promising a “fair and just” society. He ​vehemently criticized an entrenched ​culture of privilege and corruption ​that he said had taken root while conservatives were in power, ​and vowed to create a level playing field for young voters who have grown weary of dwindling job opportunities and an ever-expanding income gap.Mr. Moon spent much of his first two years in power struggling to quell escalating tension between North Korea and the United States, successfully mediating diplomacy between the two countries. He shifted more of his attention to domestic issues after the two summit meetings between North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Donald J. Trump failed to produce a deal on nuclear disarmament or the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.But things quickly turned sour on the home front ​as well.In 2019, huge outdoor rallies erupted ​over accusations of forgery and preferential treatment in college and internship applications​ surrounding the daughter of Cho Kuk, Mr. Moon’s former justice minister and one of his closest allies.The scandal flew in the face of Mr. Moon’s election promise of creating “a world without privilege,” and prompted outrage against the “gold-spoon” children of the elite, who ​glided into top-flight universities and cushy jobs while their “dirt-spoon” peers struggled to make ends meet in South Korea’s hobbled economy.President Moon Jae-in and his wife, Kim Jung-sook, casting early votes in Seoul on Friday.Choe Jae-Koo/Yonhap, via Associated Press​South Koreans expressed their growing cynicism over what they considered the hypocritical practices of Mr. Moon’s progressive allies with a popular saying: naeronambul. It roughly translates to, “If they do it, it’s a romance; if others do it, they call it an extramarital affair.”​Nonetheless, the Democratic Party won by a landslide in parliamentary elections last year as Mr. Moon leveraged his surging popularity around South Korea’s largely successful battle against the coronavirus. But Mr. Moon’s virus campaign has lost its luster.In recent months, South Koreans have grown frustrated with prolonged social-distancing restrictions, a distressed economy and the government’s failure to provide vaccines fast enough. On Wednesday, the government reported 668 new coronavirus infections, the highest one-day increase in three months.Mr. Moon’s most devastating setback came last month when officials at the Korea Land and Housing Corporation — the state developer — were accused of using privileged insider information to cash in on government housing development programs. Kim Sang-jo, Mr. Moon’s chief economic policy adviser, stepped down last month when it was revealed that his family had significantly raised the rent on an apartment in Seoul just days before the government imposed a cap on rent increases.“People had hoped that even if they were incompetent, the Moon government would at least be ethically superior to their conservative rivals,” said Ahn Byong-jin, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. “What we see in the election results is the people’s long-accumulated discontent over the ‘naeronambul’ behavior of the Moon government exploding. Moon has now become a lame duck president.”The real-estate scandal dominated the campaign leading up to Wednesday’s election. Opposition candidates called Mr. Moon’s government a “den of thieves.” Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party called Mr. Oh, the new mayor in Seoul, an incorrigible “liar.” Mr. Oh resigned as Seoul mayor in 2011 after his campaign to end free lunches for all schoolchildren failed to win enough support.Pre-election surveys this month showed that voters who planned to vote for Mr. Oh would do so not because they considered him morally superior to his Democratic Party rival. Instead, it was because they wanted to “pass judgment on the Moon Jae-in government.”Posters showing candidates for mayor of Seoul.Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press More