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      A Father’s Gift to a Mayoral Candidate: A $1 Million Super PAC

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      Super PACs for two candidates raised millions of dollars to help their chances in the New York City mayor’s race. One, for Shaun Donovan, was bankrolled by his father.With New York City’s mayoral primary a little more than three months away and a deadline to qualify for the city’s generous matching-funds program having just passed, pleas for donations have been in overdrive in recent days.But in the background, another spigot of money has quietly opened for two Democratic mayoral candidates who are trailing in early polls: Raymond J. McGuire and Shaun Donovan.An independent expenditure committee for Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, has garnered more than $3 million since Feb. 1, with more than 70 donations from business magnates, including Kenneth Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot; the art world philanthropist Agnes Gund; and the real estate developer Aby J. Rosen.A new super PAC for Mr. Donovan, a former cabinet member in the Obama administration, in contrast, has drawn $1.02 million from just two donors — the primary benefactor being his father, Michael Donovan, an executive in the ad tech industry who donated $1 million.In an interview, Mr. Donovan, the candidate’s father, said he was trying to “level the playing field,” particularly since some candidates began raising money before they even declared they were running for mayor.“I can’t give very much to Shaun directly, and seeing the amount of money McGuire had raised and all these other people, I felt he needed enough to go out and compete and get the message across,” Mr. Donovan said.The two super PACs are among several seeking to influence the race for mayor, the most important election in recent city history.Business-friendly organizations, motivated by the leftward tilt of some candidates in the Democratic field, have already raised millions of dollars. The billionaire developer Stephen M. Ross is rallying fellow business leaders to commit tens of millions of dollars in an effort to push moderate Democrats to vote in the June 22 mayoral primary and “change the future course of the city.”Progressive groups are also involved, creating their own super PACs to supplement their on-the-ground efforts and social media campaigns.The super PACs supporting Mr. McGuire and Mr. Donovan hauled in more than their respective campaigns raised during the most recent city filing period, which began in January. Mr. Donovan, who ran Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s housing agency before joining President Barack Obama’s cabinet as budget director and housing secretary, is participating in the city’s public funding program. Mr. McGuire, a former vice chairman at Citi and one of the highest-ranking African-Americans on Wall Street, is not.The super PAC supporting Mr. McGuire, New York for Ray, plans to spend its bounty on advertising — television, digital and print — “in an effort to cut through the clutter and introduce a larger number of voters to Ray McGuire, his story and inclusive plans to revitalize and rebuild New York City,’’ said Quentin Fulks, the group’s executive director.Kenneth I. Chenault, the former chairman and C.E.O. of American Express, who, with his wife, Kathryn, donated $250,000 to the super PAC for Mr. McGuire, said he had known Mr. McGuire since they attended Harvard University together and that he wanted to help him get his name out.“We’re convinced that he can be a strong leader,” Mr. Chenault said, adding that it was “important for people to understand Ray’s story and to hear Ray’s story. We think it’s compelling and that’s why we’re doing it.”Brittany Wise, the treasurer for the super PAC supporting Mr. Donovan, New Start N.Y.C., did not specify how the funds would be spent, saying only that the group would promote Mr. Donovan as having “the experience to tackle Covid, racial equity, and affordable housing and move New York City forward.”Perhaps inevitably in the small world of political professionals, both super PACs are staffed and funded by people whose circles overlap with the campaigns.Ms. Wise worked on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2013 campaign with Bill Hyers, who served as Mr. de Blasio’s campaign manager and is now advising Mr. Donovan’s campaign.Kimberly Peeler-Allen, who is helping to run Mr. McGuire’s super PAC, co-founded Higher Heights for America, an organization that aims to elevate Black women in politics. L. Joy Williams, who is working on Mr. McGuire’s campaign, is the chairwoman of Higher Heights’s PAC.Campaigns are not allowed to coordinate with super PACs, or independent expenditure committees, as they are known in New York State.But Seth Agata, a former counsel in the governor’s office who helped write New York’s independent expenditure regulations, said there was often a “wink and a nod” that characterized interactions between campaigns and super PACs.“You know what’s going to help the candidate,” Mr. Agata said. “You’re out there because you know what the candidate needs and you say the right things.”Both campaigns said they had not coordinated with their respective super PACs.“I know nothing about it,” said Lupe Todd-Medina, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGuire’s campaign, referring to New York for Ray.Yuridia Peña, a spokeswoman for Mr. Donovan’s campaign, said that Mr. Donovan had likewise not coordinated with his father on his super PAC.“We take the prohibition of coordination with any outside entities as a hard line, and any efforts to support Shaun are completely independent of our campaign,” Ms. Peña said.New York City’s strict donor limits make it difficult for big spenders to make their presence felt through direct contributions to candidates. But the Supreme Court, in its Citizens United decision, paved the way for barely regulated money to pour into super PACs, giving donors another way of exerting influence.“The Supreme Court that decided Citizens United and related cases got it wrong,” said Chisun Lee, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Election Reform Program. “Any reasonable voter knows that huge donors with unlimited influence have a detrimental effect on representative democracy.” More

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      Democrats, Pushing Stimulus, Admit to Regrets on Obama’s 2009 Response

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Biden’s Stimulus PlanBiden’s AddressWhat to Know About the BillAnalysis: Economic RescueBenefits for Middle ClassAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats, Pushing Stimulus, Admit to Regrets on Obama’s 2009 ResponseIn pitching President Biden’s relief package, Democrats have said their 2009 stimulus efforts under Barack Obama were insufficient. Those close to Mr. Obama have noticed.President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus bill during a ceremony in Denver in February 2009.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMarch 16, 2021Updated 11:00 a.m. ETAs Democrats pushed this month to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, they were eager to rebuke Republicans for opposing en masse a measure filled with aid to struggling Americans. But they had another target as well: the core policy of President Barack Obama’s first-term agenda.Party leaders from President Biden on down are citing Mr. Obama’s strategy on his most urgent policy initiative — an $800 billion financial rescue plan in 2009 in the midst of a crippling recession — as too cautious and too deferential to Republicans, mistakes they were determined not to repeat.The pointed assessments of Mr. Obama’s handling of the 2009 stimulus effort are the closest Democrats have come to grappling with a highly delicate matter in the party: the shortcomings in the legacy of Mr. Obama, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party and a powerful voice for bipartisanship in a deeply divided country.The re-examination has irked some of the former president’s allies but thrilled the party’s progressive wing, which sees Mr. Biden’s more expansive plan as a down payment on his ambitious agenda. And it has sent an early signal that Mr. Biden’s administration does not intend to be a carbon copy of his Democratic predecessor’s. Times, all concede, have changed.“This time, the feeling was, ‘We’re not very willing to negotiate what we think is needed,’” said former Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota who retired ahead of the 2010 midterm elections. “In 2009, I think the feeling was, ‘Oh we wanted more, but we didn’t get what we wanted.’”The careful dance around Mr. Obama and his accomplishments continues a dynamic from the Democratic presidential primary. While taking care not to disparage his administration, several candidates stressed the need for the party to embrace a more take-no-prisoners political approach with Republicans; others criticized Mr. Obama’s policies on immigration: though he used an executive order to aid the Dreamers, he also pushed deportations and border detentions.It also highlights the rapid change in Washington over a decade of partisan brawling. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden came into office on promises of unity and bipartisanship in the face of an economic crisis, but Mr. Biden is the beneficiary of a changed landscape in the party. Democrats are now more cognizant of Republican obstruction, less deferential to the deficit hawks and energized by a growing progressive wing that has pulled the party’s ideological midpoint to the left.A decade ago, Mr. Obama’s strategy reflected the Democratic Party’s mainstream, an insistence on negotiating with Republicans, keeping the Senate filibuster and trimming his own ambitions for a nation that he and others worried could handle only so much change after electing its first Black president. Now, the progressive criticism of that posture has become party canon.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading progressive voice, said the changes should be attributed partly to the growth of the left, but partly to an inadequate Democratic response to the Great Recession, which she said “created so much damage economically, for people, but it also created a lot of political damage for the party” by not being larger in scope.“I came of age watching Democratic governance fail me and fail my family,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said.President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel the country next week to promote the benefits of the American Rescue Plan.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Obama is himself a person who carefully takes stock of his presidential legacy and his place in Democratic Party politics. He has not publicly responded to the recent criticism of his stimulus strategy, and through a spokesman he declined a request to comment for this article.But for friends and allies who are close to him, the characterizations of Mr. Obama’s 2009 efforts sting.Some describe it as an attempt, in a different political era, to act as Monday-morning quarterback, and bristle that figures who were involved in the 2009 negotiations — like Senator Chuck Schumer or Mr. Biden — have now publicly expressed regret over them. Others describe it as the natural course of politics: past actions being used as a baseline for improvement.Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s former senior adviser, said the administration was acting on the evidence and the political possibilities of the time.“This was the worst economic recession since the Great Depression,” she said. “And therefore, there wasn’t a body of evidence about the size of the package and the impact it would have.” She also mentioned a political incentive: “It was important to show the country early in President Obama’s time in office, he was willing to work with Republicans.”Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who served as Mr. Obama’s first chief of staff, said Democrats would do well to compare themselves with their Republican presidential counterparts, and not with other Democrats.“It’s really about Obama versus Bush, and Biden versus Trump, not the other way around,” Mr. Emanuel said. “We built long-lasting, robust economic growth. And I think comparing one to the other is, is historically not accurate. And also, more importantly, it’s strategically not advantageous.”David Axelrod, who served as a chief strategist to Mr. Obama, said he believed the current criticism was born of a desire to avoid a midterm shellacking similar to the one Democrats suffered in 2010.“It is irksome only in the sense that it was an entirely different situation,” Mr. Axelrod said. “If the Obama economic record were deficient, I’m pretty sure Joe Biden wouldn’t have run on it.”In many ways, the maneuvering is a stand-in for larger tensions within the party. Mr. Obama’s close-knit circle is keenly devoted to protecting his policy legacy. A growing left wing wants more investments in health care and combating climate change, and a break from hard-line policy on immigration. Mr. Biden’s administration is seeking to chart its own path.In a recent address to House Democrats, Mr. Biden argued that it was Mr. Obama’s “humility” that cost Democrats at the time, because the president didn’t spend enough time explaining the benefits of his stimulus package to the American people.“Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap,’” Mr. Biden said. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time, I’m not going to take a victory lap,’ and we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York linked her own ascension to Congress to the failings of the Democratic response the recession in 2009.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe White House recently announced that Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and some key administration figures would travel the country.In the former president’s recently released memoir, he often returns to a familiar argument: that the ambitions of his legislation were hamstrung by an obstructionist Republican Party and moderate Democrats who were unwilling to go it alone without any bipartisan support..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus PackageThe stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read moreThis credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more.There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more.The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more.Options like budget reconciliation, the parliamentary tactic Mr. Biden used to pass the coronavirus relief plan by a simple majority vote, were not even proposed by most progressives, former aides to Mr. Obama said. That meant that any legislation would need a filibuster-proof 60 votes.“Between Republican attacks and Democratic complaints I was reminded of the Yeats poem ‘Second Coming,’” Mr. Obama wrote in the book. “My supporters lacked all conviction, and my opponents were full of passionate intensity.”But Mr. Obama’s own public comments since his presidency hint at a changing worldview. At the funeral for Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died in 2020, Mr. Obama seemed to endorse ending the Senate filibuster as a way to expand voting rights — a move he had long avoided. He said during the Democratic primary that while he was proud of his presidential campaigns, the landscape had changed and required more expansive policy proposals.“I want candidates now to propose beyond what we were able to get done then, because the politics have changed,” he said at a 2019 fund-raiser.That task is now left to Mr. Biden, who lacks the cult of personality that surrounded his former boss but is also less interested in cultivating one. In passing his first piece of signature legislation without a Republican vote, the president has subtly rejected the way Ms. Jarrett framed unity — he will pursue it not by endlessly wooing Republicans but by passing legislation that most Americans support.Mr. Obama at a news conference the day after Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesSenator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who backed Mr. Obama’s stimulus measure after it was pared back, said the Democrats’ approach on the stimulus bill passed last week was a reversion on the president’s campaign promise to be a unifying figure.She recently told reporters that Mr. Schumer, the majority leader who led the negotiations on Mr. Biden’s bill, “showed that he had absolutely no interest in trying to negotiate a bipartisan agreement.”Progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez say the willingness to forgo Republican buy-in is proof the entire party now agrees on the need for structural reform, and the hardball tactics that may be required.“Schumer spoke to the very real pain of delaying decisive action, which is a self-inflicted wound, I would say, for the party,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “Where you delay and you water down, and you just kind of hand Susan Collins a pen, to have her diminish legislation for months, just for her to not even vote for it in the end.”But Mr. Emanuel advised Democrats to remember the lessons of the presidential primary. After one debate in Detroit, when candidates repeatedly remarked on the failures of Mr. Obama’s tenure and how they would do better, voters rushed to defend the nation’s first Black president, and the running mate who stood with him.“When the Democrats were criticizing President Obama, it was Biden that said: ‘What are you guys doing? He’s our president,’” Mr. Emanuel said. “So I’m with Joe Biden on that analysis.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Can Anything End the Voting Wars?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyCan Anything End the Voting Wars?As battles over voting rules burn hotter, the stakes are still lower than both sides seem to think.Opinion ColumnistMarch 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Illustration by Arsh Raziuddin, Photos, via Getty More

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      For Voting Rights Advocates, a ‘Once in a Generation Moment’ Looms

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFor Voting Rights Advocates, a ‘Once in a Generation Moment’ LoomsOpposition to restrictive Republican voting laws — and support for a sweeping Democratic bill — fuels a movement like none in decades. But can it succeed?Protesters demonstrating against proposed changes to Georgia’s voting laws, this month in Atlanta.Credit…Ben Gray/Associated PressNicholas Fandos and March 15, 2021Updated 9:53 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — State and national voting-rights advocates are waging the most consequential political struggle over access to the ballot since the civil rights era, a fight increasingly focused on a far-reaching federal overhaul of election rules in a last-ditch bid to offset a wave of voting restrictions sweeping Republican-controlled state legislatures.The federal voting bill, which passed in the House this month with only Democratic support, includes a landmark national expansion of voting rights, an end to partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts and new transparency requirements on the flood of dark money financing elections that would override the rash of new state laws.The energy in support for it radiates from well-financed veteran organizers to unpaid volunteers, many who were called to political activism after former President Donald J. Trump’s upset win in 2016. It is engaging Democrats in Washington and voting rights activists in crucial states from Georgia to Iowa to West Virginia to Arizona — some facing rollbacks in access to the ballot, some with senators who will play pivotal roles and some with both.But after approval of the Democratic bill in the House, the campaign to pass the For the People Act, designated Senate Bill 1, increasingly appears to be on a collision course with the filibuster. The rule requires 60 votes for passage of most legislation in a bitterly divided Senate, meaning that Republicans can kill the voting bill and scores of other liberal priorities despite unified Democratic control of Washington.To succeed, Democrats will have to convince a handful of moderate holdouts to change the rules, at least for this legislation, with the likelihood that a single defection in their own party would doom their efforts. It is a daunting path with no margin for error, but activists believe the costs for failure, given the Republican limits on voting, would be so high that some accommodation on the filibuster could become inevitable.Two left-leaning elections groups, the advocacy arm of End Citizens United and Let America Vote along with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, plan this week to announce an infusion of $30 million to try to hasten the groundswell. The money will fund paid advertising in at least a dozen states and finance organizers to target Democratic and Republican swing senators in six of them.“We are at a once-in-a-generation moment,” said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote. “We either are going to see one of the most massive rollbacks of our democracy in generations, or we have an opportunity to say: ‘No, that is not what America stands for. We are going to strengthen democracy and make sure everyone has an equal voice.’”The sense of a pivotal moment is the one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on. Republicans are still inflamed by Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and the party’s unified message that voting restrictions, many of which fall most heavily on minorities and Democratic-leaning voters, are needed to prevent fraud, which studies have repeatedly shown to barely exist.“This bill is the opposite of good governance — it’s a cynical attempt by the left to put their thumb on the scales of democracy and engineer our laws to help them win elections,” said Dan Conston, president of the Republican-aligned American Action Network. “They want to limit free speech, funnel public funds into their campaign accounts, seize from states the ability to run their own free and fair elections, and then spin it like this is really all about protecting voting rights.”Ms. Muller and others are ostensibly focused on winning support for election legislation from 10 moderate Republican senators, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan M. Collins of Maine.But with Republican leaders promising near-unanimous opposition in the Senate, Democrats and their allies are positioning voting rights as the most persuasive case for scrapping or changing the filibuster that would limit much of Democrats’ legislative agenda.Voting rights groups are hoping to sway moderate senators like Lisa Murkowski, left, and Susan Collins toward supporting the federal voting bill. Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times“It is too important an issue and we are facing too big a crisis to let an arcane procedural motion hold back the passage of this bill,” Ms. Muller said. She argued that the rollback of voting rights was an existential threat to the democracy on which all other liberal causes, from gun control to health care reform, depend.The urgency for federal action has mounted not just among Washington lobbyists and Democratic lawmakers, but grass roots groups that normally fight battles in state legislatures and city councils. Many spent the winter opposing the Republican voting agenda that included curbs on mail-in and early voting and stiffer voter ID requirements.Lawmakers in Republican-controlled states have largely rebuffed those groups, leaving Democrats to see federal action as the only possible brake on widespread voting restrictions. At the same time, a handful of crucial Republican-led states are preparing to draw new state and congressional district maps in the fall that could further tilt power in their direction and lock Democrats out of a House majority for years.Voting-rights proponents say they have not given up on stopping restrictive laws in states. The Arizona group Civic Engagement Beyond Voting, has already registered 2,000 people this year to testify remotely on proposed state legislation, with voting rights as a priority.“People are up in arms,” said Cathy Kouts Sigmon, the group’s founder. “They’re relating these bills to how they vote and how members of their family vote.”Voting-rights advocates in Georgia, who claim to have slowed or killed some restrictive bills, are aiming at local companies that have supported the bills’ sponsors, including Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines and UPS. An advertising campaign led by voting and civil rights groups demands that the firms use their lobbying muscle in the Georgia statehouse to stop repressive voting bills instead of contributing to their Republican authors.“They spent most of Black History Month peppering us with Martin Luther King quotes, but now that Blacks’ future is in jeopardy, they’re silent,” Nsé Ufot, the chief executive of one participant, the New Georgia Project, said last week. “We’re using digital ads, billboards, direct action at warehouses and call centers — we’re serious. This is urgent.”One possible sign of some success: On Sunday, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, whose members include those companies, expressed “concern and opposition” to restrictive clauses in two Republican bills.Nsé Ufot, chief executive of the New Georgia Project, speaking in Atlanta in November.Credit…Marcus Ingram/Getty Images for MoveonIncreasingly, though, the focus is on federal legislation. Ms. Sigmon’s group is recruiting Arizonans to lobby their senators on the elections bill. So are local chapters of Indivisible, a movement founded in response to Mr. Trump’s election, in Georgia and Arizona.And so have national advocacy groups. Common Cause runs weeknight phone banks recruiting backers for the bill, and says it has generated 700,000 text messages supporting it. “It’s been a pretty incredible outpouring of support, because we all know what this moment means,” said Izzy Bronstein, the group’s national campaigns manager. In Phoenix, the advocacy group Progress Arizona coordinates a statewide campaign to persuade Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a first-term Democrat, to drop her support of the filibuster. Among its tactics: billboards projected at night onto buildings and other spots, calling for an end to the filibuster and displaying the senator’s Capitol Hill phone number.In Charleston, W. Va., Takeiya Smith of the advocacy group For West Virginia’s Future works with some 70 students at six state colleges to generate calls on Senate Bill 1 to Senators Shelley Capito, a Republican, and particularly Joe Manchin III, a Democrat whose support for the filibuster is a liberal target. The group plans daily campus events this week highlighting different parts of the measure. It is in turn allied with a national coalition, the Declaration for American Democracy, that has enrolled 190 organizations to push for its passage.In Atlanta, the Black Voters Matter Fund is preparing with other groups a national campaign for Senate Bill 1 aimed at both senators and President Biden, who has expressed hope for the bill’s passage but has not actively worked for it.“He’s got to have his Lyndon B. Johnson moment,” said Cliff Albright, the group’s executive director, referring to the former president’s arm-twisting on Capitol Hill for the Voting Rights Act in 1965. “You’re president of the United States. You need to do more than hope that it passes,” he said of Mr. Biden. “He needs to use everything he’s learned over 47 years in Washington, D.C., to get this bill passed.”Democrats first introduced the elections bill in 2019 as a catchall measure to address growing public disillusionment with dark money and corporate interests in politics. But as Republican state officials have raced to target voter participation, the bill’s voting provisions have increasingly been viewed by many on the left as essential protections to American democracy — and to the ability of Democratic voters to cast ballots.If it became law, the bill would drastically expand early and mail-in voting, neuter restrictive state voter ID laws, make it harder to purge voter rolls while automatically registering all eligible voters and restoring voting rights to former felons. Those and other changes would most likely increase voter participation, especially by minority voters who disproportionately lean Democratic.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic caucus promoted the party’s legislation on voting this month.Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressSenators plan to reintroduce the bill this week and Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the Senate committee that will advance it, has promised a hearing on March 24.But what happens next is a matter of hot political and strategic debate centered on Democrats’ fight over the filibuster, where a handful of moderates so far appear unwilling to change or drop the tactic. All 50 Democrats probably would have to agree to alter the rules.In an interview, Ms. Klobuchar suggested that if senators could not agree to scrap the filibuster altogether, they could try to find a compromise, potentially allowing measures on voting and elections like Senate Bill 1 to pass with a simple majority, but not other bills.“It is so fundamental to everything else, it has to get done,” she said.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has been less definitive but indicated last week that he, too, may view voting rights as a unique case. “If we can get some bipartisan support, great, but if not, our caucus will meet and we will figure out how to get it done,” he said in a radio interview. “Failure is not an option.”End Citizens United, Let America Vote and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee plan to run television and digital ads in Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Maine and Pennsylvania, homes to several key swing senators. A later phase will target up to 15 red and blue states. The groups will also dispatch 50 paid staff members to states, including Mr. Manchin’s West Virginia.“We almost don’t have a choice,” said Kelly Ward Burton, president of the Democratic redistricting group. “Because of what’s happening in the states, it’s not theoretical. It’s happening right before our eyes. It would be irresponsible not to do anything about this.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Justice Breyer Should Retire Right Now

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyJustice Breyer Should Retire Right NowIf he doesn’t, Democrats run the very real risk that they would be unable to replace him.Mr. Campos is a law professor who writes extensively about politics and the Constitution.March 15, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Simone NoronhaJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was widely, and deservedly, criticized for her refusal to retire from the Supreme Court at a time when a Democratic president could have chosen her replacement.Justice Stephen Breyer is making a similar and arguably even more egregious mistake.The evident indifference on the part of Democrats regarding the failure of Justice Breyer, 82, to announce his retirement is apparently a product of the assumption that he will do so at some point during the current Congress and that therefore whether he does so anytime soon is not particularly important.This is a grave mistake.Consider that because of the extremely thin nature of their Democratic Senate control, the shift of a single seat from the Democrats to the Republicans or even one vacancy in the 50 seats now controlled by the Democratic caucus would probably result in the swift reinstallation of Mitch McConnell as the majority leader.What are the odds that something like this — a senator’s death, disabling health crisis or departure from office for other reasons — will happen sometime in this Congress’s remaining 22 months?Alarmingly for Democrats, if history is any guide, the odds are quite high. Since the end of World War II, 27 of the 38 Congresses have featured a change in the party composition of the Senate during a session.The probability that such a shift may occur during this particular Congress may well be even higher than that. At the moment, no fewer than six Democratic senators over the age of 70 represent states where a Republican governor would be free to replace them with a Republican, should a vacancy occur.Five other Democratic senators represent states for which a vacancy would go unfilled for months, until a special election to fill the seat was held — which would hand the G.O.P. control of the Senate at least until that election and likely for the rest of the current Congress if a Republican wins that contest. (In the case of Wisconsin, such a vacancy might not be filled until 2023.)All things considered, the odds that Democrats will lose control of the Senate in the next 22 months are probably close to a coin flip.Under the circumstances, for Democrats to run the very real risk that they would be unable to replace Justice Breyer is unacceptable. Of course, the only person who is in a position to ensure that this does not happen is Justice Breyer himself.It is true that, under normal circumstances, a Supreme Court justice planning to retire generally waits until the end of a court term to do so. But these are not normal circumstances.Nothing illustrates the anti-democratic dysfunction of our political system more clearly than the current makeup of the Supreme Court. Two-thirds of the sitting justices were nominated by Republican presidents, even though Republican presidential candidates have lost the popular vote in seven of the nine elections, which determined who nominated these justices.And these justices were confirmed by a Senate that has become skewed so radically in favor of electing Republicans that the 50 senators who caucus with the Democrats represent about 41.5 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators do.Under the circumstances, it would be a travesty if the Supreme Court seat occupied by Justice Breyer was not filled by a replacement chosen by Democrats.He should announce his retirement immediately, effective upon the confirmation of his successor. For him to continue to make the same gamble that Justice Ginsburg made and lost runs the risk of tainting his legacy as a justice and has the potential to be an anti-democratic disaster for the nation as a whole.Paul F. Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and writes about law and politics at Lawyers, Guns & Money.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stimulus Bill as a Political Weapon? Democrats Are Counting on It.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Biden’s Stimulus PlanBiden’s AddressWhat to Know About the BillBenefits for Middle ClassChild Tax CreditAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStimulus Bill as a Political Weapon? Democrats Are Counting on It.The $1.9 trillion package is a big bet by the party that it will restore a sense of normalcy by the 2022 elections and that voters will defy history and reward Democrats with more seats in Congress.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, signed the stimulus bill this week while surrounded by Democratic members of Congress.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMarch 15, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — Triumphant over the signing of their far-reaching $1.9 trillion stimulus package, Democrats are now starting to angle for a major political payoff that would defy history: Picking up House and Senate seats in the 2022 midterm elections, even though the party in power usually loses in the midterms.Democratic leaders are making one of the biggest electoral bets in years — that the stimulus will be so transformational for Americans across party lines and demographic groups that Democrats will be able to wield it as a political weapon next year in elections against Republicans, who voted en masse against the package.Republicans need to gain only one seat in the Senate and just five in the House in 2022 to take back control, a likely result in a normal midterm election, but perhaps a trickier one if voters credit their rivals for a strong American rebound.Yet as Democrats prepare to start selling voters on the package, they remain haunted by what happened in 2010, the last time they were in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress and pursued an ambitious agenda: They lost 63 House seats, and the majority, and were unable to fulfill President Barack Obama’s goals on issues ranging from gun control to immigration.It has become an article of faith in the party that Mr. Obama’s presidency was diminished because his two signature accomplishments, the stimulus bill and the Affordable Care Act, were not expansive enough and their pitch to the public on the benefits of both measures was lacking. By this logic, Democrats began losing elections and the full control of the government, until now, because of their initial compromises with Republicans and insufficient salesmanship.“We didn’t adequately explain what we had done,” President Biden told House Democrats this month about the 2009 Recovery Act. “Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap.’”Now they are determined to exorcise those old ghosts by aggressively promoting a measure they believe meets the moment and has broader appeal than the $787 billion bill they trimmed and laced with tax cuts to win a handful of Republican votes in Mr. Obama’s first months in office.Republicans say the Democratic bet is a foolhardy one, both because of how little of the spending is directly related to the coronavirus pandemic and because of fleeting voter attention spans. But Democrats say they intend to run on the bill — and press Republicans over their opposition to it.“This is absolutely something I will campaign on next year,” said Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who may be the most vulnerable incumbent Senate Democrat in the country on the ballot in 2022. Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who heads the Democratic Senate campaign arm, said he would go on “offense” against Republicans who opposed the bill and sketched out their attack: “Every Republican said no in a time of need.”Party lawmakers point out that the measure Mr. Biden signed on Thursday is more popular than the 2009 bill, according to polling; contains more tangible benefits, like the $1,400 direct payments and unemployment benefits; and comes at a time when the pandemic and former President Donald Trump’s continued appetite for big spending have blunted Republican attacks.President Biden will travel the country next week to highlight the passage of the stimulus legislation.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times“People are going to feel it right away, to me that’s the biggest thing,” said Representative Conor Lamb, a Pennsylvania Democrat whose 2018 special election victory presaged the party’s revival. “Politics is confusing, it’s image-based, everyone calls everyone else a liar — but people are going to get the money in their bank accounts.”And, Representative Sara Jacobs of California said, Democrats have “learned the lessons from 2009, we made sure we went back to our districts this weekend to tell people how much help they were going to get from this bill.”Mr. Obama’s aides are quick to note that they did promote their stimulus and the health care law but ran into much more fervent, and unified, opposition on the right as the Tea Party blossomed and portrayed the measures as wasteful and ill-conceived.At the end of last week, with the House’s first extended recess looming at month’s end, Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed House Democrats to seize the moment.Ms. Pelosi’s office sent an email to colleagues, forwarded to The Times, brimming with talking points the speaker hopes they’ll use in town halls and news conferences. “During the upcoming district work period, members are encouraged to give visibility to how the American Rescue Plan meets the needs of their communities: putting vaccines in arms, money in pockets, workers back on the job and children back in the classroom safely,” it said.For their part, White House officials said they would deploy “the whole of government,” as one aide put it, to market the plan, send cabinet officers on the road and focus on different components of the bill each day to highlight its expanse.Democrats’ hopes for avoiding the losses typical in a president’s first midterm election will depend largely on whether Americans feel life is back to normal next year — and whether they credit the party in power for thwarting the disease, despair and dysfunction that characterized the end of Mr. Trump’s term.If voters are to believe the Democrats are delivering on an American rebound, of course, it’s essential the country is roaring back to prepandemic strength in a way it was not at the end of 2009, when unemployment reached 10 percent.“You could be looking at an extraordinary growth spurt in the third and fourth quarters, and that takes you into the year when candidates make their way,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, where much of the bill was crafted.The politics of the legislation, in other words, will be clear enough by this time next year. “If all the sudden you got high inflation and things are hitting the fan, Republicans are going to run on it,” said Representative Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat. “If things are going well they’re going to run on something else.”For now, Republicans are expressing little appetite to contest a measure that has the support of 70 percent of voters, according to a Pew survey released last week.Part of their challenge stems from Mr. Trump’s aggressive advocacy for $2,000 direct payments in the previous stimulus package late last year, a drumbeat he’s kept up in his political afterlife as he argues Republicans lost the two Georgia Senate runoffs because they did not embrace the proposal.It’s difficult for congressional Republicans to portray one of the main elements of the Democrats’ bill as socialism when the de facto leader of their party is an enthusiastic supporter of wealth redistribution. Moreover, right-wing media outlets have been more focused on culture war issues that are more animating to many conservatives than size-of-government questions.Asked if they would run against the bill next year, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said, “There’s going to be a lot of things we run against.”Republicans in Congress hope to change the subject to a surge of migrants along the Southern border.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesAt the weekly news conference of House Republican leaders, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming spoke about the stimulus for 45 seconds before changing the subject to the rising number of migrants at the Southern border..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus PackageThe stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read moreThis credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more.There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more.The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more.And by the end of the week, Mr. McCarthy announced he and a group of House Republicans would travel to the border on Monday in a bid to highlight the problem there — and change the subject.After spending the campaign vowing to find common ground with Republicans and make Washington work again, Mr. Biden, in his first major act as president, prioritized speed and scale over bipartisanship.He and his top aides believe in legislative momentum, that success begets success and that they’ll be able to push through another pricey bill — this one to build roads, bridges and broadband — because of their early win on Covid-19 relief.“The fact that we could do it without Republicans forces them to the table,” said a senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the nitty-gritty of lawmaking.Yet to the G.O.P. lawmakers who have signaled a willingness to work with the new administration, Mr. Biden’s determination to push through the stimulus without G.O.P. votes will imperil the rest of his agenda.“What I would be worried about if I were them is what does this do to jeopardize bipartisan cooperation on other things you want to do — you can’t do everything by reconciliation,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, alluding to the parliamentary procedure by which the Senate can approve legislation by a simple majority. “I’ve heard some of our members say that, ‘If you’re going to waste all this money on unrelated matters, I’m really not interested in spending a bunch more money on infrastructure.’”To Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who was one of the Senate Republicans who went to the White House last month pitching a slimmed-down stimulus, it’s downright bizarre to hear Democrats claiming their 2010 difficulties stemmed from not going big.“I would argue it was too big, it was unfocused, it was wasted money,” Ms. Capito said.To Democrats, though, they are avoiding, not repeating, their past mistakes.“The public didn’t know about the Affordable Care Act and the administration was not exactly advertising,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters last week.Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, was just as blunt, singling out the Maine moderate who was wooed by Mr. Obama to ensure bipartisan support for the 2009 Recovery Act but whose appeals for a far-smaller compromise bill were ignored last month.“We made a big mistake in 2009 and ’10, Susan Collins was part of that mistake,” Mr. Schumer said on CNN. “We cut back on the stimulus dramatically and we stayed in recession for five years.”And, he could have noted, his party would not have full control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for another decade.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Georgia is Bracing for More Political Hurricanes

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Political Hurricane Blew Through Georgia. Now It’s Bracing for More.The country’s most hotly contested state has calmed down after months of drama, court fights and national attention (even the death threats have slowed). But new storms are on the horizon.Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, who became a target of former President Donald J. Trump for defending the validity of the state’s election results.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesMarch 13, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETATLANTA — The death threats finally appeared to be subsiding, Brad Raffensperger was happy to report.“I haven’t gotten one in a while,” said Mr. Raffensperger, Georgia’s embattled secretary of state, expressing hope that political passions might be cooling off in the state — though “cooling off” is relative in the country’s most heated battleground.Not since Florida’s presidential recount of 2000 has one state’s election cycle drawn so much national — even international — scrutiny. Polarizing figures, expensive campaigns and breathless plotlines have become a seemingly permanent feature of elections here. Analysts have identified Georgia as a major bellwether of the nation’s cultural, economic and demographic realignment, as well as a prime battlefield for showdowns over such fundamental civic matters as the right to vote.When exactly did this reliably Republican and relatively sleepy political sphere become such a vital center of contention and intrigue?Why does seemingly every politically interested observer in America have — à la Ray Charles — Georgia on their mind?The landmark event was President Biden’s becoming the first Democrat at the top of the ticket to carry Georgia since 1992, in what was the most closely decided state in last year’s presidential race. Former President Donald J. Trump appeared especially fixated on the state and made it the main focus of his efforts to reverse the results of the national election. Georgia then played host to double runoff contests in January that flipped control of the Senate to Democrats.The fervor and spotlight will endure: The state is a focal point for the nation’s persistent voting rights battle, as Republicans move swiftly to roll back ballot access in what opponents say is clear targeting of Black voters with echoes of Jim Crow-era disenfranchisement.In 2022, the Peach State’s race for governor is likely to include perhaps the Democratic Party’s leading champion of voting rights, Stacey Abrams, in a replay of the 2018 grudge match between her and Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican incumbent. One of the two Democrats who won their races in January, Senator Raphael Warnock, will also have to turn around and defend his seat next year in a race that Republicans are already eyeing as they seek to reclaim the chamber. Several local and national Republicans — including Mr. Trump — have tried to recruit the former University of Georgia football legend Herschel Walker to run for the seat, which could lend another wrinkle to the state’s political story, as if it needed one.Adding to the chaos, Mr. Kemp has become the target of a vendetta by Mr. Trump, who has condemned him for not doing more to deliver (or poach) victory for him in Georgia in November. This has also made Georgia the unquestioned center of the internal disputes that have roiled the Republican Party since November. Mr. Trump has seemed intent on making the state a key stop on a revenge tour he has waged against Republicans he has deemed insufficiently loyal to him — Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger chief among them.“It just feels like a hurricane blew through here politically in the last few campaigns that just keeps carrying over,” said former Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from the state.Stacey Abrams is seen as likely to run again for governor of Georgia in 2022, in a potential rematch of her 2018 race against Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York TimesSenator Jon Ossoff, who prevailed alongside Mr. Warnock in the runoffs, said that “there’s a tension and complexity to the total arc of Georgia’s history that manifests itself in this particular moment.” That tension, he added, “is continually being expressed in our politics.”Towering stakes in a shifting statePeople tend to speak of Georgia politics these days in the most dramatic of terms: A struggle is underway “for the soul of Georgia,” and the New South in general. Every week seems to bring a new “existential battle” over some defining issue. A “foundational tension” is playing out in the racial politics of a place considered both a cradle of the civil rights movement and a pillar of the old Confederacy.Some days, state officials said, the stakes feel too high, the energy too charged and the language too extreme.“In my opinion, that’s not healthy, and that’s not what America should be,” said Gabriel Sterling, another top election overseer who, like Mr. Raffensperger, gained a national profile as Mr. Trump challenged Mr. Biden’s victory in the state with false claims of rampant voter fraud. (Mr. Trump’s phone call to Mr. Raffensperger in December, pressuring him to “find” enough votes to overturn the results, was disclosed by The Washington Post and led Georgia prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into the former president.)“You’re not supposed to live and die by these elections,” Mr. Sterling said, noting that in a healthy democracy, the “normal” number of death threats directed at an official like him would be “zero.” He and Mr. Raffensperger were sitting in a tavern near the Georgia Capitol early this month, monitored by a security detail. They were unwinding after another day of pitched political battle in which the Republican-controlled legislature passed an election bill that would create a raft of new ballot restrictions.Republicans are now worried that their slipping grip on Georgia could make it a perennial swing state. Mr. Chambliss said that white suburban women, who have been the key component of the state’s Republican coalition, had defected en masse in recent years, more drastically around Atlanta than in other growing metropolitan areas around the country.Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff scored momentous victories for the Democratic Party when they won their runoff elections in January. Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times“The animosity toward Trump is real, and that’s a group that Republicans need to be courting in a heavy way,” Mr. Chambliss said. He added that such a goal would not be easy to achieve as long as Mr. Trump kept involving himself in the state’s politics.“A lot of us have been standing on mountaintops screaming that our margins in the suburbs have been collapsing,” said Brian Robinson, a Republican political consultant in Georgia. Much of the recent focus on those electoral shifts, he said, flowed from the tiny margin of votes separating Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in the state. That segued to the saturation media coverage of the Senate runoffs, the Republican election challenges and, of course, Mr. Trump’s conduct after Nov. 3.“Everything became all about Georgia,” Mr. Robinson said. “I was getting interviewed by newspapers from Switzerland.”The transformation of Georgia’s politics is largely a story of rapidly changing demographics. Atlanta is among the fastest-growing cities in the country, its suburbs evolving from a white Republican hotbed to a more diverse and progressive population of college-educated “knowledge workers.” Metropolitan Atlanta has attracted a substantial influx of younger immigrants and transplants from more crowded and expensive cities in the Northeast and the West.Likewise, the racial makeup has shifted rapidly. “Our demography is reflective of where many states are, and where the nation is headed,” said Ms. Abrams, who added that the majority of Georgia’s population was expected to be nonwhite by the end of this decade. “Politically, Georgia reflects what happens when all of these things come together. It’s a difficult thing to navigate on a national scale, and Georgia is the living embodiment of this.”A Democratic-led push for voting rightsThe point of convergence for much of this ferment has been the protracted struggle over voting rights. Ms. Abrams, who founded the political advocacy and voter registration group Fair Fight Action, has received broad credit for helping capture the state’s electoral votes for Mr. Biden and the Senate seats for Democrats.She became a voting rights cause célèbre herself in 2018 after enduring a bitter defeat in a governor’s race marred by accusations of voter suppression against Mr. Kemp in his former capacity as Georgia’s secretary of state. Ms. Abrams has to this day refused to concede defeat; Mr. Kemp, who oversaw the purging of hundreds of thousands of Georgians from the state’s voter rolls during his tenure, denied any wrongdoing. He declined to comment for this article.Ms. Abrams said that Republicans could not match the political energy and the demographic momentum that have propelled Democrats in Georgia, other than to pursue laws that would make it harder for traditional Democratic constituencies, such as African-Americans, to vote.The legislation currently making its way through the Capitol includes strict limits on weekend voting, a measure that could significantly impede the traditional role of Black churches in fostering civic engagement. A bill that passed the Georgia Senate early this month would repeal “no-excuse” absentee voting and require more stringent voter identification measures. The state’s political patriarch, the 96-year-old former President Jimmy Carter, said this past week that he was “disheartened, saddened and angry” about the legislation.Mr. Ossoff, left, and Mr. Warnock on Capitol Hill this month. Mr. Warnock will have to run for re-election next year in a race that Republicans are targeting.Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press“We know that some version of this bill is likely to pass because Republicans face an existential crisis in Georgia,” Ms. Abrams said. By the same token, Democrats could face a crisis of their own if Republicans succeed at enacting more restrictive voting laws in Georgia and several other states with Republican-controlled legislatures.Mr. Ossoff, who at 34 is the youngest member of the Senate, said Georgia had become a textbook case of how political and generational realignment “can change power dynamics in a way that has massive national implications.”Mr. Ossoff’s life trajectory has offered him a firsthand view of these shifts. He grew up in a suburban Atlanta congressional district that was once represented in the House by Newt Gingrich, the Republican speaker, and is now represented by Lucy McBath, an African-American Democrat.Mr. Ossoff began his career as an intern for the civil rights pioneer and Georgia congressman John Lewis, became the first Jewish senator from the Deep South and entered the chamber with first Black senator to represent Georgia, Mr. Warnock. He now sits at a Senate desk that was once occupied by the fierce civil rights opponent Richard Russell and the staunch segregationist Herman Talmadge. In accordance with Senate tradition, both long-dead senators carved their initials in the desk, though Mr. Ossoff said he had yet to do that himself.Republicans haltingly plan their next movesGeorgia Republicans say it would be shortsighted to think that legislation alone can stem the state’s recent tide of red to blue. Nor is it clear whether the most powerful motivating force in their party — Mr. Trump — has in fact motivated just as many voters to support Democrats in and around Atlanta.This dynamic has extended to Trump acolytes like Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the first-term Republican from the state’s northwest corner, whose far-right views, incendiary language and promotion of conspiracy theories have made her the biggest new attention magnet in Congress, for better or worse. “I have always subscribed to having a big tent,” Mr. Chambliss said. “By the same token, I don’t know where some of these people who wander into the tent ever come from.”Former Senator Kelly Loeffler, the Republican businesswoman whom Mr. Kemp appointed to replace the retiring Johnny Isakson in late 2019, announced plans last month to start a voter registration group of her own, geared toward disengaged conservatives. Ms. Loeffler, who lost to Mr. Warnock, envisions the organization, Greater Georgia, as a Republican counterbalance to Ms. Abrams’s efforts.Ms. Loeffler said she had committed a seven-figure sum of her own money to seed the effort. “When I stepped out of the Senate, I heard people say consistently that ‘someone needs to do something about Georgia,’” Ms. Loeffler said.Former Senator Kelly Loeffler said she had no timetable for deciding whether she would run again for the Senate in 2022.Credit…Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesMs. Loeffler did not say precisely what “needs to be done about Georgia” whether she meant only finding new ways to reach and register conservative voters or working to support Republican-driven laws that would discourage Democrats from voting. Ms. Abrams dismissed the effort as “a shallow attempt at mimicry” and “a vile attempt to limit access based on conspiracy theories.”Ms. Loeffler said she was merely “working to ensure that voters trust the process of voting.” She leaned heavily on phrases like “transparency,” “uniformity” and “election integrity,” which critics deride as false pretenses for Republican efforts to impose voter suppression measures. “There’s no question that many Georgians did not trust the process,” she said.Ms. Loeffler’s brief foray into elective politics began in January 2020, during Mr. Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial. She immediately began running for her November re-election, in a campaign that included Representative Doug Collins, a firebrand Republican and fierce defender of Mr. Trump who continually derided Ms. Loeffler as a “RINO” (Republican in name only) who was not adequately devoted to the former president. She then spent much of her brief Senate career trying to display her fealty to Mr. Trump — an effort that included a campaign ad literally portraying her as to the right of Attila the Hun.Ms. Loeffler, 50, said she had no timetable for deciding whether she would run against Mr. Warnock in what would be a rematch for her old seat. As for what other Republicans might run, speculation has produced (as it does) a colorful wish list, from Ms. Greene to Mr. Walker. David Perdue, the former Republican senator who was defeated by Mr. Ossoff, said last month that he would not run in 2022, and Mr. Trump has been trying to enlist Mr. Collins to take on Mr. Kemp in a Republican primary bid.Mr. Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner, signed his first professional football contract in the ’80s with Mr. Trump’s United States Football League team, the New Jersey Generals, and maintains a close friendship with his former boss. A native of Wrightsville, Ga., Mr. Walker is a Republican who has encouraged African-Americans to join the party, and he has not ruled himself out for 2022.He is also unquestionably beloved in his home state, and the feeling appears to be mutual, though Mr. Walker currently lives in Texas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How to Get on the New York Mayoral Ballot in a Pandemic

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      How to Get on the Ballot in a PandemicLaylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesChanel Cohen walked up to Elmo and Cookie Monster in Times Square: “Do you want to support Dianne Morales for mayor?” They couldn’t sign, they said — they live in New Jersey. Here’s what happened when I spent a day petitioning with Morales → More