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      In Virginia, a Fight Over the Suburbs in the Governor’s Race

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      Glenn Youngkin, a first-time candidate with vast wealth, will deliver a pro-business message intended to win over suburban voters. Democrats plan to portray him as a Trump devotee.Republican voters’ choice for Virginia governor, a deep-pocketed first-time candidate who plans to run as a business-friendly political outsider, will offer a major test in the post-Trump era of the party’s ability to win back suburban voters who have fled over the past four years.Glenn Youngkin, who won the Republican nomination on Monday night, had walked a line between his party’s Trump-centric base and appeals to business interests in a crowded field, defeating two rivals who more aggressively courted supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.After years of Democratic advances in the state thanks to suburban voters who adamantly rejected anyone linked to the Trump G.O.P., Mr. Youngkin, 54, a former private equity executive, has warned that “we can kiss our business environment away” if Democrats retain power in Richmond.During the nominating fight, he criticized the current governor, Ralph Northam, and his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe, for creating business conditions that cause college-educated residents (read: suburbanites) to move away.But even as Mr. Youngkin tries to focus on kitchen-table issues, Democrats signaled on Tuesday they would aggressively seek to fuse the nominee to Mr. Trump, by reminding voters of hard-line positions he took in fending off six Republican rivals — including on voting rights, Medicaid expansion and culture-war topics like critical race theory.Mr. McAuliffe, the polling leader for the Democratic nomination, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Youngkin “spent his campaign fawning all over Donald Trump,” adding that he would “make it harder to vote” and be “a rubber stamp for the N.R.A.’s dangerous agenda.”Mr. Trump stayed out of the G.O.P. race while the field jockeyed for position, with Mr. Youngkin ultimately emerging as the winner after roughly 30,000 voters cast ranked-choice ballots at 39 locations around the state on Saturday. But the former president jumped in on Tuesday with an endorsement of Mr. Youngkin, although it was primarily an attack on Mr. McAuliffe, a former fund-raiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton, who as a private citizen was in business with Chinese investors.“Virginia doesn’t need the Clintons or the Communist Chinese running the state,” Mr. Trump said, “so say no to Terry McAuliffe, and yes to Patriot Glenn Youngkin!”But Mr. Youngkin might consider such effusions unwelcome in a state Mr. Trump lost by 10 percentage points in November. Mr. Youngkin, 54, was raised in Virginia Beach and has lived in Northern Virginia for 25 years. He defeated two rivals who appealed more directly to the Trump-centric base: Pete Snyder, a technology entrepreneur, and State Senator Amanda Chase, a hard-right supporter of the former president who was censured in a bipartisan vote of the state’s General Assembly for referring to the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as “patriots.”Mr. Youngkin’s appeal to Republicans was at least twofold: He is a political blank slate, with no record in elected office for Democrats to attack. And his private wealth — reportedly more than $200 million after he retired as co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group — will allow him to compete financially against Mr. McAuliffe, a prolific fund-raiser.Mr. McAuliffe raised $36 million for his 2013 election campaign and more than $9.9 million during the past two years, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Mr. Youngkin has already spent $5.5 million of his own money since entering the race in late January.Republicans have not won a statewide election since 2009, and Democratic dominance of the once-purple state accelerated under Mr. Trump, with Democrats taking control of both houses of the General Assembly in 2020 for the first time in a generation.They used their dominance of state government to pass sweeping progressive priorities like more restrictive gun laws and a ban on capital punishment.But the trend is not irreversible, as some election analysts see it. In the pre-Trump era, Mr. McAuliffe won his first governor’s race in 2013 by just 2.5 percentage points against a hard-right conservative, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II. Rural regions of southern and southwest Virginia have grown redder even as the populous northern and central suburbs are bluer. There is a theoretical path to statewide Republican victory for a candidate who rouses rural Trump voters, appeals to suburban independents and benefits from lower overall Democratic turnout without Mr. Trump as a motivator.And Mr. Youngkin has signaled that he would run against the very legislation Democrats have passed, accusing his opponents of pushing Virginia far to the left of most voters’ preferences.Mr. McAuliffe may be the clear polling leader for the Democrats, but he is conspicuous as the lone white candidate in a field with three Black contenders, in a party whose base is heavily African-American.In four years in office, Mr. McAuliffe governed as a pro-business Democrat, and he began his campaign for a second term in December on a pro-education note, pledging to raise teacher pay and offer universal pre-K. (Virginia governors cannot serve two consecutive terms.)Though Mr. Youngkin is not as unrelenting a supporter of Mr. Trump as some of his Republican opponents, he declined the chance at a recent candidates’ forum to distance himself from Mr. Trump’s lies about a rigged 2020 election. Asked about “voter integrity,” he launched into a five-point plan to “restore our trust in our election process.”During the nominating race, he also pledged to restore a state voter identification law and to replace the entire state board of education. He also said he would create the “1776 Project,” an apparent reference to a curriculum of patriotic education proposed by a commission established under Mr. Trump that has been derided by mainstream historians.Last month, Mr. Youngkin said it was “a sad thing” that Virginia had expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, though he acknowledged the clock couldn’t be turned back.As Mr. Youngkin likely spends generously on TV ads to forge a more soft-focus identity as a pro-business outsider, Democrats are sure to try to keep his earlier positions in front of voters.“Make no state mistake about it, we are going to point out every step of the way the right-wing extremism of Glenn Youngkin,” Susan Swecker, chair of the Virginia Democrats, said on Tuesday. More

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      Senate Panel Deadlocks on Voting Rights as Bill Faces Major Obstacles

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      Democrats now face the task of overcoming their own differences on the measure, and deciding whether they will use it as a vehicle to try to curb the filibuster.WASHINGTON — A key Senate committee deadlocked on Tuesday over Democrats’ sweeping proposed elections overhaul, previewing a partisan showdown on the Senate floor in the coming months that could determine the future of voting rights and campaign rules across the country.The tie vote in the Senate Rules Committee — with nine Democrats in favor and nine Republicans opposed — does not prevent Democrats from moving forward with the 800-page legislation, known as the For the People Act. Proponents hailed the vote as an important step toward adopting far-reaching federal changes to blunt the restrictive new voting laws emerging in Republican-led battleground states like Georgia and Florida.But the action confronted Democrats with a set of thorny questions about how to push forward on a bill that they view as a civil rights imperative with sweeping implications for democracy and their party. The bill as written faces near-impossible odds in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans are expected to block it using a filibuster and at least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, remains opposed.With their control in Washington potentially fleeting and Republican states racing ahead with laws to curtail ballot access, Democrats must reach consensus among themselves on the measure, and decide whether to attempt to destroy or significantly alter the Senate’s filibuster rules — which set a 60-vote threshold to overcome any objection to advancing legislation — to salvage its chances of becoming law.“Here in the 21st century, we are witnessing an attempt at the greatest contraction of voting rights since the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said at the session’s outset.He cited a new law in Iowa restricting early and mail-in voting, another in Florida cutting back on the use of drop boxes and making it harder to vote by mail, and one in Georgia, where Democrats have attacked the decision to bar third parties from giving water or snacks to voters waiting in long lines.“These laws carry the stench of oppression, the smell of bigotry,” Mr. Schumer said, telling Republicans they faced a “legacy-defining choice.” “Are you going to stamp it out, or are you going to spread it?”Among other changes, Democrats’ bill would essentially overwrite such changes by setting a nationwide floor on ballot access. Each state would be required to implement 15 days of early voting, no-excuse vote by mail programs like the ones many states expanded during the pandemic and automatic and same-day voter registration. Voting rights would be restored to those who had served prison sentences for felonies, and states would have to accept a workaround neutering voter identification laws that Democrats say can make it harder for minorities to vote.Over eight hours of debate, the clash only served to highlight how vast philosophical differences over elections have come to divide the two parties in the shadow of former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about fraud and theft in the 2020 contest.Republicans gave no indication they were willing to cede any ground to Democrats in a fight that stretches from the Capitol in Washington to state houses across the country. Instead, with Mr. Schumer’s Republican counterpart, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, taking the lead, they argued that Democrats were merely using state laws as a fig leaf to justify an unnecessary and self-serving federal power grab “cooked up at the Democratic National Committee.”“Our democracy is not in crisis, and we’re not going to let one party take over our democracy under the false pretense of saving it,” Mr. McConnell said.He and other Republicans on the committee were careful to sidestep many of Mr. Trump’s outlandish claims of fraud, which have taken deep root in the party, fueling the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and prompting state lawmakers to adjust their election laws. But in a late-afternoon statement, Mr. Trump, who still towers over the party, made clear the connection between those lies and the push to curb ballot access, calling for every state to adopt restrictive voting laws, including voter-identification requirements, “so we never again have an election rigged and stolen from us.”“The people are demanding real reform!” Mr. Trump wrote.While the Rules Committee vote fulfilled Democrats’ pledge to thoroughly consider the bill before it reached the floor, it left an enormous challenge for Mr. Schumer. Progressive activists are spending millions of dollars to ramp up pressure on Democrats to quickly scrap the filibuster or miss a chance to implement the changes before 2022. The bill already passed the House with only Democratic votes.“What is intense pressure now is only going to grow,” said Eli Zupnick, a former Senate leadership aide and a spokesman for Fix Our Senate, a coalition of liberal groups pushing to eliminate the filibuster. “There is no way out. There is no third option. It is either the filibuster or the For the People Act.”But Mr. Manchin and a small group of others remain uncomfortable both with changing Senate rules and with provisions of the underlying bill, which also includes a public financing system for congressional candidates, far-reaching new ethics requirements for Congress and the White House, an end to gerrymandering congressional districts and dozens of other significant changes.Demonstrators protesting Georgia’s voting legislation in Atlanta in March.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesDemocratic senators plan to meet privately Thursday afternoon to begin deliberations over how to move forward, according to two Democratic officials who discussed the scheduled private session on the condition of anonymity.At least some senators appear ready to make wholesale changes if necessary to win the support of Mr. Manchin and other hesitant Democrats. One of them, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, said the stakes were “existential” if Democrats failed.“If we can’t unify behind it, I think there are going to be some tough decisions to maybe set pieces of it aside,” Mr. Kaine said in an interview.Democrats proposed only modest changes during Thursday’s marathon session in the Rules Committee.Republicans rejected a large package of changes meant to address concerns raised primarily by state elections administrators who have complained that some voting provisions would be expensive or onerous to implement.Republicans also rejected a proposal by Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, to strike down bans, like one included in Georgia’s new law, on providing water to voters stuck in long lines to cast ballots..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media 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(min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}When the time came to offer their own amendments, Republicans were far more ambitious, submitting 150 proposals to kill various pieces of the bill. Ultimately, they demanded votes on only a couple of dozen, many of which forced Democrats to defend positions Republicans believe are politically unpopular.Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican on the committee, tried to strip the provision creating a public financing system that would match small donations to congressional candidates with federal funds. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, argued the case against it most vividly, calculating how much each member of the committee might receive in matching funds, including $24 million for himself.Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate panel considering the measure, tried to strip the bill of a public financing system that would match small donations to congressional candidates with federal funds.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Your constituents in every one of your states, I would venture, do not want to give your campaigns or my campaign millions of dollars in federal funds,” he said. “We do not need welfare for politicians.”Democrats pointed out that the public financing would be optional, but defended it as far preferable to the current system, in which politicians largely rely on a small number of wealthy donors and special interests to bankroll their campaigns. The amendment failed.“If people want to pay for their campaigns with big-money donors instead, I guess that’s what they’ll do,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the committee chairwoman.In a sign of the how seriously both parties took the debate, Mr. McConnell, who rarely attends hearings as party leader, remained glued to the dais for much of the day, sparring vigorously with Democrats. He was most animated in opposition to proposed changes to campaign finance laws, reprising his role as the Senate’s pre-eminent champion of undisclosed, unlimited political spending.“Regardless of who has a partisan advantage here — let’s just put that aside — is it the business of the government to supervise political speech, to decide what you can say about an issue that may be in proximity to an election?” he said.Mr. McConnell called unsuccessfully for dropping language that would require super PACs to disclose the identities of their big donors and a proposed restructuring of the Federal Election Commission to make it more partisan.Mr. Ossoff pushed back. Arguing that there was often no difference between the objectives of super PACs and traditional campaigns, he said, “The public should have the right to know who is putting significant resources into influencing the views of the voters.” More

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      Hispanic Democrats Run Ads Hitting Republicans Over Jan. 6 Votes

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      The political action committee of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is releasing bilingual advertisements targeting four Republicans in Congress over their support for former President Donald J. Trump and their votes on Jan. 6 to challenge the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania.The advertisements from the caucus, which is made up of 38 Democrats, target Republican members who represent heavily Latino districts in Florida, Texas, New Mexico and California, and who each won in a close election last year. The first advertisement focuses on Representative Carlos Gimenez of Florida, the former mayor of Miami, who narrowly defeated Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. The remaining ads will target Representatives Mike Garcia of California, Yvette Herrell of New Mexico and Beth Van Duyne of Texas.“These four Republicans led a misinformation campaign and helped spread the ‘Big Lie’ on social media and conservative news media outlets by sowing doubt about the presidential election results,” said Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona who serves as the chairman of the caucus’s political action committee, BOLD PAC. “They tried to undermine our democracy and in doing so, they helped incite the insurrection. The best way to fight the Republican disinformation campaign is to hold them accountable for their actions.”Mr. Gimenez’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The advertisement opens with footage of the Jan. 6 attack, while a voice-over introduces a police officer describing his experience defending the Capitol.“I experienced a group of individuals who were trying to kill me,” the officer says. A narrator continues: “When an extremist mob attacked the Capitol, Congressman Carlos Gimenez was forced to hide. But hours later, with blood still on the floors of the Capitol, he voted with Trump and helped spread the same lies that left a police officer dead and many others injured.” More

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      Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

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      Rising concerns over crime have led candidates to issue strong appeals for public safety, less than a year after the city was under pressure to defund the police.A shooting in Times Square, a spike in gun violence and a spate of high-profile attacks on subway riders have pushed concerns over crime and public safety to the forefront of the New York City mayor’s race, altering the trajectory of the contest as the June 22 primary approaches.A year after the rise of the “defund the police” movement amid an outcry over racial injustice, the primary will offer one of the first tests of where Democratic voters stand as the country emerges from the pandemic but confronts a rise in gun violence in major cities like New York.The shooting on Saturday in Times Square, the heart of tourism and transit in New York City, injured three bystanders, including a 4-year-old girl, a woman from New Jersey and a Rhode Island tourist who had been hoping to visit the Statue of Liberty.Two of the leading mayoral candidates rushed to the scene.Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, held a Sunday morning news conference where he declared that “nothing works in our city without public safety, and for public safety, we need the police.” Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, went to Times Square twice: on Saturday, hours after the shooting, and again the following afternoon.On Monday, Raymond J. McGuire appeared there as well, walking a careful line between calling for stronger policing and discussing how, “as a 6-foot-4, 200-pound Black man in America,” he understands how the police can violate civil rights.The rising concerns over crime have given those candidates a fresh opening to make forceful cases for public safety and the role it plays in New York’s recovery from the pandemic.The moment is also testing whether the most left-wing candidates in the race, whose far-reaching proposals to rein in the power of the New York Police Department reflected widespread protests over racial injustice last year, will resonate in the same way when the city may be at a different kind of inflection point.As of May 2, 132 people have been killed compared with 113 this same time last year, a 17 percent increase, according to Police Department statistics. There have been 416 shooting incidents compared with 227 this time last year, an 83 percent increase.In one sign of just how central matters of public safety are becoming in the race, at least three different candidates plan to discuss the issue on Tuesday. Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, is slated to unveil her policing plan; the former federal housing secretary, Shaun Donovan, is expected in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, which has been hit especially hard by gun violence over the last year, to discuss “his plans to eliminate the out-of-state gun pipeline”; and Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, intends to roll out a gun violence prevention proposal.“We’re in a very precarious position,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader. “People are afraid of the cops and the robbers. We have both of them that we’ve got to deal with. And anyone that cannot come up with a comprehensive plan that threads the needle of both should not be running for mayor.”Mr. Sharpton said he intends to press mayoral candidates on issues of both overpolicing and gun violence at a forum in coming weeks.More than any other candidate in the race, Mr. Adams offers the clearest test of the potency of a message centered on public safety, which he describes as the “prerequisite” to prosperity. Mr. Adams, a former police officer who has pushed for reforms within the system and says he has been a victim of police brutality himself, has been vocal for weeks about the rise in gun violence. On Monday, he was talking about those issues again, standing outside a Manhattan subway station where a woman was recently assaulted.“This city is out of control,” Mr. Adams said. “That’s what has changed in this mayoral race: People are finally hearing me. We don’t have to live like this.”He and other Democratic candidates contend that there is no conflict between urging a robust police response to crime, and insisting on changes to regulate police misconduct and violence.Even before the Times Square shooting, there were mounting signs that public safety was intensifying as a concern in New York: a Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll released late last month found that “crime or violence” was a major concern for New York Democrats, second only to the coronavirus.Jade Lundy, a child-care worker who lives in the Bronx, said she has begun taking more precautions because there seems to be an uptick in crime, which she blamed on economic hardship caused by the pandemic.“I don’t take out my phone anymore,” she said Monday afternoon as she headed for the subway to the Bronx, from Times Square. Ms. Lundy, who recently turned 18, said she plans to vote in the mayoral election and has just begun learning about the candidates.“I want someone who can make us feel safer,” Ms. Lundy said. “Especially for the women. We have it harder out here.”A spate of crimes targeting Asian-Americans have also alarmed New Yorkers across the city, some candidates say..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“That makes them very worried about the city, and particularly for people who have lived here a long time,” said Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner. For those New Yorkers, she said, some wonder, “Are we back in the ‘70s and ‘80s?”The incidents of violent crime are nowhere near the sky-high numbers of earlier eras in New York, and while shootings and homicides are up, other crimes have been down this spring. Nonetheless, other elected officials also reached for comparisons to the city’s so-called bad old days even as they stressed that they do not believe the current moment is equivalent.“Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, people that lived here, including myself, you know, we witnessed some pretty nasty stuff,” said Representative Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat. “We don’t want to slip back to that. So I think that that’s going to be a major issue with this year’s mayoral race.” Mr. Espaillat is currently neutral after pulling his endorsement from the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, following an allegation of sexual misconduct, which Mr. Stringer denies.Diana Ayala, a councilwoman representing East Harlem and the Bronx who also rescinded her support of Mr. Stringer, said the response from the mayoral candidates to addressing crime will determine if she endorses anyone else for mayor.“Citywide, people are alarmed at the numbers of shootings but quite frankly, those numbers have been pretty consistent in my district for the last three and a half years,” Ms. Ayala said. “Every summer, even as we speak, we are planning for what’s to come.”Ms. Wiley, who held a news conference on Sunday to decry gun violence, has already released a plan to combat that issue. Her policing plan, according to her campaign, will include proposals like a civilian police commissioner, and ensuring that “final disciplinary authority for police misconduct” will “be in the hands of a new all-civilian neutral body.”She also supports “cutting at least $1 billion from the N.Y.P.D. budget to fund investments in alternatives to policing,” her campaign says. Mr. Stringer has said he supports reallocating $1.1 billion in police funds over four years — while often saying that he does not want a return to the chaos of the 1970s. Mr. Donovan has pledged to cut $3 billion from the police and corrections budget by the end of his first term and direct the money to underserved neighborhoods; Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, wants to cut $3 billion and reallocate those funds as well.Ms. Morales, the most left-wing candidate in the race, was not available for an interview on Monday, but a spokeswoman, Lauren Liles, said Ms. Morales “stands by her emphasis that we need to move away from the false equivalency between policing and public safety.”Many Democrats have also pointed out that Times Square already has a significant police presence, noting that was not enough to prevent a shooting.Mr. McGuire called for a re-examination of bail reform laws in a way that doesn’t violate people’s civil rights.“There’s a difference between someone being thrown into jail for stealing a bag of potato chips and someone who has repeat arrests for gun possession,” Mr. McGuire said. “People arrested in possession of a loaded, illegal firearm cannot be detained by breakfast and walk out of the courthouse and be home by dinner.” More

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      Kathryn Garcia for N.Y.C. Mayor: The Times Endorsement

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      article#story header { margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 25px; } section#opheader{ width: 100%; max-width: 100%; } /* body{ overflow:hidden; } */ /* body.show{ overflow: auto; } */ /* body .art-wrapper img, body .headline-wrapper{ opacity: 0; } */ /* body.show .art-wrapper img, body.show .headline-wrapper{ opacity: 1; transition: opacity 1s ease-in-out; } body.show .headline-wrapper{ transition-delay: 0.25s; } */ section#vi-preview-target-standalone […] More

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      Andrew Yang’s N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

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      Andrew Yang is an entrepreneur and the founder of the nonprofit Venture for America. He was a 2020 Democratic candidate for president.This interview with Mr. Yang was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on April 30.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic primary here.Kathleen Kingsbury: Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us. We have a lot of questions for you, as I’m sure you can imagine, and not enough time. So I wanted to jump in but ask that we try for brevity whenever we can just because we don’t have enough time for all the questions we have. And we want to start by asking just why do you want this job? Why are you the best candidate in the field?I’m running for mayor because our city’s in crisis and I believe I can help. I’m a public school parent and someone who’s raising his family here. And if you think you can help our city during this time, I feel like you should do everything in your power to do so.Mara Gay: OK, that was definitely brief. Thank you. Andrew, you haven’t voted for New York City mayor in 20 years, including after the Sept. 11 attacks. You left the city during the pandemic. Tell us why voters should believe that you are connected and committed to New York City.I put myself in a category with a lot of New Yorkers who have voted in national and gubernatorial elections here in New York City but haven’t been as actively engaged in local politics. I think that number is something like 76 percent of registered Democrats or so are in that category. And like many New Yorkers, I see that our city is hurting right now and we need to do more. We need to step up in different ways during the pandemic. I mean, one of the first things we did with my new organization, Humanity Forward, was distribute a million dollars in cash relief to a thousand struggling families in the Bronx, which I hoped would be something of a template for a national approach.And at the time, I was a surrogate for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and was campaigning for them just about every day. And my focus at that point was getting Trump out of office. And I think we can all agree that him not being in office has been a tremendous thing for us all, certainly for New York City and the country.And then after Joe and Kamala won, I then, as you probably know, moved to Georgia for a number of weeks to do everything I could to help win the Senate. And I think that those victories are already having profoundly positive effects here in New York City and also around the country.Mara Gay: Thank you. If elected, you would be the first Asian-American mayor of the City of New York. Does that hold meaning for you, and what might it mean for New York?One of the proudest things about my time running for president was when Asian-American families would bring their kids to me on the trail and want a picture and say, look, you know, like, you can grow up and do anything. And that was so touching for me.I mean, I remember growing up the son of immigrants in the ’70s and ’80s and not seeing many people that looked like me when I turned on the TV. And so the fact that I may be the first Asian-American mayor in the city’s history has a lot of meaning for me. And, you know, when a New Yorker who, frankly, was not Asian actually said to me, like, hey, you know, I think having someone from your community be mayor would be really positive for the city, that also meant a great deal.Mara Gay: What would it mean for New York? The second part of my question, sorry.Not at all. So I was talking to my wife, Evelyn, about the fact that there is at least some chance that if I become mayor, there would be, like, a sign saying: Welcome to New York by Mayor Andrew Yang. And like, I thought, like, wow, that would be kind of positive, I thought, in terms of sending a message that New York City is the kind of place where people of different backgrounds can lead and contribute.Mara Gay: That’s great. Thank you. As mayor, you would be running a city with more than 300,000 employees, a budget larger than that of many small nations. You’ve run two nonprofits, several small businesses and two campaigns, of course. How would you describe your management style?I’m someone who wants to identify people who are passionate and dedicated and mission-driven, and then wants to give them room to run. The fact is, we have so many challenges we’re facing right now in New York. And you have 67 agencies and a mayor’s office of, as you said, you know, several hundred thousand workers. And so it can’t be the kind of organization where everything comes to you. Like, you need to empower leaders and managers and in different environments and different agencies so that they feel like, as long as their values are sound and their process is good, that they can make decisions on their own. And that’s something that I’ve tried to establish in every organization I’ve been a part of, for profit or nonprofit, that people feel like they’re able to make their own decisions, as long as it’s consistent with the vision and the values.Mara Gay: And that would include hiring a former sanitation worker or, excuse me, Commissioner Kathryn Garcia. Is that — do we have that right?Well, so to be very, very clear. It’s of course going to be up to Kathryn — if I do win this race — and she certainly would be one of the first people I call and say, “Hey, Kathryn, we need you.”[When we asked Ms. Garcia about this idea, she said: “If Andrew Yang thinks I need to run his government, then maybe I should just run the government and we should stop having me actually do the job and you get the title. I just reject that.”]But, you know, I think Katie asked me, like, if Kathryn wins and calls you, like, would you answer the call? And I said yes. I mean, like, this is a situation where you need all hands on deck. Certainly if you have someone like me as the mayor, one of the first things I should be doing is trying to find people like Kathryn who are very experienced in New York City government and the specific agencies, because you want to have that experience so that we can help move some of these bureaucracies, you know, towards action in different environments. But yeah, to be very clear. I mean, obviously, you know, like, it’s completely going to be up to Kathryn what kind of role she might have, if that’s the situation. But she’d certainly be someone I’d be thrilled to work with.Nick Fox: Your interview with The [New York] Post made it sound like more than just that you would hire good people for roles. It gave the impression that your vision was that of unusually detached from day-to-day operations, and the mayor of New York has been called the most, or the second most, difficult job in the world. And what you described sounded more like — cheerleader might be a little too glib, but ——So here’s my experience: The only way to make organizations work is to pay attention to what’s happening on the ground. And I think the leadership you don’t want, frankly, is someone who’s just in boardrooms making decisions, saying, “Do this, do that.” And then they’re having impacts, you know, blocks or miles away, and you’re not mindful of that.And so my approach is actually, Nick, kind of the opposite, where what I like to do is I like to go to the ground and then talk to the people who are doing the work. And say, OK, like, “What are you seeing? What are you doing? What can we help you with? What can we do better?” And you learn so much that way. I mean, that’s the way, in my mind, like, effective organizations run.So when I run an organization — so one of the lessons you do learn when you’re the C.E.O. of just about anything is that it’s easy for people just to tell you good things and not good things. Like, I remember the first time I called, like, an instructor when I was a C.E.O. — not the first thing, it was probably like, you know, I’d called people hundreds of times. More

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      Dianne Morales’s N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

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      Dianne Morales is a former nonprofit executive who led Phipps Neighborhoods, the social services arm of the affordable housing developer Phipps Houses.This interview with Ms. Morales was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on April 26.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic mayoral primary here.Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to start out by asking you if you could spend one or two minutes talking about why you want this job and why you’re the best candidate in the field. Brevity will be appreciated on all these answers, only because we just don’t have enough time with you. But I will let you start from there. I am sure several of my colleagues will have lots of questions for you.Great. So sure. Thank you all for having me. Apologies for the technological difficulties early on. So, I’m running for mayor. Right now, 700,000 of the 1.1 million students who attend our public schools — the families, the majority Black and brown families — do not trust their kids to go back to our public schools. We know also that during the pandemic, some New Yorkers were treated graciously by friendly officers who handed out P.P.E. to them, while at the same time other Black and brown New Yorkers were met with more of the same brutality and unnecessary police force, physical force, that I have been speaking out about. The city boasted of its broadband efforts under the de Blasio administration. And yet, during this pandemic we’ve seen too many young people who actually felt the impact of the design of poverty on our city.[The Times editorial board has written on the need to expand access to broadband, particularly in the context of the pandemic.]And at the same time, food and housing insecurity has existed in the city while Wall Street has flourished over the course of the last 15 months in particular. And 20 percent of our household earners control over 54 percent of the city’s wealth. I am in this race because I think it is time for our city to live up to the rhetoric and the potential of actually being the greatest city in the world. And that means being willing to confront and reconcile and address the deep inequities and injustices that have been perpetuated in the city for far too long.We don’t need reform. We don’t need renewal. What we need is to actually transform our city and finally create a city and build a city together that works for all of us. We know that politics as usual has never worked. And the idea of continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome is in fact the definition of insanity.So what I am proposing is a radically transformative new New York City that I am proposing to rebuild, to build in partnership with the communities that have been left behind for so long, that means women of color, it means the disabled, it means our essential workers, our undocumented workers. We need to build a city that works for them, because we know that throughout this pandemic they have worked for us. So that is why I want this job. I also believe that I have the skills and experience that make me uniquely qualified to do it successfully. So thank you for having me here today. I’m excited to be here for this conversation.Mara Gay: Thank you. It’s a great segue into the next question for you. As mayor, you would be running a city with more than 300,000 employees and a budget larger than that of many small nations. How does running a nonprofit prepare you for this role?Great question. Running a nonprofit prepares me for this role in a lot of different ways. One is, the nonprofit sector is probably the only sector where you know that you are going to be reimbursed from the beginning, that you’re going to be reimbursed at 80 cents on the dollar to the actual costs that it takes to operate and to provide services. I have done that not only successfully, I have closed those budgets.I have grown the program budgets in the organizations that I run. And I have done it without compromising the quality of the services that I’ve provided to the most vulnerable New Yorkers. In that capacity, I have served as an executive of large organizations whose job and mission is to actually serve communities and people directly, to have a direct impact on improving the quality of those people’s lives on a day-to-day basis, not writing policy papers that sit on the shelf, not opining about the impact of one policy or another, actually doing the work, being confronted on a daily basis with the challenges that people are facing and actually having to come up with the solutions and the strategies to help people overcome that. And I have done that successfully.The last thing I’ll say on this is that I also have lived experience that makes it such that I have direct understanding of the frustrations and the challenges that people have to overcome and navigate on a daily basis in order to try to live in dignity and provide for their families. So I think that all of those things in combination, actually, not only as a nonprofit executive, prepare me for this role, but actually uniquely prepare me for this role as opposed to some of my peers in this race.Mara Gay: Thanks. And just very briefly, about how many people have you managed, give or take? And what’s your management style?Sure. So the largest team I’ve managed was probably about 500. My management style is that I’m really good at surrounding myself with people who I think are smarter than me, people who I know sort of offset the different things that I may or may not bring to the table. Very collaborative in terms of trying to solicit people’s ideas and thoughts and also being able to co-create those solutions and strategies.But I think the other thing is the ability to sort of make tough decisions when need be and do it in such a way that even those who are in opposition somewhat begrudgingly come along, because they understand the rationale and the sort of reasoning behind the decision and feel invested in the long-term outcome. I think it’s really important that no matter how big the organization or the city, that every person that is connected and that is doing a job or work related to the city understands the role that they specifically play and the value that they bring. Because I think ultimately everybody just wants to feel valued and wants to feel like they’re doing a good job. No one gets up every day and says: “I don’t care. I don’t really want to do a good job at this.” So making sure that people feel valued and respected and a part of the solution is a critical part of being successful as an executive.Mara Gay: Thanks. Alex?Alex Kingsbury: I’m wondering if you can talk about what you think explains the rise in violent crime and what you would do about it if elected mayor.Sure. So I think we can’t really separate or tease out the rise in crime, the so-called rise in crime from all of the other insecurities that people have experienced over the course of the last 15 months.[With 447 homicides, 2020 was New York’s deadliest year in nearly a decade.]You know, we’re talking about people who have been increasingly housing insecure, people who have been increasingly food insecure, people who have not had access to health care or mental health care. There’s a level of sort of desperation that people are feeling and experiencing that is pushing people over the edge. And I think that there are definitely people that were experiencing, suffering from mental health challenges before the pandemic that have just gotten exacerbated as a result of it.So I think that one of the critical things that needs to be done in order for us to begin to address the increased violence that our communities are experiencing is to actually address our basic human needs, to make sure that everyone has a stable roof over their heads, that everyone has access to and knows where their next meal is coming from. And everybody has access to the basic sort of economic stability that they need. More

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      Kathryn Garcia's N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

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      Kathryn Garcia is a longtime civil servant who served as commissioner of New York City’s Sanitation Department.This interview with Ms. Garcia was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on April 30.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic primary here.Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you for joining us today. We don’t have very much time together, so we do just want to jump into questions. Because we don’t have very much time, brevity would be very appreciated. So I just wanted to start off by asking you why you want this job — I’m sorry, I’m hearing an echo. I’ll fix that once we start talking — and also why you’re the best candidate in the field. And finally, are you going to ask Andrew Yang to join your team when you’re in City Hall?I’ll do the last one first. I’ve made no plans for specific people in my administration at this time, but we can always have a head cheerleader.[Mr. Yang has said he’d like to be the city’s “evangelist and cheerleader in chief.”]But I would say I’m running for mayor because I fundamentally love this city. And I know that I have the qualifications to get the job done for New Yorkers, with a real vision about how we can make programs work more equitably for people, and to really make sure that we’re treating New Yorkers like customers. I know what that means, and I understand how to get it done, which is why I’m both running and the best candidate for mayor.Mara Gay: Thank you for that. At City Hall, you served as sanitation commissioner. The mayor gave you some of the city’s toughest jobs: food czar during the pandemic, lead abatement at NYCHA. How does your experience as a city manager prepare you to be mayor? I have a follow-up to that, but I’ll leave it there for now.You know, the mayor’s job fundamentally has many pieces. You are the booster for the City of New York — you have to be able to talk about everything that we all love. But you also have to be the leader of 300,000-plus employees and get them to show up and do their work every day. And you have to know where your pitfalls are going to be: How are these agencies going to interact, and how are you going to make them work as a team? That doesn’t come automatically. And that is what I have systematically done, whether or not it was in lead, crossovers between D.O.B. and D.O.H.M.H. and NYCHA to effectively make change.And it’s what I did during Covid for ensuring that we were keeping everyone fed. You know, taxi drivers for delivery, Parks Department employees at the distribution hubs, many contract people, ensuring that we were using caterers to prepare food, putting together those teams and effectively delivering for New Yorkers, because at the end of the day, that is the one person I’m always thinking about. Who’s in the Bronx, who’s in Brooklyn, who’s in Staten Island, who’s in Manhattan, who is happy with the service that they got from the city.Mara Gay: How would you assess the mayor’s management style, and what would you do differently?The mayor is not a manager. The mayor has been a public advocate, and that is where he got his training. I fundamentally manage differently. It is about bringing the smartest people together, listening to them, developing the plan and holding people accountable for delivery. That is very different than what we have today.[Bill de Blasio was the public advocate before he became mayor. The public advocate acts as an ombudsman for the people of the city and a government watchdog. The public advocate is also first in line to become mayor in the event the sitting mayor is incapacitated.]Mara Gay: So as you said just a minute ago, a mayor has to do a lot more than manage the city. Can you talk a little bit about how you would perform the other tasks of mayor as the cheerleader, the negotiator, the chief lobbyist, the ambassador for the city in Albany and D.C.?Certainly. So in some ways, I’ve had microcosms of that role in the roles that I have had. I have had to go to Albany to advocate for funding for NYCHA. I have had to do the hard work of ensuring that the Sanitation Department really felt led and boostered. I have done fun things that promoted New York. I actually got two sanitation workers into Vogue because we made partnerships with a fashion designer to talk about textile waste. Unusual, interesting and a little bit of fun. We have to be able to celebrate New York City and embed all of these different, really talented people into our goals.[The artist and designer Heron Preston began a collaboration with the city’s Department of Sanitation, which was featured in Vogue in 2016.]Jesse Wegman: I want to move to the Police Department. We’ve all watched the last two mayors be essentially steamrolled by their police commissioners. You come out with some interesting and pretty specific plans for the department, including raising the age of recruits and ensuring that officers live in the city. How would your overall approach be different and make sure that the department is accountable both to the mayor and to the people of New York? And specifically, how would you deal with the New York police union?[Mr. de Blasio had a fraught relationship with the Police Department, and both he and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg adopted a hands-off approach to their commissioners.]N.Y.P.D. is made up of officers who are actually — or should be — residents of New York but are actually just people. We have a real opportunity at this moment — we have upper-level management leaving in droves — to formally reshape this entire organization. But I hold my people accountable. I don’t understand why the current mayor doesn’t hold his police commissioner accountable for delivering.When we think about what needs to transact, we have to make it so that discipline is really transparent. Otherwise, you are not going to rebuild trust with communities. You know one of the things that’s true? There are five deputy assistant district attorneys. There are U.S. attorneys. We sort of outsource discipline away from the police commissioner, as well as the chiefs. That is where it needs to be. Fundamentally, the mayor has to hold them accountable for doing that.And when it comes to the union, you sit down with labor. I sit down with labor. I am very open to labor issues. I don’t get steamrolled by labor. Nobody has ever accused the Teamsters of being pushovers. I have been able to work incredibly effectively with them to make sure we got the job done.Jesse Wegman: I think the steamrolling was done primarily by the commissioner within the last two administrations. Can you tell us what kind of commissioner you would choose or even give us some names of potential candidates?I am not picking a candidate now. It feels like that could jinx the election by presuming that I already have the title. I know I need to go ask people for their vote, but I do have some fundamental characteristics that I need from a police commissioner.I need to know that they are completely on board with the agenda that I have set and been very clear about; that they have the management chops to get it done; that they are prepared for culture change, which means that you’re going to have to take some tough stances; and that they understand that I will work with them to make that happen. But I am not necessarily looking for just a cop’s cop, which is what others seem to be choosing over and over again.Nick Fox: In an online Q. and A. you said the police commissioner should have the final say on disciplining officers. Why? Commissioners don’t have a very good record on holding officers accountable for misconduct.[Ms. Garcia, splitting from some of her rival candidates, has said, “My police commissioner would be strictly accountable to me on discipline decisions, and I would hire someone I trust to have final authority on that decision.”]The past commissioners have not had a very good track record of holding people accountable on discipline. But if you don’t make them responsible for discipline, then you’re giving them an out — that they are not fundamentally responsible for managing their force and for holding the chain of command completely responsible for ensuring that discipline is maintained. More