DeSantis, Ron

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans’ Promises to Combat Fentanyl Fall Flat With Some Voters

      by

      The official toxicology report states that Andrea Cahill’s son died at 19 years old from an accidental fentanyl overdose. But more than three years after Tyler Cahill’s death in his childhood bedroom, she doesn’t believe that. It was a poisoning, she says, and there is no question about whom to blame: “the cartels.”Ms. Cahill believes the governments of Mexico and China should be punished for the drug’s flow into the United States. A political independent who nearly always votes for Republicans, she wants a president with relentless focus on the issue.“It does feel like maybe nobody cares,” she said.These days, Republican presidential candidates are working to convince people like Ms. Cahill that they share her urgency.Ron DeSantis talks about fentanyl in every stump speech, vowing to send the military into Mexico to target cartels. Nikki Haley has promised to send special operations forces across the border. Chris Christie has called for better access to treatment. Former President Donald J. Trump has offered few specific solutions but has tapped into victims’ families’ hunger to be seen: He likens deaths from the drug to wartime casualties.At Wednesday night’s debate, the candidates linked the crisis to immigration and foreign policy, and hammered home the toll.“We have had more fentanyl that have killed Americans than the Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars combined,” Ms. Haley noted.The promises are required of any politician wanting to appear in touch with New Hampshire, a state that can make or break presidential campaigns. As fentanyl has become one of the most urgent health crises in the country — it is now a leading cause of death for people under 45 — it has ravaged the small state. Last year, opioid overdose deaths hit a four-year high, though down slightly from their peak in 2017, according to state data. Most were from fentanyl.But truly connecting with voters — persuading them that help could be on the way — is proving difficult. In dozens of interviews with people on the front lines of the fight against fentanyl, a sense of abandonment is pervasive. Many said they believed the federal government did too little to stop the epidemic from happening and that it continues to do too little to try to bring it under control.The candidates’ talk of blockades and military intervention is met with cynicism and a deep distrust that their government can find solutions.“I don’t see it getting better if it’s Trump or Biden or whoever is going to step in,” said Shayne Bernier, 30, who fought opioid addiction years ago and is now helping to open a sober-living home in downtown Manchester, N.H. For more than a year, Mr. Bernier has patrolled parks and streets routinely, giving information about a city-funded detox program.Shayne Bernier fought opioid addiction years ago and now patrols the streets and parks of Manchester, N.H. He thinks politicians’ attention to the issue will be fleeting: “They’ll talk about it for an election, and then we’ll never hear from them again.”Mr. Bernier grew up in the city and has “Live Free or Die,” the official state motto, tattooed on his left bicep. He considers himself a conservative. He neither loves nor loathes Mr. Trump, though he understands how the former president appeals to the anger and frustration that courses through his friends.“They’ll talk about it for an election, and then we’ll never hear from them again,” he said of politicians’ promises to address the crisis.Five years ago, Mr. Trump traveled to New Hampshire and remarked how “unbelievable” it was that the state had a death rate from drugs double the national average. When he promised to secure the border “to keep the damn drugs out” the audience responded by chanting: “Build that wall!”The drugs never stopped coming in. The supply only increased, with heroin entirely eclipsed by fentanyl, its cheaper and deadlier synthetic cousin. The state is less of an outlier than it once was: In one recent public opinion poll, more than a quarter of American adults ranked opioids and fentanyl as the greatest threat to public health.To some extent, Mr. DeSantis has picked up where Mr. Trump left off. He promises to shoot drug traffickers “stone cold dead,” a vow consistently met with applause. He largely casts the problem as a symptom of a porous border, giving conservatives another reason to rail against illegal immigration.Tough talk about the Southern border brings some comfort to parents like Ms. Cahill. It’s unclear how her son got the drug that killed him. A video Tyler recorded and shared with a friend that night suggests he took what he believed to be Percocet to relieve pain from a recent tattoo, she says. His father found him dead the next morning.“I had no idea how deadly it could be, how immediate — you can’t call for help,” she said. She keeps fliers in her car that warn “there is no safe experience” using street drugs.But placing the blame on illegal border crossings is misleading. A vast majority of fentanyl in the United States enters through legal ports of entry, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Typically, U.S. citizens driving across the border smuggle in the drugs, stuffing them into trailers, trunks or vehicle linings. Keith Howard, who runs Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, a peer-support community group in Manchester, grimaces when he hears candidates talk about a border crackdown as a viable solution. Mental health support, well-paying jobs and long-term treatment programs are even more important, he said.“There is a need to escape from life for a lot of people right now,” Mr. Howard said. “The sense of alienation people have is much, much deeper than it was 10 or even five years ago.”Nikki Haley has promised to do more to target China’s funneling of chemicals used to create fentanyl.Chris Christie says politicians haven’t been honest with voters about solutions.When Mr. Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, visited Hope for New Hampshire Recovery earlier this year, he notably did not mention the border. He served as the chair for Mr. Trump’s special commission to combat the opioid crisis, but many of the recommendations in the 138-page report that the commission issued in 2017 went nowhere. Mr. Christie blamed the pandemic, but he also said the Trump administration did not focus enough on crafting specific policies and programs.Since then, he said, the crisis has worsened, and politicians haven’t been straight with voters about solutions.“It’s dishonest to lead people to believe that you can enforce your way out of this problem,” he said in an interview, adding that he would support sending National Guard troops to legal ports of entry to help Border Patrol agents intercept drugs. At the same time, he added: “I don’t want to fool the American people into thinking that if I send National Guard to the Southern border, that will solve the problem.” President Biden has focused on both expanding enforcement and improving treatment. In March, the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of Narcan, a nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses. Mr. Biden has called for closer inspection of cargo and stronger penalties for those caught trafficking drugs. Recently, he criticized the Republican-controlled Congress for risking a federal shutdown, which would prevent billions allocated to the D.E.A., Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol to address the crisis.Victoria Sullivan considers Mr. Biden’s approach a failure. A former Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire and political talk show host, Ms. Sullivan this year helped open a sober-living home for men in recovery.Ms. Sullivan calls her role “government cleanup,” as she tries to fill gaps left by local agencies. She is convinced the city’s drug policies are too permissive and drawing people from around the region to Manchester’s streets. (Roughly a quarter of people who are homeless in Manchester report that they are from the city.)Some advocates argue that Manchester’s permissive policies have drawn people from around the region to the city’s streets.Ms. Sullivan says the problem requires more aggressive interventions, accessible medical treatment, strong families and religious institutions. Her solutions hit at a contradiction in many Republicans’ views about the drug crisis: She is unabashed about her conservative, small government views, but she argues that agencies need to spend more money on rehabilitation programs.“The government has just failed at every level,” Ms. Sullivan said. “They encourage dependence but don’t do anything near enough to get anyone on their feet on their own.”Ms. Sullivan has voted for Mr. Trump in the past and still supports him. But she also been impressed by Ms. Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, who earlier this year hosted a discussion at Freedom House, the sober-living home Ms. Sullivan helped create. There, Ms. Haley promised to do more to target China’s funneling of chemicals used to create fentanyl brought into the United States.Victoria Sullivan, a former Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire and political talk show host, said she wanted the government to spend more money on rehabilitation programs.Patrick Burns, 35, grew up in rural Maine, where he began pilfering his mother prescription opioids as a teenager. At 17, he enlisted in the Army and served for several years in Afghanistan.When he returned in 2013, nearly everyone he grew up with was battling an addiction of some kind. He moved to Manchester partly to be closer to a larger Veterans Affairs Medical Center, thinking he could get more help there. Instead, he ran into one bureaucratic hurdle after another and said he found fentanyl all around him.“We’re just a bunch of people who have been discarded,” said Patrick Burns, an Army veteran who struggled to get help with his addiction.Mr. Burns voted for Mr. Trump once before and could imagine doing so again. What he finds harder to imagine, he said, is that the government that sent him to war can find a way out of the morass he sees in Manchester.“People just don’t have a clue — it’s become such a problem,” Mr. Burns said. “Now rather than address it, they just kind of ignore it. They try to mitigate the effects, but there are not pre-emptive strikes at all. We’re just a bunch of people who have been discarded.”Ms. Cahill has tried to ensure that Tyler is remembered. She allowed his photograph to be displayed in the Washington headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and attended a rally at the state capitol earlier this year to raise awareness.That day, she stood with another mother in Concord, N.H., to pass out Narcan to anyone who walked by. When she offered it to two teenage boys, their father stepped in to intervene. “No thanks; they’re good kids,” she remembered him telling her, before shuffling them away.Ms. Cahill was taken aback.“That’s not the point,” she said, recalling the incident. “Tyler was a good kid. This stuff is out there whether we want to acknowledge it or not.”Nicholas Nehamas More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Key GOP Megadonor Network Will Hear Pitches From DeSantis and Haley Camps

      by

      The network, the American Opportunity Alliance, will meet in Dallas, as its biggest donors weigh whether investing in any non-Trump candidate remains a worthwhile investment.A network of megadonors whose biggest members have stayed on the sidelines in the Republican presidential primary will meet next month in Dallas as advisers to two of the candidates hoping to defeat Donald J. Trump will make one of their last pitches for support, according to two people briefed on the matter.The multiday event will feature advisers to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, according to the two people. It will be hosted by Harlan Crow, the wealthy real-estate developer who backs Republicans and who has recently drawn attention for his friendship with and financial ties to Justice Clarence Thomas. Mr. Crow is hosting a separate fund-raiser for Ms. Haley next week, according to Bloomberg News.The donor network, known as the American Opportunity Alliance, was founded a decade ago by a group of billionaires, including the hedge fund executive Paul Singer; Kenneth Griffin, another prominent investor; and members of the Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs.Some of its members have been known to be seeking options other than Mr. Trump. Mr. Griffin, in particular, has been vocal about how he is still assessing the field, despite his past support for Mr. DeSantis in his re-election effort as governor. Mr. Griffin, who has said he wants the G.O.P. to move on from Mr. Trump, bluntly told CNBC recently about Mr. DeSantis, “It’s not clear to me what voter base he is intending to appeal to.”The gathering next month comes as a number of top Republican donors are increasingly concerned that a divided Republican primary — even just through the early states — will almost unavoidably lead to Mr. Trump’s renomination.The group does not move in unison, and the meeting is in some ways a final effort for some donors to see if contributing to any candidate — either Mr. DeSantis or Ms. Haley — remains a worthwhile investment, given Mr. Trump’s commanding lead in the polls and his penchant for vengeance against those who cross him.The meeting is also a chance for the donors to assess whether backing one of the candidates could help winnow down the field ahead of the Iowa caucuses, giving either Ms. Haley or Mr. DeSantis a greater chance to defeat Mr. Trump.Aides to other well-known candidates did not receive invitations to the event, according to a person familiar with the planning.There are members of the network who will be present who are already supporting either Ms. Haley or Mr. DeSantis. Underscoring the complicated nature of the current intraparty feud is the expected attendance at the event of Brooke Rollins, a former Trump administration adviser who leads the America First Policy Institute, and Linda McMahon, another former Trump appointee and close friend of the former president, according to one of the people familiar with the event.The circumstances of the meeting reflect the reality of the current race: Mr. Trump leads by enough that he has skipped the first two primary debates and called for the Republican National Committee to cancel the remaining calendar and unite behind him.One Republican strategist who works with the group and who was not authorized to speak publicly said bluntly of the gathering that the priority was beating President Biden next November — not the ongoing Republican primary. The person said the campaign teams will have the opportunity to lay out — and try to sell — their paths to victory. The person added that Mr. Trump’s path to victory, meanwhile, was “straightforward.”Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley are among the leading Republicans seeking to stop Mr. Trump, but remain far behind in the polls.Mr. DeSantis has been Mr. Trump’s top rival for the entirety of 2023, but for months he has lost ground to the former president while seeing other candidates make gains. He has been increasingly banking his candidacy on a superlative showing in Iowa, the first state that will vote. Mr. DeSantis has also upset some of the American Opportunity Alliance network donors with his comments minimizing the Russian incursion into Ukraine as a geopolitical concern for the United States.For Ms. Haley’s team, simply being given equal billing with Mr. DeSantis at a crucial donor meeting is a success of sorts, as the former United Nations ambassador has converted two solid debates into momentum and money.The steepness of the task to stopping Mr. Trump was underscored by a memo this week from a group, Win It Back PAC, that has spent millions of dollars trying to soften Mr. Trump’s support in Iowa.“All attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective,” read the memo, which was written by David McIntosh, who also leads the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group.The memo described why the group’s ads — testimonials from past Trump supporters — tackled few policy disagreements and focused more on his perceived electoral weaknesses.“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh wrote.The group has spent essentially no money on television since the start of September, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact.Sarah Longwell, a strategist who oversees a suite of anti-Trump groups, including the Republican Accountability PAC, which spent more than $750,000 on ads over the summer, said she has put her group’s spending entirely on pause in the primary — because Mr. Trump now appears so certain to win.“It’s pretty simple,” Ms. Longwell said. “We don’t see a path right now for somebody else. If it was close, if there was an actual alternative we thought could go somewhere or was running an effective campaign against Trump, we would continue.”Her group, she said, would oppose Mr. Trump in the general election and was saving its resources for that fight. “You can’t beat something with nothing,” she said of the primary. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Latino Republicans Call Debate a Missed Opportunity to Reach Voters

      by

      Republicans have sought to make inroads with the fast-growing slice of the electorate. But voters saw a swing and a miss on debate night.The Republican Party has been on a quest to make inroads with Hispanic voters, and the second presidential debate was tailored to delivering that message: The setting was California, where Latinos now make up the largest racial or ethnic demographic. The Spanish-language network Univision broadcast the event in Spanish, and Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a weekday prime-time newscast on a major network in the United States, was a moderator.But questions directly on Latino and immigrant communities tended to be overtaken by bickering and candidates taking swipes at one another on unrelated subjects. Only three candidates — former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — referred directly to Latinos or Hispanics at all. And only Mr. Pence pitched his economic message specifically toward Hispanic voters.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose state has the third-largest Latino population, appeared to suggest there was no need for specific overtures to Hispanics or independents when he had won by such large margins in his home state, including in Miami-Dade County, a former Democratic stronghold.“I’m the only one up here who’s gotten in the big fights and has delivered big victories for the people of Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And that’s what it’s all about.”In interviews, Latino voters and strategists called the debate a missed opportunity for Republicans: Few of the candidates spoke directly to or about Latinos or claimed any cultural affiliation or familiarity with them. The Republican field offered little in the way of economic plans to help workers or solutions to improve legal channels to immigration. The candidates doubled down on depictions of the nation’s southern border as chaotic and lawless.Mike Madrid, a longtime Latino Republican consultant in California, said the tough talk could draw in the support of blue-collar Latino Republicans who did not hold a college degree and in recent years have tended to vote more in line with white voters. But the debate was only further evidence that the party had abandoned attempts to broaden its reach beyond Latino Republicans already in its fold. Republicans are “getting more Latino voters not because of their best efforts, but in spite of them,” he said.Latinos are now projected to number about 34.5 million eligible voters, or an estimated 14.3 percent of the American electorate, according to a 2022 analysis by the Pew Research Center.Although Latino voters still overall lean Democratic, former President Donald J. Trump improved his performance with the demographic in 2020 nationwide, and in some areas like South Florida and South Texas even made sizable gains. Debate over what exactly drove his appeal continues.Some post-mortem analyses have found his opposition to city-led Covid pandemic restrictions that shut down workplaces and his administration’s promotion of low Latino unemployment rates and support for Latino businesses helped persuade Latino voters to his side, even when they disagreed with his violent and divisive approach to immigration.Historically, about a third of Latino voters have tended to vote for Republican presidential candidates. But Latino Republicans differ from non-Hispanic Republicans on guns and immigration: Fewer Hispanic Republicans believe protecting the right to own guns is more important than regulating who can own guns, and Hispanic Republicans are less likely to clamor for more border security measures, according to the Pew Research Center.At the debate on Wednesday, Ms. Calderón, who is Colombian and has gained prominence in Latin America for her incisive reporting on race and immigration, and the other moderators often turned to issues central to Latinos in the United States, including income inequality, gun violence and Black and Latino students’ low scores in math and reading.But on the stage, the candidates’ attention quickly turned elsewhere. Mr. DeSantis — the only candidate to provide a Spanish translation of his website — accused Washington of “shutting down the American dream,” an idea popular with Latino workers, but mostly pitched himself as a culture warrior.Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a major national news desk in the United States, was a moderator.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockIn response to a question on whether he would support a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people in the United States, Mr. Christie talked of the need for immigrant workers to fill vacant jobs. But in his central point, he pledged to increase the presence of troops and agents at the border with Mexico, calling for the issue to be treated as “the law enforcement problem it is.”Mr. Pence dodged Ms. Calderón when she pressed him on whether he would work with Congress to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The initiative, which remains in limbo in the courts, is temporarily protecting from deportation roughly 580,000 undocumented immigrants who have been able to show they were brought into the country as children, have no serious criminal history and work or go to school, among other criteria. About 91 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 54 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners favor a law that would provide DACA recipients permanent legal status. Although Mr. Pence described himself as the only candidate onstage who had tackled congressional reform before, he did not directly answer the question on DACA. Mostly, he used his responses to attack Vivek Ramaswamy and Mr. DeSantis before launching into a lengthy accounting of his track record on hard-line Trump policies.“The truth is, we need to fix a broken immigration system, and I will do that as well,” Mr. Pence said. “But first and foremost, a nation without borders is not a nation.”When asked how he would reach out to Latino voters, Mr. Scott highlighted his chief of staff, who he said was the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate and someone he had hired “because she was the best, highest-qualified person we have.” But he, too, quickly turned to attacking his home-state rival, former Gov. Nikki Haley.The exchanges were a marked difference from the 2016 presidential debate when Senator Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, defended speaking Spanish and personalized their experiences with immigration and the Latino community.Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who helped run Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign last election cycle, said they also were different — and less effective — from those of Mr. Trump. Missing were the pledges “to bring jobs back to America, buy American and drain the swamp,” he added, messages that he said tended to resonate with Latinos and Latino men in particular.“Their campaigns have become such grievance politics that there is not a positive message that is radiating from anyone,” Mr. Rocha said. The shift could also hurt Republicans with a Latino community that skews young and tends to be aspirational, he argued.In South Texas, Sergio Sanchez, the former chairman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, said he listened to the debate with dismay. He wanted to hear the candidates talk about pocketbook issues and energy policies. And he wanted them to stay on message and connect the dots for voters on why their economic policies were better than those under the Biden administration. Instead, he said, they spent more time swinging at one another.That was not good for Latinos or anyone else, he said. “They swung and missed,” he added. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis Says He Would Sign a 15-Week Abortion Ban as President

      by

      The little-noticed remark came during a chaotic moment in the second G.O.P. debate. Mr. DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, but had not clearly committed to federal restrictions.In the chaos of Wednesday night’s noisy Republican presidential debate, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina interrupted Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to pose a question on abortion that Mr. DeSantis had dodged directly answering for months.Would the Florida governor sign a “15-week limit” on abortion as president, Mr. Scott asked, talking over both Mr. DeSantis and Dana Perino, one of the moderators, in a way that made his full remarks difficult to hear.“Yes, I will,” Mr. DeSantis replied.The moment — which largely escaped attention in real time but was noted by The Daily Signal, a news website published by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank — clarifies Mr. DeSantis’s position on abortion, an issue that has split the Republican primary field. Mr. DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida this year, but had not clearly committed to supporting federal legislation restricting the termination of pregnancies.Mr. DeSantis is using abortion to attack former President Donald J. Trump, particularly in socially conservative states like Iowa, where he is making his biggest push to dethrone Mr. Trump as the race’s front-runner.Despite appointing the Supreme Court justices who proved critical in overturning Roe v. Wade, Mr. Trump has ducked questions about whether he would support a 15-week ban, the baseline position of many anti-abortion activists in the Republican Party. And, with a clear eye on the general election — where a hard-line position on abortion could turn off moderate and independent voters and galvanize Democrats — Mr. Trump has criticized Mr. DeSantis for signing the six-week ban, calling it a “terrible mistake.”Mr. DeSantis used those comments to open a line of attack against the former president, telling “pro-lifers” that Mr. Trump was “preparing to sell you out.” Other conservatives, including Kim Reynolds, the popular Republican governor of Iowa who signed a similar abortion ban, have also joined in criticizing Mr. Trump. (Few women know they are pregnant by six weeks.)Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that the former president had “championed the life of the unborn.”Previously, Mr. DeSantis had generally said he would support anti-abortion legislation but had not committed to signing such a federal ban. At the first debate in Milwaukee last month, Mr. DeSantis seemed to hedge when asked if he would support a six-week ban as president. “I’m going to stand on the side of life,” he said, adding that conservative and liberal states would want to handle abortion restrictions differently.On Thursday, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign disputed the idea that his comments were a change from his past position, pointing to an interview he gave to Radio Iowa this month. Asked if he would sign a 15-week ban, Mr. DeSantis said, “You put pro-life legislation on my desk, I’m going to look favorably and support the legislation.”Other candidates running for the Republican nomination have been more clear. Former Vice President Mike Pence has said he supports at least a 15-week ban. Mr. Scott has also suggested he would, at a minimum, sign a 15-week ban. At the same time, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who calls herself “unapologetically pro-life,” has knocked her rivals for what she has said are empty promises, given that Republicans would find it nearly impossible to force such restrictions through a polarized Congress.“Ron had months to advocate for a federal limit,” said Nathan Brand, Mr. Scott’s communications director, “yet discouraged efforts to protect life. If you’re going to back down on an issue, this is the one to do it on. Glad Ron is now on board.”Abortion barely featured at Wednesday’s matchup, after playing a far more prominent role at the previous debate. Only Mr. DeSantis and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey were asked to comment. The question that prompted Mr. Scott’s interruption was a challenge to Mr. DeSantis asking how he would win over abortion rights supporters in Arizona, a key swing state.Mr. DeSantis responded that he had won a resounding re-election in Florida last year. And he took the opportunity to criticize Mr. Trump, who skipped the debate.“The former president, you know, he is missing in action tonight,” Mr. DeSantis said. “He’s had a lot to say about that. He should be here explaining his comments to try to say that pro-life protections are somehow a terrible thing.”The next day, Democrats seized on Mr. DeSantis’s pledge to sign a 15-week ban — a reminder of how potent both parties see the issue in November’s election. On Twitter, the Democratic National Committee’s rapid response “War Room” account said that Mr. DeSantis had “an extreme anti-abortion record” and wanted to “rip away reproductive freedoms from women across the country.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Newsom Emerges as Biden’s Top Surrogate But Promotes Himself, Too

      by

      Gavin Newsom predictably declared Joe Biden the winner of the second G.O.P. debate. Another big winner? Gavin Newsom.For much of Wednesday evening, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, drew nearly as much attention at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif., as the Republican presidential candidates who were there for their second debate.Mr. Newsom spoke to Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. He was there before the debate, shuttling from microphone to open notebook, and stayed long after the Republican candidates headed out, thronged by reporters as he talked down the Republican field and talked up President Biden.“Clearly Joe Biden walks away with this debate,” Mr. Newsom said to a jostling crowd who sought his reaction afterward. “And maybe Donald Trump. It’s just the J.V. team. These guys are maybe running for vice president.”Mr. Newsom went to Simi Valley, aides said, at the request of the Biden campaign, which — in what has long been standard practice — assigns high-profile surrogates to talk to reporters and television correspondents at moments like this.But Mr. Newsom was no ordinary surrogate. A bundle of energy and sharp-edged quotes who seems to relish the prospect of scrapping with high-profile conservative hosts like Sean Hannity, Mr. Newsom left little doubt that he has become the leading surrogate for not only Mr. Biden but also for himself, as he considers a run for the White House in 2028. (He’s also waiting by the sidelines on the off chance that Mr. Biden ends up not running in 2024.)“What Gavin fundamentally gets is that Democrats want leaders who speak with confidence about the future with an intergenerational credibility, can take a punch but hit back harder and don’t begin their sentences with talking about House resolutions or Senate bills or various acronyms,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who has worked in national and California politics. “He goes on these shows playing to win, not as if they are a Harvard-Yale debate.”Mr. Newsom is not the only Democrat with a political future who has been out making the case for Mr. Biden. He is part of a next-generation field that includes, among others, three governors: Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. But none have been quite as active in this slow roll-up to the Iowa caucuses as Mr. Newsom, who has been traveling across the country.“I think this is in equal service to Biden ’24 and Newsom ’28,” said Matt Bennett, a founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic organization. “He’s clearly genuine in his support for the president, and he is obvious in his intent to run someday.”And Mr. Newsom is now set to debate Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican seeking his party’s presidential nomination, in Georgia this November. That unusual face-off — between two sitting governors, one of them a presidential candidate — came up often as Mr. Newsom boasted that he had baited Mr. DeSantis into this encounter.“Why is he doing it?” Mr. Newsom said on CNN. “The fact that he took this debate, the fact that he took the bait in relation to this debate, shows he’s completely unqualified to be president of the United States. Why is he debating a guy who’s not even running for president when he’s running for president?”Mr. Newsom made much the same point at another of his round-robin, post-debate sessions, this one with Mr. Hannity of Fox News, which will host the DeSantis-Newsom skirmish. Mr. Newsom laughed when Mr. Hannity suggested that his real agenda was positioning himself to be the Democratic candidate for president.“Joe Biden’s our president,” Mr. Newsom said. “Joe Biden is going to win this election.” More

    • 238 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      ‘Every Time I Hear You, I Feel a Little Bit Dumber’: Who Won and Lost the Second G.O.P. Debate

      by

      Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for the second Republican presidential primary candidate debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on Wednesday night. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers and contributors rank the candidates on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the candidate probably didn’t belong on the stage and should […] More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      None of the Republicans on the Debate Stage Are Going to Topple Trump

      by

      Donald Trump won’t be defeated with sound bites. He won’t be bested with wordplay. Ron DeSantis carped repeatedly that Trump was “missing in action” at the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, while Chris Christie called Trump a coward and christened him “Donald Duck.” How very clever.And how totally futile. They were throwing darts at the absent front-runner when missiles are in order.Trump has a mammoth lead over all of them, and there’s no sign that it’s shrinking. He’s skating to the party’s presidential nomination. Along the way, he’s doing quadruple axels of madness, triple toe loops of provocation. He’s fantasizing about executing a respected general, and he’s fetishizing firearms, his words coming close to incitements of violence. He’s not sorry for the Jan. 6 riots. To my ears, he’d like more where that came from.But did any of the seven candidates onstage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., talk about that? Nope. Mike Pence criticized Trump for wanting to consolidate too much power in Washington, D.C. DeSantis argued that Trump, if elected president again, could serve only one term, while DeSantis, a newcomer to the White House, could serve two.Christie, the bravest of a timid bunch, gave eloquent voice to how profoundly Trump had divided the country, pitting friend against friend and relative against relative, and while that’s sadly true, that’s also beside the point.The point is that Trump has zero respect for democracy and has aspirations for autocracy. The point is that he keeps scaling new pinnacles of unhinged. The point is that he needs to win the presidency so that he doesn’t have to worry about living out his days where he belongs: behind bars.And perhaps the only shot that any of those seven candidates have to stop him and prevent the irreversible damage he’d do to the United States with four more years is to call a tyrant a tyrant, a liar a liar, an arsonist an arsonist. None of them did.They’re too frightened of his and his followers’ wrath. So forgive me if I chortled every time they talked about leadership, which they talked about often on Wednesday night. They’re not leaders. They’re opportunists who are letting an opportunity slip away from them.The hopelessness of their quest for the presidency and their deepening awareness of that were reflected in all the shouting and cross-talk. Dear Lord, what a din — overlapping voices, operatic voices. It was like some misbegotten a cappella competition or the trailer for a movie I hope never to see: “Pitch Imperfect.” My ears will be ringing until the next Republican debate, scheduled for early November in Miami. Those poor Floridians. With DeSantis as their governor, haven’t they suffered enough?Instead of taking Trump sufficiently to task, instead of explaining in full why just about any one of them would be preferable to the madman of Mar-a-Loco, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott quarreled about drapes. Yes, drapes. He said she squandered $50,000 of federal money on them when she was the United Nations ambassador, she said she didn’t, and they both grew very exercised about it. Where was that passion on the subject of Trump?Instead of savaging him, the seven candidates tore into one another, seemingly vying not to catch up to Trump but to be declared the No. 1 alternative, like a beauty pageant runner-up poised to fulfill the winner’s duties and wear the winner’s tiara should the need arise.DeSantis was more aggressive than ever, a contender of faded promise making a last stand. He crammed in his entire biography: working-class upbringing, Ivy League but held his nose, volitional military service, father of three.Haley tussled with him, with Scott and especially with Vivek Ramaswamy, who was yet again the political equivalent of a jack-in-the-box, popping up every time you hoped that he’d finally been squished down. Haley called nonsense on his nonsense, telling him: “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.” It wasn’t very kind, but it was wholly relatable.Ramaswamy tried humility on for size (“I’m here to tell you, no, I don’t know it all”), but it didn’t really fit. He’s too frenetic and too splenetic, and he had the wrong hair for it, a kind of cartoon pompadour that puzzled me.But not as much as Pence’s demeanor did. He kept trying for jokes in a voice that wasn’t remotely jokey, and he reached for conviction in a manner that lacked any trace of it. It’s not more support from voters that he most needs. It’s a transfusion.“You hear the fire in all of our voices,” he said at one point, but I couldn’t detect so much as a flickering Bic disposable lighter in his. I suspect that he won’t be in the hunt for much longer. Try hard not to miss him.From the others, there was plenty of heat, and there were even important exchanges that delineated significant fault lines in the Republican Party. DeSantis and Ramaswamy objected to the continued flow of enormous aid to Ukraine; Haley deemed that reckless. DeSantis defended his extreme efforts to restrict abortion; Christie advocated something a tad closer to moderation.But what will that matter if none of them chip away at Trump’s lead? There have now been two Republican presidential debates. Trump has proudly skipped and obnoxiously counterprogrammed both of them. And his punishment from his supposed rivals has been a dainty slap on the wrist.The moderators on Wednesday night were just as gentle on him, never posing a question as pointed as one during the first debate, when the candidates were asked whether they’d support Trump as the party’s nominee even if he became a felon.Instead, one of the moderators, Dana Perino, wondered which of the seven people onstage “should be voted off the island” to winnow the field of Trump alternatives. That was hugely revealing: She was suggesting that one of them had to go, when the candidate who needs exiling is the one who didn’t bother to take the stage.At least Christie recognized and remedied that, saying, “I vote Donald Trump off the island.” It was the right choice, rendered in the wrong words and wrong tone. This isn’t a reality show. It’s no episode of “Survivor.” It’s a matter of our country’s survival. But from the way seven candidates danced around the danger of Trump, you’d never know it.For the Love of SentencesLucinda WilliamsRahav Segev for The New York TimesIn a sublime reflection in The Bitter Southerner about what Lucinda Wiliams’s music means to him, Wyatt Williams (no relation) wrote: “The songs we hear as children end up being a lot like our fathers; we go on hearing them in our heads even when they’re not around.” (Thanks to Eileen Van Schaik of Shoreline, Wash., for flagging this.)In The New Yorker, Rachel Syme pondered the sartorial oddity of a leading fashion designer: “The Thom Browne look has often been compared to Pee-wee Herman’s archly nerdy costume or to Don Draper’s office wear after a few rounds through the dryer, but it calls to my mind, too, some mischievous scamp out of a Roald Dahl book who is always conspiring to put a dead hamster in the headmistress’s bed.” (Joanne Strongin, Port Washington, N.Y.)Also in The New Yorker, Judith Thurman distilled the conflict from which the plot of “The Iliad” proceeds: “And with that puerile quarrel between stubborn warlords over the right to own and to rape a girl, Western literature begins.” (Joyce Erickson, Seattle)And Anthony Lane reflected on the liberties that the director Kenneth Branagh and the screenwriter Michael Green took in adapting Agatha Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party,” set outside London, into the new movie “A Haunting in Venice,” set amid canals. “I’m already looking forward to their next reworking of Christie: ‘The Body in the Library,’ perhaps, relocated to the freezer aisle of a Walmart,” Lane wrote. (Abigail Smith, Downingtown, Pa.)In The Washington Post, Petula Dvorak characterized the brief window in which pawpaws are available and ripe enough to eat: “They are like some of D.C.’s other ephemeral delights — cherry blossoms or the optimism and innocence of freshman members of Congress.” (Joan Tindell, Tucson, Ariz.)In Esquire, Charles P. Pierce explained Attorney General Merrick Garland’s bind during his recent clash with Republicans at a House Judiciary Committee hearing: “Garland rope-a-doped as best he could, but there were too many dopes for him to rope.” (Peter Braverman, Bethesda, Md.)In Vanity Fair, Carl Hiaasen put Trump and DeSantis side by side: “Some claim Trump has a better sense of humor, but it was DeSantis who appointed a Jan. 6 rioter to the state board that oversees massage parlors.” (Sue Jares, Los Angeles)In The Times, Pamela Paul examined the embattled House speaker: “As Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry, you could almost see his wispy soul sucked out Dementor-style, joining whatever ghostly remains of Paul Ryan’s abandoned integrity still wander the halls of Congress.” (Jeff Merkel, Fairbanks, Alaska, and Michael Berk, San Diego, among many others)Also in The Times, Bret Stephens previewed the Republican debate in Seussian style: “I expect Ramaswamy to irritate, DeSantis to infuriate, Christie to needle, Pence to remind me of a beetle, Scott to smile and Haley to win by a mile. But I doubt it will move the dial.” (Nancy Breeding, Raleigh, N.C., and Andrew Robinson, Syracuse, N.Y., among others) Bret also noted: “Politics used to be debating ideas. Now it’s about diagnosing psychosis.” (Pierre Mullie, Orléans, Ontario, and Margaret Velarde, Denver, among others)David French analyzed Trump’s recent shadings of his position on abortion, saying: “He is not convictionally pro-life. He is conveniently pro-life.” (Paul Dobbs, Relanges, France)And Tim Kreider, in a lovely essay about aging and vulnerability, inventoried the infirmities (“arthritic hips, ovarian cysts, herniated discs, breast cancer”) that set in as we move from middle to old age: “It’s as if we were all devices made by some big tech company, designed to start falling apart the instant the warranty expires and to be ingeniously difficult to repair, with zero support for older models.” (Mike Rogers, Wilmington, N.C., and Maureen Burke, Sausalito, Calif., among others)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.On a Personal NoteJohn TurturroCole Barash for The New York TimesOur lives are accidents of a sort. We have only so much control over them. We get no say in the genes that we inherit, and while they’re not the whole of our destinies, they’re big parts of them — seeds that are certain to flower, bombs that are sure to detonate. We’re born into circumstances that liberate or limit us. We’re the beneficiaries of good timing, or we’re the victims of the opposite.John Turturro knows that well. The actor, director and writer had a mentally ill brother, Ralph, who spent many of his 70 years at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. John visited him there frequently, got to know the place well and shared those memories in a moving 2015 presentation for the storytelling forum the Moth that you can find here. It’s funny, it’s soulful, and it builds to a poignant metaphor whose elegance takes you by surprise.I had students in a class of mine at Duke watch it in advance of a recent Zoom visit from John, who’d agreed to talk with them about a book they were reading, “Is There No Place on Earth for Me?” by Susan Sheehan. It’s a classic of meticulous journalism, chronicling the odyssey of a woman with schizophrenia and her parents as they struggle, often in vain, to calm her turmoil — to bring nothing more and nothing less than a steady peace and baseline contentment to her days. For several years, John has been working to adapt it into a mini-series.He wants people to understand that mental illness doesn’t have the tidy arc that movies tend to give it. That it’s not a problem reliably solved by extra heaps of love. That it’s sometimes an endless road.And the patients and families traveling it? They could be us. They’re just like us: They’re pushing through hardships that, yes, may be more daunting than other people’s, but they’re pushing nonetheless, with merciful instances of levity and cherished moments of grace. Such instances and moments flicker throughout “Is There No Place on Earth for Me?,” and John’s Moth presentation brims with them.The book and the talk are lessons in the randomness of our lives. They’re also exhortations to meet it with whatever dignity and tenacity we can muster. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis Clears a Debate Hurdle. Will It Be Enough to Build On?

      by

      The Florida governor projected confidence onstage, but time is running out to stop his slide in the polls and convince voters he’s the best Trump alternative.At a time when his standing in the polls has slid — and Republican donors have talked about finding another candidate to stop Donald J. Trump from cruising to the nomination — Gov. Ron DeSantis acted like the former president’s leading challenger at the second Republican presidential debate.Standing center stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday night, he deployed a newly assertive tone against the absent Mr. Trump, using criticisms he has been honing in recent weeks at the urging of his allies. He drew attacks from rivals who did show up, but none seemed to land a killer blow. And despite not saying a word until 15 minutes in, he ultimately imposed himself on the proceedings, speaking more than any other candidate.“Donald Trump is missing in action,” Mr. DeSantis said during his first remarks of the debate. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record where they added $7.8 trillion to the debt.”The question is whether the performance will be enough now to stop him from losing ground and to build momentum. Time is running out to convince both skeptical voters and skittish donors that he is still the most competitive challenger to Mr. Trump than anyone else in the field. Mr. Trump’s standing in the race has only risen since the first debate in August, which he also skipped, and national surveys show him leading Mr. DeSantis by roughly 40 percentage points But as his rivals onstage Wednesday night clamored for airtime, conscious of their fading window, the Florida governor projected an air of confidence.“This is a two-man race,” Andrew Romeo, Mr. DeSantis’s communications director, told reporters in the spin room following the debate.Still, it was not exactly a breakout showing, and the debate may be best remembered for the seven candidates chaotically shouting over each other as the moderators tried to regain control. Even Mr. DeSantis conceded in an interview with Fox News after the debate that, had he been watching as a viewer, he would have “changed the channel.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that Mr. DeSantis had “embarrassed” himself in front of the entire country, a seeming confirmation that the former president’s team still sees him as enough of a threat. (Mr. Trump’s team also sent out an email blast assailing Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and former ambassador to the United Nations.)Over the summer, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign strategy crystallized into one clear imperative: beat Mr. Trump in Iowa, the first state to vote in the Republican primary. Such a victory would pierce the sheen of the former president’s invincibility and potentially force some of the other candidates to drop out, his supporters say, allowing Mr. DeSantis to consolidate support.Having poured his resources into Iowa, and seen Mr. Trump attack the state’s popular governor and anger its influential anti-abortion activists, a win there seems more plausible for Mr. DeSantis than it did ahead of the first debate in Milwaukee. At that encounter, the other candidates avoided criticizing Mr. DeSantis, even as they could have taken advantage of his reputation as prickly and awkward when attacked.By the second debate on Wednesday night, however, their calculations had changed, and Mr. DeSantis was squarely in the cross hairs.Former Vice President Mike Pence went after him over increased government spending in Florida, as well as the Parkland school shooter’s not receiving the death penalty (a decision by a jury that was not in Mr. DeSantis’s control and to which he responded by signing a bill making it easier to execute people). Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina sparred with the governor over how slavery is taught in Florida schools, a frequent topic of dispute between the two men.Ms. Haley attacked him for opposing offshore drilling and fracking in Florida as governor while pushing for more oil and gas extraction in the United States as a presidential candidate. Of all the barbs, that one seemed to cut the sharpest. As Ms. Haley talked, Mr. DeSantis theatrically and somewhat uncomfortably laughed, saying that she was “entirely wrong,” although the thrust of her criticism was largely accurate.The attacks helped make Mr. DeSantis the center of attention in a way he was not in Milwaukee. And rather than starting fights of his own, and allowing other candidates to take back the spotlight, Mr. DeSantis generally stuck to his talking points on immigration, China and the economy while criticizing President Biden and Democrats.He even led the other candidates in a mini-revolt against the moderators, refusing to engage in a gimmicky attempt to have those onstage write down the name of the rival they thought should drop out of the race.Still, the bulk of Mr. DeSantis’s attention clearly remains on Mr. Trump.After the debate, he told the Fox News host Sean Hannity that he wanted to face Mr. Trump one-on-one.“I think he owes it to our voters to come and make the case,” Mr. DeSantis said. More