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      Early Voting Begins in New York: Here’s What to Know

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      Although no citywide offices are being contested this year, the New York City Council is up for election, and voters statewide will consider two ballot questions.Election Day is still several days away, but voters in New York can get a head start on Saturday, when early voting begins.There are some interesting New York City Council races on the ballot. One features two sitting council members who are fighting bitterly over a redrawn district in southern Brooklyn; one of the candidates switched parties and is now running as a Republican. Another face-off pits two newcomers in a nearby district that was recently created to amplify the voices of Asian voters.But for most New Yorkers, it will be a relatively quiet Election Day, with no presidential, governor or mayoral races on the ballot this year.What is on the ballot this year?Your ballot might include races for the City Council, district attorney, judges and two statewide ballot measures.The City Council is led by Democrats, and they are expected to keep control of the legislative body. But some local races have been contentious, and Republicans have been trying to increase their power in a city that has long favored Democrats.There are district attorney races in the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island, but only Melinda Katz, the Queens district attorney, faces a challenger. The two statewide ballot measures involve a debt limit for small city school districts and the construction of sewage facilities.How do I vote?Early voting starts on Oct. 28 and ends Nov. 5. You can find your polling location online.Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 7, and polls are open from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m.Absentee ballots are available for people who are out of town, ill or have other reasons they cannot vote in person, though the deadline to apply for an absentee ballot online has passed.Are there any close races?One of the most interesting races is the clash in Brooklyn between Justin Brannan, a Democrat and chair of the Council’s Finance Committee, and Ari Kagan, a council member who recently left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party.Mr. Brannan, a former punk rock guitarist, is running in a swing district against Mr. Kagan, a former radio and TV show host from Belarus. The two have quarreled over the city’s handling of the migrant crisis, abortion and other issues.Another council member, Inna Vernikov, a Republican, is running for re-election after being charged with openly carrying a gun at a pro-Palestinian rally — an event that she opposed and was observing.In Queens, Vickie Paladino, a Republican council member, is facing a challenge from Tony Avella, a Democratic former state senator. In the Bronx, Marjorie Velázquez, a Democratic council member, has had strong union support as she runs against a Republican challenger, Kristy Marmorato, an X-ray technician hoping to replicate her party’s showing in 2021, when Curtis Sliwa, a Republican, narrowly won the district in the mayoral race over Eric Adams, a Democrat.Why is there a new City Council district?The city’s redistricting commission sought to reflect the growth in the city’s Asian population, and created a City Council district in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which has a majority of Asian residents. The so-called Asian opportunity district has no incumbent.The two main candidates are Chinese American. Susan Zhuang, a Democrat and chief of staff to a state assembly member, is running against Ying Tan, a Republican and community activist.The Republican Party has made inroads with some Asian voters in New York, and Ms. Tan has focused on crime. Her campaign website promises to “bring law and order back!”A third candidate, Vito LaBella, a former police lieutenant, is running on the Conservative line after losing the Republican primary to Ms. Tan.What issues are on voters’ minds?New Yorkers are concerned about many pressing issues: an influx of migrants from the southern border, public safety, the city’s housing and affordability crisis, and the recent attacks in Israel.Roughly 58 percent of New York State voters agree with Mayor Adams that the migrant issue “will destroy New York City,” according to a recent Siena College poll.On Israel, about 50 percent of voters believe that a “large-scale Israeli attack in Gaza is too risky,” but that Israel “must try everything” to rescue hostages taken by Hamas, according to the poll. Nearly one-third of voters said that a “large-scale attack” in Gaza was warranted.Steven Greenberg, a Siena College pollster, also noted that a “Republican came within seven points of being elected governor” last year, when Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, beat Lee Zeldin, then a Republican congressman. With Republicans gaining ground in New York State, Mr. Greenberg said that the poll showed the “worst-ever” approval ratings for President Biden in New York. More

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      New York Primary Election 2023: Live Results

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      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Irineo Cabreros, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Lindsey Rogers Cook, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Will Houp, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Ilana Marcus, Charlie Smart and Isaac White. Editing by Wilson Andrews, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. Reporting contributed by Dana Rubinstein. More

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      New York’s Primary Elections 2023: What to Know

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      Primaries were being contested Tuesday for a range of New York City Council seats, district attorneys in the Bronx and Queens, and offices throughout New York State.Several Democratic incumbents in New York saw unusual challenges from more conservative candidates in Tuesday’s primary, with the opponents hoping to benefit from a demographic change, as an influx of immigrants is shifting some districts to the right.Incumbents easily held off primary challenges in Democratic primaries for district attorney in Queens and the Bronx; further north, a Council race in Buffalo was won by a woman whose son was shot in the Tops supermarket racist massacre.In New York City, just over 149,000 people had cast their ballots as of 6 p.m., according to the City Board of Elections. That includes 44,611 votes that were cast during the nine-day early voting period that began June 17 and ended on Sunday — less than a quarter of the early-voting turnout two years ago, when candidates for mayor were competing in the primary.There were contested primaries in New York City Council contests across the boroughs, with the races for a two-year term instead of the usual four years because of redistricting. Every seat on the City Council is up for re-election, but less than half of the 51 Council seats are being contested in primaries, and of those, 13 races feature more than two candidates — making ranked-choice voting, where voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference, necessary.Ranked-choice voting will not be used in the races for district attorney.How Ranked-Choice Voting Will Affect the ResultsThe New York City Board of Elections will reveal the first-place vote totals each candidate receives on Tuesday; if one of the candidates in the 13 Council contests where there are three or more contestants draws 50 percent of the vote or more, a winner should be declared.If no candidate hits the 50 percent mark, the board will use the ranked-choice system, but not until July 5. The board usually runs the first ranked-choice calculation seven days after the vote, but because that day falls on the Fourth of July, the tabulation will be delayed a day.If necessary, additional ranked-choice tabulations will be held each week afterward, on July 11 and July 18, said Vincent Ignizio, the deputy executive director of the Board of Elections.About 15,000 absentee ballots have already been filed, but additional absentee ballots can be received a week after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by June 27.Under recent changes to state law, voters will also have an opportunity to cure or fix mistakes on their absentee ballots. The tentative last day to receive absentee ballot cures is July 17.Because of the low turnout, Board of Elections officials don’t expect that more than three rounds of ranked-choice voting tabulations will be required.Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group, said ranked-choice voting gave people more options. “We heard some voters in our 2021 exit polling say that because they knew they had the ability to rank, they actually paid more attention to more candidates,” she said.Some Key Races to WatchNew York City District Attorney RacesThe incumbent district attorneys of the Bronx and Queens both fended off challengers to win their respective Democratic primaries, according to The Associated Press.In the Bronx, Darcel Clark defeated Tess Cohen, a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, who was the first person to challenge Ms. Clark in a primary. With 65 percent of the votes counted, Ms. Clark led Ms. Cohen by more than 12,000 votes.In Queens, Melinda Katz, rebuffed a challenge from her right, defeating George Grasso, a former Police Department first deputy commissioner who attacked Ms. Katz as being soft on crime. Ms. Katz disputed the accusation by pointing to her focus on retail theft, gang takedowns and gun seizures.The challenge from Mr. Grasso came four years after Ms. Katz narrowly defeated a democratic socialist who wanted to abolish the police and end cash bail. Ms. Katz was leading Mr. Grasso and another opponent, Devian Daniels, by 27,000 votes with 71 percent of the vote counted.Ms. Clark, whose tenure began in 2016, was the first Black woman to be elected district attorney in New York. She grew up in the Bronx, was raised in public housing and went to public schools.She said that her biggest accomplishment as district attorney has been “putting humanity into the criminal justice system.”Central Harlem City Council RaceIn Harlem, three moderate Democrats are running in one of the most competitive races in the city to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who dropped out last month.Ms. Jordan faced questions about her belief that the police should be abolished and about her far-left stance on housing development. Her name will remain on the ballot.The three Democrats running to replace her have sought to distance themselves from Ms. Jordan. They are: Inez Dickens, 73, who held the Harlem Council seat for 12 years before joining the State Assembly; Yusef Salaam, 49, one of five men exonerated in the rape of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989; and Al Taylor, 65, who is serving his sixth year in the Assembly.All three candidates gathered at Lenox Avenue and West 134th Street on Tuesday afternoon to try to woo voters. Ms. Dickens’s staff used a bullhorn, while Mr. Salaam’s team rang a bell every time a voter said they had ranked him first.Chantel Jackson, an assemblywoman from the Bronx who grew up in Harlem, came out with her nearly 2-year-old son to hand out fliers for Mr. Taylor. Mr. Salaam and Mr. Taylor had cross-endorsed each other, asking voters to rank them first and second. Ms. Dickens was endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams.The major issues in the historically Black neighborhood include the loss of Black residents, lack of affordable housing and a saturation of drug treatment centers and social service providers.The candidates have struggled to differentiate themselves. All three say they would have supported a new housing development on West 145th Street that Ms. Jordan initially rejected because it was not affordable enough.Ms. Dickens and Mr. Taylor have contended that their experience would make a difference, while Mr. Salaam, who moved back to the city from Georgia to run for the seat, has argued that it is time for a generational shift.“Knowledge is power,” Ms. Dickens said while campaigning. “If you don’t have the knowledge, working in the system is difficult.”Other City Council RacesIn Lower Manhattan, the incumbent Chris Marte, a progressive Democrat, was leading challengers Susan Lee, a consultant; Ursila Jung, a private investor; and Pooi Stewart, a substitute teacher. All the challengers emphasized public safety and education and argued that Mr. Marte was too far to the left.In the Bronx, incumbent, Councilwoman Marjorie Velázquez, was leading her opponents who criticized her because she backed the rezoning of Bruckner Boulevard in Throgs Neck, which will bring affordable housing to the area.In southern Brooklyn, three Asian American Democrats are running in a newly formed district.The candidates are Wai Yee Chan, the executive director at Homecrest Community Services; Stanley Ng, a retired computer programmer; and Susan Zhuang, the chief of staff for Assemblyman William Colton.In a district that has swung to the right in recent years, the winner of the Democratic primary is expected to face a tough general election challenge from the Republican primary winner.Vito J. LaBella, a conservative Republican and former Police Department officer, is facing Ying Tan, who works in senior services, in that primary.Buffalo Common CouncilIn Buffalo, Zeneta Everhart, a political newcomer whose son was a victim of a racist shooting at a Tops supermarket last May, appeared on track to defeat a well-known progressive, India Walton, in a primary race for a seat on the city’s Common Council.The seat represents Masten, an East Side district where the Tops is located and which is a traditional base of Black political power in Buffalo, New York’s second largest city and a Democratic stronghold.Ms. Everhart, a former television news producer who works for State Senator Timothy Kennedy, testified in front of Congress after the shooting, in which her son, Zaire Goodman, was shot in the neck but survived. Ten other people — all Black — were killed by the gunman, who targeted East Buffalo because of its large Black population.Ms. Walton, a democratic socialist, became a liberal star after she defeated Mayor Byron Brown in a primary in 2021, only to lose the general election that fall after Mr. Brown mounted a write-in campaign.In this campaign, Ms. Walton had criticized Ms. Everhart’s connections to the Democratic establishment, which included endorsements from the county Democratic Committee and Senator Chuck Schumer. But returns on Tuesday showed Ms. Everhart leading with about two-thirds of the vote, with about 85 percent of precincts reporting.Jesse McKinley More

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      In New York Primaries, Democrats Feel the Heat From the Right

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      The Queens district attorney and several City Council members face more conservative challengers who are criticizing them on issues including public safety.When Melinda Katz ran for Queens district attorney in 2019, her principal opponent in the Democratic primary was a public defender and democratic socialist with a platform of ending cash bail and eventually abolishing the police.With endorsements from progressive prosecutors around the country — as well as from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — Tiffany Cabán, a first-time candidate, lost by fewer than 60 votes after painting Ms. Katz as a regressive Democrat.Four years later, the strongest challenge to Ms. Katz is coming from George Grasso, an opponent running to her right who has accused her of being soft on crime.It’s not the only contest in the city where moderate Democrats are facing opponents on the right in primaries on Tuesday. In several City Council races, from the Bronx to southern Brooklyn, moderate Democrats are being challenged over public safety, affordable housing and education by more conservative members of their own party.“It’s really rare that so many challengers in this primary season are running to the right of the incumbent Democrat,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic consultant who is working on the campaign of Stanley Ng, who is running to the right of the front-runner in the 43rd Council District in southern Brooklyn. “Primary challengers to incumbent Democrats are usually running from the left or making a generational argument about it being time for new leadership.”In the Bronx, Councilwoman Marjorie Velázquez, who ran as a progressive in 2021, is facing two such challengers who have criticized her support of a plan to rezone Bruckner Boulevard in Throgs Neck. In Lower Manhattan, Councilman Chris Marte is facing off against opponents who have accused him of wanting to “defund” the police, which he denies.A councilwoman from Queens, Linda Lee, who represents Bayside, faces more conservative challengers. In Harlem, three moderate candidates are running to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who dropped out. And in the newly drawn 43rd Council District, the three Asian American Democrats running in the primary listed public safety and education as their top two issues.Marjorie Velázquez, a City Council member from the Bronx, said she is a moderate who is falsely viewed as a socialist.Anna Watts for The New York TimesSome see the trend as partially tied to demographic shifts from immigrants who are more conservative on two issues: public safety, especially after a rash of attacks on Asian Americans during the pandemic, and education, where progressives have backed changes to entry exams for specialized high schools with large Asian American enrollment.Between 2010 and 2020, New York City’s population grew by more than 629,000, according to a report from the CUNY Research Consortium on Communities of Interest. More than half of that increase came from a net growth in the Asian population, including a 43 percent growth in Brooklyn and the Bronx.Asian American voters have shifted to the right in recent elections. In the race for governor last year, majority Asian districts remained Democratic but shifted to the right by 23 points from the 2018 election, according to an analysis by The New York Times.Yiatin Chu, president of the Asian Wave Alliance, said Republican candidates are aligned with views that many Asian immigrants value, which she said Democrats have not engaged well on. Others say that Democrats have left themselves vulnerable by not effectively articulating their positions.“What elected official doesn’t care about public safety?” said Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who represents Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and is likely to face a strong Republican challenge in the general election. “But because we’ve allowed the right to paint us with this broad brush that we all want to abolish law enforcement, now Democrats feel compelled to lead with that.”He is supporting Wai Yee Chan, the executive director at Homecrest Community Services, in the 43rd Council District Democratic primary. She is running against Mr. Ng and Susan Zhuang, the chief of staff for Assemblyman William Colton.Sensing a threat from the right, Future NYC, a pro-business super PAC; Labor Strong, a coalition of the city’s most powerful unions; and the New York City District Council of Carpenters are funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars for advertising and on-the-ground support to help several moderate candidates.Future NYC recently pledged to spend approximately $500,000 to support Ms. Velázquez and Ms. Lee, said Jeff Leb, the group’s treasurer.Ms. Velázquez was one of 15 people who left the City Council’s Progressive Caucus in February after it asked members to agree to a statement of principles that included less funding for the police. She was recently endorsed by the conservative Police Benevolent Association. Still, her challengers have criticized Ms. Velázquez as too far left, citing her support of the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning that would bring affordable housing.One of them, Bernadette Ferrara, chairwoman of Bronx Community Board 11, said at a recent debate: “I am not going to let a weak and woke progressive like Marjorie Velázquez destroy a lifetime of work by stuffing the East Bronx with high-density, low-income housing.” Ms. Velázquez said she changed her mind and decided to support the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning, where new buildings will range from three to eight stories, because it would bring jobs and housing for older residents and families. The first Latina to represent her district, she said voters assume that she’s further left than she actually is.“I’ve heard that you’re socialist because you’re like A.O.C., and it’s like, no, I’m not,” Ms. Velázquez said referring to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist. “I am a moderate.”In Manhattan, Mr. Marte, who considers himself a progressive, said he has no plans to leave the Council caucus, and characterized his opponents as being further right than their comments suggested.All three of Mr. Marte’s challengers — Susan Lee, a consultant, Ursila Jung, a private investor, and Pooi Stewart, a substitute teacher — listed public safety as their top issue in the New York City voting guide.In a debate on NY 1, Susan Lee cited hate crimes against Asian Americans as a top public safety priority.And in the same debate, Ms. Jung defended her position by saying, “You can argue the numbers are going down, but a lot of public safety is perception.”Ms. Chu’s group endorsed George Grasso over Ms. Katz and ranked Susan Lee and Ms. Jung as their first two choices in the race against Mr. Marte. The group did not rank Ms. Chan in Brooklyn’s District 43, choosing Ms. Zhuang and Mr. Ng as their first and second choices. The Asian American winner of the Democratic primary in District 43 could face Vito J. LaBella, a former Police Department officer who is a conservative Republican, in what is expected to be a competitive general election. Mr. LaBella lost a close election for the State Senate by about 200 votes last year. He is running against Ying Tan, who works in senior services, in the Republican primary.Ms. Chu said many in her group are wary of “identity politics” and would not have a problem voting for Mr. LaBella in the general election.In the district attorney race, Ms. Katz has fended off attacks from Mr. Grasso, a former administrative judge and former Police Department first deputy commissioner, about her approach to crime.George Grasso, a primary candidate for Queens district attorney, is running as a more conservative Democratic who has accused his opponent of being soft on crime.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I think there’s a gnawing sense among people throughout the city, and Queens in particular, that they’re just not feeling as safe as they felt a few years ago, and they’re not seeing the political leadership respond in an assertive way,” Mr. Grasso said in an interview.Ms. Katz has been endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, both moderates. During her first term, she said she had focused on gang takedowns, gun seizures and retail theft. She accused her opponent of “cherry picking” crime data and courting Republicans.“His claims,” said Ms. Katz, “are ludicrous.”Emma G. Fitzsimmons More

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      In Bronx DA Race, Darcel Clark Faces a Challenge From Tess Cohen

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      Darcel Clark is running for a third term, emphasizing a balance between public safety and justice. Her opponent, Tess Cohen, is focused on alternatives to incarceration.As Darcel Clark, the Bronx district attorney, made her way through the crowd at a Juneteenth celebration on Monday afternoon, it was clear she was in friendly territory. “Hi, D.A.,” a group of women called out. Ms. Clark smiled, hugged the women and asked how they were.A couple of miles away, Tess Cohen, the criminal defense and civil rights lawyer who is challenging Ms. Clark in next week’s Democratic primary, was knocking on doors at the Pelham Parkway public housing complex, trying to get the word out about her campaign, one apartment at a time.The June 27 primary offers Democratic voters in the Bronx something they have not had in recent years: a choice in the race for district attorney. But Ms. Cohen, who is challenging Ms. Clark from the left, faces a difficult fight against a well-known incumbent with more money, the support of the political establishment and name recognition across the borough.Ms. Clark, 61, a former state appellate court judge, was the first Black woman to be elected district attorney in New York. She grew up in the Bronx and was raised in public housing and went to public schools. She was nominated by Bronx Democratic leaders in 2015 and faced no primary opponent that year or in her re-election bid in 2019.Ms. Cohen, 36, is a criminal defense lawyer at ZMO Law. She spent more than eight years as a prosecutor in New York City’s Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor. She is originally from Riverside, Calif., and has lived in the Bronx for 11 years.Ms. Cohen said in an interview that she decided to run because she was “really frustrated with how the Bronx is consistently left behind” when it comes to receiving services and “things that create true public safety.” Specifically, she suggested that more people could benefit from mental health and gun court programs in the Bronx, which can provide an alternative to incarceration.Ms. Clark said that her biggest accomplishment has been “putting humanity into the criminal justice system,” a mission she said she wanted to continue, and noted that she was focused on balancing both public safety and justice. “You cannot do this work if you don’t know the people that you serve,” she added.Ms. Clark is leading the race by some traditional campaign markers: She has more money on hand, and the backing of numerous unions and Democratic elected officials.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesIn a recent debate hosted by BronxNet, a local TV station, the candidates staked out different positions on crime, on a 2019 legal reform law, and on the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.Ms. Clark said that her office had done “everything that we can to combat crime, whether it’s creating new bureaus in my office to deal with crime strategies, to deal with violent criminal enterprise — anything that will help victims of crimes.” She pointed to her Community Justice Bureau, formerly called the Alternatives to Incarceration Unit, which helps prosecutors connect people with community resources.Ms. Cohen argued that more could be done, and said the district attorney’s focus on incarceration has been detrimental. “The Bronx continues to be left behind,” she said, adding that the borough created a gun court program, which gives a second chance to young people who face gun possession charges and have no prior violent felony convictions, years after Brooklyn had such a program.The candidates also differed on a 2019 law, backed by progressives, that favors criminal defendants.In April, Ms. Clark and two other district attorneys sought to reverse some of the changes progressives had won. One revision would have allowed judges more freedom in detaining certain defendants on bail. Another would have placed a timeline on defense lawyers to flag and request outstanding case material, or “discovery,” from prosecutors. The prosecutors ultimately abandoned the changes.Ms. Clark said that she was in favor of the 2019 discovery reform, especially after spending 16 years on the bench. “I would never want to go back to the way it was,” Ms. Clark said, but she said that she supported “reasonable revisions.”Ms. Cohen said the proposed changes represented a “gutting of the reform” and said that “we cannot go back to a system where we have Kalief Browders.”Mr. Browder was sent to Rikers Island when he was 16, accused of stealing a backpack. He never stood trial and was never found guilty of any crime, but he was held at Rikers for three years. He killed himself in 2015. Prosecutors in his case had received a number of adjournments that prolonged his detention. State legislators invoked his name when they passed the 2019 reform, which aimed to curb such delays.Ms. Clark said during the debate that the Browder incident saddens her to this day. She called the handling of his case a “colossal failure” of the district attorney’s office, his defense attorney, the Department of Correction and nine judges, of which she was one.“I accept that I was part of that,” Ms. Clark said. “But also part of that means that you do something about it, so that doesn’t happen again.”The candidates agreed that Rikers should be closed, but they differed on how it should be managed in the meantime.A federal monitor overseeing the Rikers Island jails complex recently said that officials, including Louis A. Molina, the New York City correction commissioner, were hiding information about violence. And a federal judge signaled that she might be willing to consider a federal takeover.Ms. Cohen argued in favor of a federal takeover of Rikers. She said in an interview that the district attorney’s office should open an independent investigation into the jail. She said that Mayor Eric Adams and Mr. Molina were “really actively hiding how terrible things are at Rikers,” noting a new policy where jails would no longer announce inmate deaths.“The D.A.’s office isn’t proactively going out to look into instances, it’s waiting to see if other agencies refer instances to them,” Ms. Cohen said. “Even when they do bring charges, often they are late or unsuccessful.”On Juneteenth, Ms. Cohen was handing out campaign fliers and introducing herself to residents in a public housing complex.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesMs. Clark said during the debate that she had opened an office on Rikers and opened a public integrity bureau that handles corruption. She said she had won indictments against inmates and corrections officers. “The indictments are happening,” Ms. Clark said. “It takes time to happen.”Asked about a federal takeover of Rikers, Ms. Clark said that she was “in favor of anything that is going to bring justice, that’s going to make Rikers Island more humane and more safe, but it’s not my decision.”Ms. Clark is leading the race by some traditional campaign markers. She has more money on hand — $281,000 according to a report filed on June 16, compared with just under $16,000 for Ms. Cohen — and the backing of numerous unions and Democratic Party heavyweights, including Senator Chuck Schumer, Attorney General Letitia James, Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, and Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie.“Darcel is a strong candidate, she’s been a lifelong Bronxite, she knows intimately what the issues of the Bronx are, and I just don’t see the challenger bringing that to the table,” said Virginia Krompinger, president of the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club, which endorsed the incumbent.Ms. Cohen has won the support of voters and organizations explicitly looking for a change — including a number of formerly incarcerated people who were exonerated. Amanda Litman, the co-executive director of Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits political candidates, said her group had endorsed Ms. Cohen because “she knows the system in and out, she has a really strong progressive vision for what the office can be and what the office can do.”Turnout in New York City’s primary elections is not expected to be high — and it remains to be seen how focused voters are on the district attorney contest in the Bronx.Ayisha Khalid, a college student studying politics and criminal justice, answered the door when Ms. Cohen knocked, listened to her pitch and appeared to appreciate the candidate’s ideas about providing second chances for people who commit crimes. Still, she said, “I have to read more about it, because I had no clue.” More

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      As Prosecutors Revisit Police Killings, Charges Are Still Rare

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      Pamela Price, a new district attorney in Northern California, is the latest to reopen cases that had seemingly been shut, including one from more than 15 years ago.Agustin Gonsalez was shot dead in 2018 by police officers in Hayward, Calif., when he refused to drop a sharp object during a confrontation on a dark street.Andrew Moppin-Buckskin was killed by Oakland officers in 2007 after he ran away following a car chase, hid under a vehicle and failed to comply with their demands.Two years ago, Mario Gonzalez died after he was pinned on the ground for more than five minutes by officers in Alameda, Calif.In all three cases, prosecutors determined that the police should not be criminally charged, seemingly closing the book.But shortly after she became the district attorney of Alameda County in January, Pamela Price initiated a new review of those cases and five others in one of the most extensive re-examinations of police killings launched by progressive prosecutors.Ms. Price’s review is notable because her predecessors had already cleared the officers of wrongdoing and two of the reopened cases occurred more than 15 years ago.As high-profile instances of police brutality shocked the public in recent years and raised questions about official law enforcement accounts, liberal prosecutors campaigned on the promise that they would review cases that they felt were hastily closed without charges. Their efforts to revisit old cases have won praise from the activists and liberal Democrats who voted for them.But the re-examinations so far have rarely led to criminal charges.“To reopen a police use-of-force case is, in many ways, a herculean task,” said Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County, Va. He lost in court after he charged two federal Park Police officers for the 2017 shooting of a man who fled a car crash, a case that the Justice Department previously reviewed and declined to pursue.The incidents almost never have evidence as stark as the bystander video showing George Floyd being pinned to the ground in 2020 for more than nine minutes by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.The circumstances often are more ambiguous, the footage less telling. And once a district attorney writes a lengthy memo detailing why criminal charges are unjustified against a police officer, it can be difficult for a successor to overcome those arguments, absent new evidence.“Everybody is going to go through it again, and the outcome in all probability is going to be the same,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “And what’s Einstein’s definition of insanity?”The biggest hurdle for pursuing criminal charges is the wide latitude that officers have to use force. State legislatures, including California’s, have tried to narrow that ability. But officers generally can still use lethal force when they feel they or others could be killed, a level of immunity that law enforcement officials say is necessary to ensure the public’s safety.Pamela Price, the new district attorney of Alameda County, Calif., announced this year that she would review eight police killings, including one dating to 2007.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAlameda County, Ms. Price’s jurisdiction, covers a large swath of the East Bay across from San Francisco, containing 14 cities and numerous police departments. In the county seat of Oakland, where the Black Panther Party emerged in the 1960s, a legacy of radical politics is intertwined with a troubled history of law enforcement. The Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight for more than two decades.Ms. Price campaigned on a liberal platform that, besides reviewing old cases, included removing local residents from death row and resentencing inmates serving life sentences — an effort, she said, to restore public trust. Since taking office, she has directed her staff to seek the lowest possible prison sentence for most crimes.She said that in the past, prosecutors routinely gave officers a pass when they killed someone on the job, and she wants questionable police killings to face the same rigor that other criminal cases get.“Every case that we’re looking at now was determined under a double standard,” Ms. Price said in an interview. “Police officers received a different standard of justice than everyday people.”Ms. Price is among a growing cadre of progressive prosecutors elected over the last decade, beginning with the 2016 elections of Kim Foxx in Chicago and Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, on promises of reducing jail populations and holding police accountable. The movement gained steam after Floyd’s murder.Some prominent district attorneys have since faced a backlash over crime concerns. Chesa Boudin was recalled last year in San Francisco, while Ms. Gardner resigned last week as she faced criticism for her handling of violent crime. Ms. Foxx is not running for re-election next year and has endured criticism from moderates and conservatives, especially for her support of eliminating cash bail statewide.In Maine, a police officer has never been prosecuted for an on-duty killing. But in July 2020, Natasha Irving, the district attorney for four counties, said she would seek charges for the 2007 police shooting death of Gregori Jackson, who was drunk and ran away after a routine traffic stop in Waldoboro, the town where Ms. Irving grew up.Three years later, however, Ms. Irving said that based on the attorney general’s review of the forensics from the case, she will not file charges.“It’s just not going to be a provable case,” she said in an interview.Karla Gonsalez stood at a memorial to her son at the site in Hayward, Calif., where he was shot and killed by police officers.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn the Virginia case pursued by Mr. Descano, Bijan Ghaisar, 25, was involved in a minor car crash and then fled in his Jeep, pursued by two officers who cornered Mr. Ghaisar in a residential neighborhood. When the vehicle moved toward a police car, they opened fire, killing him.Mr. Descano brought a case, but a judge dismissed the charges, ruling the officers reasonably feared they were in danger. His efforts to pursue the case further were rejected by the state’s attorney general and the Justice Department.Such reviews offer the possibility of justice for still grieving families but also may unrealistically raise their hopes. Karla Gonsalez, the mother of Mr. Gonsalez, the man who was killed in Hayward, said she was torn when she heard Ms. Price was reopening her son’s case.Television outlets began replaying the body camera footage of Mr. Gonsalez’s confrontation with police. For his family, all of the anger, grief and unresolved questions came rushing back. Why had the officers not tried to de-escalate the situation?“I was excited to know that it was going to be opened up again,” Ms. Gonsalez said. “At the same time, I was very nervous that it was going to be another roadblock, another failure.”Less than 2 percent of police killings result in charges, according to Philip M. Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University. That figure has not budged since 2020. The number of people killed by the police is holding steady — last year it was 1,200, compared with 1,147 in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence.“From where I sit, nothing has changed,” Mr. Stinson said.In Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor declined to file charges.Ryan Young for The New York TimesIn Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor, Jackie Lacey, declined to file charges. He also asked an independent team of experts to review more than 300 previous use-of-force cases to see if the evidence warranted criminal charges.The special prosecutor, Lawrence Middleton, had secured convictions in a 1993 federal trial against Los Angeles Police Department officers for beating Rodney King. In the new cases, he has secured indictments against two officers in the 2018 shooting death of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, who was driving a stolen vehicle and had an air rifle between his legs when he was confronted by officers in a grocery store parking lot. (“Both officers’ use of deadly force was reasonable under the circumstances,” Ms. Lacey wrote in a 2019 memo.)The re-examinations themselves take time, and liberal prosecutors may yet file criminal charges against more officers in past cases. But they said that charges should not be the only benchmark of whether their reviews are worthwhile.“I think there is huge value to reopening a case if there is probable cause, or if there is evidence that seems compelling in any way,” Ms. Irving, the prosecutor in Maine, said. “Yes, part of it is to send a message to people who would be bad actors. Part of it is to send a message to families that have lost loved ones, or individuals who have been harmed, that they count.”Ed Obayashi, a California-based expert in use of force who trains law enforcement, said in 2021 that Mario Gonzalez did not seem to be a threat to the public in Alameda and questioned why officers restrained him before he died. The police had responded to a call that Mr. Gonzalez, 26, was acting strangely in a park and talking to himself.Mr. Obayashi said this week that he did not fault Ms. Price for reviewing the case, but he also felt that if there was consensus in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office under her predecessor, Ms. Price should not have reopened it.“It’s a big concern to law enforcement because these types of decisions, to revisit old cases that former prosecutors have decided that no charges should be brought against the officer, it’s political,” Mr. Obayashi said. “It’s politically driven.”Ms. Price’s review also includes two cases from 15 years ago that occurred seven months apart and involved the same officer killing men who ran away after traffic stops, including Mr. Moppin-Buckskin. The officer, Hector Jimenez, was cleared in each case and remains with the Oakland Police Department.“For the life of me I can’t understand what Ms. Price thinks she’s doing with those kinds of cases, some 15 years after they occurred,” said Michael Rains, a lawyer for Mr. Jimenez.In Hayward, the city agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle a federal lawsuit with Agustin Gonsalez’s family but said it was a way to support his children rather than an admission of wrongdoing. The city said in April that there appeared to be no new evidence that warranted reopening the case.Mr. Gonsalez was shot in November 2018 after police officers confronted him. He was suicidal and was holding a razor blade. He refused to drop the blade and approached the officers with his arms outstretched. That’s when the two veteran police officers shot him 12 times.Karla Gonsalez recently sat in her sister’s kitchen and described her son as a father of two who was an Oakland sports fan and often drove nearly 400 miles south to Disneyland with his season pass. In the corner of her living room was a makeshift shrine, with a flickering candle and a crucifix draped over his portrait.Cynthia Nunes, Mr. Gonsalez’s cousin, said her family was grateful his case was being reopened. But they want more.“Charges actually have to be brought forward, too,” she said. “The system needs to change.”Julie Bosman More

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      in Elections

      On Deadline, Decoding the Trump Indictment

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      Michael Rothfeld had just hours to annotate 29 pages of documents related to the charges against Donald J. Trump.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Just after 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, a news release from the Manhattan district attorney’s office landed in the inbox of Michael Rothfeld, an investigative reporter on the Metro desk of The New York Times: The indictment of Donald J. Trump had been unsealed. It was go time.Over the next several hours, Mr. Rothfeld combed through the 16-page indictment charging Mr. Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a low-level felony in New York State. The charges center on a hush-money deal with the porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. (Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty.) Mr. Rothfeld also scrutinized a 13-page “statement of facts” in which the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, outlined a larger scheme that he said Mr. Trump and others orchestrated during the 2016 campaign to avoid negative press.Mr. Rothfeld, who was part of the team at The Wall Street Journal that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 for reporting on hush-money deals made on behalf of Mr. Trump, got to work annotating each document for an interactive Times piece, which allowed readers to see the files alongside expert context. The format was built by Charlie Smart, an editor on the Graphics desk; he started brainstorming for it in mid-March. “We weren’t sure when it would come,” Mr. Smart said of the indictment. “But we wanted to be ready.”As Mr. Rothfeld completed each annotation, Mr. Smart and Dagny Salas, a deputy Metro editor, reviewed it and added it to the article. In addition to the online display, the annotated document appeared in some print issues on Wednesday.In an interview, Mr. Rothfeld shared how he approached the annotation process and why it was beneficial for readers to see the actual documents.After receiving the documents, what was your first step?I skimmed the indictment first. It had a lot of echoes, so I didn’t read every word. All 34 counts were identical, but there were some differences in the types of records Trump was accused of falsifying.Once I had absorbed how the document was structured and what was repeated, I chose one example to annotate and pointed out how the context we were providing also applied to the other charges.Charlie had created a Google Doc, and that’s where I inputted my copy: the page number of the indictment, the section I wanted to highlight and the text of my annotation. The text was edited in the Google Doc before Charlie put it into the actual document.How long did it take you to get the first version of the article published?Not long after getting the documents, we posted them — without any annotations — just to get them up so people could see them. After that, I kept adding annotations. I’ve done a lot of reporting on legal issues and on the Trump hush-money payments, so I already had that knowledge base.Were you able to prewrite any annotations?We couldn’t prewrite anything without knowing what was in the indictment.How did you balance explaining general legal terminology with providing context on details specific to this indictment?I wanted to include some basic things like how this indictment came about, the fact it was voted on by a grand jury made up of regular New Yorkers who had been sitting for months. Then I highlighted the first instance of the particular crime Trump was charged with 34 times and explained that it’s more than a misdemeanor but the lowest felony you can have. I didn’t want to use technical jargon. I wanted people to understand the context and importance in the clearest possible terms.What is the benefit of readers’ being able to see the actual documents?It helps people trust what they’re looking at when they’re reading the actual document versus if they’re just relying on what I was choosing to highlight if I were writing a traditional article. It gives them a better window into the process of what’s happening in the case, with a little expertise to guide them through what they’re looking at.Were you surprised by anything?I was surprised that the second document, the statement of facts, contained a lot of color and narrative. That one was more fun to annotate because I could try to signpost the story being told by the district attorney of how hush money was paid by Trump throughout the 2016 election to various unnamed characters. I could go through the document and say, “OK, this begins the story of Stormy Daniels, who’s here referred to as Woman 2,” so you could follow along as you were reading the document. I felt like a narrator. More