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    For Texas Governor, Hard Right Turn Followed a Careful Rise

    Greg Abbott’s shift will face a test in next year’s election, but he has demonstrated during his career a keen sense of the political winds.AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott surprised some on his staff when he arrived at his office this fall with plans for a new pandemic decree: a ban on mandated vaccinations by private employers in Texas. The decision was a stark departure for the two-term governor, an intrusion into business decisions of the sort Mr. Abbott had long opposed — and had indeed opposed just two months earlier. “Private businesses don’t need government running their business,” a spokeswoman had said then.His about-face drew criticism from major Texas business groups, from corporations like American Airlines and from a powerful player in local Republican politics, Texans for Lawsuit Reform. It also prompted frustration among some of the governor’s staff.Those who have known Mr. Abbott and watched his rise — from lawyer to state court judge to attorney general and, ultimately, to governor — have been stunned at his sudden alignment with the Republican Party’s most strident activists.But as a governor with a keen sense of the political winds, in a state where Republican domination remains complete, his ban on vaccine mandates was in keeping with his penchant for reading the moment. And at this moment, even in business-centered Texas, corporate interests are out and cultural concerns are in.He is overseeing an audit of the 2020 results in four large counties in Texas, a state that the former president, Donald J. Trump, won by more than 5 points. He called for and signed into law restrictions on transgender athletes after appearing content, four years earlier, to watch bathroom restrictions on transgender Texans fail in the face of opposition from businesses. He went from a mask mandate last year to a ban on such orders this spring.His rightward shift will be tested next year as he faces his most well-known and well-funded Democratic challenger yet, Beto O’Rourke, who announced his run late last month. Their contest raises the question of how far right a Texas governor can go and still hold on against a rising tide of Democrats in the state’s largest cities and suburbs.The election is also an important test of Mr. Abbott’s strength on the national stage, where he is frequently mentioned alongside potential non-Trump presidential candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, even as his aides insist he is not interested. His attacks on Mr. O’Rourke have doubled as attacks on President Biden.These days, Mr. Abbott finds himself torn between the even-keeled conservative approach that has brought him favor in Texas business circles and an intense focus on winning in the evolving Republican Party, according to interviews with many current and former advisers and more than two dozen friends, former colleagues, elected officials and political strategists.His vaccine mandate ban was not enough for ultraconservatives, who have been demanding a special legislative session to codify his order. At the same time, businesses and hospitals have largely moved forward on existing or planned vaccination requirements, and the state has done little if anything to enforce the ban, industry groups said.More than 200 lives were lost during the winter storm that caused power outages in Texas in February.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Abbott first ran for governor, in 2014, he presented a more moderate side when facing the Democratic state representative Wendy Davis. An ad in Spanish featured his wife, Cecilia, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants. Another had him rolling in his wheelchair — he is paralyzed from the waist down from an accident in 1984 — across a map to show businesses leaving California for Texas.But as Republicans have strengthened their hold on state government, Mr. Abbott has seen challenges from his party’s animated base. This year, Mr. Abbott has joined with the firebrand lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, backing perhaps the most conservative legislative sessions in Texas history..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}He has done so even with a nearly $60 million campaign war chest and an early endorsement from Mr. Trump, who often calls the governor on his cellphone. (Mr. Trump has done so to press for the 2020 audit.)He has maintained an air of confidence and has offered guidance to fellow Republican governors, particularly those recently elected. As the pandemic hit, Mr. Abbott organized weekly calls among them to discuss policy, and he has led them in bucking the Biden administration and creating a separate, state-run criminal justice approach to migrants.And his aggressive attacks on Mr. Biden over the border have garnered him regular appearances on Fox News.“Greg is an arch, arch far-right conservative, which remains a shock to me,” said Pearson Grimes, a partner at the law firm where Mr. Abbott worked in the 1980s after a falling tree paralyzed him from the waist down. Mr. Grimes helped the future governor find a lawyer for his suit over the accident.“When I knew him long ago,” Mr. Grimes said, “I never would have dreamed that this would be his politics.”Mr. Abbott, who conducts few news conferences, declined requests to speak for this article. His press secretary, Renae Eze, described him in an email as an “unwavering conservative leader” and “defender of constitutional and fundamental rights,” a man driven by his belief in “Texas exceptionalism” and the need to protect it.Former President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott visit an unfinished section of border wall in Pharr, Tx., in June.Eric Gay/Associated PressA Life-altering InjuryMr. Abbott, 63, was born in the small town of Wichita Falls, Texas, northwest of Dallas, and later moved to Duncanville, just south of the city. His father died of a heart attack while Mr. Abbott was in high school, and his mother, who had been staying at home, went to work to support him and his older brother, Gary, who goes by the nickname Bud.By the time he attended Vanderbilt Law School, Mr. Abbott was already married, having met his wife at the University of Texas. “He wasn’t particularly political as I recall in those years,” said Fred Frost, a law school friend who is now executive counsel at ExxonMobil.It was during a jog with Mr. Frost through Houston’s affluent River Oaks neighborhood that Mr. Abbott’s life changed: An oak tree crashed down on him with enough force to crush a nearby Cadillac. Mr. Abbott, who was just 26, immediately lost sensation in his legs.He was determined to rebound. Mr. Frost recalled one night out in Houston watching Mr. Abbott park his maroon two-door sedan at a restaurant, grab his wheelchair, vault himself into it and roll around to the passenger side to open the door for his wife.Mr. Abbott secured a settlement including payments for the rest of his life, so far about $8 million in total.The settlement did not stop Mr. Abbott from later becoming a strong advocate for limits to personal injury lawsuits. And as a young lawyer in Houston, he defended the city’s bus system in personal injury cases.Since his accident, his wheelchair has been intertwined with his professional identity. As governor, it has allowed him to connect in moments of tragedy, aides said, such as after the mass shooting in 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso that left 23 dead, or after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.Still, despite his personal story, Texas political observers often lament that Mr. Abbott lacks the outsized personality of his immediate predecessors, Ann Richards, George W. Bush and Rick Perry.“He’s conservative with a small ‘c’ — that is, careful,” said Robert Stein, a Rice University professor of political science.Mr. Abbott has bristled at challenges from his right by Don Huffines, a former state senator, and by Allen West, a former Florida congressman who briefly led the Republican Party of Texas. While polls show Mr. Abbott broadly popular among Republican voters, he has appeared focused on the small number who have shifted away from him.Even before his campaign began, he was crisscrossing the state to meet Republican voters and holding huge invite-only telephone town halls. He frequently blocks out his daily schedule for eight hours of fund-raising calls.Texas Governor Greg Abbott prays after a candlelight vigil in El Paso after more than 20 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart.Ivan Pierre Aguirre/EPA, via ShutterstockFirst-term TestAn early test of Mr. Abbott’s leadership came during his first year as governor, as conspiracy theories grew in conservative circles that a United States military exercise, known as Jade Helm 15, was actually a secret plot to take over Texas. Mr. Abbott wanted to say something.“People had been engaging him on Twitter,” one adviser said. “He felt compelled to respond. To him, these are the grass-roots people who are engaged in the politics of the party. They’re the ones who knock on doors for you.”The governor eventually decided to direct the Texas State Guard, part of the state’s military department, to “monitor” the operation.To some of his aides, it was a mistake. For his Democratic critics, the moment was emblematic of a governor unwilling to stand up to his party’s fringe.“Abbott is just a guy who, in my opinion, he’s always afraid of something,” said Chris Turner, the Democratic leader in the Texas House.Before the pandemic, Mr. Abbott had been able to unite the business-oriented wing of the party with its right-most fringe. But as the coronavirus tore across the state last year, Mr. Abbott faced a critical moment. In July 2020, he issued a statewide mask mandate, a decision aides said he made by following his own mantra to ignore the politics and “do what’s right.”It did not go over well with some conservatives. The backlash helped spur insurgent energy and gave his Republican challengers an issue.Mr. Huffines, his most vocal primary opponent, also pushed the governor on a border wall, calling in May for the state to build one. By June, Mr. Abbott had announced his intention to construct one.And days before Mr. Abbott decided to bar businesses from mandating vaccinations, Mr. Huffines called on the governor to do just that. “No Texan should lose their job because they don’t want to get a Covid vaccine,” Mr. Huffines said in a news release.Mr. Abbott has taken up policies that are identical to much more conservative members of his party. Callaghan O’Hare for The New York TimesIt was the same message that Mr. Abbott’s aides said the governor had been hearing for weeks from everyday Texas at events across the state.When Mr. Abbott told his staff that he wanted to issue the order, a discussion followed, aides said. Some opposed the move. After a debate among staff, Mr. Abbott decided to go ahead with the order.David Carney, his campaign adviser, said Mr. Abbott wanted to protect small businesses from laying off workers because of President Biden’s “bumbling, incoherent” policy of mandating vaccinations for those with 100 or more employees, which is set to take effect Jan. 4 and which Mr. Abbott contested last month in federal court.“This always was driven by small businesses,” Mr. Carney said, and not by Republican primary politics at all. More

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    Echoing Trump, David Perdue Sues Over Baseless Election Claims

    The legal action by Mr. Perdue, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, was the latest sign that 2020 election falsehoods will be a main focus of his bid.Former Senator David Perdue of Georgia, a Republican who is running for governor with the backing of former President Donald J. Trump, filed a lawsuit on Friday seeking the inspection of absentee ballots in the 2020 election, reviving long-debunked claims in the latest sign that Mr. Trump’s election grievances will be central to his candidacy.The lawsuit draws on Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud in Georgia and across the country, which culminated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. In the months since, many Republican elected officials have pivoted from rebuking election conspiracy theories to embracing them vocally in an effort to win the affections of Mr. Trump and his supporters.Mr. Perdue, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump soon after announcing his candidacy on Monday, is running against Gov. Brian Kemp, a fellow Republican who is a staunch conservative but has come under withering attacks from the former president and his allies over Mr. Kemp’s unwillingness to help them overturn President Biden’s victory in Georgia. Mr. Perdue told news outlets this week that he would not have certified the results if he had been governor instead of Mr. Kemp.Republicans in states across the country have continued to cast doubt on the 2020 election’s legitimacy by trying to carry out partisan reviews of the results, which they often misleadingly label “audits” to lend them a greater sense of authority. G.O.P. lawmakers in at least five states are pursuing reviews, and Republicans in states including Oklahoma, Tennessee and Florida have introduced bills to begin new ones next year.Mr. Perdue’s suit, which The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier reported and which was filed in the Superior Court of Fulton County, argues that through unlawful “acts and omissions,” election officials in Fulton, the state’s most populous county and a major source of Democratic votes, “circumvented the majority vote of the people of the State of Georgia and thereby affected the outcome of the statewide General Election on Nov. 3, 2020 in several races.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In the complaint, Mr. Perdue names a county election official and workers underneath him, claiming that they “negligently, grossly negligently or intentionally engaged in and/or permitted multiple unlawful election acts.”“David Perdue wants to use his position and legal standing to shine light on what he knows were serious violations of Georgia law in the Fulton absentee ballot tabulation,” Bob Cheeley, a lawyer for the candidate, told The Journal-Constitution.Georgia election officials have reviewed the 2020 results three times and have come to the same conclusion: Mr. Biden won the state, narrowly but decisively.Mr. Perdue lost his re-election bid in January to Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat.The legal effort by Mr. Perdue follows a similar lawsuit this year by a group of voters led by a known conspiracy theorist. That case, which sought to inspect all 147,000 absentee ballots in Fulton County, was thrown out after Judge Brian Amero of Henry County Superior Court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing and could not show any specific injury or harm.Mr. Perdue’s lawsuit could work around at least part of Judge Amero’s ruling, because he was a candidate in the 2020 elections.Several Republicans in Georgia criticized the suit.“David Perdue is so concerned about election fraud that he waited a year to file a lawsuit that conveniently coincided with his disastrous campaign launch,” Cody Hall, a spokesman for Governor Kemp’s campaign, said. “Keep in mind that lawsuit after lawsuit regarding the 2020 election was dismissed in part because Perdue declined to be listed as a plaintiff.”Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state — who, like Mr. Kemp, has come under attack from fellow Republicans for resisting Mr. Trump’s election pressure — said in a statement: “Fake Trumpers like Perdue are trying to curry favor with the Trump base by pushing election conspiracy theories that everyone — including the voters they are hoping to attract — knows they don’t really believe.”Georgia continues to be a hub of litigation and national attention over elections and voting rights. Two election workers in the state filed a defamation lawsuit last week against Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news outlet that falsely claimed they had manipulated ballots. On Friday, Reuters reported that one of the workers said she had been pressured by a publicist for Kanye West, the rapper who ran for president and previously supported Mr. Trump, to acknowledge manipulating votes.The Georgia Democratic Party, whose likely nominee for governor, Stacey Abrams, announced her campaign last week, reveled in the high-profile clash of Republicans and sought to lump them together.“It is reprehensible that David Perdue is peddling those same dangerous lies in a sad ploy for attention,” the party said in a statement. “From David Perdue’s frivolous lawsuit to Brian Kemp’s voter suppression laws — both based on the same fabricated lies — nobody who sows distrust in our free and fair elections deserves to lead our state.”Sheelagh McNeill More

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    A Candidate Drops Out, Turning the Race for Governor Upside Down

    Letitia James’s surprise decision seemed to solidify the front-runner status of Gov. Kathy Hochul.It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at the surprise announcement from Letitia James, who said she was dropping out of the race for governor to run for another term as state attorney general. We’ll also take a look at a new bookstore in Chinatown.Anna Watts for The New York Times“I have come to the conclusion that I must continue my work as attorney general.”It was the opening line of a message on Twitter that left out the most important part: Letitia James was dropping out of the race for governor. She said she would run for a second term as attorney general of New York.My colleagues Katie Glueck and Nicholas Fandos write that there is now no question that Gov. Kathy Hochul will enter 2022 as the most formidable candidate in the race.James had been treated as a top contender in the six weeks since she declared her candidacy, following her office’s blockbuster report on sexual harassment claims against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo that prompted his resignation. James, a Democrat from Brooklyn, hoped to assemble a coalition of Black and Latino voters and become the first Black female governor in the nation.But recent polls had indicated that James was trailing Hochul, who replaced Cuomo, by double digits among Democratic primary voters. She was also thought to lag in fund-raising and in the competition for high-profile endorsements, while Hochul has been rolling out a steady stream. One state senator said colleagues in Albany had been reluctant to risk alienating Hochul by endorsing James.[Letitia James Drops Out of N.Y. Governor’s Race]James said in her Twitter message that she wanted to “finish the job” on several “important investigations and cases.” She did not go in details. But her announcement came on the same day that it became known that her office intended to subpoena former President Donald Trump to testify next month in a civil fraud investigation. If James finds evidence of wrongdoing, she could file a lawsuit against Trump.Ronald Fischetti, a lawyer for Trump, said he would move to have the subpoena quashed. Trump’s lawyers could argue that compelling him to testify would violate the constitutional protection against self-incrimination because the testimony could be unfairly used against him in a criminal investigation being overseen by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr.Both James and Vance have tried to determine whether Trump listed pumped-up valuations on his properties to obtain financing. Because the two investigations overlap, Fischetti said Trump — who has repeatedly called the investigations politically motivated witch hunts — could refuse to give a deposition once James formally subpoenaed him.James is also litigating a closely watched case against the National Rifle Association, as well as lawsuits involving Facebook, Google, Amazon and the New York Police Department.As for withdrawing from the governor’s race, she made the decision on Wednesday and her campaign notified allies early on Thursday, according to people with direct knowledge of her conversations with advisers and supporters she called. One person who was contacted on Thursday said no explanation was given for the course change. Another said she emphasized her work in her current role.WeatherLook for a partly sunny start to the weekend, with temps in the high 40s. At night, it will be mostly cloudy. Expect a chance of showers in the wee hours of the morning and temps in the mid-40s.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve).The latest New York newsLaborWorkers at one Buffalo-area Starbucks have voted to form a union.Student workers on strike at Columbia University formed picket lines after an email from the university said that students who remained on strike were not guaranteed jobs next term.Other Big StoriesThe chancellor of the State University of New York, Jim Malatras, will resign. Pressure had been building for him to step down over text messages that showed he had belittled a woman who later accused Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment.New legislation will require hosts of short-term rentals to register with the city.Over a week since Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial on federal sex-trafficking charges began, she and her defense team are now presented with a choice: Will she take the stand?Allergan agreed to pay $200 million in a settlement reached just before closing arguments began in a monthslong opioid trial.Yu and Me, for one and allJames Estrin/The New York TimesMy colleague Ashley Wong got an advance look at a bookstore that is opening tomorrow at 44 Mulberry Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown. It’s called Yu and Me, a play on the name of the owner, Lucy Yu, who is 27 and committed to selling a diverse range of authors historically underrepresented in book publishing.Yu will join only a handful of female Asian American booksellers in the city and will probably be the first to operate in Manhattan’s Chinatown, according to Vic Lee, co-founder of Welcome to Chinatown, a group created during the pandemic to promote businesses there.Yu, who grew up in Southern California, was trained as a chemical engineer and has never been in the book business. But she said she had spent her life seeking out literature that made her feel seen — books by and about immigrants, exploring complicated mother-daughter relationships. Stocking her shelves with such works is a tribute to her own mother, who is from China and used to take her to Chinatown in Los Angeles on weekends, where they found a common language over errands, art classes and snacks like you tiao and soy milk.“I never saw representation for myself in the books I read growing up,” she said. “Seeing the need for diverse representation and stories outside of our own, it really pushed me to continue on this path.” She said she would also offer books from authors across the Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora, a personal quest that intensified after watching anti-Asian hate crimes rise over the past year.Her arrival is being welcomed as Chinatown tries to rebound from the pandemic. She is “coming into a market that is highly in need,” said Wellington Chen, the executive director of the Chinatown Partnership, which works on community projects with the Chinatown Business Improvement District.He said that foot traffic in Chinatown was lagging, at least on weekdays, because potential customers have not returned to offices in Lower Manhattan. He said bookstores drew shoppers who linger and who he hopes will check out other businesses in the area. Yu said she decided to open a bookstore after one of her closest friends, James MacDonald, died last year in an accident. She and MacDonald had been in a book club together, she said, and his death prompted her to re-evaluate what she really wanted to do with her life. A section of the store is dedicated to him, filled with books he loved.For the first month, Yu plans to juggle bookselling with her full-time job as a chemical engineer. The store will be open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, sandwiched between hours spent at her chemical engineering job. Starting next year, she’ll also serve espresso, wine, locally brewed beer and pastries from Fay Da Bakery on Mott Street.A Guide to the New York Governor’s RaceCard 1 of 6A crowded field. More

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    Letitia James Drops Out of N.Y. Governor’s Race

    The move by the state attorney general, which instantly upended the governor’s race, seemed to solidify Gov. Kathy Hochul’s front-runner status.Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, announced on Thursday that she was ending her campaign for governor and running instead for re-election, a surprising move that upended the high-profile governor’s race and further solidified Gov. Kathy Hochul’s standing.Ms. James had just entered the race in late October, on the heels of her office’s devastating report on sexual harassment claims against former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, which led to his resignation. She was immediately treated as a top contender, buoyed by her record and her historic bid to become the first Black female governor in the country.But recent opinion polls had shown Ms. James trailing Ms. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, by double digits among Democratic primary voters. She was believed to be significantly behind the governor in fund-raising, according to many party strategists and donors, and had struggled to secure high-profile endorsements from the politicians and labor unions who typically help crown winners in New York, despite her years in city and state politics.“I have come to the conclusion that I must continue my work as attorney general,” Ms. James, a Democrat, wrote in a statement, barely six weeks after entering the race. She said that she wanted to “finish the job” on several “important investigations and cases” under her purview.The announcement came on the day that it became known that Ms. James’s office intended to subpoena former President Donald J. Trump to testify in a civil fraud investigation.Ms. James, whose office is also participating in the criminal investigation being run by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., is seeking to question Mr. Trump under oath on Jan. 7 as part of her separate civil inquiry into his business practices. She also continues to litigate a closely watched case against the National Rifle Association, as well as lawsuits involving Facebook, Google, Amazon and the New York Police Department, and she is investigating a seven-figure deal on a book that Mr. Cuomo penned as governor.New York bars candidates from running for two statewide offices at once, so Ms. James would have had to give up a relatively secure job as attorney general to continue to pursue the governorship.Her allies argued that Ms. James genuinely relishes her current position. Ultimately, it appears that she did not want to give that up for the rigors of a different campaign she was far from certain to win, against an incumbent governor with whom she did not have overwhelming disagreements.“Tish James loves what she’s doing, she’s a very passionate person, she has a lot of respect for Gov. Hochul,” said Alan Rubin, a lobbyist in New York City who backed Ms. James’s candidacy. “It wasn’t, clearly you could say, ‘I’m definitely in because I don’t agree with this person’s policies, I don’t like them.’”Ms. Hochul, who was elevated from lieutenant governor after Mr. Cuomo’s resignation, was already the early favorite in the race. But Ms. James’s exit further smoothed her path, as a number of Democrats who had either stayed on the sidelines or backed Ms. James — Mr. Rubin among them — signaled that they now intended to support the governor.“Kathy has accomplished more in four months than many of her predecessors in an entire term,” said Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party in vote-rich Brooklyn.She added that Ms. Hochul was “the best choice to lead our state forward through the recovery, and she will have the support of Brooklyn behind her as she continues to blaze a path as our first female governor.”While Ms. Hochul still faces spirited challenges from her right and left, including a possible run by Mayor Bill de Blasio, she signaled on Thursday that she was already focused on November’s general election. Representative Lee Zeldin, a Long Island Republican, is considered the leading Republican candidate.In recent weeks, some supporters and would-be supporters of Ms. James had grown increasingly skeptical of the trajectory of her campaign as Ms. Hochul continued to outpace her in public polling and to fund-raise aggressively.One elected official who had initial conversations with the James team about an endorsement noticed that follow-up from her team seemed to taper off over the last week. The endorsement never came together.And a state senator said that colleagues in Albany, even some who share her ideological outlook, had been hesitant to endorse Ms. James, given Ms. Hochul’s leverage during the state’s annual legislative season and the once-in-a-decade redistricting process.Ms. James held deliberations with around a half-dozen of her closest advisers on Wednesday and made the decision to drop out that day, according to several people with direct knowledge of the conversations, granted anonymity to discuss the internal developments. Her first call announcing her decision on Thursday was to Ms. Hochul, two of those people said.Ms. Hochul later said that she would support Ms. James’s re-election campaign and looked forward to “having her on the ticket as we head into the November election together.”The move took others within Ms. James’s campaign by surprise. In roughly the last week, offers had been extended for several senior-level jobs, and more campaign events were being readied, according to someone with direct knowledge of the activities who was granted anonymity to discuss the private plans.A number of Ms. James’s allies strongly dispute the idea that she exited the race out of concerns around money, endorsements or early-stage polls, pointing to her track record of winning challenging races in the past. A Guide to the New York Governor’s RaceCard 1 of 6A crowded field. More

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    Democrats' Infighting Only Helps Republicans

    The other day, something extraordinary happened. I went six hours — maybe even seven — without seeing anything on the internet about what a disaster Kamala Harris is.I must have been haunting the wrong sites. I’d clearly failed to check in with Twitter. Whatever the reason, I had a reprieve from Democratic carping about Democratic crises that reflected Democratic disunity and brimmed with Democratic doomsaying. Being briefly starved of it made me even more aware of the usual buffet — and of Democrats’ insatiable hunger for devouring their own.To follow Harris’s media coverage, made possible by the keening and wailing of her Democratic colleagues and Democratic analysts, she’s not merely mismanaging an apparently restless, frustrated staff. She’s bursting into flames and incinerating everything in her midst, including Democrats’ hopes of holding on to the White House in 2024.The chatter around Joe Biden is hardly cheerier. Riveted by low approval ratings for him that they’ve helped to create, Democrats in government murmur to Democrats in the media that he’s in dire political straits — which is partly true, thanks in some measure to all those fellow Democrats. As Jonathan Chait wrote recently in a cover story for New York magazine, Biden is trapped “between a well-funded left wing that has poisoned the party’s image with many of its former supporters and centrists unable to conceive of their job in any terms save as valets for the business elite.”“Biden’s party has not veered too far left or too far right so much as it has simply come apart,” Chait added. And it has done so noisily, its internal discontents as public as can be.These intraparty recriminations aren’t unusual in and of themselves: Democrats have never possessed Republicans’ talent for unity. But the intensity of the anger and angst are striking, especially given the stakes. A Republican takeover of Congress in 2022 and of the presidency two years later would endanger more than the social safety net. It would imperil democracy itself.“Democrats, big and small D, are not behaving as if they believe the threat is real,” Barton Gellman wrote for The Atlantic this month. “Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have taken passing rhetorical notice, but their attention wanders. They are making a grievous mistake.”Gellman’s article, titled “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun,” had an apocalyptic tone, matched by an accompanying note by the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. He wrote that while he prefers to avoid “partisan entanglement,” he and the rest of us must confront the truth: “The leaders of the Republican Party — the soul-blighted Donald Trump and the satraps and lackeys who abet his nefarious behavior — are attempting to destroy the foundations of American democracy. This must be stated clearly, and repeatedly.”Chait put it this way: “It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the fate of American democracy may hinge on President Joe Biden’s success.”But the media is drawn to, and amplifies, Biden’s failures. The Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank recently collaborated with the data analytics unit of the information company FiscalNote to measure journalists’ treatment of Biden versus Trump, and he concluded that “Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as — and for a time worse than — the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020.”“My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy,” he wrote, later adding: “The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians.”That news media includes more Democrats than Republicans. And its naysaying depends on the irascibility and volubility of Democratic officials complaining about other Democratic officials. Democrats don’t need Pelotons: They’ve turned finger pointing into an aerobic workout.Such self-examination and self-criticism are healthy to a point. And Democratic pessimism isn’t unfounded: Polls show real frustration and impatience among Americans, who reliably pin the blame on whoever is in charge. Additionally, the party’s loss in the Virginia governor’s race — and the implications of that — can’t be ignored.But neither can the potential consequences of some Democratic politicians’ refusals to compromise and come together. None of the ideological rifts within the party matter as much as what the current crop of Trump-coddling Republicans might do if given the chance.So enough about Biden’s age, about Harris’s unpopularity, about the impossibility of figuring out precisely the right note of Omicron caution, about lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It’s scary out there, sure. But it’ll be scarier still if Democrats can’t successfully project cooperation, confidence and hope.For the Love of SentencesPismo Beach, Calif., in 1951.Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis via Getty ImagesYou’re going to giggle or groan at this line by Justin Ray, in The Los Angeles Times, about the disappearance of bivalves from a California beach: “The clam community’s crash created a calamity.” (Thanks to Roy Oldenkamp of West Hollywood, Calif., for spotting and nominating this.)Same goes for this headline on an article in The Bulwark about a certain physician’s recently announced Senate bid: “Dr. Oz Quacks the Code of Republican Politics.” (Steve Read, Nice, France)Here’s Derek Thompson in The Atlantic on the devolution of Congress: “From 1917 to 1970, the Senate took 49 votes to break filibusters, or less than one per year. Since 2010, it has had an average of 80 such votes annually. The Senate was once known as the ‘cooling saucer of democracy,’ where populist notions went to chill out a bit. Now it’s the icebox of democracy, where legislation dies of hypothermia.” (Weigang Qiu, Queens, N.Y.) Derek’s entire article is insightful, thought-provoking and very much worth reading.Here’s Michael J. Lewis in The Wall Street Journal on some of the more untraditional proposals for restoring the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, damaged from that 2019 fire: “Is that lovely victim, saved in the nick of time and made whole again, now to be whisked, still groggy, straight from the hospital into the tattoo parlor of contemporary art?” (Jim Lader, Bronxville, N.Y., and Kathleen Hopkins, Oak Park, Ill.)In a characteristically tongue-in-cheek commentary in The Washington Post, Alexandra Petri advocated the banning of all books: “They make you cry, show you despair in a handful of dust, counterfeit life in strange ways and cheat you with shadows.” (Irma Wolfson, Irvine, Calif.) I was equally fond of these additional snippets: “Books follow you home and pry open your head and rearrange the things inside.” They “replace your answers with questions or questions with answers.” “They make strange things familiar to you and familiar things strange again.”Moving on to standouts from The Times: Reggie Ugwu profiled Ron Cephas Jones, noting that he’s “the kind of actor who works like chipotle mayo — you don’t always think to look for him, but you’re happy when he shows up.” (Peggy Sweeney, Sarasota, Fla.)Following his return to an area of Alaska that he hadn’t visited in more than 35 years, Jon Waterman contemplated climate change and caribou: “We didn’t see many, but we knew they were out there, somewhere, cantering in synchronized, thousandfold troupes, inches apart yet never jostling one another, their leg tendons a veritable orchestra of clicking castanets, their hooves clattering on stones.” (Harriet Odlum, Bloomfield, Conn., and Robert Lakatos, Glenmoore, Pa.)Adam Friedlander for The New York TimesIn Bret Stephens’s weekly online conversation with Gail Collins, he noted: “The supply-chain situation has gotten so out of hand that there’s even a cream-cheese shortage at New York City bagel shops, which is like one of the 10 biblical plagues as reimagined by Mel Brooks.” (Susan Gregory, Bala Cynwyd, Pa., and Deborah Paulus-Jagric, Landvetter, Sweden, among others)In a review of the Mel Brooks memoir “All About Me!,” Alexandra Jacobs trots out the technical term for fear of heights to fashion this gem: “Brooks himself reads as the opposite of acrophobic: scaling the icy pinnacles of Hollywood without anything more than a pang of self-doubt, using humor as his alpenstock.” (Jennifer Finney Boylan, Rome, Maine)And in a preview of the new limited series on HBO Max “And Just Like That,” which continues and updates “Sex and the City,” Alexis Soloski noted how little about its plot was revealed or known in advance: “Eager fans have analyzed that 30-second teaser clip with the exegetical rigor typically reserved for ancient hieroglyphs.” (Allan Tarlow, West Hollywood, Calif.)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 please include your name and place of residence.Bonus Regan Picture!Mike ValerioMany of you chide me if I go two weeks or more without publishing an image of my furry companion. I love you for that. So here she is, during our walk on Sunday morning. We covered five miles, mostly in the woods, which we had to ourselves, because we headed out early and the weather was cold. She looked for deer and settled for squirrels, sprinting madly toward many of those she spotted. Much about dogs fascinates me but nothing more than their mix of tameness and wildness — of gentleness and ferocity — and the suddenness with which they shift between the two. One minute, a hugger. The next, a huntress. Regal all the while.What I’m Reading (and Watching, and Listening To)The director Jane Campion, right, on the set of “The Power of the Dog.”Kirsty Griffin/NetflixPeople are often more complicated than you imagine. So is life. Both of those truisms animate Bill Adair’s engrossing, moving account, in Air Mail, of Stephen Glass’s journey after he was exposed as one of contemporary journalism’s most prolific and audacious fabulists. Glass went on to tell another big lie. But you may find yourself cheering him for it.Moral complexity: It’s present in the elegant, addictive novels of Amor Towles, and I’m currently listening to, and relishing, his latest, “The Lincoln Highway.” The Times’s adoring review of it is precisely right.A friend and I have argued fiercely over the director Jane Campion’s latest film, “The Power of the Dog,” which is streaming on Netflix. He thinks that it’s genius. I think that it’s overrated — and that, like some of Campion’s other work, it plods at times, more cerebral than visceral, a bid for your admiration rather than your involvement. But the intensity of our back-and-forth means that there’s plenty in “Dog” to chew on. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) I’m glad I watched it.On a Personal NoteI’m sick of the sound of my own voice.I know, I know: Writing those words is like wearing a “kick me” sign. The obvious rejoinder is that you’re sick of my voice, too. But you’d mean my musings, my opinions, and I mean the actual sound of my audible voice. I mean that I’ve been in a recording studio for much of this week, talking and talking and talking into a microphone.My next book is done — more on that below — and for the audio format, the publishers asked me to be the one to read it aloud. That made abundant sense: The book is largely about my own experiences, with long stretches in the first person. But, still, I was hoping they’d recruit someone else.That’s because I’ve done this twice previously, for earlier books, and it’s no cakewalk. (Or should that be caketalk?) You have to go slowly and enunciate clearly, and if you bobble a word, you redo much of the sentence or even paragraph. Forward, backward, forward, backward. You’re a Sisyphus of syllables.For my memoir “Born Round,” I was in a studio in Manhattan devoted to audiobooks. I noticed a basket of muffins and bagels right outside the airless, soundproof booth in which the reader sits. “How hospitable!” I thought.No. How strategic. Many readers, like me, have skipped breakfast and may be planning, for efficiency’s sake, to skip lunch. Their stomachs growl. Mine did. And the microphone picked it up. The solution was a chunk of sound-muffling starch.The studio’s technicians told me that some of the actors hired to record novels refuse those calories. So blankets are wrapped around their tiny waists, to silence hunger’s roar.The studio I’ve been using this week is here in Chapel Hill, N.C., just a 15-minute drive from my house. I’ve eaten a light breakfast each morning; my stomach has behaved. And so the audio should be ready for release, along with hardcover and digital versions, on March 1.The book, “The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found,” is about my brush with the prospect of blindness and how that changed the way I look at setbacks and limits and aging. And I mention it in part as a segue into an update on my eyes, which many of you kindly and regularly ask about.My right eye will forever be useless for reading, computer work and the like, but my left eye hangs in there, undiminished. The nature of what happened to me, a kind of stroke of the optic nerve, is such that if my left eye does fail me, it is likely to do so in an instant. There’s perhaps a 20 percent chance of that.So I’ll be good until I’m not. But even then, I’ll manage. That’s what I’ve come to see. That’s what the book is really about: acceptance, resilience, optimism. It describes the honing of those qualities. It’s also the fruit of them.It’s alchemy — trepidation into determination — or at least intends to be. And the opportunity to tell my story is a privilege, as is the invitation to perform it, no matter how Sisyphean. I shush my stomach. I clear my throat. I raise my voice. I even make peace with it. More

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    Who Wants to Be Governor of New York?

    Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s resignation has led to a rush of candidates from both parties declaring their intent to run for the state’s highest office.The surprise resignation of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo instantly upended the 2022 governor’s race in New York, opening the floodgates for a rush of candidates vying for the state’s highest office after more than a decade with Mr. Cuomo at the helm.At least seven candidates have formally begun campaigns for governor, the most powerful job in one of the country’s largest states, with the potential to shape policies with wide-ranging influence.The race on the Democratic side is shaping up to be the first contested primary in decades, attracting candidates with history-making potential that will test racial, ideological and geographical lines in one of the nation’s liberal bastions.Republicans, who have not won a statewide election in New York since 2002, face an uphill battle to reclaim the governor’s office, but they are hoping to replicate the party’s successes in the November 2021 off-year elections.The field remains fluid, fractured and unpredictable, with the potential for others to join the fray ahead of the primary in June.Here are the candidates:Officially RunningThe Democratic field has continued to swell with well-known political figures of diverse backgrounds since Mr. Cuomo resigned, while the contours of the Republican field began to emerge earlier in the year.Kathy Hochul, 63, DStephanie Keith for The New York TimesGov. Kathy Hochul was the first candidate to jump into the race, officially declaring in August, after she ascended to the state’s top job following Mr. Cuomo’s resignation and made history as the state’s first female governor.Ms. Hochul, a former congresswoman from the Buffalo area, previously served as Mr. Cuomo’s lieutenant governor for six years, a largely ceremonial role.A moderate Democrat, Ms. Hochul has focused her first months as governor on responding to the pandemic and its economic fallout, hoping to use the advantage of incumbency to introduce herself to voters and secure a full term.Letitia James, 63, DJoy Malone/ReutersLetitia James, the state attorney general, announced her candidacy in late October after months of rumors, instantly positioning herself as one of the most formidable challengers to Ms. Hochul.Ms. James, a Brooklyn Democrat who is hoping to build a coalition anchored by Black and Latino voters, as well as white progressives, could become the first Black female governor in the nation.Ms. James, who was elected attorney general in 2018, oversaw the investigation into the sexual harassment claims that led to Mr. Cuomo’s resignation and has garnered praise from liberals for suing the National Rifle Association and investigating President Donald J. Trump.Tom Suozzi, 59, DStefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepresentative Tom Suozzi of Long Island entered the race in late November, casting himself as a centrist Democrat focused on lowering taxes and reducing crime, and as someone unafraid to confront the party’s left wing.Mr. Suozzi, who is looking to cut into Ms. Hochul’s support among moderate and suburban voters, was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2016, after serving eight years as Nassau County executive.Jumaane Williams, 45, DAnna Watts for The New York TimesJumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, formally declared his candidacy in mid-November, pitching himself as the candidate most suitable to become the standard-bearer of the party’s progressive left flank.Mr. Williams, an activist who has described himself as a democratic socialist, ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor against Ms. Hochul in 2018, but came within six percentage points of defeating her.Rob Astorino, 54, RJonah Markowitz for The New York TimesRob Astorino, who served as Westchester County executive from 2010 to 2017, announced his bid for governor in May, marking his second run for the state’s highest office.A Guide to the New York Governor’s RaceCard 1 of 7A crowded field. More

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    Georgia Governor's Race Puts State at Center of 2022 Political Drama

    Former Senator David Perdue, encouraged by Donald Trump, is challenging Gov. Brian Kemp, a fellow Republican who defied the former president.ATLANTA — Former Senator David Perdue’s leap Monday into a primary challenge against Gov. Brian Kemp, his fellow Republican, ensured that Georgia will be at the hot molten core of the political universe next year, with costly and competitive races that will test the grip of Trumpism over the G.O.P. and measure the backlash against President Biden in a state that increasingly reflects the country’s demography and its divisions.Already a battleground at the presidential level, Georgia will be the scene of intense Republican primary showdowns for both governor and secretary of state, followed by general election contests in which Democrats — led by Senator Raphael Warnock, who is seeking a full term, and Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the 2018 governor’s race to Mr. Kemp and announced another bid last week — hope to keep the state a bluer tint of purple.Mr. Perdue, who lost his Senate seat after one term to the Democrat Jon Ossoff in January, is former President Donald J. Trump’s preferred candidate, while Mr. Kemp earned a place on Mr. Trump’s enemies list after declining to help the former president overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. The two will now face off in May in an internecine war that may offer the closest approximation to a referendum on Trumpism next year as any in the country.“Look, I like Brian. This isn’t personal,” Mr. Perdue said Monday in a video announcing his candidacy. But he implied that Mr. Kemp had damaged his standing with Georgia’s Trumpist base of Republican voters.“He has failed all of us,” Mr. Perdue said of Mr. Kemp, “and cannot win in November.”Aides to Mr. Kemp gave Mr. Perdue a blistering reception, revealing the depths of the anger over what they view as his betrayal of a fellow Republican and former political ally. They noted that the governor had actually beaten Ms. Abrams, while Mr. Perdue was, most recently, that most loathsome of nouns in the former president’s vocabulary: a loser.And Georgians First Inc., a pro-Kemp political action committee, released an ad reminding voters of Mr. Perdue’s stock trades of companies whose business fell under the purview of his Senate committees.While Mr. Kemp boasted a “proven track record,” a campaign spokesman for the governor, Cody Hall, said on Monday, “Perdue is best known for ducking debates, padding his stock portfolio during a pandemic, and losing winnable races.”Endorsing Mr. Perdue on Monday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp “a very weak governor” who “can’t win because the MAGA base — which is enormous — will never vote for him.”In entering the governor’s race, Mr. Perdue joins a number of other G.O.P. candidates who could form a slate of high-profile Trump loyalists in November: The former football star Herschel Walker, with Mr. Trump’s encouragement, is seeking the nomination to run against Mr. Warnock. And Representative Jody Hice is challenging the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who also rebuffed Mr. Trump’s entreaties to help overturn his defeat.Both Mr. Walker and Mr. Hice have parroted Mr. Trump’s false claim that election fraud cost him the 2020 election..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And Mr. Perdue did not limit his own attack to Mr. Kemp. Republicans were disunited in Georgia, he said, “and Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger are to blame.”The influence of Mr. Trump, who has not ruled out another presidential run in 2024, is bound to be felt in other states’ midterm races. But Mr. Trump has been particularly fixated on Georgia, a state he lost by fewer than 12,000 votes. He and some of his allies are being investigated by the Fulton County district attorney’s office for potential criminal violations after reaching out to state officials, including Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger, in an effort to change the election results.If Mr. Perdue and Mr. Walker lead the Republican ticket next fall, Georgia voters will be forced to choose between revulsion for Mr. Trump and his incendiary politics, on the one hand, and, on the other, dissatisfaction with Mr. Biden and unease with the liberal politics that Ms. Abrams and Mr. Warnock embody.The drama will unfold in a state that, with its gaping divides along the lines of race, class and region, mirrors the nation and its partisan, polarized and increasingly poisonous politics.Georgia also reflects broader trends among the two national parties. Democrats are increasingly turning to more diverse candidates. But the candidates are still stepping gingerly, as Ms. Abrams did in her launch video by trumpeting the idea of “one Georgia,” and seeking to elevate unifying issues that can appeal to die-hard liberals and fickle suburbanites alike.Some Democrats fear that Ms. Abrams, a veteran state legislator and voting-rights advocate, may face an uphill climb in the governor’s race given the challenges confronting the party nationally: an unpopular president, inflation, Covid-19, and simmering concerns over violent crime and how American history is taught in schools.But many expressed hope on Monday that the coming fight between Mr. Kemp and Mr. Perdue would benefit Ms. Abrams, who is seeking to become the state’s first Black governor, and other down-ballot Democrats.Stacey Abrams is hoping to benefit from the Republican infighting.Eze Amos for The New York Times“While David Perdue and Brian Kemp fight each other, Stacey Abrams will be fighting for the people of Georgia,” said her campaign manager, Lauren Groh-Wargo, pointing to Ms. Abrams’s stances on health coverage, school funding and Covid-related health policies.For Republicans, Georgia has now become perhaps the most consequential proving ground in the party’s Trump wars. Should Mr. Perdue and other Trump-backed candidates lose their primaries, it will raise grave questions about the former president’s clout in the party as well as his own capacity to compete in a must-win state in 2024.By running, Mr. Perdue and his supporters are effectively sending the message that Mr. Trump must be accommodated — and his election denialism perpetuated.Mr. Perdue’s allies say their case is very simple: Mr. Kemp is unelectable next November because a significant number of Trump devotees will stay at home if he’s nominated.“The bitterness between Kemp and Trump is so deep that Kemp cannot win a general election,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who is backing Mr. Perdue. “The question for Georgia Republicans is would you like Perdue or Stacey Abrams, because if you’re for Kemp, you’re effectively voting for Stacey Abrams.”For his part, Mr. Kemp, who in his 2018 race brandished guns and threatened to round up “criminal illegals” in his pickup truck, can be expected to remind Republican voters that it is hard to outflank him to the right on issues like gun rights or abortion rights. He also signed into law Georgia’s controversial new voting law, which limits ballot access for voters in urban and suburban areas that are home to many Democrats.Mr. Kemp’s supporters also say they believe that Ms. Abrams is enough of a polarizing force to cauterize any G.O.P. wounds sustained in the primary.“She will inspire Republicans to come back out,” said Erick Erickson, a Georgia-based conservative writer and radio host. “They’re not going to stay home in Kemp-versus-Abrams or Perdue-versus-Abrams.”Still, Mr. Erickson, an outspoken Trump detractor, expressed concern that a nasty primary could disrupt next year’s legislative session and deny Mr. Kemp any new accomplishments to run on.Brian Kemp earned a place on Mr. Trump’s enemies list after declining to help the former president overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesDemocrats, who are eager to amplify the opposition’s discord — and to downplay Mr. Biden’s unpopularity, which is weighing on the party in Georgia as elsewhere — can barely contain their glee.“All that Perdue is going to be talking about is ‘the election was stolen,’” said Jennifer Jordan, an Atlanta-area state senator running for attorney general. “The voters in my district, the chamber of commerce Republicans, that is incredibly unseemly to them. You have this guy, Perdue, who had some appeal in the business community, and he’s basically giving that away because now he’s just going to become Trump’s boy.”Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, said she expected Republicans to rally around the party’s nominee in November. But even if that were Mr. Kemp, she said, Mr. Trump could still be a wild card.“If Brian Kemp won,” she said, “would Donald Trump be disciplined enough to keep his mouth shut in a general election?” More

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    Ex-Senator David Perdue to Run for Governor of Georgia

    Mr. Perdue, an ally of Donald Trump, will challenge the incumbent governor, Brian Kemp, in a Republican primary.ATLANTA — David Perdue, the former U.S. senator from Georgia and ally of Donald Trump, plans to announce on Monday that he will run in a Republican primary against the state’s incumbent governor, Brian Kemp, according to people familiar with Mr. Perdue’s plan. Mr. Trump has vowed to orchestrate Mr. Kemp’s defeat as payback for the governor’s refusal to help overturn the former president’s November election loss in the state.The news of Mr. Perdue’s pending announcement, first reported on Sunday by Politico, illustrates both the grip the former president still wields over the G.O.P. and his willingness to upend state races entirely because of his personal pique toward Republicans he feels are insufficiently loyal to him.Mr. Perdue’s decision to try to knock out a fellow Georgia Republican in 2022 is also sure to ignite an ugly — and costly — intraparty war before a general election in which the Republican nominee will likely face Stacey Abrams, the Democratic superstar whose national fame will allow her to amass a huge campaign war chest. Ms. Abrams, who lost to Mr. Kemp in 2018, announced her own run for governor last week.Ms. Abrams’ announcement accelerated Mr. Perdue’s decision, moving up his timeline to before the new year. The former senator has told people he was uncertain about running but decided to run because he’s gravely worried about her prospects for victory over an incumbent who has been weakened by Mr. Trump’s unrelenting attacks.Mr. Perdue, 71, a wealthy former corporate executive, narrowly lost his U.S. Senate seat to Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in a January runoff. Reports about his return, this time as a candidate for governor, have been circulating for weeks. A number of Republicans told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in October that Mr. Perdue was considering the move. At a September rally in rural Georgia, Mr. Trump appeared to encourage Mr. Perdue to challenge Mr. Kemp, who is seeking a second term..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Trump, standing at a lectern, turned to Mr. Perdue and praised him as a “great guy.”“Are you going to run for governor, David Perdue?” he asked.Mr. Trump then went on to accuse Mr. Kemp, 57, a former Trump favorite, of being a “RINO governor,” meaning “Republican in name only.” He also described him as “a complete and total disaster on election integrity.”The looming battle between Mr. Perdue and Mr. Kemp will help determine the extent of Mr. Trump’s influence heading into Georgia’s crucial 2022 general election. Mr. Trump has been working to set up a pro-Trump Republican slate in Georgia made up of politicians who have supported his false assertions that the 2020 presidential election was somehow “rigged.” The list so far includes the former football star Herschel Walker, who is running for U.S. Senate; U.S. Representative Jody Hice, who is running for secretary of state; and State Senator Burt Jones, who is running for lieutenant governor.The outcome of the Georgia elections will have important implications for the country. Raphael Warnock, the other Democratic senator from Georgia who won a January runoff race, is up for election in 2022, and that contest may help determine which party controls the Senate. And with Ms. Abrams in the race, the election will serve as a dramatic plot point in the closely watched story of one of the Democratic Party’s most respected and ambitious politicians.Ms. Abrams lost to Mr. Kemp in the 2018 governor’s race by about 55,000 votes. But the result was close enough to convince many observers that Georgia, once reliably Republican, had become a true battleground state. And Ms. Abrams’s organizing prowess is believed to have helped pave the path to victory for Senators Ossoff and Warnock, as well as President Biden, who also squeaked out an upset victory in Georgia.In 2018, Mr. Kemp ran as a “politically incorrect conservative” candidate proudly in the Trump mold, armed with a pro-Second Amendment message, a hard-line illegal immigration stance and, crucially, the endorsement of Mr. Trump himself.But the fact that Mr. Trump has unequivocally turned against Mr. Kemp — and is actively seeking vengeance — has created an awkward and potentially perilous situation for the governor. Polling commissioned by Mr. Trump’s Save America PAC released in August showed Mr. Kemp leading Mr. Perdue by six points among likely Republican primary voters. But the poll showed that if Mr. Perdue were endorsed by Mr. Trump, he would leapfrog ahead of Mr. Kemp.Mr. Kemp, however, is a savvy politician and former two-term secretary of state well-known to Georgia Republicans. A campaign disclosure from July showed that he had amassed nearly $12 million. But some Republicans are concerned that he will have to spend dearly to fend off Mr. Perdue’s primary challenge. If he wins, he may find himself depleted financially as he heads into a general election against the formidable Ms. Abrams.Some Republicans have quietly expressed surprise that Mr. Perdue would want to take on Mr. Kemp. Mr. Perdue did not seem to relish the down-and-dirty realities of running in a close race when Mr. Ossoff challenged him last year.In February, Mr. Perdue said that he would not challenge Mr. Warnock in the Senate race. The New York Times reported at the time that Mr. Perdue, aware of Mr. Trump’s vengeful streak, was put off by the idea of running for office in 2022 — and of being involved in Mr. Trump’s plot to get even with the people on his enemies list, including Georgia’s Republican governor. More