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      Hochul’s Lt. Governor Pick Says He Is Afro-Latino. Some Latinos Object.

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      The three major Democrats running to become New York’s second-in-command have Latino roots, but Antonio Delgado’s claim to the heritage is being challenged.In New York’s Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, one goal had unified two outsider candidates, Diana Reyna and Ana Maria Archila: vying to be the first Latino elected to statewide office.Achieving that objective has now gotten more complicated.This month, Gov. Kathy Hochul named Representative Antonio Delgado as her new lieutenant governor and running mate, replacing Brian Benjamin, who resigned in April after being indicted on federal bribery charges.In announcing the choice, Ms. Hochul heralded Mr. Delgado’s Afro-Latino ethnicity, and noted his membership in both the Black and Hispanic congressional caucuses.Prominent Latino Democrats, who lobbied Ms. Hochul on the decision and have long pushed for greater representation in state government, were quick to celebrate an appointment that, once it becomes official, will make Mr. Delgado the first Latino to hold statewide office in New York.But as the congratulatory statements began to circulate, so did questions about Mr. Delgado’s background, putting a spotlight on issues of ethnicity, self-identity and representation in advance of the June 28 primary.Asked about his Afro-Latino heritage at the news conference where he was introduced as Ms. Hochul’s choice for lieutenant governor, Mr. Delgado gave a winding answer. He said people had surmised that he was Afro-Latino because of his name, or perhaps because he briefly lived in Puerto Rico, where he played semipro basketball. He then seemed to suggest that his Latino heritage stemmed from his family’s ties to Cape Verde, a small island nation off the west coast of Africa that was once a Portuguese colony.The answer mystified some of his supporters, and created an opening for his opponents to scrutinize his claims of being Latino.Luis A. Miranda Jr., a founding partner of the MirRam Group, a political consulting firm, posted celebratory comments on Twitter about Mr. Delgado’s appointment when it was announced. But after hearing his remarks at the news conference, Mr. Miranda said he was “puzzled by his explanation on ethnicity.”Mr. Delgado, in an interview with The New York Times, described the complexity of how he views his ethnicity. He said his mother grew up at a time when she felt safe identifying only as Black or white, but eventually embraced the Mexican, Colombian and Venezuelan ancestry of her father, whom she did not know.“She became someone who identifies as a proud Black woman with Latino roots,” Mr. Delgado said in the interview. “And as I’ve tried to orient myself and my sense of identity through her, that is the entry point.”Asked how he identified himself, Mr. Delgado said: “I am a Black American man with Cape Verdean roots and Latino roots. When it pertains to my Latino roots, that comes from my mom’s side, whose own story around her identity is multifaceted and complex.”When Ms. Hochul picked Mr. Benjamin for the job, her choice was influenced by a desire to have her running mate be a person of color from the New York City area as a way to help broaden her appeal beyond her base as a white politician from western New York.Mr. Delgado offered many of the same qualities, giving the governor a running mate with name recognition and the potential to appeal to downstate Black and Latino voters as she seeks a full term this year.Ms. Archila, who has been endorsed by Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the House, and Ms. Reyna said they understood why Ms. Hochul would want a Latino running mate. Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the state and make up 19 percent of the population. But the two women questioned Mr. Delgado’s rationale for describing himself as Latino and cast Ms. Hochul’s decision as a political ploy.“Gov. Hochul is being extremely opportunistic and simplistic,” said Ms. Archila, whose running mate is Jumaane Williams, New York City’s public advocate. “I think he should say more than, I have an ancestor who once was born in Colombia.”In selecting Mr. Delgado, Gov. Kathy Hochul, right, chose a running mate of color who may appeal to downstate voters who are not part of her natural base.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesMs. Reyna, whose running mate is Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, said at a recent campaign event that a “last name does not make you Latino.” The first statewide Latino official should be “authentic,” have “lived experience” and a record of helping Latino communities, she told Encuentro New York, a Latino advocacy group.“She tells us that her lieutenant governor is a member of the Latino community,” Ms. Reyna said of the governor. “This is not about identity politics. This is about being truthful.”Ms. Hochul and her campaign have said little about the questions surrounding Mr. Delgado’s ethnicity. They referred to him as Afro-Latino in the third line of a news release announcing his appointment; an email sent out the next day about a fund-raiser did not mention his ethnicity.“He identifies as Afro-Latino,” Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, said.The focus on Mr. Delgado’s ethnicity adds a new wrinkle to the primary for lieutenant governor, which was upended after the resignation of Mr. Benjamin, the presumptive favorite. For weeks, it appeared that he would remain on the primary ballot despite the criminal charges, but state lawmakers ultimately passed a bill allowing him to remove himself.It was then that Ms. Hochul chose Mr. Delgado to succeed Mr. Benjamin.Camille Rivera, a Democratic political strategist who identifies as Afro-Latina, said Ms. Hochul had missed an opportunity to energize an important voting bloc that could help decide the general election. Among the issues Latino leaders say they want state government to address are affordable housing, child care and inequalities in health care.“You have no statewide Latino representation, right?” Ms. Rivera said. “Here was an opportunity to actually lift up Latinos in a real way.”There has been little scrutiny of Mr. Delgado’s Latino heritage. Several news articles over the years have identified him incorrectly as Puerto Rican. Some articles from 2018, when he defeated John J. Faso, the Republican incumbent, to claim the House seat representing the Hudson Valley and Catskills regions, referred to him as Black.Asked whether he had ever corrected the record about being Puerto Rican before the news conference where he was introduced as lieutenant governor, Mr. Delgado said in a statement that he was “raised as a blend of heritages,” including “Latino roots.”“That’s the background I grew up with and how I identify,” he said in the statement. “My mom’s maiden name is Gomez and she grew up identifying as having Latina roots.”Racism and colorism may also play a role in how Mr. Delgado’s description of being Afro-Latino is being received, said Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who identifies as Afro-Latino.“I find it curious that those of us with Black skin often have our Latino identity questioned,” said Mr. Torres, who supports Mr. Delgado. “As an Afro-Latino, I have been told repeatedly that I do not look Latino, whatever that means, and therefore, I must be less authentically Latino than those with lighter skin.”Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores, an associate professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, said she understood why some Latinos were upset about the appointment. Being Afro-Latino in the United States, she said, involves a complicated mix of race, language and culture.“Experience informs what you see, how you perceive things, how you bring in issues that might go unseen or unrecognized,” Professor Dinzey-Flores said. Choosing someone from an Afro-Latino background so that constituency is represented in government, she added, should be about “authentically” capturing that experience and not “checking a box.”Melissa Mark-Viverito, a former New York City Council speaker who was born and raised in Puerto Rico, concurred, saying that Mr. Delgado’s claim of Latino heritage “raises the question and the concern of people loosely taking on certain identities and not being completely honest.”“That concerns me because as someone who fully embraces the importance of representation, we have two qualified Latinas running and a chance to make history,” Ms. Mark-Viverito said, referring to Ms. Reyna and Ms. Archila. “Yet it feels like we are being duped. It’s all very messy.”Days after Ms. Hochul named him as Mr. Benjamin’s successor, Mr. Delgado gave a 15-minute speech at the Harlem headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Mr. Sharpton said he was surprised that Mr. Delgado did not address the confusion about his Afro-Latino identity.“I think it’s something he can’t ignore,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview after Mr. Delgado spoke that day.Instead, Mr. Delgado reminisced about growing up in a Black Baptist church and drew hearty amens and nods of approval from the mostly Black crowd. He talked about why he pursued a career as a rapper after graduating from Harvard Law School, an issue opponents tried to use against him when he first ran for Congress.“I know the power of the culture,” Mr. Delgado said. “I am the culture.” More

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      Hochul Chooses a Congressman Who Has Won in a Swing District

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      Antonio Delgado will replace Brian Benjamin as the governor’s running mate in the upcoming Democratic primary.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll meet the man Gov. Kathy Hochul has chosen to be the new lieutenant governor. We’ll also check on how a federal rule about light bulbs will make New York look a little different.Monica Jorge for The New York Times“Upstate, downstate, doesn’t matter,” said Representative Antonio Delgado, above, who grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., and now lives in Rhinebeck, N.Y. — places many people in the five boroughs would consider upstate. “We all want the same things: security, family and opportunity.”The immediate opportunity for him is a new job, as lieutenant governor. It means leaving Congress, a prospect that compounded the anxiety for Democrats already worried about losing control of the House after the midterm elections this fall. He was facing a difficult fight for re-election in a district that was likely to be more competitive than the one on the Democratic-drawn map struck down by the state’s highest court last week.My colleagues Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Nicholas Fandos write that Delgado, 45, has shown that he can win contested elections, raise large sums of money and appeal to a broad range of voters. On Tuesday a special state committee moved to add his name to the primary ballot as the favored Democratic candidate in the June primary, replacing former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, who resigned last month after federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed bribery charges.Hochul chose Benjamin, a Black former state senator from Harlem, last summer when she ascended to the governor’s office following former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation. A Buffalo native, she had been the lieutenant governor for slightly more than six and a half years. Like Delgado, she had served in Congress.Before settling on Delgado, Hochul and her team also considered Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, and Vincent Alvarez, the president of the New York City Central Labor Council, as well as other Latino candidates, according to two people familiar with the process.Delgado, a former corporate lawyer who is Black, said on Tuesday that he said he was well positioned to represent the city along with the rest of the state. And as a prospective running mate, he offered Hochul considerable political attributes, including twice winning one of the most competitive swing districts in the country and fending off Republican opponents who branded him a “big-city rapper.”He also proved to be a prolific fund-raiser. He has nearly $6 million in his House campaign account, money he can spend on a lieutenant governor’s campaign.In Congress, Delgado has largely avoided the partisan fights that dominate cable news; he rarely speaks with reporters. In the primary for lieutenant governor, he will face two opponents, both Latina women: Diana Reyna, a former member of the New York City Council, and Ana María Archila, a progressive activist. His centrist credentials, paired with institutional party support, could allow him to push Reyna out of the moderate lane she was looking to occupy.WeatherPrepare for showers and a possible thunderstorms early in the day, with temps in the mid-60s. At night, there’s a chance of showers with temps in the mid-50s.alternate-side parkingSuspended today (Eid al-Fitr).State lawmakers promise to protect access to abortionReacting to the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Democratic leaders in Albany said they were working to make New York a safe haven for women seeking reproductive care.The State Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, said that it was “an outrage that the Supreme Court is poised to reverse the rights of women in this country” and that she expected to pass legislation to reaffirm abortion rights before the end of the session.If the court overturns the 49-year-old decision, New York and other states with strong support for abortion rights could see a rush of people from states that have banned abortions. State Senator Liz Krueger of Manhattan has introduced a bill to protect New York doctors who treat those patients by prohibiting law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state investigations of abortion cases.The latest New York newsDr. David Sabatini, a biologist facing accusations of sexual harassment, is no longer in the running for a faculty position at N.Y.U. News of his potential hiring had sparked a protest.National Democrats made an 11th-hour appeal to a federal court to intervene in New York’s heated redistricting dispute.New York’s Law Department fired the city lawyer who handled lawsuits from George Floyd protesters after discovering she had made a misrepresentation in court filings.A sommelier charged last year with arson will be required to pay thousands of dollars to two restaurants whose outdoor dining structures he set on fire.For the second time in less than a week, New York City canceled plans for a shelter in Chinatown after protests from the community.A teacher in Rochester was placed on leave and is being investigated after parents said he told students to pick cotton during a lesson on slavery.The look of lightAlex Wroblewski for The New York TimesLights always shine brightly in New York, and a lot of them are old-fashioned incandescent lights — the roundish bulbs with filaments in the middle that Thomas Edison would recognize.Some New Yorkers don’t want to give them up.“The government is trying to get us not to sell them,” said David Brooks, the owner of Just Bulbs, a store on the East Side of Manhattan that carries — well, you figure it out. “There’s really no good reason why you shouldn’t want to switch to LED, but a lot of customers are dinosaurs.”Selling incandescent bulbs, which are less energy efficient than LEDs, is just “giving them what they’re asking for,” Brooks said, adding that he had “scrounged the corners of the earth to find the old bulbs people want.”His scrounging may become more difficult before long. Last week the Biden administration adopted energy-efficiency standards that would phase out most incandescent bulbs — the familiar household ones, anyway — next year. There are exceptions for many of the so-called specialty bulbs that Brooks keeps in stock.LEDs already illuminate much of New York, just as they illuminate much of the country. The Department of Citywide Administrative Services does not use incandescent bulbs in the 55 city-owned buildings — City Hall among them. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is converting fluorescent bulbs on station platforms to LEDs. It is also preparing to “transition” light banks for track workers in tunnels to LEDs, a spokesman said.The move away from incandescents has been going on for years — a decade ago, The New York Times said decorators were “laying in light bulbs like canned goods,” buying large quantities because they were not happy with the light from LEDs.What to Know About Lt. Gov. Brian BenjaminCard 1 of 5Who is Brian Benjamin? More

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      Brian Benjamin Won’t Be on the New York Ballot After All

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      Lawmakers have passed legislation that would allow individuals who have been arrested or indicted to be removed from state ballots.ALBANY, N.Y. — Brian A. Benjamin, the former New York lieutenant governor who resigned after being indicted on federal bribery charges, will no longer appear on the state Democratic primary ballot after legislation passed on Monday made it possible to remove him.The measure is widely regarded as an accommodation to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had publicly appealed to Democratic leaders of the Assembly and Senate to change the law, after other efforts to remove Mr. Benjamin from the ballot had stalled.The bill passed by the Senate and Assembly will allow candidates who have been arrested or charged with a misdemeanor or felony after being nominated to be removed from the ballot if they do not intend to serve. Ms. Hochul is expected to sign the bill into law shortly.Mr. Benjamin released a statement on Twitter Monday, saying that he would sign the necessary paperwork to remove his name from the ballot. “I am innocent of these unsubstantiated charges. However, I would be unable to serve under these circumstances,” he said.Under the old law, candidates who had formally accepted a party’s nomination could not be taken off the ballot unless they died, moved out of state or were nominated to another office. People who have been convicted of felonies are eligible to run for and hold public office under New York law, though a politician convicted of a felony while in office will be removed, according to the state Board of Elections.If Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, had been unsuccessful in changing the law, she would probably have faced the awkward scenario of running in November with a running mate who had been the designated No. 2 of one of her Democratic primary opponents.Democrats to Ms. Hochul’s left and Republican foes characterized the move as an abuse of power, saying that Ms. Hochul should not have been allowed to change the rules midstream because it suited her.“The rules of democracy really matter,” said Ana Maria Archila, an activist who is running to be lieutenant governor. “And how you do democracy, how you participate in it is actually the way that you demonstrate your commitment to it.”“Anyone else find it frightening that the Governor — the most powerful person in NY — is changing the rules of the election they are running in mid-game to help them look better in said election?” Robert G. Ortt, the State Senate minority leader, wrote on Twitter.Leaders in Albany had also initially expressed skepticism, with the Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, saying she “really, really, really” did not like the idea of changing election laws while a campaign was already in progress. Some of her Democratic colleagues in the party’s progressive wing chafed at the idea of offering Ms. Hochul political favors after bruising budget negotiations.But the lawmakers softened over the weekend, with many embracing the idea that it did not serve voters’ interest to keep someone like Mr. Benjamin, who has no intention of serving, on the ballot.“There’s always that extreme example that leads us to the change. That’s all this is,” said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin of Westchester, a bill sponsor. “This is so that voters are voting for someone who intends to serve. This isn’t about politics.”Political observers noted, however, that the optics of sharing a ticket with someone who is under federal indictment were obviously less than ideal for Ms. Hochul. Mr. Benjamin has pleaded not guilty.The governor, who is seeking her first full term, enjoyed broad popularity when she ascended to the state’s highest office after her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment. Mr. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.Ms. Hochul quickly set to work building a campaign that would raise more than $20 million in record time, making her the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination.What to Know About Lt. Gov. Brian BenjaminCard 1 of 5Who is Brian Benjamin? More

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      Brian Benjamin’s Bribery Defense: He Got ‘No Personal Benefits’

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      The case against Brian Benjamin, who resigned as New York’s second-in-command last week, may hinge on whether political contributions in this case constituted a bribe.A federal prosecutor said on Monday that the government had issued more than 160 subpoenas for financial, phone and other records as part of its investigation into New York’s former lieutenant governor, Brian A. Benjamin, who resigned last week after being charged with bribery and fraud.At a hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the prosecutor, Jarrod L. Schaeffer, suggested a trove of potential evidence of broad scope and complexity.On Monday morning alone, Mr. Schaeffer said, the government turned over about 160,000 pages of materials to Mr. Benjamin’s lawyers. The government had also executed about seven search warrants for email accounts and seized and searched cellphones, including one belonging to Mr. Benjamin, he said.The hearing was the first court appearance for Mr. Benjamin, 45, since his arrest a week ago in what the authorities have depicted as a brazen scheme to funnel illegal contributions to his previous political campaigns and to cover up the criminal activity.The arrest and Mr. Benjamin’s quick resignation sent tremors through Albany and created a political headache for Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat who handpicked him to be her second-in-command less than a year ago. Though no trial date was set on Monday, it now appears Mr. Benjamin’s legal saga could easily stretch beyond June’s Democratic primary and this fall’s general election.In a statement before Monday’s proceeding, lawyers for Mr. Benjamin said they were “shocked and dismayed that the prosecution would bring such flimsy and unwarranted charges against a sitting lieutenant governor, a mere 67 days before voting begins in the primary election.”Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, declined to comment.In the courtroom, Mr. Benjamin’s lawyer, Barry H. Berke, signaled that he would argue that the government had overreached in a case that offers “lively legal issues.”Most recent political corruption cases, Mr. Berke told the judge, involved a government official receiving personal benefits like watches, cash and no-show jobs in exchange for an official action.“This case is different, because it’s based solely on political contributions — and no personal benefits,” Mr. Berke said.Mr. Benjamin, who has pleaded not guilty, has reshuffled his legal team since his arrest, bringing in Mr. Berke and Dani R. James of Kramer Levin as his new lawyers. Mr. Berke represented Bill de Blasio in several inquiries into the former mayor’s fund-raising practices and later served as a lead counsel for both impeachments of former President Donald J. Trump.Prosecutors have said that Mr. Benjamin used his power, while he was a member of the State Senate, to direct $50,000 in state funds to a charity run by a Harlem real estate developer, Gerald Migdol. In return, Mr. Migdol orchestrated thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to Mr. Benjamin’s failed campaign in 2021 for New York City comptroller and his State Senate campaign, the authorities said.What to Know About Lt. Gov. Brian BenjaminCard 1 of 3Who is Brian Benjamin? More

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      A Subway Attack That Shook New York City

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      The gunman who injured 23 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, escaped, but the police identified a person of interest.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Two stories will dominate the conversation today: the attack in the subway that left at least 23 people injured, 10 from gunfire, and the resignation of Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, hours after he was arrested on corruption charges.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesA man dressed in a neon-orange vest and a green construction helmet strapped on a gas mask, released two smoke grenades and began firing a gun he was carrying.It was the beginning of an attack that rattled the city — a mass shooting that turned the subway into another edgy symbol of a city worn thin by violence.Videos from the subway car where the smoke bomb went off and the shots rang out showed commuters running and just trying to breathe as they pulled their sleeves and their collars across their faces. My colleague Sarah Maslin Nir writes that there were a few panicked screams before the train pulled into the next stop, the doors opened and riders who could escape poured out, gasping in the smoke.“There’s been a shooting,” a woman said as she fled. Behind her a man limped out of the smoky subway car. Other passengers collapsed once they made it out, while in the car, wounded passengers lay on the blue seats or on the floor.The gunman — who had been on the train for eight stops, according to the police — apparently escaped in the maelstrom on the platform. At least one surveillance camera that could have captured the gunman was not working, Mayor Eric Adams said. The camera malfunction appeared to hamper the search as the police fanned out through Sunset Park. Police officials said they were looking for a “person of interest,” Frank R. James, a 62-year-old man who had rented a U-Haul van they found several miles from the station where the attack occurred. They said the van had been rented in Philadelphia.In the station, they said, they had found a nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, a hatchet and a bag with fireworks. Keechant Sewell, the police commissioner, added that there were online “postings possibly connected to the man where he mentions homelessness, he mentions New York and he does mention Mayor Adams.” As a result, she said, the mayor’s security detail was being tightened “in an abundance of caution”Adams, confined to Gracie Mansion after testing positive for the coronavirus this week, said in radio and television interviews that the police presence in the subways would be doubled and that officers assigned to day shifts would work into the evening. He said on NY1 that the shooting “really elevates the conversation” about the “crisis that is playing across our country” involving the proliferation of guns.It was not the first time in his 100-plus days in office that Adams had ordered more police attention on the subways. He announced plans in January to order hundreds of street-level patrol officers to inspect subway stations regularly and to redeploy officers from desk jobs onto the trains. Adams also announced plans to stop homeless people from sheltering on trains and platforms a few weeks after a woman was pushed to her death in front of a train.But crime has continued to increase. For January and February, felony assaults were up 10 percent over the same period last year, and for many passengers, safety is a paramount concern. In a recent survey by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs the transit system, fear of crime and harassment were the top factors cited by people who said they no longer take the subway.On Tuesday, Marjorie Michele, a nursing technician from Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, took an Uber home from work. She said the subways were still snarled from the attack, but riding above ground also felt safer.“It could have been me,” she said. “It could have been any of my children.”WeatherIt’s a mostly cloudy day in the high 60s. Expect a slight chance of showers late at night when temps drop to the high 50s.alternate-side parkingIn effect today. Suspended tomorrow (Holy Thursday).The latest New York newsThe killing of a 12-year-old boy in East Flatbush reflected how a spike in shootings during the pandemic is complicating recovery in less affluent neighborhoods.A former lawyer and his husband filed a complaint against the city, saying they were denied insurance coverage because of a definition of infertility that excludes gay men.The “Fearless Girl” sculpture will continue to stand outside the New York Stock Exchange after city officials voted to extend the sculpture’s temporary permit.A lieutenant governor is indicted and resignsJefferson Siegel for The New York TimesOn his 216th day as the second-most powerful state official in New York, Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin resigned, hours after federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment accusing him of directing a corruption scheme. The charges included trading state funds for illegal donations to his past campaigns for the State Senate and New York City comptroller.The five-count indictment accused him of bribery, fraud and conspiracy in directing $50,000 in state funds to a nonprofit group controlled by a real estate developer, Gerald Migdol. In return, Migdol arranged for illegal contributions to go to Benjamin’s failed campaign for city comptroller last year. Benjamin was also accused of offering to help Migdol win a zoning variance if he gave $15,000 to a separate fund for State Senate Democrats.“This is a simple story of corruption,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a news conference before Benjamin’s resignation was announced. “Taxpayer money for campaign contributions. A quid pro quo. This for that. That’s bribery, plain and simple.”Benjamin pleaded not guilty in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan before his resignation and was released on $250,000 bond.The fallout for the governorThe case complicated this year’s campaign for Hochul. After Andrew Cuomo resigned in disgrace last summer, one of her first major decisions was to appoint Benjamin.Now that decision has become a potentially consequential liability as she runs for a four-year term. My colleague Luis Ferré-Sadurní writes that Democratic and Republican rivals are already sharpening their attacks.She can select a new lieutenant governor in the coming weeks, but it will be difficult to replace Benjamin on the Democratic primary ballot in June. Because he was designated as the Democratic Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, election rules stipulate that his name could be removed at this point only if he were to move out of the state, die or run for another office.Benjamin left court without commenting on the case. He and his lawyers met with prosecutors last week, according to someone familiar with the matter, and Benjamin’s top aides were privately reassuring their allies that he expected to be cleared of wrongdoing.A charity gets $50,000 it did not ask forThe indictment said Benjamin had approached Migdol in March 2019, months before he announced his candidacy for comptroller, and that Migdol demurred, saying he needed to solicit the same potential donors for his charity, Friends of Public School Harlem.“Let me see what I can do,” Benjamin replied, according to the indictment. Then he arranged a $50,000 education grant for the charity that Migdol had not sought.Later, in a meeting in Benjamin’s office, Migdol handed over $25,000 in checks made out to Benjamin’s Senate campaign account. The prosecutors said he attempted to conceal his involvement by giving Benjamin checks drawn on the accounts of relatives or an L.L.C. he controlled. The indictment said Benjamin watched as Migdol, filling out campaign forms, signed the relatives’ names.The indictment also accused Benjamin of attempting a cover-up by falsifying campaign donation forms, misleading city authorities and giving incorrect information in a background check before he became lieutenant governor.What we’re readingLast month, our reporter Karen Zraick received a tip about elevator breakdowns at a high-rise residential building. It proved to be more than just griping.Curbed reported on four key landmarks in Little Ukraine in the East Village and how they reflect the community’s history.METROPOLITAN diaryLong tent dressDear Diary:A friend and I were on the subway to Brooklyn. We were standing and chatting, holding on to the pole at the end of the car.I was wearing a long tent dress from Marimekko. Since I am 6 feet tall, the dress presented as a large swath of fabric as I leaned on the pole.A seat next to us was empty, and construction worker in hard hat and work boots asked whether we would mind if he sat down. He said he had been injured at work that day.Of course, my friend and I said. We continued to chat as the train crossed the river. It was clear that the construction worker was eavesdropping on us.At a break in our conversation, he spoke.“Excuse me,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but that dress would look a lot better with a belt.”— Celia RodriguesIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Hochul Picked a Running Mate. Now She Has to Pick Another One.

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      Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin’s resignation in the face of a criminal indictment creates a major political test for Gov. Kathy Hochul.One of the first decisions Gov. Kathy Hochul had to make when she suddenly ascended to New York’s highest office last summer was a personnel one: Who would fill her previous role as lieutenant governor, becoming her second-in-command and running mate in the 2022 election?The search was relatively swift, with Ms. Hochul, a white Democrat from Buffalo, homing in on elected officials of color from downstate.She picked Brian Benjamin, a Black state senator from Harlem who was expected to help Ms. Hochul broaden her appeal in New York City, announcing her choice at a campaign-style rally in Upper Manhattan in August.The move came despite a string of ethics questions that had followed Mr. Benjamin and that centered on some dubious campaign finance practices during his time as senator and his unsuccessful run for city comptroller last year.On Tuesday, almost eight months later, that early decision turned into one of Ms. Hochul’s most potentially consequential political liabilities with her announcement that she had accepted Mr. Benjamin’s resignation after his arrest on federal corruption charges.“While the legal process plays out, it is clear to both of us that he cannot continue to serve as Lieutenant Governor,” Ms. Hochul said in a statement hours after Mr. Benjamin’s arrest. “New Yorkers deserve absolute confidence in their government, and I will continue working every day to deliver for them.” The criminal case against Mr. Benjamin could undermine the governor’s efforts to seek her first full term this year, and may be a campaign distraction as the Democratic primary in June nears. Ms. Hochul has led the field comfortably in early public polls, but Mr. Benjamin’s arrest and resignation could throw the race for both her office and his into flux, with Democratic and Republican rivals already sharpening their attacks.Ms. Hochul must now decide who will fill the lieutenant governor vacancy. It was unclear on Tuesday whether she would also seek to remove Mr. Benjamin from the Democratic ballot, an extremely complicated task because of the timing of his resignation and New York’s archaic election laws.But in a statement shortly after Mr. Benjamin’s resignation, Jay Jacobs, the state Democratic Party chairman, said he would “explore every option available to seek a replacement for Brian on the ticket.”The investigation into Mr. Benjamin’s activities had begun to dog Ms. Hochul weeks ago, just as she was negotiating the state budget, where she secured many of her favored policies related to public safety with his help.The governor had indicated just last week that Mr. Benjamin had her unwavering support, even as it became public that he had not told her while being vetted for the lieutenant governor post that his comptroller campaign had received subpoenas.“I have utmost confidence in my lieutenant governor,” Ms. Hochul said at an April 7 news conference at the State Capitol where Mr. Benjamin sat by her side as she announced the budget deal. “This is an independent investigation related to other people and he is fully cooperating. He is my running mate.”On Tuesday, Mr. Benjamin pleaded not guilty to five counts of bribery and fraud in Federal District Court in Manhattan.Most immediately, Mr. Benjamin’s arrest and resignation could upend the race for lieutenant governor. Under state law, neither arrest nor conviction prompt the removal of a candidate from a New York State ballot. Mr. Benjamin’s lawyers said on Tuesday that he had suspended his campaign, but it is too late for Mr. Benjamin to be easily removed from the ballot; the only way it could happen is if he were to leave the state, die or be nominated for a different office.Mr. Benjamin could be nominated for another office, but since petitioning deadlines have now passed for most positions, another elected official would most likely need to resign to create a vacancy for him. It is unclear whether Mr. Benjamin could sidestep that by running as an independent candidate.The primary contests for governor and lieutenant governor are conducted separately, raising the possibility that Mr. Benjamin could remain on the ballot and lose even if Ms. Hochul wins. That could force Ms. Hochul to run in the November general election with a Democratic running mate she had not chosen.Running against Mr. Benjamin are Ana Maria Archila, a progressive activist who has aligned herself with Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, who is challenging Ms. Hochul from the left. Ms. Archila’s campaign sent an email to supporters on Tuesday asking for donations after news of Mr. Benjamin’s arrest broke, saying that “we need cleareyed, transparent and accountable leadership.”“I find it remarkable that the vetting process wasn’t more vigorous,” Ms. Archila said in an interview earlier on Tuesday, questioning Mr. Benjamin’s ability to fulfill his duties but stopping short of calling for his resignation. “It says that she wasn’t careful or thoughtful in prioritizing the public’s trust in the way she said she would.”Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, a moderate Democrat from Long Island who is running against Ms. Hochul in the primary, issued his own statement earlier in the day, along with Diana Reyna, his informal running mate for lieutenant governor, saying that Mr. Benjamin’s arrest was “an indictment on Kathy Hochul’s lack of experience and poor judgment.”Representative Lee Zeldin, a Long Island Republican and the party’s nominee for governor, criticized Ms. Hochul on Tuesday for her “terrible judgment” in choosing Mr. Benjamin, who he described as “a bad pick.”“When this corruption surfaced, Hochul tripled down,” Mr. Zeldin wrote on Twitter. “She owns this … all of it! Terrible judgment!”Mr. Benjamin’s arrest appeared to blindside Ms. Hochul, disrupting her schedule just as she was increasing her time on the campaign trail this week. The arrest coincided with a mass shooting at a Brooklyn subway station, and Ms. Hochul had to call off a union fund-raiser in Manhattan and a news conference on Long Island.Early in the day, as Ms. Hochul weighed Mr. Benjamin’s future, the Republican leaders in the State Legislature, as well as some Democratic state lawmakers, had called on her to demand his resignation.“Kathy Hochul and Senate Democrats might tolerate this corruption, but New Yorkers don’t and neither do I,” said Rob Ortt, the Republican leader in the State Senate.What to Know About Lt. Gov. Brian BenjaminCard 1 of 3Who is Brian Benjamin? More

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      Winsome Sears Wants Black Voters to Rethink the G.O.P.

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      The incoming lieutenant governor of Virginia was an unlikely candidate: a deeply conservative Black woman, and an immigrant, who supports Donald Trump.RICHMOND, Va. — On a December afternoon, Winsome Sears, Virginia’s lieutenant governor-elect, stood at the podium in the State Senate chamber where she will soon preside. It was empty but for a few clerks and staffers who were walking her through a practice session, making pretend motions and points of order. Ms. Sears followed along as the clerks explained arcane Senate protocols, though she occasionally raised matters that weren’t in the script.“What if they’re making a ruckus?” Ms. Sears asked her tutors.Then, a clerk said, pointing to the giant wooden gavel at Ms. Sears’s right hand, you bang that. Ms. Sears smiled.That she was standing here at all was an improbability built upon unlikelihoods. Her campaign was a long shot, late in starting, skimpily funded and repeatedly overhauled. The political trajectory that preceded it was hardly more auspicious: She appeared on the scene 20 years ago, winning a legislative seat in an upset, but after one term and a quixotic bid for Congress, disappeared from electoral politics. She briefly surfaced in 2018, announcing a write-in protest against Virginia’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, but this earned her little beyond a few curious mentions in the press.Yet just three years later she is the lieutenant governor-elect, having bested two veteran lawmakers for the Republican nomination and become the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia history. She will take office on Jan. 15, along with Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin.Ms. Sears during a campaign event for Glenn Youngkin in October. She became the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia history.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe focus on Ms. Sears’s triumph, in news profiles and in the post-election crowing of conservative pundits, has been on the rare combination of her biography and politics: a Black woman, an immigrant and an emphatically conservative, Trump-boosting Republican.“The message is important,” Ms. Sears, 57, said over a lunch of Jamaican oxtail with her transition team at a restaurant near the State Capitol. “But the messenger is equally important.”This is the question that Ms. Sears embodies: whether she is a singular figure who won a surprise victory or the vanguard of a major political realignment, dissolving longtime realities of race and partisan identification. Democrats say there is little evidence for the latter, and that Ms. Sears won with typical Republican voters in an especially Republican year. But Ms. Sears insists that many Black and immigrant voters naturally side with Republicans on a variety of issues — and that some are starting to realize that.“The only way to change things is to win elections,” she said. “And who better to help make that change but me? I look like the strategy.”Ms. Sears dates her own partisan epiphany to her early 20s. She already had plenty of life experience by that point: moving at the age of 6 from Jamaica to the Bronx to be with her father, who had come seeking work; joining the Marines as a lost teenager and learning to be a diesel mechanic; becoming a single mother at 21. When she listened to the 1988 presidential campaign, hearing the debates over abortion and welfare, she realized, to her surprise, that she was a Republican.More than a dozen years passed before Ms. Sears, then a married mother of three who had run a homeless shelter and gone to graduate school, began her political career. At the urging of local Republicans, she ran in 2001 for the House of Delegates in a majority Black district in Norfolk. The seat had been held by Billy Robinson Jr., a Democrat, for 20 years; his father had held it before him. Weeks before the election, Mr. Robinson spent a night in jail on a contempt of court charge. Ms. Sears won in the surprise of the election season.Ms. Sears will take office on Jan. 15, along with Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin.Steve Helber/Associated PressIn the Legislature, she adjusted to the political architecture and her unusual place in it: joining, then leaving, the legislative Black caucus; voting dependably as a Republican but calling earlier than many colleagues for the resignation of the Republican House speaker when news broke of his sexual harassment settlement.She did not run for re-election, instead launching an underdog campaign against Democratic U.S. Representative Bobby Scott. Mr. Scott returned to Congress, where he remains, and the House of Delegates seat returned to Democratic hands for good. Ms. Sears was “done with politics,” she said.Her family moved to the small city of Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, where Ms. Sears and her husband ran a plumbing and electrical repair shop. She held a few posts — on the state board of education and on a committee at the Department of Veterans Affairs — and wrote a book, “Stop Being a Christian Wimp!” Much of her focus was on caring for a daughter struggling with mental illness. In 2012, the daughter, DeJon Williams, was killed in a car accident along with her two young children.While Ms. Sears was absent from politics, Barack Obama won the presidency, Trayvon Martin was killed, the Black Lives Matter movement rose up, Donald Trump was elected and neo-Nazis marched on Charlottesville, Va. Ms. Sears’s political example, as a Black woman Republican representing a majority Black district in Virginia, went unrepeated.Republicans, she said, rarely even tried to sever the old ties between Black voters and the Democratic Party. This is partly why she decided to run this year.“I just took a look at the field, and said, ‘My God, we’re gonna lose again,’” she said. “Nobody was going to reach out to the various communities that needed to be heard from: women, immigrants, you know, Latinos, Asians, Blacks, etc.”Ms. Sears favors strict limits on abortion, supports vouchers to help students pay for private school tuition and insists that gun control laws do not deter crime but that gun ownership does.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesShe stood to the right of much of the field and was arguably the furthest right of the three Republicans nominated for statewide office. She favors strict limits on abortion, calling Democratic abortion policies “wicked”; she is an advocate of vouchers to help students pay for private school tuition and of tighter restrictions on voting; and she insists that gun control laws do not deter crime — gun ownership does. A photo that went viral last spring, showing her holding an AR-15 while wearing a blazer-and-dress outfit suitable for a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, propelled her as much as anything to the Republican nomination.Ms. Sears derides the left as too concerned with race but often explains her politics as rooted in Black history, stressing Marcus Garvey’s rhetoric on self-reliance as a Jamaican immigrant in Jim Crow America, emphasizing that Harriet Tubman carried a gun and referring to the infamous Tuskegee experiments in explaining her opposition to Covid-19 vaccine mandates. “If the Democrats are always going to talk about race, then let’s talk about it,” she said.She rejects the notion that the problems Republicans have attracting Black voters might run deeper than mere neglect. She was angered when Republicans nominated Corey Stewart, who had a history of associating with Neo-Confederates, for the 2018 U.S. Senate race in Virginia. But she said this didn’t give her qualms about the party. She remains a champion of Mr. Trump, who openly endorsed Mr. Stewart; indeed, she was the national chairwoman of a group called “Black Americans to Re-elect the President.”Jennifer McClellan, a Democratic state senator from Richmond, agreed that Democrats could not assume that Black people would show up for them at the polls, saying that Black voters, like any voters, choose candidates based on who they believe is going to help solve their problems. But, she continued, little that Ms. Sears has said suggests she would be that person in office.“The vast majority of Black voters disagree with her on abortion, on school choice, on guns,” Ms. McClellan said. “Those aren’t necessarily the issues driving Black voters anyway. It’s the economy, it’s health care, it’s broader access to education.”Lieutenant governors in Virginia are fairly limited in their responsibilities, but they have a public profile — and they almost always eventually run for governor. Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesThe evidence that this year’s elections scrambled the fundamentals of race and partisanship is mixed at most. If anything, some Republicans worried that Ms. Sears’s hard-right politics might jeopardize the campaign strategy of appealing to more moderate voters. This risk was largely mitigated, said John Fredericks, a conservative radio host, by the fact that Ms. Sears’s general election campaign, which he called “a train wreck from start to finish,” never raised enough money to really broadcast her politics.In any case, the attention was overwhelmingly directed to the top of the ticket.“The election this year was all about the gubernatorial candidates,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington. There were few big surprises in the exit polls, several political experts said, and Ms. Sears won her race by a margin that would have been expected of just about any Republican this year.But there were some warning signs for Democrats, outlined in a postelection survey by the Democratic Governors Association. While Black Virginians overwhelmingly voted for Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee for governor, the analysis found a drop in Democratic support among Black men, compared with the 2020 presidential election. There was notable erosion in Democratic support among Asian and Latino voters as well.“We don’t need to be tied or beholden to one particular party,” said Wes Bellamy, a Black political activist and a former vice mayor of Charlottesville. He will be watching Ms. Sears closely, he said.Lieutenant governors in Virginia are fairly limited in their responsibilities, but they have a public profile — and they almost always run for governor. If Ms. Sears advocates for policies that improve the day-to-day lives of Black people and, more crucially, if she can persuade her Republican colleagues to go along, Mr. Bellamy said, “I think she’s gold.” More

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      What If Gavin Newsom Resigned Before the Recall Election?

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      Kathy Schwartz, a retired health care analyst living in Los Angeles, had been following the news about the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom with increasing concern.Ms. Schwartz, 65, initially believed that the recall was a waste of time and money. But she got frightened late last month as Larry Elder, the conservative radio host, vaulted into the top spot to replace the governor, propelled by promises to immediately remove all pandemic health mandates.Then a question occurred to her: Why couldn’t Mr. Newsom resign and allow Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a fellow Democrat, to take over, rendering the recall moot?“Larry Elder is scary, the guy with the bear and the guy in San Diego are scary,” she said, referring to the Republican candidates John Cox and Kevin Faulconer. “So I wondered, ‘Why don’t you just resign to be safe?’”Ms. Schwartz, who recently emailed The New York Times her query, unwittingly stumbled across a kind of thought experiment that has been percolating on social media, and among some Democrats who fear even a brief period of Republican rule in the nation’s most populous state. Earlier in the year, Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, floated the idea to Politico as what the publication called a kind of “nuclear option.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Newsom declined to comment on whether he would step down, and Ms. Kounalakis said she was not considering the possibility.“That is a highly unlikely scenario, so right now my main focus is on keeping Gavin Newsom in office, where he has been doing so much good for Californians,” she said.There has been some ambiguity about what would happen if for Ms. Kounalakis were forced to take over in the next couple of days.The California Secretary of State’s office, which runs elections, said in a statement that “we can’t at this point confirm that it would render the recall moot,” adding that “it would require more extensive research in the matter.”The relevant section of the state’s elections code says, “If a vacancy occurs in an office after a recall petition is filed against the vacating officer, the recall election shall nevertheless proceed.”But just because state law requires the recall election to go forward would not necessarily mean its results matter, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert in constitutional law.In the scenario where the governor resigns just ahead of a recall election, “there’s no one to recall,” he said. In his reading, it would take another recall petition to trigger another recall election targeting the lieutenant governor once she took over.Mr. Chemerinsky said there was even less indication in the State Constitution that the recall election’s results would hold if Mr. Newsom was no longer governor.One thing Mr. Chemerinsky is certain about, though, is that if Mr. Newsom were to be replaced by Ms. Kounalakis in the coming days, there would be a lot of litigation.“It would be a mess,” he said.Ms. Schwartz said she did not take any chances, quickly mailing in her ballot with a “no” vote on the first question, about whether the governor should be removed. On the second question — who should replace Mr. Newsom if he is recalled? — she selected Angelyne, the pink-Corvette-driving Hollywood enigma.If Mr. Elder wins, she said, she and her husband might move abroad. More