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      Adrienne Adams Will Become New York City Council's Next Speaker

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      In an early political setback for Eric Adams, Adrienne Adams emerged from a hard-fought race with the votes she needed to be council speaker.The race for New York City Council speaker, the second-most powerful government post in the nation’s largest city, ended Friday with Adrienne Adams, a member from Queens, securing the votes needed from her colleagues to win the job, and Mayor-elect Eric Adams’s blessing as well.Ms. Adams said that 32 fellow members of the incoming Council had agreed to choose her as the body’s next leader, well above the 26 she needed.The resolution of what was a complex campaign of insider jockeying came a few days after four of the candidates who had been vying for the job threw their support to Ms. Adams, who declared herself victorious, only to have her main challenger, Francisco Moya of Queens, assert that he had won the race.“I am honored to have earned the support and the trust of my colleagues to be their speaker,” Ms. Adams said in a statement on Friday. “Our coalition reflects the best of our city. We are ready to come together to solve the enormous challenges we face.”Mr. Moya conceded to his fellow Democrat on Friday, saying in a statement that “it is clear that I do not have a path to victory” and calling Ms. Adams a “dedicated and thoughtful leader” who he expected would work well with all Council members.Ms. Adams is now virtually assured of becoming the first Black woman to lead the City Council. As speaker, she will help set the city’s agenda and negotiate with Mr. Adams over a municipal budget that, at $100 billion, is larger than those of all but a few states. A formal vote installing her as speaker will be held in January after the incoming City Council is sworn in.Mr. Adams had publicly vowed to stay out of the race. But he and his allies had made it clear in private conversations meant to build support for Mr. Moya that they preferred him for the job. In backing Mr. Moya, Mr. Adams expended valuable political capital and risked putting himself at odds with key members of the coalition that helped elect him, making Ms. Adams’s victory a notable political setback for the incoming mayor.Mr. Adams was nonetheless quick to congratulate Ms. Adams, calling her “the best choice to lead our City Council forward” a day after he had spoken warmly about her while emphasizing that he believed that they could work together effectively.Ms. Adams’s victory declaration on Friday capped nearly two weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations and frantic calls that created tension among members of the city’s congressional delegation and early endorsers of Mr. Adams.The acrimony spilled into public view when The New York Post published an article featuring anonymous criticism of Representative Gregory Meeks, the Queens Democratic leader, for aligning with “anti-Israel socialists” to support Ms. Adams. Mr. Meeks, the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, is a longtime supporter of Israel and has had strong disagreements with democratic socialists in his party.Incoming N.Y.C. Mayor Eric Adams’s New AdministrationCard 1 of 4Schools Chancellor: David Banks. More

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      Robberies. Drought. Tent Camps. Los Angeles’s Next Mayor Faces a Litany of Crises.

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      The city’s unease could prove pivotal next year, when Los Angeles will elect a new mayor in a contest that civic leaders say will have the highest stakes in decades.LOS ANGELES — Peter Nichols has lived for 22 years in a two-bedroom Cape Cod in the Fairfax District, in the flat, bungalow-lined midsection between the east and the west sides of Los Angeles. His block used to make him proud, with its neat lawns and palm trees: Crime was low. Streets were clean. When a problem arose — drug use in the park, traffic from the nearby Melrose Avenue shopping district — the city seemed to know how to address it.All that has changed.Homicides in his area have risen from one in 2019 to more than a dozen this year, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. He cannot drive more than a block or two without passing homeless encampments. Drought has withered the yards. Trash blows past on the Santa Ana winds.Waves of robberies have left armed guards posted for months outside high-end sneaker boutiques. Earlier this month, police officers responding to a burglary four miles from Mr. Nichols’s house arrested a parolee in connection with the slaying of an 81-year-old philanthropist in her mansion.“Now there’s this new variant,” he said about the coronavirus. “It’s like, what are we going to die of? Ricochet? Robbery gone wrong? Heat? Drought? Omicron? Delta? If you were watching this through the lens of a camera, you would think it was the makings of a disaster movie.”As the nation’s second-most-populated city struggles to emerge from the wreckage of the pandemic, a pileup of crises is confronting Los Angeles — and those who hope to become its next mayor next year.A Los Angeles police officer watching from a squad car as a homeless encampment is cleared in the Harbor City neighborhood of Los Angeles.Bing Guan/ReutersTens of thousands of people remain unhoused, violent crime is up and sweeping problems like income disparity and global warming are reaching critical mass. The anxiety is being felt in all corners and communities of the city. In a recent poll by the Los Angeles Business Council Institute and The Los Angeles Times, 57 percent of county voters listed public safety as a serious or very serious problem, up four percentage points from an almost identical poll in 2019.More than nine in 10 voters said homelessness was a serious or very serious problem. And more than a third said they had experienced homelessness in the past year or knew someone who had — a figure that rose to nearly half among Black voters.“Rome is burning,” former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently said in a local television interview.In fact, crime rates are far below the historic peaks of the 1990s, coronavirus infections are a small fraction of last December’s terrifying levels and the city is making some progress in its breathtaking homelessness crisis, thanks to pandemic funding.But the unease is already shaping next year’s mayor’s race, a contest that civic leaders say will have the highest stakes in decades.“The problems we had before were big and they were complex, but they weren’t staggering and existential,” said Constance L. Rice, a civil rights lawyer, who sees mounting challenges from the pandemic, climate change and social injustice.“We’re in staggering-and-existential territory now.”The urgency comes as Los Angeles’s current mayor, Eric Garcetti, enters the homestretch of his administration. Ineligible for re-election because of a two-term limit, Mr. Garcetti is scheduled to leave office in December 2022.With roughly a year left on the job, he also is “between two worlds,” he said in an interview this fall: He has been tapped by President Biden to become the U.S. ambassador to India but it has taken six months for his confirmation even to be scheduled for its committee hearing on Tuesday. If confirmed, he could leave office early and the City Council could name an interim replacement, but the fate of his nomination is uncertain: Republicans have slowed approvals for scores of the president’s nominees, and additional hurdles have arisen involving City Hall.More than a dozen mayoral hopefuls are vying to replace Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is ineligible for re-election because of a two-term limit.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFederal prosecutors have charged a former deputy mayor in a bribery scandal. A former member of the mayor’s security detail has sued the city, accusing a former top mayoral aide of sexual harassment. The former head of the city water and power department has agreed to plead guilty to bribery charges in a case involving the city attorney. And at least three City Council members have been convicted or indicted on public corruption charges.Even without those distractions, Mr. Garcetti can only do so much. Los Angeles’s mayor is weak compared with other big-city mayors. Shaped by backlash to the East Coast machine politics of the early 1900s, Los Angeles is famously ambivalent about power and institutionally diffuse.Only about a fifth of the 20 million people in greater Los Angeles actually live in the amoebalike city limits. Newcomers often assume they can vote in city elections, only to discover that they actually live in West Hollywood or unincorporated Los Angeles County.Major initiatives require buy-in from myriad independent players — homeowners’ associations, unions, school districts, county supervisors, nearly 90 surrounding cities. Yet Los Angeles mayors are often held responsible for vast quandaries like homelessness and port backups.Mr. Garcetti has been dogged for the past two years by assorted protests, and at one point demonstrators spray-painted and toilet papered the Tudor-style, city-owned mayoral mansion. But he has tirelessly urged Angelenos to maintain perspective. His tenure has had some notable successes: The city moved aggressively to deal with the pandemic, has passed major initiatives to fund transportation and affordable housing, is considered a national leader in climate policy and in 2028 will host the Olympics.At a news conference to announce a crackdown after a spate of flash mob robberies — in which large groups rush into a store and overwhelm employees — stunned the city, Mr. Garcetti reminded that Angelenos were statistically still in perhaps “the safest decade of our lifetimes.”In the interview in his City Hall office — an iconic room decorated with Frank Gehry chairs and Ed Ruscha paintings — he framed the past several months as a delayed societal response to the pandemic. “You come up for air and you kind of feel all the trauma that you’ve had to see and push down and witness and give voice to,” he said.White flags outside Griffith Observatory honoring the Los Angeles County residents who have died from Covid-19, one of the area’s many crises.Mario Tama/Getty ImagesMore than a dozen mayoral hopefuls are campaigning to succeed him. They include local politicians such as Mike Feuer, the city attorney, and Joe Buscaino, a former police officer now on the City Council, along with better-known figures such as Kevin de León, a councilman and former State Senate leader, and Representative Karen Bass, the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus who was on Mr. Biden’s short list for vice president.Potentially in the mix, too, is the billionaire developer Rick Caruso, a former police commissioner and a onetime Republican. Shortly before Thanksgiving, Mr. Caruso’s own mall, the Grove, was stormed by a flash mob that smashed a Nordstrom display window with sledgehammers.Mr. Caruso, in television interviews, blamed the robbery on a $150 million cut to last year’s $1.7 billion-plus police budget and on lax prosecution, calling it “a manifestation of deciding we’re going to defund the cops.” (City leaders backed a modest increase in funding this year.)Rick Caruso has hired a team of political consultants to weigh his odds in a run for mayor of Los Angeles.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesMr. Caruso has not said he will run, but he has hired a team of top California political consultants to help determine his chances. But his remarks underscore the potential that the mayoral race will exacerbate the state’s long-running fight over criminal justice.In the calls for crackdowns, progressive activists hear a retreat from reforms won after the George Floyd protests and echoes of the tough-on-crime rhetoric in the 1990s that led to mass incarceration.“Folks like Rick Caruso have been waiting for an opportunity to put more money into policing,” said Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and a co-founder of the city’s chapter of Black Lives Matter. “I think we need to be wary of that. When we say, ‘Defund the police,’ it doesn’t mean we don’t want public safety. It means we want resources for communities.”Ms. Bass, who is considered the front-runner and would leave her congressional seat to become mayor, says that “first and foremost, people need to feel safe,.” But she said she also is reminded of the 1990s, when she was a physician assistant in South Los Angeles advocating for social programs in the midst of the crack epidemic.Representative Karen Bass is considered the front-runner in the mayoral race.Erin Schaff/The New York Times“People were angry because of the violence — the Crips and Bloods, the crack houses,” she recalled, sitting in her Baldwin Hills living room. Through the sliding glass door of the modest ranch house, the city unfurled to the horizon, interrupted only by the Hollywood Hills and the abrupt metallic bar chart of downtown.“That’s what is frightening to me now — the anger,” she said. “And my concern is the direction the anger can move the city in.”Other powerful currents could also propel voters between now and June, when they will winnow candidates down to a two-person November runoff unless one gets a majority. Under a new state law, every registered and active voter will be mailed a ballot. And this will be the first mayoral race since Los Angeles began aligning local elections with those at the state and national level, holding them in even-numbered years.The new system is expected to amplify turnout among Latino, Asian and younger voters — groups that have historically been underrepresented in local off-year elections. The electorate’s new mix could challenge the center-left alliances among businesses and Black and liberal Jewish voters that long have determined mayoral contests.Mr. de León, a son of Guatemalan immigrants who rose through organized labor to lead the California Senate from his longtime Eastside district, noted that, while none of those groups are monoliths, sheer demographic math could sway the election as much as any crisis. Over a breakfast taco in the downtown Arts District, the energetic progressive swiftly corrected an outdated statistic when asked if the city’s 40 percent Latino population might be an edge for a candidate with a Latino surname.“Forty-nine percent,” he said with a smile.Kevin De Leon, a City Council member and former State Senate leader running for mayor, said demography could sway the election.Jessica Pons for The New York TimesHe is deeply aware, however, of challenges that await the next mayor. Mr. de León’s Council district, which includes Skid Row, has more homeless people than the entire city of Houston, and he has set a citywide goal of creating 25,000 new housing units by 2025.“We simply can’t go back to the old normal,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the encampments in every neighborhood in Los Angeles. Families standing in line for blocks just to pick up a box of food to feed their children — the panic and anxiety.”On Melrose, Mr. Nichols, who runs a community group focused on public safety, will be watching. This year, for the first time in the 14 years since it was founded, his group is holding candidate forums. In recent weeks, he said, more than 200 people joined a Zoom call with aspiring City Council members, and mayoral candidates will be up next.“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “People joined from all over the city. I expect a shake-up from the top down.” More

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      Mayor-Elect Eric Adams Cancels 10 Fund-Raisers

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      One of them was sponsored by a contentious public relations executive, Ronn Torossian.Mayor-elect Eric Adams of New York has canceled a series of fund-raisers scheduled for this month, beginning with a planned event on Monday night co-hosted by a colorful and divisive public relations executive whose proximity had drawn unwelcome attention.Mr. Adams, who will take office on Jan. 1, is scrambling to fill jobs in his administration and to manage his new status as the darling of certain powerful Manhattan circles that had more limited access to the outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio.“We canceled 10 planned fund-raisers for December because the transition’s fund-raising effort in November was extremely successful, bringing in enough donations to pay for both the inauguration and staff to help prepare the mayor-elect’s administration to hit the ground running on Day 1,” Mr. Adams’s spokesman, Evan Thies, said in an email.The fund-raiser Monday night was to be co-hosted by Ronn Torossian, the chief executive of a public relations firm, 5WPR, whose high-profile presence at Mr. Adams’s side in recent months has rankled Mr. Adams’s staff, two people familiar with their relationship said. It was to be held at Zero Bond, the private club in NoHo where Mr. Adams has been known to fraternize into the night, particularly since winning the Democratic nomination in July.An array of New York interests had been seeking to curry good will with the incoming mayor by contributing to Mr. Adams’s committees. Among the canceled fund-raisers is one hosted by the New York Electrical Contractors Association and another by the Muslim community activist Debbie Almontaser, Mr. Thies said.But Mr. Adams has not canceled all of his events. He still plans to attend a Dec. 16 event hosted by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mr. Thies said, but it is no longer a fund-raiser. Mr. Bloomberg endorsed Mr. Adams in the general election and the mayor-elect has leaned on the former mayor for advice.A spokesman for Zero Bond says the club doesn’t comment on events hosted by its members.The canceled Zero Bond event casts a spotlight on Mr. Adams’s abrupt arrival as a Manhattan power broker after a career in Brooklyn across the river from Manhattan’s elite. Mr. Torossian is a new friend who has helped introduce Mr. Adams to figures in the real estate and entertainment businesses, and crucially brought him to the exclusive Zero Bond, which Mr. Adams used as an informal transition headquarters.While many politicians carefully manage their relationships to avoid potential favor-seekers, conflicts of interest or simple embarrassment, Mr. Adams has thrown himself headfirst into the new circles his election has opened, even flying to Puerto Rico on a jet owned by the cryptocurrency investor Brock Pierce.But Mr. Torossian’s particularly controversial history, and his high profile at Mr. Adams’s side, has drawn a wave of coverage, including an unflattering Daily Beast story that revisited some of Mr. Torossian’s controversial clients, several of them allies of former President Donald Trump, as well as his “street-brawler” style and profane emails.“It’s great Eric has hit his fund-raising goals and is oversubscribed,” Mr. Torossian said in a text message on Saturday. “His pro-business, pro-police policies are what NYC needs.”None of the Adams aides who had sought to distance their boss from Mr. Torossian would speak for the record, perhaps because of his reputation as a tenacious enemy.Mr. Torossian purchased a website called Everything PR in 2014, the site’s former editor in chief, Paul Bulter, told The New York Times. A former 5WPR employee said Mr. Torossian operated the site, where he regularly promotes his firm’s work.For instance, under the headline “Pornhub Is Necessary Viewing for PR Professionals,” one story concludes: “Pornhub has brilliant PR. Their PR agency in the U.S. is 5WPR.”Mr. Torossian declined to comment on Everything PR.The site also attacks other PR firms with whom Mr. Torossian has clashed. After Ken Frydman, a New York public relations executive, won a contract that 5WPR had also sought, Mr. Frydman’s firm received a negative write-up on Everything PR, saying, “We cannot in good faith recommend this agency.”“I should sue Ronn for slander and defamation,” Mr. Frydman said. “But I don’t have time to stand on that long line.” More

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      Andre Dickens Is Elected Mayor of Atlanta

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      Mr. Dickens and Felicia Moore had advanced to the runoff election by beating former Mayor Kasim Reed.ATLANTA — Andre Dickens, a veteran City Council member, was elected mayor of Atlanta in an upset on Tuesday night after promising voters that he would help guide the city in a more equitable direction.Mr. Dickens, 47, will step into one of the most high-profile political positions in the South after defeating Felicia Moore, 60, the City Council president, in Tuesday’s runoff election.In a first round of voting, Ms. Moore had bested Mr. Dickens by more than 17 percentage points. But on Tuesday, Mr. Dickens had about 62 percent of the vote when The Associated Press declared him the winner at about 10:30 p.m.Mr. Dickens, a church deacon, delivered an upbeat, roof-raising victory speech to supporters, noting his humble upbringing in the working-class neighborhood of Adamsville, his engineering degree from Georgia Tech and the daunting problems he has promised to tackle.“We are facing some generational problems in our city,” he said. “Atlanta is growing in population and in wealth. Businesses are flocking to the city, yet we still have people living on our streets. We have people working at our airport just to meet last month’s rent. People are still fighting to stay in their homes in the city that they love.”But if there was “any city in the world” that could face these issues, he added, “it’s Atlanta.”Voting at the Church at Ponce & Highland in Atlanta on Tuesday.Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressThe mayor’s race unfolded at a time of promise and peril for Atlanta. The city’s population grew 17 percent in the past decade, to about 499,000 people, and a number of major technology companies are expanding their footprint in the city in hopes of increasing diversity, given that nearly half of city residents are Black.But like many U.S. cities, Atlanta has been struggling with spikes in a number of violent crime categories, including murder. In May, the city’s political future was thrown into doubt when Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced she would not run for re-election after a first term in which she was forced to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, a high-profile police shooting of a Black man, Rayshard Brooks, and racial justice protests that occasionally became violent.As other killings rocked the city, public safety emerged as the key issue in the mayor’s race, giving an early boost to former Mayor Kasim Reed, who argued that his experience made him uniquely qualified to solve the crime problem. But Mr. Reed, who left office in 2018, also brought significant political baggage, with numerous members of his administration convicted or indicted on federal corruption-related charges.Mr. Reed’s complicated past was a likely factor in the surprise outcome in the initial balloting, when Mr. Dickens nudged out the better-known Mr. Reed to secure a spot in the runoff against the first-place finisher, Ms. Moore.Since then, Mr. Dickens and Ms. Moore endeavored to distinguish themselves in the nonpartisan race, despite the fact they are both liberal Democrats who share many of the same policy goals.Both supported hiring more police officers, encouraging the reform of police culture and increasing Atlanta’s stock of affordable housing.Felicia Moore campaigning in Atlanta in September.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBoth candidates also opposed a controversial effort to allow Buckhead, an upscale, majority-white neighborhood, to secede from Atlanta, taking with it a substantial chunk of the city’s tax base. This potential divorce, which has been fueled by crime concerns, would require approval by the Republican-dominated State Legislature and a subsequent vote by the neighborhood’s residents. To derail the plan, the next mayor will need to deploy the bully pulpit and engage in nimble and strategic lobbying of Republicans who control the Statehouse.During the campaign, Ms. Moore, a real estate agent, leaned into her reputation as a thorn in the side of previous mayors, including Mr. Reed. Before he left office, she argued that he should be held accountable for the corruption on his watch. She reminded voters that she backed legislation creating a new inspector general for City Hall as well as an independent compliance office, both in reaction to the scandals that dogged the Reed administration.“I am actually like the outsider that’s on the inside, fighting against corruption, fighting against the status quo, sometimes fighting the established order of things,” Ms. Moore told a recent audience at a mayoral forum.Mr. Dickens is the chief development officer at TechBridge, a nonprofit organization that uses technology to help amplify the work of other nonprofits. During the campaign he emphasized his role in increasing the minimum wage for city employees, as well as spearheading the creation of a city transportation department. Mr. Dickens, who was endorsed by Mayor Bottoms and former Mayor Shirley Franklin, argued in recent weeks that Ms. Moore had spent more time criticizing others than racking up her own achievements over the course of her long career.“She does nothing and I do a lot,” Mr. Dickens said in a recent interview.Both Ms. Moore and Mr. Dickens are Black. Tuesday’s election extends a streak of Black mayors in Atlanta since the election of Maynard Jackson in 1973 despite a recent influx of white residents that caused the share of Black residents to decline from a slight majority to 47 percent of the population, according to an analysis of 2020 Census figures. More

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      Democratic Socialists Have a Long Road to Electoral Victory

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      In my political circles, the socialist and activist left, the recent defeat of India Walton, a democratic socialist candidate for mayor of Buffalo, seemed all too familiar, even if she lost in an unusual way to the incumbent Democratic mayor, Byron Brown. Ms. Walton prevailed against Mr. Brown in the Democratic primary, but for the general election, he ran a write-in campaign to retain his position.That outcome saddens and disappoints me. Like many admirers of Ms. Walton, I believe she was terribly mistreated by the New York Democratic Party, which largely fell in line behind Mr. Brown, even though he was not running as a Democrat. It’s not fair that Ms. Walton had to run against him twice, with the weight of a lot of centrist Democrats and Republicans behind him in the general election, and that he enjoyed the support of several prominent labor unions and much of the city’s and state’s larger party infrastructure. (Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand did endorse Ms. Walton.)Nevertheless, I am willing to say something far too few leftists seem willing to: Not only did Mr. Brown win, but he won resoundingly (the race is not officially over but stands at roughly 59 percent for Mr. Brown to 41 percent for Ms. Walton); it’s time for young socialists and progressive Democrats to recognize that our beliefs just might not be popular enough to win elections consistently. It does us no favors to pretend otherwise.What too many young socialists and progressive Democrats don’t seem to realize is that it’s perfectly possible that the Democratic Party is biased against our beliefs and that our beliefs simply aren’t very popular.They frequently claim that Americans want socialist policies and socialist politicians but are prevented from voting for them by the system. Or they argue that most American voters have no deeply held economic beliefs at all and are ready to be rallied to the socialist cause by a charismatic candidate.This attitude toward Ms. Walton’s defeat specifically and toward the political landscape more broadly is part and parcel of a problem that has deepened in the past five years: So many on the radical left whom I know have convinced themselves that their politics and policies are in fact quite popular on a national level, despite the mounting evidence otherwise.As New York magazine’s Sarah Jones put it over the summer, “Should Democrats mount a cohesive critique of capitalism, they’ll meet many Americans where they are.” We are held back, the thinking frequently goes, not by the popularity of our ideas but by the forces of reaction marshaled against us.But the only way for the left to overcome our institutional disadvantages is to compel more voters to vote for us. Bernie Sanders’s two noble failures in Democratic presidential primaries galvanized young progressives and helped create political structures that have pulled the party left. They also helped convince many of a socialist bent that only dirty tricks can defeat us. In the 2016 primary, the superdelegate system demonstrated how undemocratic the Democratic Party can be. Mr. Sanders won every county in West Virginia, for example, but the system at the time ensured that Mr. Sanders did not receive superdelegates in proportion to his vote totals (many superdelegates defied the wishes of the voters and supported Mrs. Clinton). In 2020, it was widely reported that after Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada, former President Barack Obama had an indirect role as the minor candidates in the primary rallied behind Joe Biden to defeat the socialist threat. There is little doubt that the establishment worked overtime to prevent a Sanders nomination.But the inconvenient fact is that Mr. Sanders received far fewer primary votes than Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and Mr. Biden in 2020. He failed to make major inroads among the moderate Black voters whom many see as the heart of the Democratic Party. What’s more, he failed to turn out the youth vote in the way that his supporters insisted he would.Whatever else we may want to say about the system, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the voters of the liberal party in American politics twice had the opportunity to nominate Mr. Sanders as their candidate for president and twice declined to do so. If we don’t allow this to inform our understanding of the popularity of our politics, we’ll never move forward and start winning elections to gain more power in our system.This may be seen as a betrayal of the socialist principles I stand for, which are at heart an insistence on the absolute moral equality of every person and a fierce commitment to fighting for the worst-off with whatever social and governmental means are necessary. But I am writing this precisely because I believe so deeply in those principles. I want socialism to win, and to do that, socialists must be ruthless with ourselves.The idea that most Americans quietly agree with our positions is dangerous, because it leads to the kind of complacency that has dogged Democrats since the “emerging Democratic majority” myth became mainstream. Socialists can take some heart in public polling that shows Americans warming to the abstract idea of socialism. But “socialism” is an abstraction that means little without a winning candidate. And too much of this energy seems to stem from the echo-chamber quality of social media, as young socialists look at the world through Twitter and TikTok and see only the smiling faces of their own beliefs reflected back at them.Socialist victory will require taking a long, hard road to spread our message, to convince a skeptical public that socialist policies and values are good for them and the country. Which is to say, it will take decades.Americans have lived in a capitalist system for generations; that will not be an easy obstacle for socialists to overcome. If you want socialist policies in the United States, there is no alternative to the slow and steady work of changing minds. My fellow travelers are in the habit of saying that justice can’t wait. But justice has waited for thousands of years, and we all must eventually come to terms with the fact that we don’t get to simply choose when it arrives.Fredrik deBoer is the author of “The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice” and publishes a daily newsletter.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Is Brooklyn in the House? Its Politicians Certainly Are.

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      Brooklyn’s influence over New York City politics grew with Eric Adams’s mayoral win, and it could grow further if a candidate from the borough is elected governor.When she took the stage at a recent reception for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, Gov. Kathy Hochul could not ignore the evidence gathered before her.“Anyone on the stage not from Brooklyn?” Ms. Hochul joked at the event, held at the Somos conference in Puerto Rico. “Can we spread the love around a little bit?”As Brooklyn politicians, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor-elect, looked on, the response from the crowd was a resounding “no.”Brooklyn, the city’s most populous borough, is unquestionably enjoying a moment.With Mr. Adams’s victory, the city will now have its second consecutive mayor from Brooklyn. Brad Lander, the next comptroller, and Jumaane D. Williams, who was re-elected as public advocate, also hail from Brooklyn — giving the borough ownership of all three citywide elected officials next year.Letitia James, the state attorney general and a candidate for governor, is also from Brooklyn. Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, is thought to be a leading candidate to replace Ms. James as state attorney general. Mayor Bill de Blasio, a potential candidate for governor, is from the borough; Mr. Williams is also considering a run.Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the state’s highest ranking House Democrat, represents Brooklyn and is often mentioned as a future candidate for speaker (he is also fond of quoting the Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G. on the House floor).“Brooklyn has never had this much clout,” Mr. Lander said jokingly.For many years, Manhattan has been the traditional power center of New York, with local leaders from other boroughs grousing that Manhattan received preferential treatment on everything from snow removal to economic development projects.“There was no question that over the years that Manhattan was the center of the universe,” said Marty Markowitz, the former Brooklyn borough president.That has changed in recent years as more young people of the professional and creative class moved to Brooklyn, gentrifying certain neighborhoods there. People who were priced out of parts of Brooklyn moved to Manhattan. If Brooklyn were a stand-alone city, it would be the fourth largest in the country.“A win for Brooklyn is a win for everyone who has been left behind or feels invisible in the halls of power,” said Justin Brannan, a councilman who represents Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and is a leading candidate for City Council speaker. “But we’re done fighting over crumbs just because we may live far from City Hall. Now we’re inside the building, doing the thing.”Brooklyn also began leading the city out of the pandemic. Private sector jobs increased faster there than in Manhattan, which was devastated by the loss of tourism, hotel closures and empty office buildings as international travel was restricted and companies moved to remote work at the height of the pandemic.“We are hitting our stride politically but also economically,” said Randy Peers, president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve got the right leadership at the right time.”.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-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. Adams, the outgoing Brooklyn borough president, owns a home in Bedford-Stuyvesant that he famously opened to reporters during the Democratic primary to prove that he lived there. Mr. de Blasio, who owns two homes in Park Slope, was so steadfast in his loyalty to Brooklyn that he endured years of criticism for being driven to his old neighborhood from Gracie Mansion to work out at the local Y.M.C.A.Even though Mr. Adams plans to move into Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side, he said he will also spend time at his home in Bedford-Stuyvesant.“I love Brooklyn,” Mr. Adams told WPIX-TV the day after easily beating the Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa. “I’m going to be an outer-borough mayor, not just a Manhattan-centered mayor.”Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist, said Mr. Adams’s attitude is important. Previous Manhattan-centric mayors like Michael R. Bloomberg ran into problems when other boroughs felt left out of the city’s growth. Mr. de Blasio leaned on the idea of New York being a “tale of two cities” to win election in 2013 after Mr. Bloomberg had served three terms.Brooklyn’s size and diversity has allowed politicians there to use the borough as a solid base for launching citywide and statewide campaigns, Mr. Gyory added.Black, Caribbean and Latino voters there have long represented a solid base and Asian communities are gaining more political power. The borough has the most registered Democrats of any county in the state and the share of Democratic votes cast there increased in the Democratic primary.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      Democrats Deny Political Reality at Their Own Peril

      by

      Tuesday’s election result trend lines were a political nightmare for the Democratic Party, and no Democrat who cares about winning elections in 2022 and the presidential race in 2024 should see them as anything less.Familiar takeaways like “wake-up call” and “warning shot” don’t do justice here because the danger of ignoring those trends is too great. What would do justice, and what is badly needed, is an honest conversation in the Democratic Party about how to return to the moderate policies and values that fueled the blue-wave victories in 2018 and won Joe Biden the presidency in 2020.Given the stakes for the country, from urgent climate and social spending needs to the future of democracy, Americans badly need a rolling conversation today and in the coming weeks and months about how moderate voters of all affiliations can coalesce behind and guide the only party right now that shows an interest in governing and preserving democratic norms.The results in Virginia are a grave marker of political peril. Virginia is a blue state; it hasn’t been a battleground in years. Mr. Biden won there in 2020 by 10 points; a year later, the Democratic nominee for governor just lost by 2.5 percentage points, and Republicans flipped two other statewide offices — lieutenant governor and attorney general — that they have not won in 12 years.Virginia is a cross-section of suburbs, education levels and racial diversity that is a mirror of what a winning, coalition-driven Democratic Party should be. Democrats lost there — even with a longtime moderate as their candidate for governor — because the party has become distracted from crucial issues like the economy, inflation, ending the coronavirus pandemic and restoring normalcy in schools and isn’t offering moderate, unifying solutions to them. Republicans now have a playbook for future elections, based on ways their nominee for governor, Glenn Youngkin, overperformed with independents and cut into Democrats’ support in the suburbs and among women.In true-blue New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy barely held onto his seat, while the powerful State Senate leader, Steve Sweeney, lost to a Republican truck driver whose campaign worked with a shoestring budget. Republicans flipped a House seat in a traditionally Democratic area of San Antonio. In Seattle, voters appear to have chosen a Republican for city attorney over a police abolitionist running on the Democratic line.Bill Clinton’s mantra from 1992 of “it’s the economy, stupid” is rarely out of vogue, and it certainly isn’t now. But Democrats, looking left on so many priorities and so much messaging, have lost sight of what can unite the largest number of Americans. A national Democratic Party that talks up progressive policies at the expense of bipartisan ideas, and that dwells on Donald Trump at the expense of forward-looking ideas, is at risk of becoming a marginal Democratic Party appealing only to the left.Broader trends were also working against the Democrats. Perhaps chief among these: When voters are feeling surly and unhappy about the direction of the country — as polls show that a majority of them are — they tend to blame the party in power. President Biden’s poll numbers have been on the slide for months, for a blend of reasons ranging from the ugly withdrawal from Afghanistan to the seemingly endless burdens of the pandemic. In an era of nationalized elections, that exerts a drag on his entire party.Many in the president’s party point to Tuesday as proof that congressional Democrats need to stop their left-center squabbling and clock some legislative wins ASAP by passing both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a robust version of the Build Back Better plan, the larger social spending and environmental proposal. They believe this will give their candidates concrete achievements to run on next year and help re-energize their base.But Tuesday’s results are a sign that significant parts of the electorate are feeling leery of a sharp leftward push in the party, including on priorities like Build Back Better, which have some strong provisions and some discretionary ones driving up the price tag. The concerns of more centrist Americans about a rush to spend taxpayer money, a rush to grow the government, should not be dismissed.Tuesday was not just about Republicans reclaiming electoral ground from Democrats. Even in many blue enclaves, voters showed an interest in moving toward the center. In Buffalo, N.Y., the democratic socialist who bested the current mayor, Byron Brown, in the Democratic primary appears to be losing to Mr. Brown’s write-in campaign. In Minneapolis, a referendum to replace the police department with a Department of Public Safety went down in flames. In the New York mayoral race, voters went with Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who ran with a focus on law and order. “Progressives on the ropes?” asked The Seattle Times, in a postelection piece noting that “the more moderate, business-backed candidates in the city’s three most watched races surged to huge and likely insurmountable leads.”Progressives notched some notable wins for mayor in Boston, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. But progressive wins in deep-blue cities aren’t evidence of broad, national support.Many Americans, across party lines, are concerned about crime and border security and inflation. The high price of gas is causing particular pain. More than 60 percent of voters hold the Biden administration responsible for inflation. Polls show that many independents already think that the government is trying to do too much to deal with the nation’s problems.For many voters — especially those who don’t vote regularly — the 2020 election was about removing Mr. Trump from the White House. It was less about policy or ideology. Mr. Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a progressive revolution. There were plenty of other candidates doing that. He captured the nomination — and the presidency — because he promised an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence. “Nobody elected him to be F.D.R.,” Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, told The Times after Tuesday’s drubbing. “They elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people. Congress should focus on what is possible, not what would be possible if Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and — frankly — a host of lesser-known Democratic moderates who haven’t had to vote on policies they might oppose were not in office.Democrats agree about far more than they disagree about. But it doesn’t look that way to voters after months and months of intraparty squabbling. Time to focus on — and pass — policies with broad support. Or risk getting run out of office.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More