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      Romans Choose From a Crowded Field to Run a Chaotic City

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      Rome has defied efforts to make basic services work, and the incumbent mayor lags in the polls, with no shortage of rivals hoping to take her place.ROME — In the five years since Virginia Raggi became mayor, Rome has had some problems. Garbage has piled up on sidewalks, attracting swarms of sea gulls and crows. A pothole epidemic has riddled city streets. Public buses, already unreliable, have started combusting. And the city’s Christmas tree has looked so sad that Romans nicknamed it “Mangy.”Now, in the days leading up to Rome’s mayoral election on Sunday, the city’s newspapers, frustrated residents and a long list of candidates jostling to replace Ms. Raggi have attacked her on an issue that they say encapsulates just how uncivilized it has become: marauding packs of wild boars. Her critics call them “Raggi’s Boars,” swapping viral videos of pigs in Roman dumpsters.“If we want to make a zoo, we are on a good path,” Carlo Calenda, one of the candidates running against Ms. Raggi, said on Italian television.The perceived weakness of Ms. Raggi has drawn 21 opponents across the political spectrum. The main challengers in her re-election bid include a conservative lawyer and two center-left politicians with national profiles. But fringe characters, including “Dr. Seduction” and a Gladiator re-enactor who calls himself “Nero,” have also jumped at the chance of replacing Ms. Raggi, who trails badly in the polls.Virginia Raggi, the incumbent mayor.Fabio Frustaci/EPA, via ShutterstockLocal Italian elections, especially in the major cities, are often considered bellwethers for the broader national mood. Ms. Raggi’s landslide victory in 2016 as the candidate of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement anticipated Five Star’s success at the 2018 national elections.But Five Star’s popularity has plummeted, and Italy is enjoying a rare period of political stability under Prime Minister Mario Draghi, an independent, stripping Rome’s election of such broad ramifications this time around. Winning here is still seen as a measure of strength of the national parties, but this time, municipal issues — traffic, trash and unwanted wildlife — have come to the fore.It is unlikely that any candidate will win a majority of the vote when polls close on Monday, prompting another round of voting and possibly weeks of horse trading that could very well turn Ms. Raggi into a power broker.But she is not conceding anything and has campaigned vigorously in the closing days. She blames the larger region of Lazio, which includes Rome and is run by the center-left Democratic Party, for all of the trash and invasive species. After a stint on Rome’s City Council, and pledging, according to her party’s original rules, that she would never serve more than two terms in public office, Ms. Raggi now argues that five full years running the city is not enough time to change Rome.Carlo Calenda, a center-left candidate for mayor and a former national economic minister.Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA full decade, she says, will do the trick.Romans do not seem so sure. The latest polls favor Enrico Michetti, a lawyer and last-minute candidate supported by several center-right parties and by the far-right leader Giorgia Meloni, who is Roman and has a significant base. Mr. Michetti has gained attention for his knack of ducking the news media (Italian reporters call him “Houdini”) and speaking largely about ancient Rome when asked about modern-day problems.“When Caesar died, it looked like everything was over,” Mr. Michetti said in July during a rare appearance in an electoral debate when asked about his idea for the future of Rome. “But then Caesar Octavian Augustus put institutions in the center.”In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Michetti defended his talk of Rome’s glory days, which he described as a time of civic-minded governance. “Rome would never have built the pyramids; too much effort in the interest of one individual,” he said. “Instead, Rome built bridges, roads, aqueducts, theaters — anything to serve the collective well-being.”Enrico Michetti, the right-wing alliance candidate. He is leading in the latest polls.Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Michetti is trailed by Roberto Gualtieri, the candidate of the center-left Democratic Party. Mr. Gualtieri was Italy’s minister of economy and finance from 2019 until early this year, and before that, he was the chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee in the European Parliament. A historian partial to gray suits, he has emphasized his competence and expertise as a contrast to what critics consider Ms. Raggi’s ineptitude.“Rome can have a rebirth,” he said in a telephone interview, “after the bad administration of these years.”Mr. Gualtieri has campaigned, sometimes with a guitar to liven things up, on the promise to turn Rome, where it often takes roughly forever to get anything done, into a “15-minutes city” where residents can quickly reach any service.But in a familiar dynamic in Italian politics, the center-left vote is split. One of Mr. Gualtieri’s rivals is Mr. Calenda, who was once the country’s economic development minister and who now sits in the European Parliament. A former member of the Democratic Party, Mr. Calenda broke with the party to protest an alliance it made with its former enemy Five Star, which he loathes.Roberto Gualtieri, the center-left candidate of the Democratic Party. He has promised to turn Rome into a “15-minutes city” where residents can quickly reach any service.Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Calenda has been more full-throated in his critique of Ms. Raggi, calling her administration “an apocalypse” and “a cosmic disaster,” and seizing on Rome’s reputation as an ungovernable city to argue that only a proven manager like him could get it under control.He said he would spend the first year and a half of his administration fixing the “decorum” of Rome’s streets, focusing on basic services like garbage removal and attending to trees to prevent falling branches from crashing onto cars.He also rejected the speculation of political insiders that, if necessary, he would form an alliance with Mr. Michetti. “I have never heard him say anything intelligent, not even anything normal,” Mr. Calenda said of him.Lorenzo de Sio, the director of the Italian Center of Electoral Studies, said the number of candidates running made the election difficult to call.Many Romans have become so accustomed to blaming Ms. Raggi’s incompetence for the city’s travails that her very name — “La Raggi,” they say — has become a shorthand for everything that is wrong in the city.But many Romans were once captivated by Ms. Raggi, the first woman to hold the office and, at 37 when she took office, Rome’s youngest mayor. She campaigned on promises to break the city’s special interests and make it work for everyone, an appeal that worked especially well in the city’s outermost and least affluent neighborhoods.Wild boars roaming a street in Rome. Ms. Raggi’s critics say the boars encapsulate just how uncivilized the city has become.Remo Casilli/ReutersMany of those voters remain undecided, and candidates like Mr. Michetti and Mr. Calenda, who visited every Roman neighborhood, have sought to woo them. But even at this late hour, Ms. Raggi’s supporters are hopeful that they would eventually come home to her.On Friday morning, a small group of supporters joined Ms. Raggi at a neighborhood market where the mayor inaugurated a municipal food bank for residents struggling to make ends meet. It is the fourth such center to open in Rome since May 2020, a pet project of the mayor’s, as the number of people needing assistance has soared during the pandemic.She arrived to applause and made some remarks. Her supporters complained that despite the mayor having opened kindergartens and gyms and improved parks in the neighborhood, “all people talk about is the boars.”But as Ms. Raggi left, another woman complained to her about how filthy her street had become. The mayor, she said, had furious taxpayers to answer to.Ms. Raggi blamed the problems on what she called corrupt transportation and sanitation agencies. Previous administrations had swept the dirt under the rug, she said, “but when you lift it up, mounds of mud emerged.”“Brava, Virginia!” a supporter shouted. More

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      ‘We’ve Become Too Complicated’: Where Eric Adams Thinks Democrats Went Wrong

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      In July, Eric Adams narrowly won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York, making him the odds-on favorite to win in November. And he won the nomination by running directly against the verities of today’s progressives: asserting that the police are the answer, not the problem; that “defund the police” misjudged what communities of color actually want; that Democrats had lost touch with the multiracial working-class voters they claim to represent.Adams won on that message. He won in deep-blue New York City. It’s made him a national figure, and he’s been emphatic on what that means. “I am the face of the new Democratic Party,” he said. And “if the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they’re going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they’re going to have a problem in the presidential election.”[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]When politicians become national stories, they often release, or rerelease, a book. Adams is no exception. But instead of a campaign manifesto or an autobiography, “Healthy at Last” is a book about the health benefits of plant-based eating. “Outspoken vegan” isn’t a political identity I tend to associate with ambitious politicians at odds with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but that’s Adams for you. He doesn’t shy away from a fight.In this conversation, Adams and I talk about the fights he is picking, or will have to pick, in the coming years: with progressives who he thinks have lost their way, with police unions he wants to reform, with wealthy communities where he wants to build more housing, with critics who think plant-based eating is a hobby for foodie elites and with voters who may not be willing to wait for Adams’s “upstream” approach to social problems to pay off.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Tommy Thomas“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. More

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      Andrew Yang Is Back for a Third Round

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      Andrew Yang failed in his campaigns for president of the United States and mayor of New York City, but that has not stopped him from trying to disrupt the political status quo with a new party, which he has named “Forward.” This time, the candidate known for evangelizing universal basic income, or U.B.I., is championing ideas like open primaries and rank-choice voting (which, incidentally, was the voting system used in the mayoral race he lost). But critics are skeptical that he needs to work outside the two-party system to accomplish these goals.[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Yang whether the new party is a gimmick to sell books or a real solution to political polarization. She presses him for some self-reflection on his mayoral campaign, and they unpack whether lack of government experience is an asset or a liability. Also, we get an update on the Yang Gang.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Andrew YangThoughts? Email us at sway@nytimes.com.“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Matt Kwong, Daphne Chen and Caitlin O’Keefe, and edited by Nayeema Raza; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Liriel Higa. More

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      Kasim Reed Focuses on Crime in Atlanta Mayoral Election

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      Kasim Reed, the former mayor whose administration was marked by corruption scandals, is running for another term, promising to restore public safety.ATLANTA — The fear of rising crime in American cities is having a profound effect on mayoral politics from New York to Seattle. In Atlanta, it has had the power of resurrection, delivering a reanimating jolt to the once-moribund career of one of the South’s most polarizing public figures.Kasim Reed, the former Atlanta mayor who fell off the political map in 2018 amid a steady drip of scandal in his administration, has returned to the spotlight with an unlikely bid for a third term and is now a leading candidate in a crowded field of lesser-known contenders.The overwhelming focus of Mr. Reed’s second act is the troubling increase in violent crime in Atlanta — and a promise that he, alone, can fix it.“I am the only candidate with the experience and track record to address our city’s surge in violent crime,” he recently wrote on Twitter, introducing a new campaign ad in which he called public safety “Job No. 1.”“I am the only candidate with the experience and track record to address our city’s surge in violent crime,” Mr. Reed wrote on Twitter.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn an echo of moderate Democrats like Eric Adams, the winner of this summer’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, Mr. Reed is promising to strengthen law enforcement in a way that takes into account grass-roots demands for a cultural change in policing. He has promised to add 750 officers to Atlanta’s police force. “But we’re going to train them in a post-George Floyd way,” he said in a recent television ad.Most of Mr. Reed’s major opponents in the nonpartisan race identify as Democrats, and most are also offering some version of this message, which is distinctly different from the defund-the-police rhetoric that emerged from progressive activists during the street protests of 2020.Mr. Reed’s fate at the polls in November may also hint at how much voters are willing to overlook from politicians so long as they think they might gain a modicum of peace and order. His time in office was defined by a sharp-elbowed style that some described as bullying, and by several scandals involving kickbacks, theft of public funds and weapons violations, among other things.Felicia Moore, the City Council president and one of Mr. Reed’s top rivals for mayor, wants voters to think hard about the string of corruption cases involving members of his administration. “The leadership should take responsibility for the actions of their administration,” she said. “He was the leader of that organization.”But in Atlanta, crime has increasingly taken center stage. The number of homicides investigated by the Atlanta police surged from 99 in 2019 to 157 in 2020, a year when the United States experienced its largest one-year increase in homicides on record, and in Atlanta, this year is on track to be worse. Some homicides have particularly horrified residents over the past year: An 8-year-old girl shot and killed in a car she was riding in with her mother last summer. A 27-year-old bartender kidnapped at gunpoint and killed as she was returning home from a shift last month. A 40-year-old woman mutilated and stabbed to death, along with her dog, while she was on a late-night walk near Piedmont Park, the city’s signature open space, in July.“They are more random, and they’re happening all over the city at all times of day,” said Sharon Gay, a mayoral candidate who noted that she was mugged about 18 months ago near her home in the well-heeled neighborhood of Inman Park. A memorial for Katherine Janness, who was fatally stabbed near Piedmont Park this summer.Ron Harris/Associated PressThe political ramifications extend beyond the mayor’s office. Georgia Republicans have begun campaigning with dire warnings about the violence in liberal Atlanta — even though cities run by both Democrats and Republicans have seen a rise in violent crime. Gov. Brian Kemp has devoted millions in funding for a new “crime suppression unit” in the city. And the upscale Buckhead neighborhood is threatening to secede from Atlanta due mostly to concerns about crime, a move that could be disastrous for the city’s tax base.Some critics blame the current mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, for failing to adequately tackle the crime problem.This spring, a few days before Ms. Bottoms announced she would not run for re-election, Mr. Reed asserted that crime had reached “unacceptable levels” that were “fracturing” the city. It was widely interpreted as a turn against Ms. Bottoms, his one-time protégée, and a sign that Mr. Reed was plotting a comeback.When it came, it was with a heavy dose of glamour.“The fate of the city of Atlanta is at stake,” Mr. Reed declared at a star-studded party at the Buckhead manse of Tyrese Gibson, the actor and musician. “Atlanta, tell L.A., tell New York, tell Charlotte, tell Dallas, tell Chicago, and definitely tell Miami — I’m back!” In a matter of weeks, he had raised roughly $1 million in campaign contributions.Still, the idea that Atlanta would be better off if it could go back to the days of 2010 through 2017, when Mr. Reed was in office, is deeply divisive. Mr. Reed takes credit for keeping crime low during those years and boasts of recruiting hundreds of police officers.F.B.I. statistics show that violent crime in the city fell beginning in 2012, and continued falling throughout Mr. Reed’s tenure, a time when violent crime around the country was on a downward trend that began in the early 1990s.In fact, the total number of violent crimes per year continued to decline in Atlanta through 2020. But the high-profile nature of some of the more recent crimes has put many residents on edge, as have some short-term trends: As of early September, murders, rapes and aggravated assaults were all up compared with the same time last year.Mr. Reed has promised to add 750 officers to Atlanta’s police force. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Reed, as mayor, could display both conviction and practicality: He dismissed the city fire chief after the chief published a book calling homosexual acts “vile,” and he faced down union protesters in pushing through reforms to address the city’s enormous unfunded pension liability.However, investigations into scandals in Mr. Reed’s administration led to guilty pleas from the city’s former chief procurement officer, its former contract compliance officer and Mr. Reed’s deputy chief of staff. A former human services director, watershed management head and chief financial officer were also indicted, and are awaiting trial.In June, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, relying on court documents and campaign records, reported that Mr. Reed appeared to be under federal investigation for using campaign funds for personal purchases. Mr. Reed, in an interview, said the Justice Department had told his lawyers he was not under investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta declined to comment.In the interview, Mr. Reed said he accepted responsibility for the problems that occurred on his watch, and noted that after years of scrutiny, no charges have been lodged against him. “I have been through a level of vetting and security that very few people go through and survive, and I have come out with my name clear,” he said. He suggested that racism might have been a reason for all the scrutiny he received.Federal investigations like the ones in Atlanta, he said, are “frequently directed at Black political leaders, certainly in the job of mayor.”In a University of Georgia poll commissioned by The Journal-Constitution and conducted in late August and early September, Mr. Reed was narrowly leading the mayoral race, with roughly 24 percent support. But about 41 percent of likely voters were undecided, and Mr. Reed’s opponents are hoping to convince them that there are better choices.Felicia Moore, the City Council president, narrowly trailed Mr. Reed in a recent poll.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesSome voters have had enough of Mr. Reed. Bruce Maclachlan, 85, is a landlord who lives in Inman Park close to the place where Ms. Gay was mugged. Corruption, he said, seemed to be “circulating around Kasim Reed. It makes you wonder.”Mr. Maclachlan said he was voting for Ms. Moore, the City Council president who was just behind Mr. Reed in the poll with about 20 percent support. He said she appeared to be honest and free of scandal.Robert Patillo, a criminal defense lawyer, has felt the crime problem intimately. In the past few months, his sister’s car was stolen, his laptop was stolen from his car, and a friend’s house was broken into.“I think everybody’s been touched by it,” he said.Mr. Patillo said he, too, was voting for Ms. Moore, who he believed would be more trustworthy and better at balancing crime fighting with a civil rights agenda. But he said he understood the appeal of Mr. Reed. “When people are scared,” he said, “they turn back to a strongman.”Pinky Cole, the founder of Slutty Vegan, a local restaurant chain with a cult following, had a different view. Ms. Cole, one of the city’s better known young African American entrepreneurs, said Mr. Reed had helped her with legal problems her business faced.For Ms. Cole, the issues of crime and the city’s business climate were intertwined, a common sentiment in Atlanta these days, but one that has hit her particularly hard: In recent months, she said, two of her employees have been shot, one of them fatally.Despite the baggage from the corruption cases, she believed that Mr. Reed was a man of integrity. And she saw how he had made the city safe before.“I’m confident,” she said, “that he’ll do it again.” More

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      India Walton Beat the Buffalo Mayor in a Primary. He Won’t Give Up.

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      India Walton, the democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor, still faces a challenge from Mayor Byron Brown, who is running a write-in campaign against her.BUFFALO, N.Y. — In late June, India Walton shocked the political world by defeating the four-term incumbent mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, in the Democratic primary, seemingly guaranteeing her eventual election in November in a solidly Democratic city.Her win would be historic: She would be the first socialist to be elected mayor of a major American city in more than half a century, and the first woman — and first Black woman — to lead New York’s second-largest city.In recent months, however, Mr. Brown has also been trying to make some history, mounting a furious comeback campaign to hold on to his job as a write-in candidate after trying — in vain — to add his name to the ballot as an independent.While most write-in campaigns are quixotic, political observers in Buffalo believe that Mr. Brown’s widespread name recognition and ample campaign resources could actually make him a slight favorite, particularly if the city’s small cohort of Republicans votes for him.The unexpected battle for Buffalo reflects the defining tension within the national Democratic Party, pitting its new generation of left-wing politicians against its more moderate establishment, as represented by Mr. Brown.That battle played out in the Democratic presidential primary last year and again in the New York City mayoral primary this year — with more centrist candidates, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Eric Adams, winning both times. And it may well resume in next year’s primary for governor, when Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, is likely to face a challenge from the party’s left flank.Against that backdrop, the mayoral race in Democratic-dominated Buffalo has gained national attention, particularly on the left. With a little more than five weeks to go before the election, a roster of prominent liberal figures, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are pledging support for Ms. Walton.Liberal groups and downstate Democrats, including the New York City public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and the former candidate for governor, Cynthia Nixon, have also been rallying to Ms. Walton’s side, hoping to demonstrate that their insurgent energy flows all the way to the edge of Lake Erie, where Buffalo sits.“This has become a statewide, national and international priority,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of the New York Working Families Party, which has endorsed Ms. Walton and is offering strategic and fund-raising support. “People are calling from everywhere to make sure that India can come out ahead.”On paper that would seem like a fait accompli: Ms. Walton is the only person on the ballot. But Mr. Brown, a lifelong Democrat who is the city’s first Black mayor, seems to be banking on a coalition of business leaders and conservatives, some labor groups and loyal voters who approve of his 16 years in office to vault him to victory.Long known as a mild-mannered moderate, Mr. Brown has hardened his rhetoric in response to the threat of political oblivion, portraying Ms. Walton, a registered nurse making her first run for public office, as an inexperienced interloper.“I am convinced that she is unqualified for this position,” said Mr. Brown, 63, in a recent interview. “And if she became mayor of the city of Buffalo, it would be a disaster for this community.”Nor does he see any problem with accepting the support of Republicans.“The way I look at it, an election isn’t over until the general election has been held,” Mr. Brown said. “So I see no concerns with optics at all.”Such statements are galling to Ms. Walton, 39, who says the mayor’s intransigence is doing a disservice to the residents of the very city he says he loves.“I believe that if the mayor wants what’s best for Buffalo, he would have conceded, he would have helped with a productive transition, and gracefully bowed out,” said Ms. Walton, sitting in her single-room downtown campaign office. “But instead he’s throwing a tantrum.”Mr. Brown’s ongoing campaign has made some Democrats queasy, as well as put elected officials in an awkward political position. Among them are Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo native, who is faced with either abandoning Mr. Brown — a former head of the New York Democratic state party — or risking alienating the ascendant left wing.The governor’s office has said Ms. Hochul had no comment on the race, and her campaign office says she will not be making an endorsement, but instead will be “supporting county parties across New York to bolster their get-out-the-vote efforts.”Jeremy Zellner, the chairman of the Erie County Democratic Committee, said that Mr. Brown’s quest to upend a fellow Democrat was unsettling, noting that several prominent local conservatives, as well as outspoken fans of former President Donald J. Trump, have expressed support for Mr. Brown, and have been attacking Ms. Walton.“He’s openly taking the support of Republicans, and working with them,” said Mr. Zellner, who also serves on the Erie County Board of Elections and is backing Ms. Walton.Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, talked to Patrick Lett, a constituent, outside a workforce training center. He lost the primary, but has waged a write-in campaign.Libby March for The New York TimesMs. Walton’s primary victory came largely from the work of a volunteer staff and strong support from the city’s west side, a mix of middle-class neighborhoods, new immigrant communities and elegant homes.She has a compelling personal biography: She is a mother of four children, having had her first child at 14 and later living in a group home and earning a GED while pregnant with twins. Her path to politics was circuitous, including once working as a tattoo artist and later serving as a representative for the powerful health care union, SEIU 1199.Her message, during the primary and now, was one of sharing the wealth in Buffalo, which has seen a surprising uptick in population and pockets of economic vitality over the last decade. Her campaign promises, including reforming policing, addressing poverty and reducing economic and racial inequities, seemingly struck a chord with primary voters, after a year of Covid-19 and a national reckoning over race relations.Her general election campaign seems to be staying on that message, while also trying to play down any suggestion that — as a socialist — she is anti-growth.“I want to reduce poverty in my community,” Ms. Walton said, adding, “If people are less poor, they have more money to spend in businesses.”There are signs, however, that Ms. Walton is bulking up — and changing up — her staff, a possible indication of the seriousness of Mr. Brown’s challenge. Last week, she announced a new campaign manager, Drisana Hughes, who worked on Alvin Bragg’s successful primary run for Manhattan district attorney.She has also been welcoming downstate supporters, doing a swing of events over the weekend in New York City, including a fund-raiser with Mr. Williams, a potential candidate for governor next year, who has criticized Governor Hochul for not vocally backing Ms. Walton.“This should be a race where the governor is stumping for the first female mayor of Buffalo,” he said.Many local and state politicians have, in fact, scrupulously avoided making endorsements of either candidate. And last week, Jay Jacobs, the current chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and a moderate himself, confirmed that the party was not planning on making an endorsement in the race.“One way or another, a Democrat is going to be elected mayor of Buffalo,” Mr. Jacobs said.Mr. Brown was a trailblazer when he was elected the first Black mayor of Buffalo in 2005, after stints as a state senator and city councilman. He takes credit for a series of accomplishments, including tax cuts and increased property values, as well as gleaming new buildings along the city’s waterfront. At the same time, however, Buffalo remains home to one of the highest poverty rates in the country — more than 30 percent — a problem that is even worse for the city’s children. In mid-September, the mayor’s hopes suffered a setback, when judges in both federal and state court ruled that Mr. Brown’s name — and a newly created party he had called the Buffalo Party — should be removed from the official ballot, reversing lower court decisions.Mr. Brown’s write-in campaign’s slogan — “Write Down Byron Brown” — is found on red-white-and-blue campaign signs peppered throughout the city and has been echoed by the Twitter hashtag #writedownbyronbrown.Last week, that hashtag was used by a curious ally: Carl Paladino, the Buffalo developer, former Republican candidate for governor and staunch supporter of Mr. Trump. Mr. Paladino tweeted his support for Mr. Brown, and circulated an emailed invitation for a fund-raiser for him.Jacob Neiheisel, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, said Mr. Brown erred in refusing to debate Ms. Walton before the primary or regularly acknowledge her candidacy.“Frankly I think he just didn’t take it seriously enough,” said Mr. Neiheisel. Since deciding to pursue a write-in campaign, Mr. Brown has been aggressively attacking Ms. Walton; in an early September debate, he accused her of wanting to “defund the police” and cut police jobs, echoing a recent ad.Ms. Walton denied this, saying that she wants the police to concentrate on stopping and investigating crime, not handling social services like homeless outreach and mental health calls.“There’s one person up here that’s been defunding our community,” she said in a reference to her opponent, mentioning his administration’s cuts to community centers and swimming pools. “And that’s caused crime to run rampant.”Later, sitting in a gleaming new workplace training center on the city’s hardscrabble east side, Mr. Brown pressed his case that he was running to safeguard “the future of my city.”“I think I’m the best equipped person to do the work that needs to do done,” he said.He was blunt in response to accusations that he is meanspirited in not accepting the outcome of the primary.“I never cry and whine about what people do who are running for office,” he said, adding, “So I think that notion of ‘sore loser’ that some of her supporters are trying to push is just a false notion.”For her part, Ms. Walton seems confident, saying she and her team are working the phones, knocking on doors and raising money every day.Still, there is a small sense of frustration that Mr. Brown’s general election campaign has prevented her from concentrating on a potential move to City Hall. She noted that “for the last 50 years, the Democratic primary has decided who the presumptive mayor is.”Her responsibility, Ms. Walton said, is to the city’s voters. “I have to deliver for them,” she said. “I shouldn’t be spending all this time justifying a solid win.” More

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      As Adams Plots City’s Future, He Leans on a Past Mayor: Bloomberg

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      The relationship between Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee in New York City, and Mike Bloomberg has benefits for both men.In the lead-up to and aftermath of the New York City mayoral primary, Eric Adams and his team sought guidance from current and past city leaders — first, to help craft his successful bid for the Democratic nomination, and then to prepare for a likely transition to the mayoralty.But Mr. Adams has recently come to lean on one person in particular: Michael R. Bloomberg.In mid-September, Mr. Bloomberg released a video endorsement of Mr. Adams for mayor. The next day, at a business conference featuring various of Mr. Bloomberg’s fellow billionaires, Mr. Adams declared, “New York will no longer be anti-business.”Two days later, Mr. Bloomberg hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams on the roof of the East 78th Street headquarters of Bloomberg Philanthropies, featuring dozens of guests, several of them financial sector executives.Last Wednesday, one of Mr. Bloomberg’s closest advisers, Howard Wolfson, met with David C. Banks, who is thought be among Mr. Adams’s top choices for schools chancellor.The meeting between Mr. Wolfson, Mr. Bloomberg’s former deputy mayor, and Mr. Banks, the founder of a network of all-boys public schools, was not happenstance. It was a product of a burgeoning relationship between the once and likely future mayors and has played out in proclamations of mutual regard.“The best New York City mayor in my lifetime is a combination of Mayor David Dinkins and Michael Bloomberg,” Mr. Adams said during the primary, hailing Mr. Bloomberg’s “practical approach.”Mr. Adams’s overtures to Mr. Bloomberg reinforce the notion that Mr. Adams has himself perpetuated on the campaign trail: that he is a pragmatic, centrist Democrat eager to make New York safe, prosperous and functional.Tying himself to Mr. Bloomberg may yield other benefits for Mr. Adams, too. It gives him access to a particularly well-heeled corner of New York’s donor class and the opportunity to wrap himself in the aura of Mr. Bloomberg’s reputed managerial skill, especially as questions arise about Mr. Adams’s ability to manage his own affairs.In recent days, Mr. Adams has been battered by headlines about his tax returns, which he has promised to revise, for the second time, after reporters found irregularities in them. Mr. Adams blames those errors on his accountant, whom Mr. Adams said he kept in his employ, even though the tax preparer was homeless. The news outlet The City reported that the tax preparer’s neighbors had accused him of embezzling money and had evicted him.Mr. Adams and his campaign have spoken to a number of former officials in the Bloomberg administration and former and current officials in the de Blasio administration, said Evan Thies, a spokesman for Mr. Adams.“It’s not like he’s embracing one mayor over the other mayor,” Mr. Thies said. “That’s just what you do, check in with people who have been there.”Mr. Adams plans to have a group of deputy mayors with whom he can consult, including current and former officials from past administrations. In some ways, he has approached the mayoralty like a research project — seeking out the advice of deputy mayors going as far back as the Giuliani administration.“He was trying to pick my brain and think out of the box,” said Phil Thompson, the deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives for Mr. de Blasio and a former staffer in the Dinkins administration. “He is trying to figure out how a mayor can do something for low-income communities of color to make a difference.”Mr. Adams, center, has said recently that New York City is “out of control,” but is wary of alienating Mayor Bill de Blasio, a supporter.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Bloomberg, who has extended an open-door policy to Mr. Adams and his team, may also derive some benefit from the relationship with Mr. Adams. It allows him to involve himself again in New York City municipal matters — following eight years of disengagement while his successor, Bill de Blasio, held office — and to burnish his reputation here.One former Bloomberg aide, who requested anonymity to speak freely, noted that while the former mayor had little standing in the de Blasio administration, he is far more likely to act as a respected source of advice for Mr. Adams.Mr. de Blasio ran for mayor by decrying Mr. Bloomberg’s legacy, arguing that New York had become a “tale of two cities,” one for the rich, the other for the poor. At Mr. de Blasio’s inauguration in 2014, Mr. Bloomberg was forced to sit poker-faced as speakers derided his tenure, with one comparing the city under his rule to a “plantation.”Mr. Adams, in contrast, campaigned on a platform of restoring public safety and prosperity, the frequently voiced concerns of the business class. He has recently decried the city’s state of “disorder,” and has cited a laundry list of ills such as graffiti, ATVs, homelessness and shootings.Like Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Adams is a former Republican. And during Mr. Bloomberg’s ill-fated presidential campaign, Mr. Adams served as a surrogate, saying publicly that he believed the former mayor was remorseful for his Police Department’s abusive use of stop-and-frisk, after the two men met for 45 minutes at Mr. Adams’s table at Brooklyn’s Park Plaza Restaurant.Dennis M. Walcott, the former city schools chancellor and deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg, said Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Adams have similar styles.“Adams’s style is such that he works with people from both sides of the aisle,” Mr. Walcott said. “One of the interesting things about Mayor Bloomberg is he recruited people who didn’t necessarily support him and then surrounded himself with solid talent.”In mid-September, Mr. Adams appeared on two Bloomberg Media programs, one on the radio, the other on TV, during which he promised to crack down on disorder and open New York City to business, including by offering incentives. Job No. 1, he said, was public safety.Mr. Wolfson, Mr. Bloomberg’s longtime adviser, is spearheading the Bloomberg-Adams engagement effort, by several accounts. He spoke regularly with Sheena Wright, the United Way of New York City chief executive who is running Mr. Adams’s transition, in the run-up to the fund-raiser. Representatives of Mr. Adams have also connected with Robert Steel, another former deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg. And Daniel Doctoroff, Mr. Bloomberg’s former deputy mayor for economic development and the former head of Bloomberg L.P., has independently spoken with Mr. Adams.Mr. Bloomberg has also met personally with Mr. Adams, according to one person familiar with the meeting, and has spoken with him privately throughout the course of the campaign, according to Mr. Adams’s aide. And Mr. Bloomberg hosted last Wednesday’s fund-raiser, during which Mr. Adams is said to have extolled Mr. Bloomberg’s expertise, and Mr. Bloomberg is said to have expressed confidence in Mr. Adams.Several dozen Bloomberg associates attended the 8 a.m. fund-raiser, where the price of admittance was $2,000 a head.The guests included at least five former Bloomberg deputy mayors: Mr. Steel and Robert C. Lieber, both bankers; Edward Skyler, an executive vice president at Citi; Kevin Sheekey, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg; and Patricia E. Harris, the head of Bloomberg Philanthropies, according to fellow attendees.Mr. Adams said at the fund-raiser that he wants the city to work on behalf of both the person in the front of the limousine and the person in the back, according to two attendees. And he said that New York City squandered the last eight years by failing to learn any lessons from the Bloomberg administration.Ken Lipper, a friend of Mr. Bloomberg’s from their days at Salomon Brothers, was also there, and he said he was impressed with Mr. Adams’s practical approach to governance, with its emphasis on making the actual levers of government work.There was something “old-fashioned” about him, according to Mr. Lipper, an investment banker and former deputy mayor under Ed Koch.He said he also appreciated Mr. Adams’s understanding of the tax structure.“Sixty-five thousand people in the entire city pay 51 percent of the taxes,” Mr. Lipper said, referring to the wealthiest personal income tax filers. “Those people don’t use the hospital system, generally, they don’t use the subways in many cases, they’re not using the public schools. So their focus is on having a safe city. You’ve got to give them those minimal services, even though it might seem disproportionate to other areas, and I think Adams kind of gets that.” More

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      Turn Empty N.Y.C. Hotels Into Permanent Housing for Homeless, Adams Says

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      Hotels in New York City that have been left empty by the pandemic would be converted into “supportive housing” that provides a wide range of assistance to people struggling with mental illness or substance abuse and to people leaving the prison system, under a plan proposed on Monday by Eric Adams, who is likely to be the city’s next mayor.More than 20 percent of the city’s hotels are now closed, a trade association says. At the same time, the city faces a homelessness crisis, growing sentiment against warehousing homeless people in barrackslike shelters and a lot of severely mentally ill people living in the streets.“The combination of Covid-19, the economic downturn and the problems we’re having with housing is presenting us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Mr. Adams, who won the Democratic primary for mayor in June, said as he stood outside a boarded-up hotel in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. “Use these hotels not to be an eyesore, but a place where people can lay their eyes on good, affordable, quality housing.”Details of the plan were thin. Mr. Adams mentioned the possibility of 25,000 converted hotel rooms, but he said that he would focus on boroughs outside Manhattan, where the number of rooms in closed hotels is much smaller than that.He was not clear about whether there was any overlap between his plan and those that the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and the former governor of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, have already launched to build 25,000 supportive housing units in the city by about 2030. A spokesman for Mr. Adams’s campaign said that Mr. Adams was also considering converting rooms in former hotels that have already become homeless shelters into permanent supportive-housing apartments, something that Mr. de Blasio has also discussed.The nexus of hotels and homelessness has been a contested one during the pandemic. Early in the lockdown imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, thousands of people who had been living in dorm-style shelters were moved to hotel rooms, mostly in Manhattan where their presence led to complaints from some residents about harassment and sometimes violence. The city has since moved most of those people back to group shelters.Several advocates for homeless people and for supportive housing endorsed Mr. Adams’s plan and stood with him at the news conference. “Adams can be the mayor who uses this inflection moment to change the trajectory on homelessness,” Laura Mascuch, executive director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York, said in an interview. “We look forward to working with Adams to implement the strongest supportive housing program in the nation.” More

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      Boston Mayoral Election Race Narrows, With Michelle Wu in the Lead

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      The city’s 91-year succession of Irish American and Italian American mayors has ended, with Michelle Wu earning one of two spots in the general election in November.BOSTON — Michelle Wu, an Asian American progressive who has built a campaign around climate change and housing policy, earned one of two spots in Boston’s preliminary mayoral election on Tuesday, setting the stage for change in a city that for nearly 200 years has elected only white men.As a front-runner, Ms. Wu, 36, marks a striking departure for this city, whose politics have long turned on neighborhoods and ethnic rivalries.The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she is not from Boston, and has built an ardent following as a city councilor by proposing sweeping structural changes, like making the city’s public transportation free, restoring a form of rent control, and introducing the country’s first city-level Green New Deal.The vote count moved slowly into Wednesday morning and The Associated Press did not immediately announce who had finished second behind Ms. Wu. But another city councilor, Annissa Essaibi George, announced that she had won the other spot in November’s general election, and her two closest competitors told supporters they had lost.Ms. Essaibi George, 47, has positioned herself as a moderate, winning endorsements from traditional power centers like the former police commissioner and the firefighters’ union.In a debate last week, she promised voters that if elected, “you won’t find me on a soapbox, you’ll find me in the neighborhoods, doing the work.”The Nov. 2 matchup is expected to test the consensus that emerged among many national Democrats after New York’s mayoral primaries: that moderate Black voters and older voters will tug the Democratic Party back toward its center, particularly around the issue of public safety.For weeks, polls showed two leading Black candidates — Acting Mayor Kim Janey and City Councilor Andrea Campbell — in a dead heat with Ms. Essaibi George for second place. But turnout in the nonpartisan preliminary election was low on Tuesday, and they appeared to fall short.The prospect of a general election with no Black candidate came as a bitter disappointment to many in Boston, which had seemed closer than ever before to electing a Black mayor.“Boston is a Northern city,” John Hallett, 62, who had supported Ms. Janey, said in frustration. “They have had Black mayors in Atlanta, in Mississippi, and other places down South. I think this is just ridiculous. Really, I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s going to take.”The winner of the election will take the helm of a swiftly changing city.Once a blue-collar industrial port, Boston has become a hub for biotechnology, education and medicine, attracting a stream of affluent, highly educated newcomers. The cost of housing has skyrocketed, forcing many working families to settle for substandard housing or to commute long distances.Annissa Essaibi George, a city councilor.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesMs. Wu, a Chicago native who moved here to attend Harvard University and Harvard Law School, speaks to those new arrivals and their anxieties, acknowledging that her flagship proposals are “pushing the envelope.”“Others have described them, at times, as ‘pie in the sky’ because they are bold, reaching for that brightest version of our future,” she said. “So much of what we celebrate in Boston started as visions that might have seemed ‘pie in the sky’ initially, but were exactly what we needed and deserved. And people fought for them.”Throughout its history, she says, Boston has served as a laboratory for new ideas, like public education, and for movements like abolitionism, civil rights and marriage equality.“This is a city that knows how to fight for what is right,” said Ms. Wu, who credits Elizabeth Warren, her law professor, with helping to launch her in politics.But Boston’s most faithful voters are in predominantly white precincts, where many look askance at many of Ms. Wu’s policies, and at the calls for policing reforms that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.Those voters have rallied around Ms. Essaibi George, who grew up in Dorchester, the daughter of Tunisian and Polish immigrants, and is the only candidate to oppose cuts to the police budget and favor increasing the number of officers on Boston streets.At a victory celebration that began shortly before midnight, Ms. Essaibi George, flanked by her teenage triplets, launched into a critique of Ms. Wu and her policy-wonk platform.“We need real change, and that doesn’t come with just ideas or an academic exercise, that comes with hard work,” she said. “I don’t just talk, I work. I do. I dig in and get to it. It’s how my parents raised me. It’s how this city made me.”She went on to poke holes in two of Ms. Wu’s signature platforms, to cheers from the crowd. “Let me be clear,” she said. “The mayor of Boston cannot make the T free. The mayor of Boston cannot mandate rent control. These are issues the state must address.”Ms. Essaibi George’s supporters, who gathered on a Dorchester street corner on the eve of the election, wearing her campaign’s trademark hot pink T-shirts, were mostly white, and named public safety as a top concern. Robert O’Shea, 58, recalled “Dirty Water,” the 1965 pop ode to the polluted Charles River and its “lovers, muggers and thieves.”“Well, when that was written, nobody wanted to be here,” he said. “Look what it is now. I’ve seen this city grow so much, I can’t afford to buy the house I live in.”Mr. O’Shea said he was not hostile to Ms. Wu, or what he called “all this progressive stuff.”“It’s all great, though the socialism aspect of it kind of scares me a little bit,” he said, noting that several of his relatives are Boston police officers. “But people need to be safe. People need to feel safe in their homes before they can save the world.”One reason Boston may prove more receptive to progressive candidates is that it is a very young city, with roughly one-third of its population between the ages of 20 and 37.Its manufacturing jobs have mostly vanished, making way for affluent, better-educated newcomers, “people who may read The Times but don’t necessarily go to church,” said Larry DiCara, 72, a former Boston city councilor. And it was not jolted by a rise in violent crime over the summer, something that probably shifted votes in New York toward Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee.Ms. Wu had no choice but to build her political base around a set of policies because she could not bank on ethnic or neighborhood affinities, said Jonathan Cohn, the chair of the Ward 4 Democratic Committee, which endorsed her.“There is a real way that politics is often done here, of ‘what church, what school, what neighborhood,’ and she is trying to shift it to a policy discussion,” he said.Clockwise from top left: Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell, Kim Janey and Annissa Essaibi George.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesWhen Ms. Wu entered the City Council in 2014, the body had largely concerned itself with constituent services, but over the next few years it became a platform for national-level policy, on climate change and police reform. The policies Ms. Wu zeroed in on, like fare-free transit and the Green New Deal, emerged as her mayoral platform.Some observers question whether Ms. Wu’s policy platform will be enough to carry her through the general election in November.“People just want the city to work for them, they don’t want nice policies,” said Kay Gibbs, 81, who worked as a political aide to Thomas Atkins, the city’s first Black city councilor, and to Representative Barney Frank. Boston’s next mayor, she said, will have her hands full with the basics, taking control of powerful forces within a sprawling city government.“The electorate is smarter than we think they are, and they have certain interests that don’t extend to all these dreamy ideas of free public transport and Green New Deal,” she said. “They are going to choose the person they think is most able.”Boston is growing swiftly, with rapid growth in its Asian and Hispanic populations. It has seen a shrinking percentage of non-Hispanic white residents, who now make up less than 45 percent of the population. And the percentage of Black residents is also dropping, falling to 19 percent of the population from about 22 percent in 2010.Ms. Janey, who was then the City Council president, became acting mayor in March after Martin J. Walsh became the country’s labor secretary, and many assumed she would cruise into the general election. But she was cautious in her new role, sticking largely to script in public appearances, and damaged by criticism from her rival Ms. Campbell, a Princeton-educated lawyer and vigorous campaigner.At a campaign stop on Monday, Ms. Janey said incumbency had not necessarily proved an advantage.“I certainly would say, if anything, it’s a double-edged sword,” she said.Municipal elections, especially preliminary ones, tend to draw a low turnout, whiter and older than the city as a whole. It is only in the last few years that change has begun to ripple through Massachusetts, which has seen a series of upsets for progressive women of color, said Steve Koczela, president of the MassInc Polling Group.“This is the culmination of a lot of flexing of new political muscle,” he said. More