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      New York City Is Getting Tired of Mayor Adams’s Scandals

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      No sooner did Mayor Eric Adams of New York land in Washington, D.C., on city business Thursday than he had to turn right back around to take care of his own.The F.B.I. had raided the Brooklyn home of Mr. Adams’s top fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Parts of a search warrant obtained by The Times suggest that federal prosecutors in Manhattan are trying to determine if the mayor’s 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and a Brooklyn construction company to direct foreign money into the campaign through straw donations.A spokesman said Mr. Adams had rushed back to New York from Washington “to deal with a matter.” You don’t say.Mr. Adams so far has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But this kind of drama and foolishness doesn’t serve the city, or him. Though he will have to answer for it, a fund-raising scandal engulfing the mayor is about the last thing New York needs.The city, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities, is reeling from the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Hate crimes against both groups are on the rise. Posters of missing loved ones kidnapped by Hamas line the city streets. Palestinian American New Yorkers are getting word of relatives killed in Israeli airstrikes.More than 130,000 migrants have arrived in the city over the past year and a half, and the city has run out of places to put them. That’s the very issue that led Mr. Adams to visit the nation’s capital on Thursday to seek federal help.Thanks to the city’s continuing housing crisis, more than 119,320 students enrolled in New York’s public schools are homeless, according to new data released this week. That figure is based on last year’s enrollment and is likely roughly 30,000 higher. The city is also still struggling to recover from the pandemic, in myriad ways.Mr. Adams is working on all of these issues. So I’m hopeful that the mayor, who is up for re-election in 2025, can take this moment to think carefully about the people he wants to surround himself with while running America’s biggest city. This seems to be a blind spot for him, as he has formed an inner circle that often appears to be particularly shaped by loyalty, sometimes at the expense of ethics or the interest of taxpayers.It isn’t just Ms. Suggs. Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former building commissioner and a former campaign adviser, was indicted on bribery charges in September. In July the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, charged six people — including a former N.Y.P.D. inspector who is also a friend of the mayor — with campaign finance violations, accusing them of being part of a conspiracy to direct public matching funds to Mr. Adams’s campaign through straw donors in a bid to seek political favors.More often, though, the mayor’s personnel decisions have simply raised questions about his judgment. There’s Timothy Pearson, a senior adviser and friend who is under review by the city’s Department of Investigation for an altercation in which he shoved a security guard at a migrant center and threatened her job, according to reports. The mayor appointed his brother Bernard Adams to a senior position at City Hall, leading to public concerns about nepotism. An agreement with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board prevented the mayor’s brother from receiving a $210,000 salary for the position. He received a salary of $1 per year and resigned in February.And far more alarming than nepotism was the mayor’s decision this week to promote the commissioner of the corrections department, Louis Molina, to a job at City Hall. Mr. Molina has run the Rikers Island jail complex since January 2022, and it is verging on collapse. In September, as the violence and chronic staff absenteeism continued at the jails, Mr. Molina and his top aides took a taxpayer-funded trip to Europe to visit jails in London and Paris, according to The New York Daily News. Instead of holding Mr. Molina accountable for this questionable use of city funds, Mr. Adams announced on Oct. 31 that Mr. Molina would serve at City Hall as the assistant deputy mayor for public safety. “Lou has demonstrated exceptional leadership,” the mayor said of Mr. Molina in a statement this week.Maybe I’m naïve to expect more from the mayor. Public corruption scandals have become commonplace. Trust in institutions is at a serious low. All the more reason to hold Mr. Adams to account for the way he conducts the city’s business, and his own.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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      U.S. Investigating Whether Adams Received Illegal Donations From Turkey

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      A raid at the home of Eric Adams’s chief fund-raiser was part of an inquiry into whether foreign money was funneled into his mayoral campaign, a search warrant shows.Federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. are conducting a broad public corruption investigation into whether Mayor Eric Adams’s 2021 election campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations, according to a search warrant obtained by The New York Times.The investigation burst into public view on Thursday when federal agents conducted an early-morning raid at the Brooklyn home of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Ms. Suggs is a campaign consultant who is deeply entwined with efforts to advance the mayor’s agenda.Investigators also sought to learn more about the potential involvement of a Brooklyn construction company with ties to Turkey, as well as a small university in Washington, D.C., that also has ties to the country and to Mr. Adams.According to the search warrant, investigators were also focused on whether the mayor’s campaign kicked back benefits to the construction company’s officials and employees, and to Turkish officials.The agents seized three iPhones and two laptop computers, along with papers and other evidence, including something agents identified as “manila folder labeled Eric Adams,” seven “contribution card binders” and other materials, according to the documents.There was no indication that the investigation was targeting the mayor, and he is not accused of wrongdoing. Yet the raid apparently prompted him to abruptly cancel several meetings scheduled for Thursday morning in Washington, D.C., where he planned to speak with White House officials and members of Congress about the migrant crisis.Instead, he hurriedly returned to New York “to deal with a matter,” a spokesman for the mayor said.Appearing at a Día de Muertos celebration at Gracie Mansion on Thursday night, Mr. Adams defended his campaign, saying that he held it “to the highest ethical standards.”He said he had not been contacted by any law enforcement officials, but pledged to cooperate in any inquiry. Mr. Adams said that he returned from Washington to be “on the ground” to “look at this inquiry” as it unfolded.The warrant suggested that some of the foreign campaign contributions were made as part of a straw donor scheme, where donations are made in the names of people who did not actually give money.Investigators sought evidence to support potential charges that included the theft of federal funds and conspiracy to steal federal funds, wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy, as well as campaign contributions by foreign nationals and conspiracy to make such contributions.Mr. Adams has boasted of his ties to Turkey, most recently during a flag-raising he hosted for the country in Lower Manhattan last week. The mayor said that there were probably no other mayors in New York City history who had visited Turkey as frequently as he has.“I think I’m on my sixth or seventh visit,” he said. At least one of those visits happened while he was Brooklyn borough president, when the government of Turkey underwrote the excursion, The Daily News reported. Ms. Suggs, who could not be reached for comment, is an essential cog in Mr. Adams’s fund-raising machine, which has already raised more than $2.5 million for his 2025 re-election campaign.A person with knowledge of the raid said agents from one of the public corruption squads in the F.B.I.’s New York office questioned Ms. Suggs during the search of her home.An F.B.I. spokesman confirmed that “we are at that location carrying out law enforcement action,” referring to Ms. Suggs’s home in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The raid of Brianna Suggs’s home, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, occurred early on Thursday.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesThe agents also served Ms. Suggs with a subpoena directing her to testify before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in Manhattan.Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, declined to comment.The construction company was identified in the warrant, portions of which were obtained by The Times, as KSK Construction Group in Brooklyn. Individuals who listed their employer as KSK donated nearly $14,000 to Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign, according to campaign finance records. A person who answered the telephone at the company declined to comment.Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, a spokesman for Mr. Adams, said Ms. Suggs was not an employee of City Hall and referred calls to the mayor’s campaign team.“The campaign has always held itself to the highest standards,” said Vito Pitta, a lawyer for Mr. Adams’s 2021 and 2025 campaigns. “The campaign will of course comply with any inquiries, as appropriate.”Mr. Pitta added: “Mayor Adams has not been contacted as part of this inquiry.”The search warrant sought financial records for Ms. Suggs and any entity controlled or associated with her; documents related to contributions to the mayor’s 2021 campaign; records of travel to Turkey by any employee, officer or associate of the campaign; and documents related to interactions between the campaign and the government of Turkey, “including persons acting at the behest of the Turkish government.”Investigators specified documents relating to Bay Atlantic University, a tiny Turkish-owned institution that opened in Washington, D.C., in 2014. The following year, Mr. Adams visited one of the school’s sister universities in Istanbul, where he was given various certificates and was told that a scholarship would be created in his name.The warrant also sought electronic devices, including cellphones, laptops or tablets used by Ms. Suggs.Ms. Suggs, 25, is the latest in a series of individuals tied to Mr. Adams who have attracted interest from law enforcement, including several connected to the mayor’s fund-raising efforts.In September, Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former buildings commissioner and senior adviser, was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, on 16 felony charges, including counts of conspiracy and bribetaking. Mr. Ulrich, as well as three others indicted at the time, helped organize a 2021 fund-raiser for Mr. Adams.In July, Mr. Bragg indicted six individuals, including a retired police inspector who once worked and socialized with Mr. Adams, on charges of conspiring to funnel illegal donations to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.The Department of Investigation is also investigating the role of one of the mayor’s top aides in a violent altercation last month at a migrant center in Manhattan.Mr. Adams has tried to distance himself from these inquiries, arguing that he had limited insight into the events that precipitated them. But the investigation of such a close and longtime adviser might be harder to keep at arm’s length.In the past two years, Mr. Adams’s re-election campaign has paid Ms. Suggs nearly $100,000 for fund-raising and campaign consulting services via her company, Suggs Solutions, according to city records.His first mayoral campaign paid her more than $50,000.Ms. Suggs has also registered as a lobbyist. State records indicate that the East Broadway Mall, a Chinatown real estate concern, hired Ms. Suggs, via an intermediary, to lobby the mayor’s office and the City Council on its behalf in 2022.Ms. Suggs worked as an aide to Mr. Adams when he was Brooklyn borough president, and is particularly close with Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who was his deputy at the time and is currently his top adviser.Ms. Suggs is deeply embedded in outside efforts to advance the mayor’s agenda. A key ally’s political action committee, Striving for a Better New York, which promised to support state candidates aligned with Mr. Adams on policy matters, has paid Ms. Suggs roughly $100,000.Ms. Suggs also lists the Brooklyn Democratic Party, with which Mr. Adams has close ties, as a client on her LinkedIn page.Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, the assemblywoman who leads the Brooklyn party, said Ms. Suggs was a volunteer fund-raiser who mainly handled logistics. She said she was surprised to learn of the F.B.I. raid.“What I know of Brianna Suggs, she’s a bright young lady. I think she’s a very honest person, organized. She’s very mild-mannered, a very professional person,” Ms. Bichotte Hermelyn said. “She knows the rules.”Mr. Adams’s decision to cancel high-level meetings with senior White House officials about an issue that he has warned will hollow out New York’s budget and destroy the city suggested an unusual level of urgency.The White House appeared to have been taken by surprise. The mayor’s office called Thursday morning to inform them of the cancellation, a White House aide said.“I can’t speak to his schedule and why he had to, he could not attend,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary.The mayor was scheduled to meet with representatives from Congress along with the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, and the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston.At 7:41 a.m. Thursday, Mr. Adams posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, of himself sitting aboard an airplane. He said he was heading to Washington to meet with White House officials and members of the congressional delegation about the migrant crisis, which he described as a “real issue.”The mayor promised to keep the public updated throughout the day, but after he canceled the meetings, officials at City Hall would not explain why. They said the meetings would be rescheduled.By 8 a.m. Thursday, around 10 agents could be seen standing on Ms. Suggs’s block, according to a video of the scene taken by a neighbor and viewed by The New York Times. One agent wore a light green tactical vest with the letters “F.B.I.” stamped on the back. Another official could be seen leaving the apartment with a cardboard box.Ms. Suggs was standing on the stoop with her father as the agents searched her home, according to the neighbor, Christopher Burwell.“Whatever it is, she must have been tricked into it, because she’s a great woman,” Mr. Burwell said. “I’ve known her all my life.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      F.B.I. Raid of Adams Ally Brings Corruption Question to Mayor’s Doorstep

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      Mayor Eric Adams has faced ethics issues for years. A raid of his chief fund-raiser’s home poses a serious threat.Even as Eric Adams completed his rise in New York City politics and became mayor, questions remained over ethical issues and his ties to people with troubling pasts.His fund-raising tactics have repeatedly pushed the boundaries of campaign-finance and ethics laws. His relationships with his donors have drawn attention and prompted investigations. Some donors and even a former buildings commissioner have been indicted.Mr. Adams, a moderate Democrat in his second year in office, has not been implicated in any misconduct, but a broad public corruption investigation involving his chief fund-raiser and his 2021 campaign has drawn the mayor even closer to the edge.On Thursday, federal agents conducted an early-morning raid at the Brooklyn home of Brianna Suggs, Mr. Adams’s top fund-raiser and a trusted confidante. The inquiry is focusing on whether the mayor’s campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations.Mr. Adams, who typically takes great pains to distance himself from any investigation of people in his outer circle, took the opposite tack on Thursday.He abruptly canceled several meetings in Washington, D.C., where he was scheduled to discuss the migrant crisis with White House officials and members of Congress, and returned to New York.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Election Day Guide: Governor Races, Abortion Access and More

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      Two governorships are at stake in the South, while Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution.Election Day is nearly here, and while off-year political races receive a fraction of the attention compared with presidential elections, some of Tuesday’s contests will be intensely watched.At stake are two southern governorships, control of the Virginia General Assembly and abortion access in Ohio. National Democrats and Republicans, seeking to build momentum moving toward next November, will be eyeing those results for signals about 2024.Here are the major contests voters will decide on Tuesday and a key ballot question:Governor of KentuckyGov. Andy Beshear, left, a Democrat, is facing Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s Republican attorney general, in his campaign for re-election as governor.Pool photo by Kentucky Educational TelevisionGov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, is seeking to again defy convention in deep-red Kentucky, a state carried handily by Donald J. Trump in 2020.He is facing Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general, who was propelled to victory by an early endorsement from Mr. Trump in a competitive Republican primary in May.In 2019, Mr. Cameron became the first Black person to be elected as Kentucky’s attorney general, an office previously held by Mr. Beshear. He drew attention in 2020 when he announced that a grand jury did not indict two Louisville officers who shot Breonna Taylor.In the 2019 governor’s race, Mr. Beshear ousted Matt Bevin, a Trump-backed Republican, by fewer than 6,000 votes. This year, he enters the race with a strong job approval rating. He is seeking to replicate a political feat of his father, Steve Beshear, who was also Kentucky governor and was elected to two terms.Governor of Mississippi Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner who is related to Elvis Presley, wants to be the state’s first Democratic governor in two decades.Emily Kask for The New York TimesGov. Tate Reeves, a Republican in his first term, has some of the lowest job approval numbers of the nation’s governors.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressIt has been two decades since Mississippi had a Democrat as governor. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican in his first term, is seeking to avoid becoming the one who ends that streak.But his job approval numbers are among the lowest of the nation’s governors, which has emboldened his Democratic challenger, Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner with a famous last name: His second cousin, once removed, was Elvis Presley.Mr. Presley has attacked Mr. Reeves over a welfare scandal exposed last year by Mississippi Today, which found that millions in federal funds were misspent. Mr. Reeves, who was the lieutenant governor during the years the scandal unfolded, has denied any wrongdoing, but the issue has been a focal point of the contest.Abortion access in OhioAs states continue to reckon with the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court last year, Ohio has become the latest front in the fight over access to abortion.Reproductive rights advocates succeeded in placing a proposed amendment on the November ballot that would enshrine the right to abortion access into the state constitution. Its supporters have sought to fill the void that was created by the Roe decision.Anti-abortion groups have mounted a sweeping campaign to stop the measure. One effort, a proposal to raise the threshold required for passing a constitutional amendment, was rejected by voters this summer.Virginia legislatureIn just two states won by President Biden in 2020, Republicans have a power monopoly — and in Virginia, they are aiming to secure a third. The others are Georgia and New Hampshire.Democrats narrowly control the Virginia Senate, where all 40 seats are up for grabs in the election. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House of Delegates, which is also being contested.The outcome of the election is being viewed as a potential reflection of the clout of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican with national ambitions.Philadelphia mayorAn open-seat race for mayor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s foremost Democratic bastion, is down to two former City Council members: Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, and David Oh, a Republican.The advantage for Ms. Parker appears to be an overwhelming one in the city, which has not elected a Republican as mayor since 1947.It has also been two decades since Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth most populous city, had a somewhat competitive mayoral race. More

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      ‘We Still Don’t Have Answers’: A Uvalde Mother Is Running for Mayor

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      After her daughter was killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Kimberly Mata-Rubio figured it was time to get answers and help her city heal.On a recent Saturday morning, a day after what would have been Lexi Rubio’s 12th birthday, dozens gathered in the Texas city of Uvalde for a run in her honor. Blasting Lexi’s playlist, Kimberly Mata-Rubio, her mother, took off from under a towering mural of Lexi, one of 19 children and two teachers killed in a shooting at her school last year.This was more than a fund-raising run for charity — it was also a campaign event of sorts, as Ms. Mata-Rubio and the other competitors made their way past a series of signs in yellow (Lexi’s favorite color) announcing her candidacy for mayor.Ms. Mata-Rubio, a former news reporter, would be the first woman and only the third Latino to lead the Hispanic majority city, one that has been bitterly divided in the aftermath of one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.Her campaign, in which she is vying with a veteran local politician and an elementary school art teacher, often prominently features her daughter’s favorite color and reminders of a tragedy that many would prefer to leave in the past.Ms. Mata-Rubio said she understood immediately that everybody in the small town of 15,000 people had lost something, if not a loved one, then certainly a sense of security. Like other parents, she complained that the authorities had released confusing and often conflicting information that made it hard to understand why they took more than an hour to confront and kill the gunman.Ms. Mata-Rubio, second from right, said she understood immediately that everybody in the small town of 15,000 people had lost something, if not a loved one, then a sense of security.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesUvalde has been bitterly divided in the aftermath of one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesThe Uvalde parents also pushed for a ban on assault weapons like the one used in the attack on Robb Elementary School. The issue prompted deep divisions in a rural town renowned for white-tailed deer hunting, where many households have guns and rifles are a regular prize at school raffles.But as president of Lives Robbed, an organization made up of mothers and grandmothers of the Uvalde victims, Ms. Mata-Rubio has organized rallies, flown to Washington and sat through legislative hearings in Austin. And it did not feel like she was doing enough.When she saw an opening to run for mayor, she texted her husband, Felix, asking for advice.“You’re Lexi’s mom,” he replied. “You can do it.”For her, the mission is clear.“We still don’t have answers. We still don’t know what role everyone played then and what role everyone is playing now,” she said of the many ongoing investigations into the delayed police response by the local district attorney and others.She said she also wants to bring the town together over the still-contentious issues of assault weapons, and whether police officers who failed to confront the Uvalde gunman should be fired or face criminal charges.“I want to have the difficult conversations so that everybody feels heard,” Ms. Mata-Rubio said. “I’m going to be raising my children in this community. I want to bring the community back together again.”Felix Rubio, Ms. Rubio’s husband, and their daughter, Jahleela.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesIf Ms. Mata-Rubio were to win, she would become the first woman to lead the city.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesShe is running against a veteran local politician who hopes to return to office, Cody Smith, and an elementary school art teacher, Veronica Martinez, who have said during their campaigns that they not only want to bring Uvalde back from the nightmare of the shooting, but also to focus on other issues.In the most recent election in Uvalde County, which includes the county seat and six other small towns, voters largely failed to support politicians who backed more control on guns, delivering a political blow to the families of the victims who campaigned on their behalf. But a much narrower pool of voters will decide the mayor’s race, those who live within in Uvalde itself.Ms. Mata-Rubio’s campaign raised the most money in the 30-day period that ended in September, $80,000 to Mr. Smith’s $50,000, according to the most recent campaign finance report filings, with many of her donations coming from out of town. Ms. Martinez has not sought contributions.The Nov. 7 election, with early voting this week, was called after the current mayor, Don McLaughlin, announced he was leaving City Hall to run for a Texas House seat. The winner will need to run for a full four-year term in 2024.Veronica Martinez, an art teacher at Dalton Elementary School, said she hopes to create an open-door culture in a City Hall that often does not feel inviting to residents.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesCody Smith, a former mayor and a senior vice president at First State Bank of Uvalde, was first elected to the City Council in 1994 and also served as mayor in 2008 and 2010.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesIf Ms. Mata-Rubio or Ms. Martinez were to win, they would become the third mayor of Hispanic ancestry and the first woman to lead the city.George Garza, 85, who in the 1990s became the second Hispanic mayor, said the city’s Hispanic majority has often gone unrecognized in city politics. “Representation is important,” he said.Mr. Smith, a former mayor and a senior vice president at First State Bank of Uvalde, was first elected to the City Council in 1994 and also served as mayor in 2008 and 2010. He declined to be interviewed, but has called for supporting better communication between law enforcement agencies.Ms. Martinez, said she supports in principle some form of an assault rifle ban, but said the city must also focus on local issues that affect everyone, like lowering what people pay in property taxes on their homes.She said she hopes to change the culture in a City Hall that often does not feel inviting to residents.“Maybe I can effect some change, and do some good by having an open-door policy,” she said.Some voters like Amanda Juarez, 42, a teacher’s assistant, want to see a fresh face in city government, but she said that she worries that Ms. Mata-Rubio may focus too much on the tragedy and gun control issues. She said she appreciates Ms. Martinez’s calls for lowering taxes on property like her mobile home, whose assessed value recently went up by several thousand dollars for no apparent reason. “We need people who are going to solve our issues at the local level,” she said.Ms. Mata-Rubio, right, and her campaign manager, Laura Barberena, preparing for the Labor Day weekend parade in Uvalde in September.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesSome voters want to see a fresh face in city government. “We need people who are going to solve our issues at the local level,” said voter, Amanda Juarez.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesTo help win over voters interested in such grass-roots issues, Ms. Mata-Rubio has been knocking on doors and handing over yellow campaign signs and cards with her key campaign issues: Bring People Together, Protect Our History and Boost Our Economy.Moments after taking part in Lexi’s Legacy Run, as it was called, Ms. Mata-Rubio canvassed the streets and she ran into Antonia Rios, 80, a potential voter who was excited to see her. “No te conocía. I didn’t know you. You are very young,” Ms. Rios said, combining English and Spanish as many do in this town 60 miles east of the border with Mexico. “Yo voto por ti. I’ll vote for you.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      Running San Francisco Made Dianne Feinstein

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      When I was interviewing Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2011 for a book about San Francisco’s tumultuous history from the 1960s to the ’80s, she suddenly began to tear off her microphone and terminate the exchange. My offense? I asked about her decision as mayor of the city to veto a 1982 ordinance that would have extended health insurance benefits to live-in partners of municipal employees, including lesbians and gay men. I managed to coax the irate Ms. Feinstein back into her chair, but she had clearly drawn a line: I’m ready to leave whenever I don’t like the direction this is headed.Ms. Feinstein could be imperious, thin-skinned and intolerant. She was also the leader that San Francisco sorely needed on Nov. 27, 1978, when she was abruptly thrust, at the age of 45, into City Hall’s Room 200 after Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated by another colleague, Dan White.“This will not be a rudderless city,” she firmly told the shellshocked public after the murders, even though she was shaken by them. When she met with the hastily assembled press soon after the killings, her skirt was stained with Mr. Milk’s blood.During her nine plus years as the first female mayor of the famously cantankerous metropolis, Ms. Feinstein won the grudging respect of the old boys’ network that had always run City Hall. She managed to steer San Francisco between the liberal, freewheeling future that Mr. Moscone aimed toward — the era of San Francisco values — and its older, more conservative traditions, including its downtown business interests. As mayor, she opposed rent control on vacant housing and some demands from the gay community, like domestic partner legislation. But she also pushed through a tough gun control ordinance, environmental regulations and pro-labor laws and hosted a wedding ceremony of lesbian friends in her backyard.All the while, she kept a strong hand on the rudder, emphasizing law and order and putting more cops on the streets but also drawing the line against police mayhem after the White Night riot and violent police sweep of the gay Castro district after the stunningly lenient verdict for Mr. White.“This city has to be managed,” she said. “If you don’t manage, it falls apart.”The Chinatown activist Rose Pak witnessed Ms. Feinstein’s hands-on approach one day when she was riding with her in the mayoral limousine. Spotting an older man collapsed on the sidewalk, Ms. Feinstein ordered her chauffeur to stop, jumped out, wiped foam from the stricken man’s lips and began administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on him. People later commented that this incident proved she was not a cold fish.“But I didn’t see it that way,” Ms. Pak recalled. “I saw her as a doctor’s daughter and a doctor’s widow, doing the proper clinical thing.”Most important, Ms. Feinstein became a national face of AIDS compassion when President Ronald Reagan was ignoring the growing suffering and conservative activists like Patrick Buchanan were crowing that the disease was nature’s “awful retribution” on gay men. When the gay progressive supervisor Harry Britt, who often clashed with the mayor, brought Ms. Feinstein the city’s first AIDS proposal in 1982, she told him simply, “Fund everything.”Other cities dumped their AIDS patients on San Francisco, including a notorious incident in 1983 when hospital officials in Gainesville, Fla., put a dying man on a plane to the city, miles from his loved ones. San Francisco took care of the sick men, but Ms. Feinstein denounced the practice as “outrageous and inhumane.”“Dianne spent more time visiting AIDS patients in hospitals than I did,” Mr. Britt remembered. “She was a giver. She was a very compassionate person. I don’t want to say ‘queenly,’ because that sounds negative, but she was a good queen.”Led by Ms. Feinstein — and the city’s gay and lesbian activists and frontline medical workers — San Francisco wrapped the sick and dying men in its arms and finally became the city of its eponymous friar, St. Francis, who cared for the needy.San Francisco made Dianne Feinstein, but until the gunfire that exploded at City Hall, she had concluded that her political career as a city supervisor was over. After returning from a challenging trek through the Himalayas that month with her future husband, the investment banker Richard Blum, she recalled, “I was firmly convinced I was not electable as mayor.”Ms. Feinstein was widely perceived as too starchy, a goody-goody, the Margaret Dumont in a wacky city filled with Marx Brothers. She was raised to be a political animal; her paternal uncle Morris Goldman, a clothing manufacturer and Democratic Party wheeler-dealer, took her as a girl to “board of stupidvisors” meetings and pointed out how the flick of a city boss’s cigar could change the vote tally. But later, as a young civic reformer, when she visited a hippie commune in the Haight-Ashbury district that had been trashed by a police raid or seedy porn theaters or the down-and-out Tenderloin neighborhood (where she posed as a prostitute in a wig), Ms. Feinstein came off as slightly ridiculous.Newly elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Ms. Feinstein addressed the hard-luck worshipers at Glide Memorial Church, lecturing them about the importance of good hygiene and hard work — and predictably got a tepid response from the congregation. “Dianne,” Glide’s minister, the Rev. Cecil Williams, told her later, “you don’t talk that way to these folks. If they had a place to get cleaned up, most of them would get cleaned up. If they could get a job, they’d get a job.”But Ms. Feinstein — a daughter of privilege, educated at the exclusive Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and Stanford University — did her political homework. She was ready to lead when history came calling.One day in 1979, when Ms. Feinstein, then the interim mayor, was campaigning for election, she went door to door in the city’s rough and redeveloped Fillmore district. Suddenly she was approached by a man who pointed a silver pistol at her head and pulled the trigger. She froze in fear; the City Hall assassinations happened the year before. Out of the man’s gun shot a butane flame instead of a bullet. She quickly gathered herself and went on campaigning. She won the election, even though The San Francisco Chronicle and key political establishment figures supported her more conservative opponent.“She ran the city with an iron fist,” Mike Hennessey, a progressive who served as San Francisco’s sheriff for 32 years, told me. “Of all the mayors I’ve worked with, she was the best. That’s because she took responsibility for this city. San Francisco is a very hard city to run. It’s very politically fractious. It takes a lot of work to hold it together. And that’s what Feinstein did.”In her three decades in the U.S. Senate, to which she was elected in 1992 (four years after her last term as mayor), Ms. Feinstein turned in a more mixed record. Over the years, she gained wide respect, even across the political aisle, for her hard work and political wisdom. But her success at banning assault weapons was undone, and her legislative record is uneven at best.In 2017, as a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, I warned Ms. Feinstein not to run again the next year for the Senate, writing that she would then be 85 and too old for the rigors of the job. But she didn’t listen — and neither did California’s voters.When I think of Dianne Feinstein, I think of her as San Francisco’s mayor. She may not have been the leader many San Franciscans (including me) wanted, but she was the one we needed.David Talbot is the author of, among other books, “Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love.” 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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      Levi’s Heir Daniel Lurie to Challenge San Francisco Mayor London Breed

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      Daniel Lurie, 46, said he would run for mayor next year, at a time when many voters in the city are in a sour mood.Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss clothing fortune, announced on Tuesday that he would run against Mayor London Breed of San Francisco next year, at a time when the city is struggling to overcome a number of crises in its downtown core.Mr. Lurie, 46, planned to launch his campaign Tuesday at a community center in the city’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, a longtime working-class area now dotted with multimillion-dollar homes and upscale shops. His entrance in the race signals that Ms. Breed may be vulnerable in her bid for re-election and may have lost the support of some moderate allies.Mr. Lurie said in an interview that he intended to campaign on solving the city’s quality-of-life problems, and that he blames Ms. Breed for doing too little to tackle them.Mr. Lurie is the founder of Tipping Point, an anti-poverty nonprofit. He said that he decided to run for mayor when he was walking his 9-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter to school, and they saw a man stumbling down the street, naked and screaming.Noting that nobody did anything about the situation, himself included, he said he was troubled that city leaders and residents had apparently grown numb to such scenes.“Our kids have come to a place where they’re inured,” he said. “It’s almost like they accept it, which is not OK.”Mr. Lurie filed paperwork for his candidacy on Tuesday at the San Francisco Department of Elections office as his wife, Becca Prowda, looked on.Aaron Wojack for The New York TimesThough many San Francisco neighborhoods came through the pandemic relatively unscathed, the city’s downtown has suffered. Offices have been left vacant while employees work remotely at home. Retailers have struggled, while homeless encampments, fentanyl overdoses and property crimes have endured as serious problems.Mr. Lurie said Ms. Breed had accomplished little, even though voters approved higher taxes to finance homeless services and low-income housing. He said that as mayor, he would add more psychiatric beds to the city’s hospitals, expand the shelter system and pay homeless people to clean the sidewalks.He also said he would place more police officers on the streets and compel more people who are severely mentally ill into treatment, even if they refuse care. San Francisco is one of seven counties in California that will begin a court program this fall with the authority to force people with severe mental illness to be hospitalized if they refuse treatment.Maggie Muir, a spokeswoman for Ms. Breed’s campaign, said Mr. Lurie’s platform did not depart from what the mayor was already trying to do. The only difference, she said, was that Mr. Lurie lacked government experience.“Mayor Breed is working every day to make San Francisco safer and cleaner,” Ms. Muir said. “Why should we trust a beginner to accomplish these things faster?”Ms. Breed, 49, and Mr. Lurie are both San Francisco natives and Democrats, but have very different backgrounds. Ms. Breed, the first Black woman to lead the city, was raised by her grandmother in public housing near City Hall, and now rents an apartment in the Lower Haight, a lively neighborhood popular among young tenants for its restaurants, nightclubs and colorful Victorian homes.Mr. Lurie and Ms. Prowda walked down a hallway at the Department of Elections.Aaron Wojack for The New York TimesFew San Francisco residents have family ties — or riches — that extend as far back in the city as Mr. Lurie’s do. When he was a young child, his mother married Peter Haas, a great grand-nephew of Levi Strauss, the German immigrant who opened a dry goods shop in San Francisco in 1853, when the city was bustling with new arrivals seeking gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Mr. Strauss found his own fortune by making durable denim pants for miners, and his company is still synonymous with bluejeans today.Mr. Lurie’s mother, Mimi Haas, is a billionaire. His father, Rabbi Brian Lurie, was the executive director of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. Daniel Lurie is living in Potrero Hill temporarily while his house in Pacific Heights, the wealthy residential area where he grew up, is being renovated.Defeating an incumbent mayor in San Francisco is rarer than a fog-free day in summer; it last happened 28 years ago, when Willie Brown beat Frank Jordan, a former police chief. Unlike Mr. Lurie, Mr. Brown entered that race with extraordinary name recognition, having served as speaker of the California State Assembly for nearly 15 years.Even so, Mayor Breed appears vulnerable as the November 2024 election approaches. While San Francisco residents fiercely defend their city against critics, few are sticking up for her. In poll after poll, city residents have said the city is on the wrong track and that Breed is mishandling the city’s recovery from the pandemic. Her approval ratings hover at about 33 percent.Mr. Lurie joins a mayoral field that so far has just one other challenger: Ahsha Safaí, a San Francisco supervisor and a Democrat, who has centered his campaign on addressing retail theft and expanding the number of police officers. San Francisco will hold one nonpartisan contest for mayor next year, using a system that allows voters to rank their preferred candidates in order. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the ranked order would determine the winner and avoid a runoff.San Francisco voters have been in a foul mood. In 2022, they recalled Chesa Boudin, the district attorney, and three members of the school board. Local political consultants said that Ms. Breed was at risk, but that Mr. Lurie will have to overcome progressive voters’ skepticism toward a wealthy candidate, as well as a lack of experience.“He hasn’t gained traction with even the business community as a strong leader who actually has the know-how and spine to shake things up,” said Jim Stearns, a San Francisco political consultant who has worked on past San Francisco campaigns but is not involved in the mayoral race.Mr. Lurie said that he wants to use his privilege to help the city — and that he would ensure that his administration is as ethnically diverse as the city itself.Asked to name the mayor he most admires, Mr. Lurie pointed to Mr. Brown of San Francisco and to Michael Bloomberg of New York City, both known for their pro-business, moderate politics.“Whatever you think of them, they got stuff done,” Mr. Lurie said. “I am bullish on San Francisco, and I’m looking forward to helping put this city back on the right track.” More

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      Jim McGreevey, Who Quit Politics Amid Scandal, Eyes a New Job: Mayor

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      Jim McGreevey, New Jersey’s 52nd governor, resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair with a male employee. Now he is preparing for a political comeback.James E. McGreevey, a former New Jersey governor who resigned two decades ago in scandal, has built his career on reinvention. So much so that when he enters a classroom filled with newly freed felons hoping to make the most of their own second chance, they are not sure what to call him.“Governor!” the instructor bellows.“Jim — come on, guys — it’s just Jim!” he counters affably as he fist-bumps several men enrolled in a post-prison career training program he founded and now leads as executive director.Mr. McGreevey, 66, has tried on other titles since he quit politics in 2004 after announcing to his second wife and to the world that he was gay and had had an affair with a man who worked for him.Mr. McGreevey resigned as governor in 2004 after admitting he had had an extramarital affair with a man who worked for him.Associated PressHe published a book, “The Confession,” and starred in a documentary produced by Alexandra Pelosi, a daughter of the former House speaker. He earned a master’s degree in divinity. He had hoped to be ordained an Episcopal priest, but amid the fallout of his bitter divorce the church turned him down.And now Mr. McGreevey, a Democrat who once was thought to have the White House in his sights, is making plans to do what he had said he would not: re-enter politics.Over the past several months, Mr. McGreevey has begun cobbling together support for an expected run for mayor of Jersey City, the state’s second-largest city, where he has lived for eight years.Minutes from New York and teeming with progressive newcomers, Jersey City enjoys a prominent place in regional lore, filled with immigrants, innovation and working-class brio. But it is also 63 miles away from the State House and its attendant power and trappings.Mr. McGreevey, who was born in Jersey City, says he has no problem with the perceived downgrade in prestige.“Being governor is so much about the budget, the dollar,” he reasoned during an interview at the job training center in Kearny, N.J., run by his current employer, the New Jersey Reentry Corporation. “Being mayor is about building strong communities.”He added, “It’s also a worthy place to put my energies, to hopefully do some good.”He expects to make a final decision before Thanksgiving.“I’m getting closer to making that decision in the affirmative,” he said.At least three other Jersey City Democratic leaders are also seriously considering vying for the job. The current mayor, Steven Fulop, who is running for governor, does not intend to run for re-election. But the contest is not until November 2025, setting up a two-year runway in which anything might happen.“I could be dead by then,” said Gerald McCann, 73, a former Jersey City mayor now advising Mr. McGreevey.Still, few would dispute that Mr. McGreevey is winning the race for buzz and institutional support among key power brokers in Hudson County.Nine of the county’s 12 mayors have publicly endorsed his candidacy. A recent fund-raiser for a nonprofit civic organization named for his parents, who, he stressed, were raised in Jersey City, drew labor leaders and local and state officials. And on Saturday he is convening the first of what he calls “listening sessions.”On a recent morning, he wandered the halls of the training center with the confidence of a school principal and the lively gait of a St. Patrick’s Day parade grand marshal. He was eager to discuss the state-funded program in minute detail, including the 268,402 pounds of food it has provided this year to clients, the role of the on-site chaplain and the facility’s free medical and dental services.His phone rang during the interview, and he answered it cheerfully. It was a young detainee at a state psychiatric facility who had been assigned to him as part of the client caseload he maintains, even as executive director. He listened patiently and asked if the man had read the book he shared, “Band of Brothers.”It is his work with current and former prisoners and the insight it has offered about their lack of educational and workplace preparedness, and the realities of the impoverished communities they return home to, that most guides his current ambition, he said.“My sense is Jersey City is at a tipping point, and it ought to be affordable for those families that have lived in the city for three or four generations,” he said.“I had a second chance, too,” Mr. McGreevey told students enrolled in a career training program at the New Jersey Re-entry Corporation. “We believe in a God of second chances.”Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesFans of Mr. McGreevey’s candidacy cite his decades of government experience. Before being elected governor, he was an assemblyman, state senator and mayor of Woodbridge, a sprawling suburban township in central New Jersey.Mr. McGreevey’s 21-year-old daughter, Jacqueline, who, with her older half sister, Morag, grew up in the shadow of their father’s spectacular crash-landing from politics, said part of her wishes he would remain out of the limelight.“I genuinely think that he would do a lot of good for a lot of people,” she said between classes at Barnard College, “so it feels kind of selfish to not want him to pursue it.”“My dad always says, ‘Do the next right thing,’ ” she said, “whether it means study for the next test or help the next person.”“This seems to be kind of a natural progression of where he’s been,” she added, “and what he wants to do.”Whatever happens, Mr. McGreevey said he does not see the job as a steppingstone.“I’m walking down the hill,” he said. “This is it.”Jersey City’s mayoral elections are nonpartisan, a detail that diminishes the ability of county political bosses to design the ballot to all but guarantee a win for their handpicked candidates, as occurs in many other places in New Jersey.Mr. Fulop, who did not have the backing of the county Democratic Party when he was first elected mayor, has not commented on Mr. McGreevey’s potential candidacy. The two have a fraught history: Mr. McGreevey was fired from a job in Jersey City in 2019 after Mr. Fulop and his aides suggested the former governor had misallocated funds, a claim Mr. McGreevey said was untrue and was disproved by independent audits.Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop, is competing for the Democratic nomination for governor and has said that he will not seek re-election to a fourth term in City Hall.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesThe mayor of Union City, N.J., a powerful county leader, was first to champion Mr. McGreevey’s candidacy, generating a cascade of early institutional support.But two possible Democratic opponents, William O’Dea, a county commissioner, and James Solomon, a city councilman, argued that this outside support, while helpful for fund-raising, could also backfire.“It’s creating this overarching question: ‘Why are these folks who have nothing to do with our city imposing their will on our city?’ ” said Mr. O’Dea, who also held a political fund-raiser this week.Mr. Solomon said voters were savvy enough to think for themselves.“I haven’t met a voter in Jersey City who is concerned with the opinions of power brokers outside of Jersey City,” Mr. Solomon said. “They’re concerned about rents going through the roof and political cronies stealing their tax dollars. They’re going to vote for the candidate who can make their life better.”Politics is not the only community Mr. McGreevey has returned to.After years as an Episcopalian, he has rejoined the Roman Catholic Church, unable to walk away for good from the faith that shaped him as a child and younger man.He attends Mass regularly at Christ the King, a predominantly African American congregation in Jersey City, parishioners say. He is friendly and contributes to the upkeep of the parish. His homosexuality, which the catechism of the Catholic church does not approve of, is not an issue, they say.“We accept him. He accepts us,” said Ann Warren, 63, the parish business administrator.Still, in a city where more than 75 percent of residents are nonwhite, Ms. Warren said the concerted push by county leaders to “recycle their buddies” and put him at the front of the line smacks of the “hypocrisy of the Democratic Party.”Joyce E. Watterman, the first Black woman to serve as City Council president in Jersey City, is among the three likely mayoral candidates pushed to the side as Mr. McGreevey was elevated.“It’s like, ‘We’re all for minorities and blah, blah, blah,” said Ms. Warren, a lifelong resident of Jersey City.“But we’re not willing to invest the funds to put them in positions that matter. It’s just the same old boy network.” More