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      How a Sham Candidate Helped Flip a Florida Election

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      The candidate and the man who prosecutors say recruited him to play spoiler in a Florida Senate race last year were both arrested this week.MIAMI — The recruitment of the sham candidate began with a Facebook message at around 4 a.m. on May 15, 2020. “Call me,” a Florida legislator turned lobbyist wrote to an old friend. “I have a question for you.”Later that day, former State Senator Frank Artiles, a Republican, asked Alexis Pedro Rodriguez by phone whether he still owned a home in the suburban Miami village of Palmetto Bay. Because in that case, Mr. Artiles wanted something else: to put his friend’s property and last name to use in the upcoming election.The incumbent Democrat, State Senator José Javier Rodríguez, was on the ballot. And Mr. Artiles, a crafty political operator with a dubious reputation, had a plan: to plant his friend as a candidate and siphon off votes that could defeat Senator Rodríguez.The plan worked, setting off one of Florida’s most brazen electoral scandals in years — even by the heady standards of a state that has long been fertile ground for political scammers. What is still uncertain is how broad the scandal is, whether it had touched other races and whether it was part of an organized effort by Republicans or an interest group to sway legislative races.Mr. Rodriguez, a machine-parts dealer who had been struggling financially, agreed to help Mr. Artiles, who promised him $50,000 in return. He switched from Republican to no party affiliation and qualified for the ballot as Alex Rodriguez. He did not disclose that he actually lived far from the district, in Boca Raton, or that the money for his candidacy came from Mr. Artiles.In November, Senator Rodríguez, an effective legislator who had crusaded for Florida to face the climate change crisis, lost to the Republican challenger, Ileana Garcia, by a mere 32 votes out of more than 215,000 that had been cast. Alex Rodriguez had received 6,382 votes and played the spoiler.It was a devastating loss for Florida Democrats in a year of Republican successes in the state. It was also the result of criminal behavior, prosecutors say.On Thursday, Mr. Artiles, 47, and Mr. Rodriguez, 55, turned themselves in for arrest. They were each charged with three third-degree felony charges related to violating campaign finance law, including for conspiracy to make campaign contributions in excess of legal limits, making those excess contributions and false swearing in connection to an election.Mr. Artiles declined to comment to a scrum of reporters who chased him out of jail on Thursday once he posted a $5,000 bond. “This will be decided in the courts, thank you,” he said.His lawyer, Greg Chonillo, said in a statement on Friday that his client, whose home was raided by investigators on Wednesday, had been cooperative with prosecutors “throughout the course of this investigation.”“We will be investigating this matter fully and zealously, representing our client in court against these charges,” Mr. Chonillo said.Mr. Artiles planned to use Alex Rodriguez as a candidate that would siphon votes away from State Senator José Javier Rodríguez, causing him to lose.Steve Cannon/Associated PressThe story of how Mr. Artiles plotted the scheme, according to the arrest documents, is a classic South Florida racket complete with the sale of a nonexistent Range Rover and wads of cash stored in a home safe.But it leaves unanswered the questions of where the money for the scheme came from — the Republican Senate president said the party had nothing to do with it — and whether the funds were tied to secretive dark money that oozed through two other State Senate races last year. Republicans have controlled the state government for more than two decades.On Friday, Democrats called for campaign finance reform — and for the resignation of Ms. Garcia so that a new election could be held. “Her victory is clearly tainted,” said Manny Diaz, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party.Prosecutors said they had found no ties between her and the scheme by Mr. Artiles and Mr. Rodriguez. On Friday, State Senator Wilton Simpson, the state’s Senate president, issued a joint statement with Ms. Garcia saying that they “support the ongoing efforts of law enforcement.”“Senator Garcia has the full support of President Simpson as she continues to serve her constituents,” the statement said.South Florida has an ignominious history of political and electoral shenanigans, both high profile — fraud that was so rampant in a Miami mayoral election in 1997 that a judge threw out the results — and low rent, such as small-time brokers getting caught unlawfully harvesting absentee ballots.In 2012, former Representative David Rivera, a Republican, was involved in a shadow campaign to try to hurt the electoral chances of his Democratic rival, Joe Garcia. The recruited candidate and Mr. Rivera’s ex-girlfriend, who acted as a go-between, wound up in jail. Mr. Rivera, who was never charged, last month was ordered to pay the Federal Election Commission a $456,000 fine.On Thursday, Katherine Fernández Rundle, the state attorney for Miami-Dade County, a Democrat, noted that recruiting a sham candidate to deliberately influence an election was not illegal, unless the candidate was also secretly financed.“Is it an attack on our democracy? Is it a dirty political trick?” she said. “Absolutely.”At the center of the latest scandal is Mr. Artiles (pronounced are-TEE-less), who before his arrest this week was perhaps best known in Tallahassee, the state’s capital, for resigning from the Senate in 2017, after he cursed at and used a racist slur before a group of Black lawmakers. His political committee had spent money on “consultants” who were models from Hooters and Playboy without any campaign experience. He once denied punching a college student at a bar near the Capitol.His involvement in recruiting the sham candidate for the Senate District 37 race last year became public in December, when The Miami Herald reported that Mr. Artiles had boasted about planting Mr. Rodriguez on the ballot to a crowd at an election night party held at an Irish pub in Seminole County. “That is me, that was all me,” The Herald quoted Mr. Artiles as saying, citing an anonymous source who was present.Employees and campaign observers working on a manual recount for Florida’s Senate District 37 election between Ileana Garcia and José Javier Rodríguez, at the Miami-Dade Elections Department in November.David Santiago/Miami Herald, via Associated PressThe furor around Mr. Rodriguez’s suspicious candidacy had begun after Election Day, when the results separating Senator Rodríguez and Ms. Garcia, a founder of the group Latinas for Trump, were so tight that they led to a manual recount.Local reporters in Tallahassee, Orlando and Miami found that Mr. Rodriguez along with two mysterious under-the-radar candidates in two other Senate races, one in the Miami area and one in Seminole County, were all likely plants. (Results in the other races were not close.)Politico Florida tied the three candidates to dark money from two political committees that had sent hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of attack fliers to voters during the campaign. The only donor reported was an entity that listed a UPS box in Atlanta as its mailing address. The committees amended their financial reports after Election Day, changing the source of the money to a different donor, this time in Colorado.Investigators with Miami-Dade County’s public corruption investigations unit began sniffing around on Nov. 11, eight days after the election.“It was suspicious that Rodriguez did not appear to have actively campaigned,” Detective Eutimio Cepero of the Miami Police Department wrote in one of the arrest documents. “Additionally, it was learned that political committees were spending money in support of Rodriguez’s candidacy, even though Rodriguez did not actively campaign.”Investigators found that Mr. Artiles ultimately paid $44,708 to Mr. Rodriguez in violation of the state’s $1,000 campaign contribution limit for legislative races. The payments came in various forms, including payments of $3,000 and then $5,000 that Mr. Artiles had stored in his home safe and recorded in a ledger on his desk as well as $2,400 that Mr. Artiles had wired to Mr. Rodriguez’s landlord.There was much distrust between Mr. Artiles and Mr. Rodriguez, who told investigators he thought Mr. Artiles would not come through with the money he had promised him. At one point, when Mr. Artiles was looking for a used Range Rover to buy his daughter, Mr. Rodriguez concocted a story about finding one in Jacksonville for $10,900. Mr. Artiles paid Mr. Rodriguez for the car, even though it did not exist. (That money was not considered by prosecutors as part of Mr. Artiles’s payments to Mr. Rodriguez for his candidacy.)But where Mr. Artiles got so much cash is still unknown.“Frank Artiles is not a lone wolf,” said William R. Barzee, a lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez. “Over half a million dollars was spent by political operatives working in the shadows to prop up ghost candidates in three separate Senate races, all in one cycle. This was a well-thought-out, calculated and coordinated plan to steal Senate seats throughout Florida.”The “greatest beneficiary of these actions,” Mr. Barzee added, “is the Republican Party of Florida.”Mr. Simpson, the Senate president who ran the Republican Senate campaigns in 2020, has said that he had nothing to do with the effort. “I think we don’t have all the facts,” he told reporters in Tallahassee on Thursday. “We’re learning what you’re learning as you report it.”“I hope this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said former State Representative Juan-Carlos Planas, known as J.C., who was Senator Rodríguez’s lawyer during the recount and who himself once fought a candidate who had been planted against him: his second cousin, who appeared on the Republican primary ballot as Juan E. “J.P.” Planas.Senator Rodríguez, 42, lamented that weak enforcement mechanisms continue to allow questionable candidates to make it on the ballot.“It’s a shame that it has to reach this level of criminality for there to be any kind of consequence, because this is not the first time these types of schemes have been put together,” he said. “But this is the Wild West here in Florida.” More

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      Can Andrew Cuomo Continue to Lead?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyCan Andrew Cuomo Continue to Lead?The governor has lost his political allies and the public’s confidence.The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.March 13, 2021Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesFew political families have had more of an impact on New York politics than the Cuomos. Father and firstborn son both had public service woven deep in their DNA, and both developed a reputation for toughness in service of the common good and their own political ambitions.When we endorsed Andrew Cuomo for another term as governor in 2018, we noted that he was “strategic and at times bullying in his use of power, driven and maddeningly evasive.” Supporters and critics, we wrote, agree that Mr. Cuomo is “a formidable political animal.”There is a lot Mr. Cuomo can be proud of. The governor used his considerable political talents to great effect. He persuaded the State Legislature to legalize same-sex marriage, pass strong gun-control legislation and raise the minimum wage, and he saw New York through several crises, from Superstorm Sandy in 2012 to the coronavirus pandemic. Few people understand how to make government work as Mr. Cuomo does.But those same traits translated into a ruthlessness and power that Mr. Cuomo failed to control. Several female staffers have come forward with accounts of sexual misconduct and harassment. These allegations are under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James and the State Assembly. Mr. Cuomo says he is confident that investigations will clear his name.Undergirding these specific accusations is the widespread description of his administration by many former aides as a toxic workplace in which Mr. Cuomo and others ruled by fear and emotional abuse — and drew women whom Mr. Cuomo saw as attractive closer into his orbit, actively encouraging them to wear heels and dress in tightfitting clothing whenever he was around. In New York politics, Mr. Cuomo’s bullying style was an open secret. But the public caught only a glimpse of the dangers of Mr. Cuomo’s behavior recently.It is always preferable to let official investigations run their course, to establish evidence from accusation. If crimes were committed, they should be fairly adjudicated. But the question of the governor’s continued fitness for office is about more than a criminal matter, with different standards.The reality is that Mr. Cuomo has now lost the support of his party and his governing partners. The Democrats who control the State Legislature appear willing to impeach him, to say nothing of the Republicans. New York’s congressional delegation and city leaders, key to his base, have called on him to resign.Voters, who returned him easily to office, will not have their say until the next election, should he decide to run for re-election.The governor has jeopardized the public’s trust at the worst possible moment. The state is facing the hard and urgent task of vaccinating millions of people and recovering from a pandemic that has killed nearly 50,000 of its residents, sickened hundreds of thousands more and devastated the economy.Mr. Cuomo, unsurprisingly to anyone who knows him, brushed off calls to step down and railed against what he called “cancel culture.” Asked whether he had a consensual relationship with any of the women who have come forward, Mr. Cuomo dodged: “I have not had a sexual relationship that was inappropriate. Period.”What the governor failed to grasp during his news conference on Friday was that he owes the public a far more robust explanation for the slew of credible harassment complaints against him, as well as an articulation of why the public should give him their trust.At this point, it is hard to see how Mr. Cuomo can continue to do the public’s important business without political allies or public confidence.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State Blue

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      Credit…June ParkSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionStacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State BlueIt may take 10 years. Do it anyway.Credit…June ParkSupported byContinue reading the main storyStacey Abrams and Ms. Abrams was the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia in 2018. Ms. Groh-Wargo was her campaign manager. They opened Fair Fight Action in late 2018.Feb. 11, 2021We met and became political partners a decade ago, uniting in a bid to stave off Democratic obsolescence and rebuild a party that would increase the clout of regular, struggling Georgians. Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.That’s not all we had to contend with. There was also a 2010 census undercount of people of color, a looming Republican gerrymander of legislative maps and a new Democratic president midway into his first term confronting a holdover crisis from the previous Republican administration. Though little in modern American history compares with the malice and ineptitude of the botched pandemic response or the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, the dynamic of a potentially inaccurate census and imminent partisan redistricting is the same story facing Democrats in 2021 as it was in 2011. State leaders and activists we know across the country who face total or partial Republican control are wondering which path they should take in their own states now — and deep into the next decade.Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state. As the world knows, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in November, and the January runoff elections for two Senate seats secured full congressional control for the Democratic Party. Yet the result wasn’t a miracle or truly a surprise, at least not to us. Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should. The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity.We realize that many people are thinking about Stacey’s political future, but right now we intend to talk about the unglamorous, tedious, sometimes technical, often contentious work that creates a battleground state. When fully embraced, this work delivers wins — whether or not Donald Trump is on the ballot — as the growth Georgia Democrats have seen in cycle after cycle shows. Even in tough election years, we have witnessed the power of civic engagement on policy issues and increases in Democratic performance. This combination of improvements has also resulted in steady gains in local races and state legislative races, along with the continued narrowing of the statewide loss margin in election after election that finally flipped the state in 2020 and 2021.The task is hard, the progress can feel slow, and winning sometimes means losing better. In 2012, for example, we prevented the Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the Georgia House of Representatives, which would have allowed them to pass virtually any bill they wanted. We won four seats they had drawn for themselves, and in 2014 we maintained those gains — just holding our ground was a victory.The steps toward victory are straightforward: understand your weaknesses, organize with your allies, shore up your political infrastructure and focus on the long game. Georgia’s transformation is worth celebrating, and how it came to be is a long and complicated story, which required more than simply energizing a new coterie of voters. What Georgia Democrats and progressives accomplished here — and what is happening in Arizona and North Carolina — can be exported to the rest of the Sun Belt and the Midwest, but only if we understand how we got here.Understand why you’re losing.To know how to win, we first had to understand why a century of Democratic Party dominance in Georgia had been erased. For most of the 20th century, Georgia Democrats had existed in a strained alliance of rural conservatives, urban liberals and suburbanites, all unconvinced that voting Republican would serve their ends. After serving as the incubator of the Gingrich revolution in the early 1990s, Georgia turned sharply to the right. When Democrats lost U.S. Senate seats in 2002 and 2004, as well as the governorship in 2002, it showed that former conservative Democrats had fully turned Republican. The Democratic Party lost its grip on power. By 2010, Democrats were losing every statewide race, and in 2012 the State Senate fell to a Republican supermajority. Clearly, Democrats had to change tactics. More

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      Why Pennsylvania Republican Leaders Are All-In for Trump More Than Ever

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Pennsylvania Republican Leaders Are All-In for Trump More Than EverPennsylvania G.O.P. leaders have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party, and would-be candidates are jockeying to prove they fought the hardest for him.Representative Scott Perry in December with members of the House Freedom Caucus who were asking that Bill Barr, the attorney general, release findings of investigation into allegations of 2020 election fraud.Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesJan. 28, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAs a second impeachment trial for Donald J. Trump approaches next month, Republicans in states across the country are lining up behind the former president with unwavering support.Perhaps no state has demonstrated its fealty as tenaciously as Pennsylvania, where Republican officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep Trumpism at the center of their message as they bolster the president’s false claims of a “stolen” election.Eight of nine Republicans in Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation voted to throw out their state’s own electoral votes for President Biden on Jan. 6, just hours after a mob had stormed the Capitol.A majority of Republicans in the state legislature had endorsed that effort.And one House member from the state, Scott Perry, was instrumental in promoting a plan in which Mr. Trump would fire the acting attorney general in an effort to stay in office.In the weeks since the Nov. 3 election, Republicans in Pennsylvania have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party, the latest chapter in a rightward populist march repeated across other states. As elsewhere, the Pennsylvania G.O.P. was once led by mainstream conservatives, but it is now defined almost exclusively by Trumpism. It faces major statewide races in 2022, for offices including governor and the Senate, with an electorate that just rejected Mr. Trump in favor of Mr. Biden.Far from engaging in self-examination, Pennsylvania Republicans are already jockeying ahead of the 2022 primaries to prove that they fought the hardest for Mr. Trump, who, in spite of the losses by his party in the White House, the Senate and the House, still exerts a strong grip over elected Republicans and grass-roots voters.As the Republican base has shifted — suburbanites leaning more Democratic, and rural white voters lining up behind Republicans over culture-war issues — G.O.P. leaders recognize the extent to which the former president unleashed waves of support for their party. In Pennsylvania, just as in some Midwestern states, a surge of new Republican voters with grievances about a changing America was triggered by Mr. Trump, and only Mr. Trump.Supporters of President Trump marched outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in December as state electors met to cast their Electoral College votes.Credit…Mark Makela for The New York Times“Donald Trump’s presidency and his popularity has been a big win for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania,” said Rob Gleason, a former chair of the state G.O.P. Even though numerous state and federal courts rejected the Trump campaign’s baseless claims of voter fraud, Mr. Gleason said the belief that the voting was rigged “lingers in the minds of a lot of people.”He predicted it would drive Republican turnout in upcoming races. He said he had met this week with a prosecutor who “feels the election was stolen” and was pondering a run for a statewide judgeship this year.Other Republicans are more skeptical that lock-step support of the former president is the best path forward in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state that is likely to be up for grabs in the next several election cycles.“We have become, over four years, the party of Trump, and it has been one test after the other,” said Ryan Costello, a former G.O.P. House member from the Philadelphia suburbs who has been critical of Mr. Trump and is exploring a run for Senate. “It is not a sustainable growth strategy to double and triple and quadruple down on Trump when he gets divisive.”Despite Mr. Costello’s apprehension, most Republicans thought to be mulling runs for Senate or governor have made it clear that they are prepared to pass a Trump loyalty test.They include members of the Republican congressional delegation, hard-line members of the legislature, and even Donald Trump Jr. The president’s oldest son is the subject of persistent rumors that he will run for high office in the state — mostly because of his ties to Pennsylvania, where he went to prep school and college. The Trump family spent an enormous amount of time campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2020, and as it seeks its next political stage, the state remains a big one.The transformation of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania has been stark. Less than two decades ago, it was led by political centrists such as former Senator Arlen Specter and former Gov. Tom Ridge, who became the first secretary of homeland security.Now it is embodied by Mr. Perry, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus who won a fifth term in November for his Harrisburg-area seat. His Democratic opponent, Eugene DePasquale, said he lost the race “fair and square.” But he called the Republican congressman’s efforts on behalf of Mr. Trump in a scheme involving the Justice Department “a radical attempt to overthrow the election.”Demonstrators with a cut-out replica of former Mr. Trump outside the Pennsylvania Capitol this moth.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMr. Perry, a purveyor of misinformation about the presidential election, acknowledged on Monday his role in introducing Mr. Trump to an official in the Justice Department. That official, Jeffrey Clark, was willing to abet Mr. Trump in pressing Georgia to invalidate its electoral votes for Mr. Biden.The plan never unfolded. But Mr. Perry, a retired National Guard general who dodged the new metal detectors in the Capitol, rejected calls by Democrats to resign.Just as resolute in their defense of Mr. Trump were the other Pennsylvania House Republicans who voted to reject the state’s electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6. Representative Conor Lamb, a Democrat from western Pennsylvania, said on the House floor that his Republican colleagues should be “ashamed of themselves” for spreading lies that led to the breach of the Capitol. His impassioned speech nearly precipitated a fistfight.“The Trump people were putting out a message: ‘We better see you publicly fighting for us,’” Mr. Lamb said in an interview this week. “The 2022 midterm is shaping up to be choosing the candidate who loves Trump the most,” he said of G.O.P. primary contests.But he called that an opportunity for Democrats to talk about issues affecting people’s lives, such as the economy and the pandemic, while Republicans remain fixated on the 2020 election. “They’re making their main political argument at this point based on a fraud; they’re not making it based on real-world conditions,” he said. “The election was not stolen. Biden really beat Trump.”Mr. Lamb, who has won three races in districts that voted for Mr. Trump, has been mentioned as a contender for the open Senate seat. “I would say I will be thinking about it,” he said.Apart from the House delegation, much of the Trumpist takeover in Pennsylvania has occurred in the legislature, where Republicans held their majorities in both chambers in November (a result that the party fails to mention in its vehement claims of election fraud in the presidential race).In contrast to states such as Georgia and Arizona, where top Republican officials debunked disinformation from Mr. Trump and his allies, in Pennsylvania no senior Republicans in Harrisburg pushed back on false claims about election results, some of them created by lawmakers themselves or by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.A majority of Republicans in the General Assembly urged the state’s congressional delegation in December to reject the state’s 20 electoral votes for Mr. Biden after the results were legally certified. Such was the pressure from grass-roots Trump supporters that the majority leader of the State Senate, Kim Ward, said in an interview last month that if she refused to sign on to such an effort, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”The full embrace of Mr. Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election followed months of Republican lawmakers’ echoing his dismissals of the coronavirus threat. Lawmakers who appeared at “ReOpen PA” rallies in Harrisburg in May, flouting masks and limits on crowd sizes, morphed into leading purveyors of disinformation about election fraud after Nov. 3.One state senator, Doug Mastriano, who is widely believed to be considering a run for governor, paid for buses and offered rides to the “Save America” protests in Washington on Jan. 6 that preceded the breach of the Capitol. Mr. Mastriano has said he left before events turned violent.State Senator Doug Mastriano with supporters of Mr. Trump outside the Pennsylvania Capitol in November.Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated PressAs the legislature convened its 2021 session, Republicans recommitted to a hard-line agenda. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, was removed by the Republican majority as president of the State Senate at a legislative session on Jan. 5. Mr. Fetterman had strenuously objected to Republicans’ refusal to seat a Democratic lawmaker whose narrow victory had been officially certified.Republicans in the State House are seeking to change how judges are elected to ensure a Republican majority on the State Supreme Court, after the current court, with a Democratic lean, ruled against claims in election fraud cases last year.Republican lawmakers have also plunged into a lengthy examination of the November election, even though no evidence of more than trivial fraud has surfaced, and courts rejected claims that election officials overstepped their legal mandates.Republicans announced 14 hearings in the House. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, was grilled in the first one last week. Dismissing the series of hearings as a “charade,” she called on Republicans not to sow further distrust in the integrity of the state’s election, which drew a record 71 percent turnout despite a pandemic.“We need to stand together as Americans,” Ms. Boockvar said in an interview, “and tell the voters these were lies, that your votes counted, they were checked, they were audited, they were recounted many places, and the numbers added up and they were certified.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      In Minnesota, a G.O.P. Lawmaker’s Death Brings Home the Reality of Covid

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Minnesota, a G.O.P. Lawmaker’s Death Brings Home the Reality of CovidMinnesota Republicans celebrated election victories with a gala party. A state senator’s death from Covid-19 underlined the consequences of the G.O.P.’s rejection of health experts’ guidance.Dana Relph’s father, State Senator Jerry Relph of Minnesota, died from Covid-19 after attending a celebratory dinner with other Republicans following Election Day. Credit…Caroline Yang for The New York TimesJan. 18, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETRepublicans in the Minnesota State Senate were feeling jubilant after the November election. They had held onto a slim majority following an onslaught by Democrats trying to win control. Now, it was time to party.More than 100 senators, their spouses and their staff members gathered for a celebratory dinner at a catering hall outside the Twin Cities on Nov. 5, two days after Election Day. Masks were offered to guests on arrival, but there was little mask wearing over hours of dining and drinking, at a moment when a long-predicted surge in coronavirus infections was gripping the state.At least four senators in attendance tested positive for Covid-19 in the days that followed. One was the Republican majority leader, Paul Gazelka, the state’s most outspoken opponent of mask mandates and shutdown orders during the pandemic. He compared his symptoms to a “moderate flu” and recovered. So did two other senators who had tested positive after the dinner.“Our future cannot be prolonged isolation, face coverings and limited activities,” Mr. Gazelka said defiantly in announcing his positive test.The fourth was Senator Jerry Relph, a Vietnam veteran and grandfather from St. Cloud, Minn. Struggling to breathe after testing positive for the coronavirus, he was admitted to a hospital in mid-November. He died on Dec. 18, at age 76.His daughter Dana Relph, who watched her father fight the disease as well as the cruel isolation it forces on patients and families, is still furious at Republican leaders for holding the dinner and the refusal of Mr. Gazelka to take responsibility.Mr. Relph died on Dec. 18 after being admitted to a hospital in mid-November.Credit…Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune, via Associated Press“Why are you throwing a party with 100-plus people in the middle of a pandemic?” said Ms. Relph, 44, who was not allowed to visit her father until the day he died. “Why would you choose to do that when we know people are going to be eating and drinking and taking their masks off, where their inhibitions will be lowered? Why would you even consider that responsible behavior?”Mr. Gazelka declined an interview request, and a spokeswoman said he would not respond to Ms. Relph “out of respect for privacy requested from the family.”Ten months into the coronavirus crisis, the ongoing Republican resistance to mask wearing and social distancing is a striking political phenomenon: G.O.P. officials have abetted the spread of the virus to friends and colleagues, even fatally so, because they don’t take the science seriously.Four Democratic members of Congress tested positive this month after being in lockdown at the Capitol on Jan. 6 with Republicans who refused to wear masks. Luke Letlow, just elected to Congress as a freshman Republican from Louisiana, died of Covid-19 in December, days before he was to be sworn in. According to the election data site Ballotpedia, six state lawmakers have died from Covid-19, including the speaker of the New Hampshire State House and a Virginia state senator who succumbed on New Year’s Day. All six were Republicans.G.O.P. officials and voters have amplified President Trump’s misinformation about risk factors. After two packed campaign rallies in Minnesota for the president over the summer, defying state orders and federal guidelines, coronavirus cases spiked in the surrounding counties.And while Republicans insist that their freedom was at issue in refusing to wear masks or enforce mandates, such events and the death of Mr. Relph raise urgent questions as to where individual “freedom” ends and where responsibility to others begins in a pandemic during which breathing shared air can be fatal.“It’s ironic that Senator Gazelka, as majority leader, was always the person most outspoken in opposing the governor’s emergency order and would state to us over and over again that Minnesotans would do the responsible thing,” said Richard Cohen, a Democrat who retired from the Legislature last month. “And now it is alleged that because of a caucus event, where apparently many people were not wearing masks, a caucus member became ill and then passed away.”An owner of the catering hall, John Schiltz, said that his servers had worn masks and gloves throughout that evening, and that none had later tested positive. Although masks were offered to guests, state guidelines at the time allowed them to be removed at tables.Mr. Schiltz said the dinner was the only event any group had booked at his venue in November before he had to close on Nov. 20. As of that date, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, restricted bars and restaurants to takeout and delivery service only amid a surge in virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.Paul Gazelka, the leader of the Republican majority in the Minnesota State Senate, spoke outside the State Capitol in October.Credit…Leila Navidi/Star Tribune, via Associated PressPressed about the dinner in a radio interview in late November, Mr. Gazelka, 61, who is reported to be considering a run for governor, said he had no regrets.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      The Georgia Runoffs, Part 1: ‘We Are Black Diamonds’

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      @media (min-width: 1024px) {
      .nytslm_outerContainer {
      margin-bottom: 0px;
      padding: 13px 1.25em 10px;
      }
      }

      .nytslm::-webkit-scrollbar {
      display: none;
      /* Safari and Chrome */
      }

      .nytslm_innerContainer {
      margin: unset;
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
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      @media (min-width: 600px) {
      .nytslm_innerContainer {
      margin: auto;
      min-width: 600px;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_title {
      padding-right: 1em;
      border-right: 1px solid #ccc;
      }

      @media (min-width: 740px) {
      .nytslm_title {
      max-width: none;
      font-size: 1.0625rem;
      line-height: 1.25rem;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_spacer {
      width: 0;
      border-right: 1px solid #E2E2E2;
      height: 45px;
      margin: 0 1.4em;
      }

      .nytslm_list {
      font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
      display: flex;
      width: auto;
      list-style: none;
      padding-left: 1em;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      align-items: baseline;
      justify-content: center;
      }

      .nytslm_li {
      margin-right: 1.4em;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      font-size: 0.8125rem;
      line-height: 0.8125rem;
      font-weight: 600;
      padding: 1em 0;
      }

      #nytslm .nytslm_li a {
      color: #121212;
      text-decoration: none;
      }

      #nytslm .nytsmenu_li_current,
      #nytslm .nytslm_li a:hover,
      #nytslm .nytslm_li a:active,
      #nytslm .nytslm_li a:focus {
      color: #121212;
      border-bottom: 2px solid #121212;
      padding-bottom: 2px;
      }

      .nytslm_li_live_loud:after {
      content: ‘LIVE’
      }

      .nytslm_li_live_loud {
      background-color: #d0021b;
      color: white;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 6px 2px 6px;
      margin-right: 2px;
      display: inline-block;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      .nytslm_li_upcoming_loud {
      border: 1px solid #d0021b;
      color: #d0021b;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 6px 2px 6px;
      margin-right: 2px;
      display: inline-block;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      .nytslm_li_upcoming_loud:before {
      content: ‘Upcoming’
      }

      .nytslm_li_loud a:hover,
      .nytslm_li_loud a:active,
      .nytslm_li_loud a:focus {
      border-bottom: 2px solid;
      padding-bottom: 2px;
      }

      .nytslm_li_updated {
      color: #777;
      }

      #masthead-bar-one {
      display: none;
      }

      .electionNavbar__logoSvg {
      width: 80px;
      align-self: center;
      display: flex;
      }

      @media(min-width: 600px) {
      .electionNavbar__logoSvg {
      width: 100px;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_notification {
      border-left: 1px solid #ccc;
      font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
      padding-left: 1em;
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      .nytslm_notification_label {
      color: #D0021B;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      font-weight: 700;
      font-size: 0.6875rem;
      margin-bottom: 0.2em;
      letter-spacing: 0.02em;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_link {
      font-weight: 600;
      color: #121212;
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_headline {
      font-size: 0.875rem;
      line-height: 1.0625rem;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_wrapper {
      position: relative;
      max-width: 75px;
      margin-left: 10px;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image {
      max-width: 100%;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_live_bug {
      position: absolute;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      bottom: 7px;
      left: 2px;

      font-size: 0.5rem;
      background-color: #d0021b;
      color: white;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 4px 2px 4px;
      font-weight: 700;
      margin-right: 2px;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      }

      /* No hover state on in app */
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li a:hover,
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li_loud a:hover {
      border-bottom: none;
      padding-bottom: 0;
      }

      .Hybrid #TOP_BANNER_REGION {
      display: none;
      }

      .nytslm_st0 {
      fill: #f4564a;
      }

      .nytslm_st1 {
      fill: #ffffff;
      }

      .nytslm_st2 {
      fill: #2b8ad8;
      }

      Electoral College Results

      Election Disinformation

      Full Results

      Biden Transition Updates

      “),e+=””+b+””,e+=””,d&&(e+=””,e+=””,e+=”Live”,e+=””),e+=””,e}function getVariant(){var a=window.NYTD&&window.NYTD.Abra&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync(“STYLN_elections_notifications”);// Only actually have control situation in prd and stg
      return[“www.nytimes.com”,”www.stg.nytimes.com”].includes(window.location.hostname)||(a=”STYLN_elections_notifications”),a||”0_control”}function reportData(){if(window.dataLayer){var a;try{a=dataLayer.find(function(a){return!!a.user}).user}catch(a){}var b={abtest:{test:”styln-elections-notifications”,variant:getVariant()},module:{name:”styln-elections-notifications”,label:getVariant(),region:”TOP_BANNER”},user:a};window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-alloc”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-expose”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”impression”}))}}function insertNotification(a,b){// Bail here if the user is in control
      if(reportData(),”0_control”!==getVariant()){// Remove menu bar items or previous notification
      var c=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_innerContainer”);if(c&&1 30 * 60 * 1000) return restoreMenuIfNecessary();
      // Do not update DOM if the content won’t change
      if(currentNotificationContents!==a.text&&window.localStorage.getItem(“stylnelecs”)!==a.timestamp)// Do not show if user has interacted with this link
      // if (Cookie.get(‘stylnelecs’) === data.timestamp) return;
      {expireLocalStorage(“stylnelecs”),currentNotificationContents=a.text;// Construct URL for tracking
      var b=a.link.split(“#”),c=b[0]+”?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-notifications&variant=1_election_notifications&region=TOP_BANNER&context=Menu#”+b[1],d=formatNotification(c,a.text,a.kicker,a.image);insertNotification(d,function(){var b=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_notification_link”);return b?void(b.onclick=function(){window.localStorage.setItem(“stylnelecs”,a.timestamp)}):null})}})}(function(){navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)||window.stylnelecsHasLoaded||(// setInterval(getUpdate, 5000);
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