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    AfD Candidate Loses Race for Mayor in Nordhausen, Germany

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    Voters on Sunday rejected the candidate for the hard-line Alternative for Germany Party, which is rattling German national politics, in the race for mayor in the city of Nordhausen.With a colorless and reputedly prickly small-city mayor being challenged by a far-right candidate known for his charisma and business success, many Germans feared that the hard-line Alternative for Germany party was about to win its first City Hall.But when the ballots were counted Sunday evening, voters in the city of Nordhausen had decisively returned their mayor to office, dealing a setback to a party that has drawn on nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment to secure a firm hold in German politics.“I thought it would be much, much closer,” said an early-round mayoral candidate, Andreas Trump, who ran for the conservative Christian Democrats and did not endorse a candidate for fear of driving voters into the arms of the rightists.The election came as Alternative for Germany, which has a nationalist, anti-migrant platform, is on the rise across the country. The party, known as the AfD, won only 10 percent of the votes in the 2021 general election, but since then, it has benefited from frustration with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party government, the rising cost of living, worries about the war in Ukraine and a surge in immigration.Now, the AfD is regularly above 20 percent in national opinion polls, well ahead of Mr. Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats. In the five states that were once part of East Germany, nearly a third of voters say they back it.A question-and-answer session for AfD supporters and residents in Gera, in eastern Thuringia, in June.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesBefore the vote in Nordhausen, in which the incumbent, Mayor Kai Buchmann, was challenged by the AfD candidate, Jörg Prophet, many thought the rightists might make a significant inroad into German governance.“Nordhausen is simply swept up in the blue wave,” Thomas Müller, a former local journalist, said, referring the party’s campaign color.Still, it was unclear if Nordhausen, despite its history as an East German municipality, would topple. A quaint city of 42,000 known for its schnapps distillery, it is an exemplar of Germany’s investment in its east, with modern trams and an impeccably maintained medieval quarter.“It’s not an especially right-leaning place,” Mr. Müller said.On Sunday, 55 percent voted for Mr. Buchmann, with 45 percent voting for Mr. Prophet.Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist who studies Alternative for Germany, said that winning the mayor’s office would have represented “another important step in the AfD’s normalization strategy.”“By showing they can take on communal executive responsibility, the hard-right-wing extremist core, which is increasingly crystallizing, appears to recede into the background,” he said,Nordhausen, a city with modern trams and a well-maintained medieval quarter, is home to about 42,000 people.Ronny Hartmann/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThis summer, AfD candidates won runoffs to lead a district in southern Thuringia and a small town in another eastern state, Saxony-Anhalt. The party has also gained ground at the state level. In Thuringia, Christian Democrats recently pushed through a property tax measure with AfD votes, three years after an outcry when mainstream parties allied with the far right to briefly oust the state’s leftist governor.None of this, however, means that the AfD is abandoning its extremes.That may have proved Mr. Prophet’s undoing.In the days after the first mayoral vote in Nordhausen, he turned away from city issues and solicited the help of two prominent AfD party figures who came to give speeches. He also refused to distance himself from Björn Höcke, the party’s most famous far-right extremist.“If he had really limited himself to just the municipal issues — there’s no telling how it would have turned out,” said Mr. Trump.The AfD leader Björn Höcke, speaking at a rally in Dresden in 2020, is viewed as one of the party’s most extreme figures.Gordon Welters for The New York Times More

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      New Zealand Election: After Ardern, a ‘Scary Time’ for Women in Politics

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      Three years after Ms. Ardern won a resounding victory for her Labour Party, the nation will vote in a very different political landscape.The last time New Zealanders voted in a general election, they were choosing between two women who were self-professed feminists. Three years later, in a sign of how sharply the pendulum has swung, they will pick between two men named Chris.Ahead of next month’s polls, and 130 years after New Zealand became the first country to grant women the vote, the political landscape is in many ways unrecognizable from the era of former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose pursuit of women’s rights and gun control transformed her country’s image abroad.Issues like pay equity, child poverty and the prevention of domestic violence and harassment have seldom featured in the current campaign. Female politicians across the spectrum now say they face extraordinary abuse from a misogynistic and sometimes scary slice of the population. Some women say they did not seek office because of safety fears. The next government is likely to be significantly less diverse than the one led by Ms. Ardern, and the most conservative in a generation. Polling suggests that Ms. Ardern’s center-left Labour Party, and her successor as prime minister, Chris Hipkins, will be voted out. The current opposition leader, Christopher Luxon, of the center-right National Party, is expected to form a coalition government with Act, a libertarian party.Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis of the National Party campaigning in Auckland in June.Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images“It feels like politics here is just different,” said Michelle Duff, who wrote a biography of Ms. Ardern and lives in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. “It does feel like a scary time in politics for women — which is incredibly disappointing, when you think about how hopeful things seemed.”It is a daunting legacy for Ms. Ardern, who became a global liberal icon but whose government was criticized at home for not delivering the transformational change that it promised.After steering New Zealand through multiple crises, Ms. Ardern was re-elected in a landslide in 2020. She was lauded for her response to the coronavirus, but, eventually, public opinion soured over the country’s path to recovery from the pandemic. And even as her personal popularity remained high, her government struggled with the seemingly intractable problems of housing, inflation and rising crime.In January, Ms. Ardern said she would leave politics after five and a half years in office. “I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice,” she told reporters at the time. Since her departure, her party has stumbled. Four top ministers quit suddenly and, in some cases, dramatically, with one facing legal difficulties and another defecting to another party.Chris Hipkins, New Zealand’s prime minister, campaigning in Auckland this month.Fiona Goodall/Getty ImagesWhen Ms. Ardern formally retreated from political life in April, Heather du Plessis-Allan, a conservative political commentator in New Zealand, described her as “one of the worst” prime ministers in the country’s history and questioned whether she had accomplished anything in her tenure.“She’s left behind no achievements worth mentioning,” Ms. du Plessis-Allan wrote.Advocates for women disagree.Under Ms. Ardern, they say, New Zealand extended paid parental leave from about four months to six months, decriminalized abortion, introduced free menstruation products in schools and strengthened pay equity and domestic violence laws. Her government was the most diverse in New Zealand’s history — more than half of the lawmakers in office are women. And the world-leading response to the coronavirus pandemic spared the country the sustained lockdowns that elsewhere forced many women out of paid work to take on more child care responsibilities.“Her leadership will be a story that is just passed on and on, by women, especially,” said Marilyn Waring, a former member of the National Party. “To have been a girl child who was a feminist growing up while Jacinda Ardern was prime minister would have been incredible.”But where some saw inspiration in her “politics of kindness,” others perceived a threat.“As soon as Jacinda showed a different style of leadership which is more feminine in nature than other people have been allowed to be, there was huge pushback,” said Suzanne Manning, the president of the National Council of Women New Zealand. “It’s designed to silence women,” and some decided to stay out of politics over safety concerns, she said.Marama Davidson, the co-leader of the left-wing Green Party, has felt the change.“As a brown woman in politics, things are particularly hostile,” said Ms. Davidson, who is Māori. All her public appearances are now vetted beforehand by security personnel, she said.Marama Davidson, center, the co-leader of the left-wing Green Party, during a teachers’ strike in Wellington in March.Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesNicola Willis, the dynamic deputy leader of the National Party, who is widely expected to helm her party in the future, said the abuse affected women across the political spectrum.“I’ve had all sorts of abuse hurled at me — ‘rotten cow,’ the ‘b-word’, some pretty choice adjectives,” she told the public broadcaster Radio New Zealand last year. “People saying, when I’m being feisty about something, that it must be that time of the month. I’ve learned to laugh most of it off, but, of course, it’s not OK.”Women’s issues, which were at the center of Ms. Ardern’s platform, have scarcely featured in the election campaign of the two main parties. One issue that has — paid parental leave for non-birth parents — has struggled to find momentum or consensus, as lawmakers across the political aisle have stymied one another’s efforts.This worries experts like Ms. Manning, who fear the next government could walk back some hard-won gains that were the result of years of consultation.Ms. Ardern’s steady work on these issues eventually helped to lift more than 75,000 New Zealand children out of poverty, even as her party fell short of its stated goal of 100,000, said Ms. Duff, her biographer. “The symbolic nature of what she’s done shouldn’t be underestimated, either, in terms of inspiring women to get into politics,” she said.Ms. Davidson, of the Green Party, worked closely with Ms. Ardern and had counted her as a colleague and a friend. “Her intentions, her purpose or objectives, her values and vision. I absolutely stand by what she wanted for this country,” she said. “We had different ideas of how to get there.”Ms. Ardern is currently undertaking a fellowship at Harvard University and plans to write a book about her leadership.Speaking on “Good Morning America” this week, she said, of her time as New Zealand’s premier, “I hope it was a call to anyone who is holding themselves back.”For now, she is staying out of the political fray at home.“I’m quite sure she would say that she never achieved what she wanted to,” said Ms. Waring, the former National Party lawmaker. “But she certainly rolled the barrel along.” More

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      Restaurants and Unions Agree to Raise Pay to $20 an Hour in California

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      The deal will avoid a ballot fight over a law passed last year that could have resulted in higher pay and other changes opposed by restaurant companies and franchisees.Labor groups and fast-food companies in California reached an agreement over the weekend that will pave the way for workers in the industry to receive a minimum wage of $20 per hour.The deal, which will result in changes to Assembly Bill 1228, was announced by the Service Employees International Union on Monday, and will mean an increase to the minimum wage for California fast-food workers by April. In exchange, labor groups and their allies in the Legislature will agree to the fast-food industry’s demands to remove a provision from the bill that could have made restaurant companies liable for workplace violations committed by their franchisees.The agreement is contingent on the withdrawal of a referendum proposal by restaurant companies in California that would have challenged the proposed legislation in the 2024 ballot. Businesses, labor groups and others have often used ballot measures in California to block legislation or advance their causes. The proposed legislation would also create a council for overseeing future increases to the minimum wage and enact workplace regulations.“With these important changes, A.B. 1228 clears the path for us to start making much-needed improvements to the policies that affect our workplaces and the lives of more than half a million fast-food workers in our state,” Ingrid Vilorio, a fast-food worker and union member, said in a statement released by the S.E.I.U.Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs at the National Restaurant Association, said the deal also benefited restaurants. “This agreement protects local restaurant owners from significant threats that would have made it difficult to continue to operate in California,” he said. “It provides a more predictable and stable future for restaurants, workers and consumers.”Last year, the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 257, which would have created a council with the authority to raise the minimum wage to $22 per hour for restaurant workers. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it on Labor Day last year.But the bill met fierce opposition from business interests and restaurant companies, and a petition received enough signatures to put a measure on the November 2024 ballot to stop the law from going into effect.Other business groups in California have successfully used that tactic to change or reverse legislation they opposed.In 2020, ride-sharing and delivery companies like Uber and Instacart campaigned for and received an exemption from a key provision of Assembly Bill 5, which was signed by Mr. Newsom and would have made it much harder for the companies to classify drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.Those companies collected enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot as Proposition 22, which passed in November 2020. More than $200 million was spent on that measure, making it the costliest ballot initiative in the state at the time.And in February, oil companies received enough signatures for a measure that aims to block legislation banning new drilling projects near homes and schools. That initiative will be on the 2024 ballot.In response to calls from advocacy groups who have said the referendum process unfairly benefits wealthy special-interest groups, and in an effort to demystify a system that many Californians say is confusing, Mr. Newsom signed legislation on Sept. 8 that aims to simplify the referendum process. More

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      ‘Virginia Is the Test Case’: Youngkin Pushes for G.O.P. Takeover This Fall

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      Glenn Youngkin, a popular Republican governor with national ambitions, is trying to help his party take full control of state government in crucial legislative races this year. Virginia, whose off-year elections are usually closely watched as an indicator of the national mood, has been mostly out of the spotlight this year, overshadowed by the Republican presidential primary and the looming general election clash.But with every seat in the Legislature up in eight weeks, the stakes are unusually high, with Republicans in position to swing the entire state, just four years after Democrats did the same. The effort, led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a popular Republican with national ambitions, is likely to serve as an early read on the politics of 2024, spinning out lessons for both parties, especially on abortion.Democrats have made abortion rights their top issue, warning that if Republicans win full control of the General Assembly, then Virginia will join other Southern states by sharply restricting abortion access.A winning night for Democrats on Nov. 7, however, will show that abortion remains just as potent a get-out-the-vote issue for the party as it has been in a string of state elections since the reversal of Roe v. Wade.With Mr. Youngkin overseeing his party’s message, the Republican pitch to turn out voters is less conservative red meat than roast chicken — a Republican comfort menu of tax cuts, job creation and parental influence over schools, which the governor labels “common-sense conservative policies.”On abortion, Mr. Youngkin, who is not on the ballot, wants to ban the procedure after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. If Republicans take majorities in both legislative chambers — and both are in play — the takeaway is likely to be that the party cracked the code with suburban swing voters on abortion by offering a more middle-of-the-road position than the near total bans passed in deep-red states.“This election is going to matter, it’s going to set things up for 2024,” said Don Scott, the Democratic leader of the Virginia House of Delegates, who is one his party’s lead strategists. “If Virginia goes the wrong way, the narrative is going to be the Republicans have figured out the right election combination to overcome their extremism on abortion.”And it could be a road map for Republicans in other states who are looking to defuse the issue after election losses following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.All 40 seats in the Virginia Senate and all 100 in the House are on the ballot. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and Democrats narrowly control the Senate. Strategists on both sides agree that each chamber is up for grabs.Supporters signed the campaign bus to commit to voting early.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“Folks, hold our House and flip our Senate, we know how to do this,” Mr. Youngkin urged a crowd on Saturday in a swing House district south of Richmond. He added: “Virginia is the test case.”He did not mention that another upshot of Republicans’ taking full control of state government is that Mr. Youngkin would further ascend as a national figure. Although he earlier teased a presidential run for 2024 — encouraged by many wealthy out-of-state donors and conservative media outlets who still yearn for him to get in the race — he has batted away the calls for months, saying his sole focus is turning the state.Although he has not ruled out a late entry into the primary, the political calendar and the polls argue strongly against such a move. Filing deadlines for the ballot in the early primary states of South Carolina and Nevada will have passed by November. In a recent Roanoke College Poll, 51 percent of Virginians approved of Mr. Youngkin’s job as governor, but only 9 percent of Republicans in his home state want him to be the 2024 nominee, versus 47 percent who favor Donald J. Trump.Mr. Youngkin, a wealthy former financial executive, has raised record sums for the Spirit of Virginia, his political committee supporting legislative candidates. The group says it pulled in $3.3 million in August and has raised $12 million since March. It is underwriting a tour of swing districts with Mr. Youngkin urging supporters to sign the side of a bus to show their commitment to voting early starting Sept. 22 — a practice that Mr. Trump had made toxic with the G.O.P. base, but has recently embraced.With Democrats lacking a comparable state leader this year, Virginia’s Democratic U.S. senators, Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, have raised alarms in recent weeks that the party was falling behind in fund-raising and mobilization.The White House heard the pleas, and President Biden directed the Democratic National Committee to funnel $1.2 million to the Majority Project, the Democratic group in Virginia coordinating door-knockers and other voter outreach in key districts.During Mr. Trump’s presidency, Virginia Democrats won full control of state government in elections in 2017 and 2019. In 2021, Mr. Youngkin and down-ballot Republicans profited from a backlash over pandemic-era school closures as well as rising inflation under Mr. Biden.“I’d love to have said that Virginia is solidly blue; that’s clearly not the case,” Mr. Warner said in an interview. Control of each chamber is likely to come down to a handful of races: four seats in the Senate and seven in the House that are considered tossups, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.Many of the seats are in the exurbs of Virginia’s metropolitan areas — greater Washington, Richmond and Hampton Roads — a frontier of swing voters, many college-educated, the kind of voters who have had starring roles in elections across the U.S. in recent years.Democratic strategists said they needed to win only one of the four tossup Senate seats to hold their current majority. They are encouraged that Democratic congressional candidates carried all of the districts in the 2022 midterms. Republicans counter that Mr. Youngkin won the same districts in his 2021 election, and that he remains popular.Mr. Youngkin branded himself the “parents’ rights” candidate, and is aiming to bring his success on education issues to the state races.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesOne of the most closely watched races is between two first-time Senate candidates in Loudoun County, a Washington exurb that became a national flashpoint in 2021 after conservative attacks on its public school policies on diversity and transgender students.Mr. Youngkin seized on those cultural issues to brand himself the “parents’ rights” candidate, which helped power his victory. In office, he banned critical race theory in K-12 schools (although educators said C.R.T. had no influence on curriculums), set up a tip line for parents to report about teachers and gave parents control of the names and pronouns their children used in school.Whether these issues still motivate voters is one of the unknowns in this year’s election. Mr. Youngkin is betting that they do and is holding a “Parents Matter” town hall-style event in Loudon County on Tuesday. Over the weekend, the governor went on “Fox News Sunday” to announce he had pardoned a father arrested in a 2021 incident at a Loudoun County School Board meeting where the father had criticized officials after his daughter was sexually assaulted in school.Russet Perry, the Democrat running for the open Senate seat in the county, said that when she knocks on the doors of swing voters, the top education issue she hears is concerns over school shootings, not culture-war matters.“Parents are a little tired of the politics intentionally injected into the schools by people who do not live here, including Glenn Youngkin,” said Ms. Perry, a former prosecutor with a daughter who is a high school freshman in public school.Across the state, the Democratic message is that Republicans are “extremists” and if they win full control in Richmond, they will seek strict abortion limits.But Mr. Youngkin has mostly focused his message elsewhere. In his 18-minute speech to rally Republicans on Saturday in Prince George, Va., he did not utter the words “abortion” or “pro-life,” instead stressing “common sense” policies.After a half-hour of greeting supporters, as aides hustled him to his car, he responded to a reporter’s shouted question about whether he would sign a six-week abortion ban.“Virginians elected a pro-life governor,” he said. “At the end of the day, I think we can ask all kinds of hypothetical questions. What I’ve been very clear on — and I’d appreciate you writing it clearly — is that I support a bill to protect life at 15 weeks.” More

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      Mexico’s Next President Will Be a Woman

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      Mexico will elect its first woman as president next year after the governing party chose Claudia Sheinbaum to square off against the opposition’s candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez.Mexico’s governing party chose Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, as its candidate in next year’s presidential election on Wednesday, creating a watershed moment in the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country, with voters expected to choose for the first time between two leading candidates who are women.“Today democracy won. Today the people of Mexico decided,” Ms. Sheinbaum said during the announcement, adding that her party, Morena, would win the 2024 election. “Tomorrow begins the electoral process,” she said. “And there is no minute to lose.”Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, a physicist with a doctorate in environmental engineering and a protégé of Mexico’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will face off against the opposition’s top contender, Xóchitl Gálvez, 60, an outspoken engineer with Indigenous roots who rose from poverty to become a tech entrepreneur.“We can already say today: Mexico, by the end of next year, will be governed by a woman,” said Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, a political scientist at Mexico’s Monterrey Institute of Technology, adding that it was an “extraordinary change” for the country.Ms. Sheinbaum has built her political career mostly in the shadow of Mr. López Obrador, and had emerged early on as the party’s favored pick to succeed the current president. That connection is thought to give her a crucial edge heading into next year’s election thanks to the high approval ratings enjoyed by Mr. López Obrador, who is limited by Mexico’s Constitution to one six-year term.In recent months, Mr. López Obrador has insisted that he will hold no influence once he finishes his term. “I am going to retire completely,” he said in March. “I am not a chieftain, much less do I feel irreplaceable. I am not a strongman; I am not a messiah.”President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is constitutionally limited to one six-year term.Alejandro Cegarra for The New York TimesBut some analysts say his influence will endure regardless of which candidate wins in 2024. Should Ms. Sheinbaum win, “there may be changes to certain policies, though the broad strokes of his agenda will remain intact,” according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institute in WashingtonIf she is defeated, Mr. López Obrador “will not fade quietly into the background,” the report said, citing a large base of loyal supporters allowing him to command substantial influence. Some legacies of his administration — including austerity measures or the immersion of the military into social, security and infrastructure roles — could also be obstacles for Ms. Gálvez if she seeks to roll back his policies.As the two female candidates target weaknesses in each other’s campaigns, they share some similarities. While neither are explicitly feminist, both are socially progressive, have engineering degrees and say they will maintain broadly popular antipoverty programs.Both women also support decriminalizing abortion. In Ms. Gálvez’s case, that position stands in contrast to that of her conservative party. Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday decriminalized abortion nationwide, building on an earlier ruling giving officials the authority to allow the procedure on a state-by-state basis.Ms. Sheinbaum, who was born to Jewish parents in Mexico City, would become Mexico’s first Jewish president if she wins the race. She has faced a misinformation campaign on social media claiming falsely that she was born in Bulgaria, the country from which her mother emigrated; supporters of Ms. Sheinbaum have called this effort antisemitic.Ms. Sheinbaum would become Mexico’s first Jewish president if she wins the race.Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York TimesShe studied physics and energy engineering in Mexico before carrying out her doctoral research at California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. After entering politics, she became Mr. López Obrador’s top environmental official when he was mayor of Mexico City.When Ms. Sheinbaum herself was elected mayor of the capital in 2018, she took on public transit and environmental issues as top priorities, but was also the target of criticism over fatal mishaps in the city’s transportation systems, including the collapse of a metro overpass in which 26 people were killed.With polls positioning Ms. Sheinbaum as the front-runner, her ties to Mr. López Obrador required discipline to maintain his support even when she may not have agreed with his decisions. For instance, when Mr. López Obrador minimized the coronavirus pandemic and federal government officials tweaked data to avoid a lockdown in Mexico City, she remained silent.“What has stood out is her loyalty, I think a blind loyalty, to the president,” said Mr. Silva-Herzog Márquez, the political scientist.Still, while hewing to Mr. López Obrador’s policies, Ms. Sheinbaum has also signaled some potential changes, notably expressing support for renewable energy sources.Drawing a contrast with her rival, Ms. Gálvez, a senator who often gets around Mexico City on an electric bicycle, has focused on her origins as the daughter of an Indigenous Otomí father and a mestiza mother.Xóchitl Gálvez, the top opposition candidate, has Indigenous roots and rose from poverty to become a tech entrepreneur.Claudio Cruz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMs. Gálvez grew up in a small town about two hours from Mexico City without running water and speaking her father’s Hñähñu language. After receiving a scholarship to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, she became an engineer and founded a company that designs communications and energy networks for office buildings.After Vicente Fox won the presidency in 2000, she was appointed as head of the presidential office for Indigenous peoples. In 2018, Ms. Gálvez was elected senator representing the conservative National Action Party.Mr. López Obrador has repeatedly made her the focus of verbal attacks, which has had the effect of raising her profile around the country while highlighting the sway that the president and his party exert across Mexico.A combative leader who has embraced austerity measures while doubling down on Mexico’s reliance on fossil fuels, Mr. López Obrador looms over the campaigning. He pledged to do away with a long-held political tradition whereby Mexican presidents handpicked their successors with their “big finger,” replacing the practice with nationwide voter surveys.Historically, political parties in Mexico mostly selected their candidates in ways that were opaque and lacked much inclusion. Handpicking was more common than a “free and fair competition for a candidacy,” said Flavia Freidenberg, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.The new selection process has changed that tradition, but concerns persist over a lack of clarity and other irregularities that have been denounced by some analysts and other presidential hopefuls. Both the governing party, Morena, and the broad opposition coalition, called the Broad Front for Mexico, used public opinion polls “that have not been fully transparent,” Ms. Freidenberg added, “and are not necessarily considered democratic procedures.”The new procedures also ignored federal campaign regulations, with those at the helm of the process in both the governing party and the opposition moving the selection forward by a few months and cryptically calling Ms. Sheinbaum and Ms. Gálvez “coordinators” of each coalition instead of “candidates.”“These irregular activities have occurred under the gaze of public opinion, the political class and the electoral authorities,” Ms. Freidenberg said. “This is not a minor issue.”Next year’s general election, in which voters will elect not only a president but members of Congress, might also determine whether Mexico may return to a dominant-party system — similar to what the country experienced under the once-hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held uninterrupted power for 71 years until 2000.Despite some setbacks, there are signs this is already happening. In June, Morena’s candidate won the governor’s race in the State of Mexico, the country’s most populous state, defeating the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s candidate.That victory brought the number of states under Morena’s control to 23 out of 32 states, up from just seven at the start of the president’s term in 2018.The question is “whether Morena reconfigures itself into a hegemonic party like the old PRI,” said Ana Laura Magaloni, a law professor who advised Ms. Sheinbaum’s mayoral campaign. “And that depends on how much of a fight the opposition can put up.” More

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      Dos mujeres competirán por la presidencia en México

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      México votará por su primera presidenta el próximo año después de que el partido gobernante eligiera a Claudia Sheinbaum para enfrentarse a la candidata de la coalición opositora, Xóchitl Gálvez.El partido gobernante de México, Morena, eligió el martes a Claudia Sheinbaum, quien fue jefa de gobierno de Ciudad de México, como su candidata presidencial para las elecciones de 2024. Se trata de un momento crucial en el mayor país de habla hispana del mundo, pues se espera que los votantes elijan por primera vez entre dos mujeres como principales candidatas.Sheinbaum, de 61 años, es física, tiene un doctorado en ingeniería ambiental y cuenta con el respaldo del actual presidente de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Se enfrentará con la principal contendiente de la oposición, Xóchitl Gálvez, una ingeniera franca y de ascendencia indígena que creció en un ambiente de pobreza y luego se convirtió en empresaria tecnológica.“Ya podemos decir hoy: México, a finales del año que viene, va a estar gobernado por una mujer”, dijo Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, un politólogo en el Tec de Monterrey, y agregó que era un “cambio extraordinario” para el país.Sheinbaum ha hecho su carrera política en buena medida a la sombra de López Obrador y muy pronto surgió como la candidata preferida del partido para suceder al presidente. Se considera que ese vínculo con López Obrador le ha brindado una ventaja clave de cara a las elecciones del próximo año gracias a los altos índices de aprobación con los que cuenta el mandatario, que está limitado constitucionalmente a un solo periodo sexenal.López Obrador ha insistido en los últimos meses que no tendrá influencia cuando concluya su mandato. “Me voy a retirar por completo”, dijo en marzo. “No soy cacique, mucho menos me siento insustituible; no soy caudillo, no soy mesías”.El presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador solo puede gobernar durante un sexenio según la ConstituciónAlejandro Cegarra para The New York TimesPero algunos analistas consideran que su influencia se extenderá sin importar cuál sea el aspirante que gane la presidencia en 2024. Si Sheinbaum fuera electa, “podría haber cambios en ciertas políticas, aunque los esbozos generales de su agenda seguirán intactos”, según un reporte reciente del Centro de Estudios Estratégicos e Internacionales.Si fuera derrotada, López Obrador “no se retirará discretamente a segundo plano”, decía el informe. “Su base de seguidores es suficientemente grande y leal como para permitirle ejercer influencia significativa”. Gálvez podría enfrentar obstáculos con el legado de la actual gestión si buscara revertir sus políticas, como las medidas de austeridad o la participación del ejército en labores sociales, de seguridad e infraestructura.Aunque las dos candidatas identifican mutuamente las debilidades de sus campañas, comparten algunas similitudes. Ambas son progresistas en temas sociales, aunque ninguna de las dos se identifica explícitamente como feminista; ambas tienen grados universitarios en ingeniería y han dicho que van a mantener los programas de combate a la pobreza de esta gestión, que son ampliamente populares.Ambas mujeres apoyan la despenalización del aborto. En el caso de Gálvez, esa postura contrasta con la de su partido conservador. La Suprema Corte de Justicia de México despenalizó el aborto a nivel federal el miércoles, una decisión que se sustenta en un fallo anterior que le da autoridad a los funcionarios para permitir el procedimiento en todos los estados.De ganar la elección, Sheinbaum, hija de padres judíos en Ciudad de México, se convertiría en la primera persona judía en gobernar México. En las redes sociales ha enfrentado una campaña de desinformación que asegura que nació en Bulgaria, el país del que emigró su madre; los seguidores de Sheinbaum han calificado esos señalamientos como antisemitas.En caso de ganar la elección, Sheinbaum se convertiría en la primera persona judía en gobernar México.Meghan Dhaliwal para The New York TimesSheinbaum estudió física e ingeniería energética en México antes de hacer su investigación de doctorado en el Laboratorio Nacional Lawrence Berkeley en California. Luego de incursionar en la política se convirtió en la principal funcionaria de medioambiente de la gestión de López Obrador cuando él fue jefe de gobierno de Ciudad de México.Luego, cuando ella fue electa para ese mismo cargo en 2018, puso entre sus prioridades el transporte público y medioambiente, pero también fue blanco de críticas por los percances mortales sucedidos en los sistemas de transporte público de la ciudad, entre ellos el colapso de una línea del metro en el que 26 personas perdieron la vida.Al posicionarse como la favorita en los sondeos, los vínculos de Sheinbaum con López Obrador le exigieron disciplina para conservar el apoyo presidencial incluso cuando pudo haber estado en desacuerdo con sus decisiones. Por ejemplo, se quedó callada cuando López Obrador minimizó la pandemia de coronavirus y los funcionarios federales manipularon los datos para evitar un confinamiento en Ciudad de México.“Lo que ha resaltado es su lealtad, yo creo que una lealtad ciega al presidente”, dijo Silva-Herzog Márquez, el politólogo.Sin embargo, al apegarse a las políticas de López Obrador, Sheinbaum también ha dado muestras de posibles cambios, expresamente al mostrar apoyo por las fuentes de energía renovable.En cambio su rival, Gálvez, una senadora que suele andar por la capital mexicana en una bicicleta eléctrica, se ha enfocado en resaltar su origen como hija de una madre mestiza y un padre indígena otomí.Xóchitl Gálvez, principal candidata opositora, tiene ascendencia indígena y surgió de un entorno de pobreza para convertirse en empresaria de tecnología.Claudio Cruz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGálvez creció en un pueblo pequeño ubicado a unas dos horas de Ciudad de México sin agua corriente y hablando la lengua hñähñu de su padre. Estudió ingeniería con una beca de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México y fundó una empresa que diseña redes de comunicación y energía para edificios de oficinas.Después de que Vicente Fox ganó la presidencia en el año 2000 fue nombrada como encargada de la comisión presidencial de asuntos indígenas. En 2018 fue electa senadora por el conservador Partido Acción Nacional.López Obrador la ha convertido en la figura central de reiterados ataques verbales, lo que ha tenido el efecto de elevar su presencia en el país mientras que llama la atención hacia la influencia del presidente y su partido en todo México.López Obrador, un líder combativo que ha adoptado medidas de austeridad y ha incrementado la dependencia de México de los combustibles fósiles, influye en la campaña. Prometió erradicar una antigua tradición política, el dedazo, con la cual los presidentes mexicanos eligen a sus sucesores, y remplazar esa práctica con encuestas de electores a nivel federal.Históricamente los partidos políticos mexicanos elegían a sus candidatos en primarias opacas y con poca inclusión. La elección por dedazo era más común que una “competencia libre y justa por una candidatura”, dijo Flavia Freidenberg, politóloga de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.El nuevo proceso de selección ha cambiado esa tradición, pero siguen existiendo preocupaciones por la falta de claridad y otras irregularidades señaladas por algunos analistas y aspirantes presidenciales. Tanto el partido gobernante, Morena, como la amplia coalición de la oposición, llamada Frente Amplio, usaron sondeos que “no necesariamente han sido transparentados en toda su magnitud”, dijo Freidenberg, “y que no necesariamente son procedimientos considerados como democráticos”.El nuevo proceso también ignoró las regulaciones federales a las campañas, y los responsables de los procesos, tanto en el partido gobernante como en la oposición, han adelantado la selección unos meses mencionando de manera críptica a Sheinbaum y Gálvez como “coordinadoras” de cada coalición en lugar de “candidatas”.“Estas actividades irregulares, en cualquier caso, se han dado bajo la mirada de la opinión pública, de la clase política y de las autoridades electorales”, dijo Freidenberg. “Esto no es una cuestión menor”.Las elecciones presidenciales del próximo año, en las que los votantes no solo elegirán al presidente, sino también a los miembros del Congreso, también podrían determinar si México se prepara para volver a un sistema de partido dominante similar al que el país experimentó con el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), una agrupación que alguna vez fue hegemónica y gobernó durante 71 años ininterrumpidos hasta el año 2000.Hay indicios de que esto ya está sucediendo, aunque con algunos retrocesos. En junio, la candidata de Morena ganó la contienda por la gubernatura del Estado de México, el estado más poblado del país, donde derrotó a la candidata del PRI.Esa victoria puso en manos de Morena a 23 de un total de 32 entidades federativas de la república, un aumento de las siete que controlaba el partido gobernante al inicio del sexenio en 2018.La duda es “si Morena se reconfigura en un partido hegemónico como fue el viejo PRI”, dijo Ana Laura Magaloni, una profesora de derecho que asesoró la campaña de Sheinbaum a la jefatura de gobierno. “Y eso depende, para mí, de cuánta batalla pueda dar la oposición”.Simon Romero es corresponsal en Ciudad de México, desde donde cubre México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. Se ha desempeñado como jefe del buró del Times en Brasil, jefe del buró andino y corresponsal internacional de energía. Más sobre Simon RomeroEmiliano Rodríguez Mega es reportero-investigador del Times radicado en Ciudad de México. Cubre México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. 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      Nigerian Court Rejects Challenges to Contested Presidential Election

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      The tribunal confirmed the election of President Bola Tinubu, who has faced growing discontent amid unpopular economic policies and lingering allegations of irregularities in the election.A judicial tribunal in Nigeria confirmed on Wednesday the results of a contested February presidential election that kept Africa’s most populous country on edge amid allegations of voting irregularities and tainted the first months in power for the declared winner, President Bola Tinubu.In their petitions, opponents of Mr. Tinubu argued that he should have been disqualified from running in the first place because of irregularities with his candidacy, and that Nigeria’s electoral commission had failed to release the results on time, opening the way for potential fraud.But judges in Abuja, the capital, rejected all three petitions for lack of credible evidence, they said.Nigerian television channels broadcast the court decision live on television amid high tensions in the capital, Abuja, and hints by the opposition that a validation of the results could prompt Nigerians to take to the streets. There were no immediate reports of unrest.The plaintiffs have 60 days to file an appeal to Nigeria’s Supreme Court.Since he was sworn in last May, Mr. Tinubu has rocked Nigeria’s economy with what analysts and foreign investors say was the long overdue scrapping of an oil subsidy. But the soaring transportation, food and electricity prices that ensued have hurt tens of millions of Nigerians and taken a toll on Mr. Tinubu’s popularity.Mr. Tinubu has also faced stiff challenges abroad. In neighboring Niger, mutinous soldiers seized power in a coup just two weeks after Mr. Tinubu took the helm of an economic bloc of West African countries and vowed to put an end to an epidemic of military takeovers in the region — by force, if necessary.Supporters of Atiku Abubakar protesting the election results in Abuja, Nigeria, in March.Gbemiga Olamikan/Associated PressThe generals in Niger haven’t budged. They have refused to release the president they ousted and ignored Mr. Tinubu’s threat of a military intervention. After weeks of stalemate, and a backlash at home about a potential war with a neighboring country, Mr. Tinubu appears to have taken a back seat in the negotiations with Niger’s junta, at least publicly.In March, Nigeria’s electoral commission declared Mr. Tinubu the winner of a single-round presidential election with 37 percent of the vote, ahead of the main opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who won 29 percent, and Peter Obi, who finished a surprising third with 25 percent of the vote.Both Mr. Obi’s and Mr. Abubakar’s parties disputed the results in court. They argued that Mr. Tinubu wasn’t qualified to be president, citing what they said were forged academic records and an indictment for drug trafficking in the United States. He was not indicted, but the U.S. government did file a complaint of forfeiture under which Mr. Tinubu paid $460,000 in settlements in 1993.For months, Nigerians questioned the credibility of the country’s judiciary ahead of Wednesday’s ruling, with the hashtag All Eyes On The Judiciary a trending topic on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.Mr. Tinubu, who was attending the G20 summit in India on Wednesday, had denied all allegations of wrongdoing. Since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999 after decades of military rule, all but one of its elections have been contested in court, but none have been overruled.Pius Adeleye contributed reporting from Ilorin, Nigeria. More

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      Slovakia Election Could Shift Sentiment in a Fierce Ukraine Ally

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      The vote in Slovakia this month will be a test of European unity on Ukraine, and of Russia’s efforts to undermine it. The front-runner wants to halt arms shipments to Kyiv.When Ukraine discovered civilian mass graves in an area recaptured from Russian troops, Russia’s ambassador in neighboring Slovakia countered with his own discovery.The mayor of a remote Slovak village, as the ambassador announced last September, had bulldozed Russian graves from World War I. Ambassador Igor Bratchikov demanded that the Slovak government, a robust supporter of Ukraine, take action to punish the “blasphemous act.”The Slovak police responded swiftly, dismissing the ambassador’s claims as a “hoax,” but his fabrication took flight, amplified by vociferous pro-Russian groups in Slovakia and news outlets notorious for recycling Russian propaganda.A month later, the mayor of the village, Vladislav Cuper, lost an election to a rival candidate from a populist party opposed to helping Ukraine.Today, the same forces that helped unseat Mr. Cuper have mobilized for a general election in Slovakia on Sept. 30 with much bigger stakes.The vote will not only decide who governs a small Central European nation with fewer than six million people, but will also indicate whether opposition to helping Ukraine, a position now mostly confined to the political fringes across Europe, could take hold in the mainstream.Vladislav Cuper, the former mayor of Ladomirova, Slovakia, at his home in the village. Mr. Cuper says he was smeared by pro-Russian forces in Slovakia.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThe front-runner, according to opinion polls, is a party headed by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister who has vowed to halt Slovak arms deliveries to Ukraine, denounced sanctions against Russia and railed against NATO, despite his country’s membership in the alliance.A strong showing in the election by Mr. Fico and far-right parties hostile to the government in Kyiv would likely turn one of Ukraine’s most stalwart backers — Slovakia was the first country to send it air-defense missiles and fighter jets — into a neutral bystander more sympathetic to Moscow. It would also end the isolation of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary as the only leader in the European Union and NATO speaking out strongly against helping Ukraine.“Russia is rejoicing,” Rastislav Kacer, a former foreign minister and outspoken supporter of Ukraine, said in Bratislava, the Slovak capital. “Slovakia is a great success story for its propaganda. It has worked hard and very successfully to exploit my country as a wedge to divide Europe.”Thanks to widespread public discontent with the infighting between pro-Western Slovak politicians who came to power in 2020, and deep pools of genuine pro-Russian sentiment dating back to the 19th century, Russia has been pushing on an open door.A survey of public opinion across Eastern and Central Europe in March by Globsec, a Bratislava-based research group, found that only 40 percent of Slovaks blame Russia for the war in Ukraine, while 51 percent believe that either Ukraine or the West is “primarily responsible.” In Poland, 85 percent blame Russia. In the Czech Republic, 71 percent think Russia is responsible.The World War I cemetery in Ladomirova that the Russian ambassador to Slovakia falsely said had been destroyed.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesDaniel Milo, director of an Interior Ministry department aimed at countering disinformation and other nonmilitary threats, acknowledged that “there is fertile ground here for pro-Russian sentiment.” But he added that genuine sympathy rooted in history had been exploited by Russia and its local helpers to sow division and sour public opinion on Ukraine.Those helpers include Hlavne Spravy, a popular anti-American news site, and a bikers group called Brat za Brata, or Brother for Brother, which is affiliated with the Kremlin-sponsored Night Wolves motorcycle gang in Russia.A freelance writer for Hlavne Spravy, Bohus Garbar, was convicted of espionage this year after being caught on camera taking money from Russia’s military attaché, who has since been expelled.Brat za Brata, which has a large following on social media and close ties to the Russian embassy, has meanwhile worked to intimidate Russia’s critics.Peter Kalmus, a 70-year-old Slovak artist, said he was beaten up by members of the biker group last month after he defaced a Soviet war memorial in the eastern city of Kosice to protest Russian atrocities in Ukraine. In March, the bikers reduced to pandemonium a government-sponsored public debate about the war in a town near the Ukrainian border attended by Mr. Kacer, who was then still a minister. Fiercely pro-Russian protesters bused in by the bikers, recalled Mr. Kacer, “jumped on the stage screaming and spitting at us.”Many Slovaks, said Grigorij Meseznikov, the Russian-born president of the Institute for Public Affairs, a Bratislava research group, “have an invented romantic vision of Russia in their heads that does not really exist” and are easily swayed by “lies and propaganda” about the West.The Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Ladomirova. The former mayor said that in his view, Russia did not care who won the election in the village, but had spotted a good opportunity to “present itself as a victim.”Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThat, he added, has made the country vulnerable to efforts by Moscow to rally pro-Russian sentiment in the hope of undermining European unity over Ukraine. Slovakia is a small country, Mr. Meseznikov said, but “if you take even a small brick out of a wall it can crumble.”That is certainly the hope of Lubos Blaha, a former member of a heavy metal band and the author of books on Lenin and Che Guevara who is now the deputy leader of Mr. Fico’s surging political party, SMER. He is also one of Slovakia’s loudest and most influential Kremlin-friendly voices on social media and regularly denounces his country’s liberal woman president, Zuzana Caputova, as a “fascist” and pro-Ukrainian ministers as “American puppets.”“The mood in Europe is changing,” Mr. Blaha said in an interview, describing the conflict in Ukraine as “a war of the American empire against the Russian empire” that cannot be won because Russia is a nuclear power.Insisting he was “not pro-Russia, just pro my country’s national interests,” Mr. Blaha predicted that countries hostile to arming Ukraine would soon “be in the majority while supporters of Ukraine will be in a small minority,” especially if Donald J. Trump wins the next presidential election in the United States.In the run-up to Slovakia’s own election, the usually placid country has been swamped by heated accusations on all sides of foreign interference. Mr. Fico has accused NATO of meddling in the campaign, while his foes have pointed a finger at Russia.Describing Mr. Fico’s SMER party as a “Trojan horse” for Russia, Jaroslav Nad, a former defense minister who led a push to send arms to Ukraine, claimed this summer that, according to intelligence reports, a Slovak citizen he didn’t identify had visited Russia “to receive financial resources to benefit SMER.” But, citing confidentiality, he produced no evidence, and his claim has been widely dismissed as a pre-election smear.Still, the Russian ambassador’s fabricated story of desecrated war graves highlighted Russia’s skill at fishing in Slovakia’s troubled waters. It also provided what Mr. Milo, the interior ministry official, called “a very rare smoking gun” directly implicating Moscow in scripting a fake scandal. “They usually act more cleverly and try not to get caught red-handed,” he said.Children climbing on Soviet and German tanks at a World War II monument outside Ladomirova. In the run-up to a general election, Slovakia has been swamped by heated accusations of foreign interference.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesDuring a visit last week to the still-intact graveyard in Ladomirova, Mr. Cuper said that in his view Russia did not care who won the mayoral vote there, but had spotted a good opportunity “to distract attention from mass graves in Ukraine” and “present itself as a victim.”When the ambassador visited Ladomirova, he met with Mr. Cuper’s bitter rival, a former mayor whom Mr. Cuper had accused of embezzling village funds and who was convicted of fraud in 2019. The former mayor’s wife, Olga Bojcikova, who declined to be interviewed, was at the time running against Mr. Cuper, who was backed by pro-Ukrainian parties, in the local election last October. She won.The ambassador’s story of “razed” Russian graves, though debunked by the police, was, Mr. Cuper recalled, “blown out of all proportion” by Kremlin-friendly Slovaks, particularly the Brat za Brata bikers.The bikers posted incendiary statements on Facebook denouncing the mayor’s “blasphemous act” and rallied its members to respond. This set off calls for Mr. Cuper to be “executed,” “buried alive” and “flogged like a dog.”Slovakia’s prosecutor general, Maros Zilinka, who has a long history of sympathy for Russia and hostility to the United States, added fuel to the fire by announcing that the mayor could be liable for criminal prosecution for a “morally reprehensible act” that needed to be investigated.Mr. Cuper said he never touched the graves but had removed stone border markers because they were falling apart. Nor did he touch a notice board put up as part of renovation work financed by Russia in 2014: It falsely described the cemetery as the resting place of 270 Russian war dead. The cemetery contains the unidentified bodies of soldiers from various countries, including Russia, killed in a World War I battle.The ambassador’s story, he said, was “entirely untrue” but still “created a national uproar.” More