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      Biden to Campaign for Terry McAuliffe in Virginia

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      President Biden made a gleeful return to the campaign trail on Friday evening, joining former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who is seeking to regain his old job in November, for his first campaign event since his inauguration.In a park in Arlington County, a short drive from Washington, Mr. Biden appeared to be back in his electoral element, shedding his necktie, whipping up the crowd and repeatedly casting Mr. McAuliffe as a crucial ally in his fight for a sprawling agenda to remake American capitalism.“I need him,” Mr. Biden said as Mr. McAuliffe beamed behind him. “I need him.”Mr. McAuliffe easily won the Democratic nomination for the Virginia governor’s race in June, hoping to return to the office four years after he served his term. The state does not permit governors to run for consecutive terms.Mr. Biden won Virginia handily last year on his way to the White House, but some Democrats are worried about Mr. McAuliffe’s prospects this year against the Republican nominee, Glenn Youngkin, a political newcomer and former private equity executive. Mr. Youngkin has the ability to spend millions of dollars of his own money to help make the race competitive.Trading his more serene presidential demeanor for a fiery campaign one, Mr. Biden sought to tie the coming elections to his own political project. Instead of his typical practice in White House speeches of leaning into the microphone and whispering to emphasize his points, the president leaned in and shouted.“We’re going to have to go out and win, win this thing, win races up and down the ticket,” he implored the crowd.Mr. Biden repeatedly praised his coronavirus relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, including the direct checks that were sent to low- and middle-income workers. He also pitched his suite of proposals to overhaul American capitalism, including reducing prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies and making two years of community college free for all students, paid for by raising taxes on corporations and high earners.In each case, Mr. Biden called Mr. McAuliffe a partner in his vision. “Terry and I share the same basic truth,” Mr. Biden said. “Trickle-down economies never work.”He leaned on policy to draw contrasts with Republicans. “In this election and in 2022, the question the American people are going to be asking is whether or not we’re helping them and their families,” Mr. Biden said. He added: “We have to show we do understand, and we’re delivering for them. And we’re keeping our promises.”Republicans sought to criticize Mr. McAuliffe over the visit. In a news release on Friday, the Republican National Committee called Mr. Biden and Mr. McAuliffe “swampy career politicians with failed records who are now tripping over themselves to embrace the radical left as quickly as possible.”Mr. McAuliffe, who mulled a presidential run in 2020 but passed and endorsed Mr. Biden, has sought to make the race a referendum on former President Donald J. Trump, who has backed Mr. Youngkin enthusiastically. Mr. Trump remains popular with Republicans in the state’s rural areas but has alienated moderates in the Washington suburbs.Mr. McAuliffe has sought to tether Mr. Youngkin to Mr. Trump, joking that he would pay for the fuel for Mr. Trump to visit the state and campaign for Mr. Youngkin. And the former governor has embraced Mr. Biden, expressing hope that the president will campaign for him multiple times before November.In his speech introducing Mr. Biden, Mr. McAuliffe accused Mr. Youngkin of founding his campaign “on an election integrity plan that was based on Donald Trump’s conspiracy theory about the 2020 election, and for five months that is the only plan that he had on his website.”“Let me clear it up for you,” Mr. McAuliffe said. “Joe Biden won that election.”Mr. McAuliffe later drew cheers for vowing to raise Virginia’s minimum wage to $15 an hour within the next three years, an echo of Mr. Biden’s unsuccessful attempts to raise the federal minimum wage to that level.Then he yielded to Mr. Biden, who commanded the stage for almost exactly a half-hour. When the president finished — with a more energetic-than-normal version of his typical request for God to bless America and its troops — he turned to embrace Mr. McAuliffe, then wheeled back to the crowd, smiling and waving. More

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      How The Cleveland House Race Between Turner and Brown Captures Democrats' Generational Divide

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      Nina Turner’s move from Bernie Sanders’s campaign co-chairwoman to House candidate has highlighted a Democratic divide between impatient young activists and cautious older voters.WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — Nina Turner had just belted out a short address to God’s Tabernacle of Faith Church in the cadences and tremulous volumes of a preacher when the Rev. Timothy Eppinger called on the whole congregation to lay hands on the woman seeking the House seat of greater Cleveland.“She’s gone through hell and high water,” the pastor said to nods and assents. “This is her season to live, and not to die.”On Aug. 3, the voters of Ohio’s 11th District will render that judgment and with it, some indication of the direction the Democratic Party is heading: toward the defiant and progressive approach Ms. Turner embodies or the reserved mold of its leaders in Washington, shaped more by the establishment than the ferment stirring its grass roots.Democrats say there is little broader significance to this individual House primary contest, one that pits two Black women against each other in a safe Democratic district that had been represented by Marcia Fudge before she was confirmed as President Biden’s secretary of housing and urban development.Yet in the final weeks of the campaign, the party establishment is throwing copious amounts of time and money into an effort to stop Ms. Turner, a fiery former Cleveland councilwoman and Ohio state senator known beyond this district as the face and spirit of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, a co-chairwoman in 2020 and a ubiquitous surrogate for the socialist senator.That suggests leaders understand that the outcome of the race will be read as a signal about the party’s future. It has already rekindled old rivalries. The Congressional Black Caucus’s political action committee has endorsed Ms. Turner’s main rival, Shontel Brown, the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chairwoman. So have Hillary Clinton and the highest-ranking Black member of the House, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, who will be campaigning here this weekend for Ms. Brown. They argue that Ms. Brown is the better candidate, with a unifying message after four divisive years of Donald J. Trump.Ms. Brown sees herself as liberal, but she would move step by step, for instance embracing Mr. Biden’s call for adding a “public option” to the Affordable Care Act before jumping straight to the single-payer Medicare-for-all health care system Ms. Turner wants.“I’m not one to shy away from a challenge or conflict; I just don’t seek it out,” said Ms. Brown, who sees the differences as more style than substance. “And that’s the major difference: I’m not looking for headlines. I’m looking to make headway.”In turn, liberal activists around the country have rushed to Ms. Turner’s defense, with money, volunteers and reinforcements. Her campaign has raised $4.5 million for a primary, $1.3 million in the last month. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York will be knocking on doors for her the same weekend Mr. Clyburn will be in town. Mr. Sanders will join the fray in person the last weekend before Election Day.“She would be a real asset for the House,” Mr. Sanders said. “She is a very, very strong progressive, and I hope very much she is going to win.”Supporters of Shontel Brown say she presents a more unifying message after four years of the Trump administration.Mike Cardew/Akron Beakon Journal, via USA Today NetworkThe race has captured less an ideological divide than a generational split, pitting older voters turned off by the liberal insurgency’s disparagement of Democratic leaders and brash demands for rapid change against younger voters’ sense of urgency and anger about the trajectory of the country and world being left to them.At every turn here, Ms. Turner hits on the struggles of her city, the poorest large municipality in the country, but also America’s mountain of student debt, its inequity in health care and a climate crisis that has left the West parched and burning, the ice caps melting and Europe digging out from a deluge.Cleveland’s mayor, Frank Jackson, has endorsed Ms. Turner, as has The Plain Dealer. But Ms. Brown has the most reliable voters, many of them older, more affluent and white.For Ms. Turner to win, she needs people like Dewayne Williams, 31 and formerly incarcerated, who came out in the rain on Saturday to the Gas on God Community Giveaway, for $10 worth of free gas in one of Cleveland’s most dangerous neighborhoods.“I’m just young, don’t know much about politics, but I know she’s a good woman,” Mr. Williams said, growing emotional after Ms. Turner leaned into his car to give him a hug. Given his experience in the prison system, he said, “the changes she’s trying to do — to even care a little bit about that situation — I definitely appreciate.”“Oh man,” Mr. Williams added, “you’ve got to have a loud voice. You’ve got to be loud so people can hear.”The outcome of the special election could reverberate through the party. Progressive primary challengers have already declared — and are raising impressive sums, far more than previous challengers — to take on Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney in New York, Danny K. Davis in Chicago, John Yarmuth in Louisville and Jim Cooper in Nashville. They are hoping to build on the successes of Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman in New York, Ayanna S. Pressley in Boston, Marie Newman in Chicago and Cori Bush in St. Louis — all of whom have knocked off Democratic incumbents since 2018.All of them face opposition from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Congressional Black Caucus and a new political action committee, Team Blue, started by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic Caucus chairman; Josh Gottheimer, a moderate from New Jersey; and Terri A. Sewell, a Black Caucus member from Alabama.“It speaks volumes to where they want us to be going as a party,” said Kina Collins, who is challenging Mr. Davis. “The message is, ‘You’re not welcome, and if you try to come in, we’re going to pony up the resources to silence you.’”Ms. Turner spoke with voters at a Gas on God Community Giveaway in Cleveland on Saturday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMs. Turner said she wanted the race to be about her issues: single-payer Medicare for all, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, canceling student loan debt and other centerpieces of the Sanders movement she helped create. She said she had been warned from the beginning of her candidacy that Washington Democrats would unite around an “anyone but Nina” candidate.But on Sunday, even she seemed surprised by the bitter turn the contest had taken. The Congressional Black Caucus PAC’s intervention particularly rankled. With the rise of liberal groups like Justice Democrats dedicated to unseating entrenched Democrats in safe seats, the caucus has emerged as something of an incumbent protection service.It backed Representative William Lacy Clay Jr. of Missouri, a caucus member, in his unsuccessful bid to stave off a Black challenger, Ms. Bush, last year, and Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, now the chairwoman of the caucus, in her successful bid to beat a Justice Democrat.But the PAC also backed Representative Eliot Engel of New York, who is white, last year against his progressive challenger, Mr. Bowman, who is Black.And now, inexplicably to Ms. Turner and her allies, the powerful Black establishment is intervening in an open-seat race between two Black candidates.“I don’t begrudge anybody wanting to get involved in the race,” Ms. Turner said, “but the entire Congressional Black Caucus PAC? That’s sending another message: Progressives need not apply.”Mr. Clyburn’s high-profile intervention is especially striking. In endorsing Ms. Brown, Mr. Clyburn said he was choosing the candidate he liked best, not opposing Ms. Turner. But he did speak out against the “sloganeering” of the party’s left wing.Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking Black Democrat in the House, has endorsed Ms. Brown.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesIn Cleveland, not everyone appreciated the distinction.“They want somebody they can control, and they want somebody to fall in line,” said State Representative Juanita Brent, who backs Ms. Turner. She said she had a message for Mr. Clyburn: “Congressman, with all due respect, stay out of our district.”Ms. Brown, younger than Ms. Turner, with an easygoing demeanor that does not match the Turner campaign’s description of her negative campaigning, pushed back hard against the characterization of her as a Washington puppet.Her campaign is staffed by help from SKDK, a powerhouse Democratic political firm stocked with old hands from the Clinton and Obama days. Her endorsements include moderate House Democrats like Mr. Gottheimer, many of whom are motivated by Ms. Turner’s favorable statements on Palestinian rights.But Ms. Brown insists she is no pawn for establishment Democrats.“You should ask the people who have tried to control me,” she said. “You will find that I am an independent thinker. I am one that likes to gather all of the facts and make an informed decision.”At Alfred Grant’s motorcycle shop in Bedford, Ohio, where Ms. Brown was dropping by a show of motorcycle muscle on Saturday night, older Black voters backed her campaign’s assessment of Ms. Turner: You either love her or you really don’t.“It seems to me that Nina tends to work for herself more than working together,” Roberta Reed said. “I mean, I need people who are going to work together to make it all whole.”“She’s going to help the Biden-Harris agenda; that means a lot,” Denise Grant, Mr. Grant’s wife, said of Ms. Brown, hitting on her biggest talking point. “We don’t need anybody fighting with Biden there.”Her husband jumped in, expressing weariness of the kind of confrontational politics that Ms. Turner embraced. “We did four years of foolishness,” he said. “Now it’s calmed down. That’s how politics should be. I don’t have to look at you every day.”Ms. Turner does not back down from that critique. Voters can take it or leave it.“My ancestors would have never been set free but for somebody bumping up against the status quo and saying, ‘You will not enslave us anymore,’” she said.Parishioners prayed over Ms. Turner at God’s Tabernacle of Faith Church on Sunday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“Martin Luther King, Minister Malcolm X, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer — I’m just giving examples of people who I’m sure folks who believe in the status quo wish had been nicer,” she said.At God’s Tabernacle of Faith, Pastor Eppinger teed up Ms. Turner with a rousing sermon inspired by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel.“How long will you walk through dead schools, dead communities, dead governments?” he thundered. “Can these dry bones live?”Ms. Turner, in a bright yellow dress, removed her matching, bright yellow mask, and answered, “All Sister Turner is saying is, we need somebody to speak life into the dry bones of City Hall, the dry bones in Congress, and if God blesses me to go to that next place, I am going to continue to stand for the poor, the working poor and the barely middle class. Can these dry bones live?”To that, the 50 or so parishioners gave an amen. More

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      Rep. James Clyburn Opposes Sanders Ally in Special Election

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      The decision by Representative James Clyburn to oppose an outspoken ally of Senator Bernie Sanders in a special election in Cleveland highlights the generational and ideological gulf in the Democratic Party.WASHINGTON — Early last year, as Bernie Sanders was surging through the first Democratic presidential primary races, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a kingmaker in his state, stepped in to endorse Joseph R. Biden Jr. before the primary there, helping vault the former vice president to the nomination.On Tuesday, Mr. Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, took aim at one of Mr. Sanders’s most outspoken acolytes, Nina Turner, a hero to the left who is surging in her campaign in Ohio to claim the Cleveland-based congressional seat vacated by the housing secretary, Marcia L. Fudge.In a rare intervention into a party primary, Mr. Clyburn, a veteran lawmaker and the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, endorsed Shontel Brown, Ms. Turner’s leading opponent.He said his decision to back Ms. Brown, the chairwoman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, was not about Mr. Sanders, or even Ms. Turner, who remains the favorite before the contest on Aug. 3 in the heavily Democratic district. But he took a swipe at what he called the “sloganeering” of the party’s left flank, which has risen to power with calls for “Medicare for all,” and to “abolish ICE” and “defund the police.”“What I try to do is demonstrate by precept and example how we are to proceed as a party,” Mr. Clyburn said in an interview. “When I spoke out against sloganeering, like ‘Burn, baby, burn’ in the 1960s and ‘defund the police,’ which I think is cutting the throats of the party, I know exactly where my constituents are. They are against that, and I’m against that.”The special election in Cleveland is highlighting the vast generational divide and ideological gulf that the Democratic Party faces as the entire House leadership heads toward the sunset. Mr. Clyburn, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, are all octogenarians, leading an increasingly youthful, diverse and restive caucus. Ms. Pelosi even agreed to vacate her position after this Congress, and the next year will be an ideological battle over who will succeed her.Ms. Brown has the backing of the Democratic establishment, including not only Mr. Clyburn but also Hillary Clinton; Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general; Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus; and moderate Democrats like Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and David Trone of Maryland.Ms. Turner, who has the endorsements of much of the House Progressive Caucus, including the so-called squad — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna S. Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — would be a strong new voice for the congressional left. And the left is increasingly focused on Black and Hispanic districts that they see as safe redoubts for ideological candidates.“You can’t take any one race and paint it as some larger aggregate for the whole country,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said on Tuesday. “But I do think that Nina is a beloved leader in the progressive movement, and the degree of excitement that she’s generated and grass-roots energy and organizing in her direction is a real testament to the asset that the base of our party can provide.”Ms. Turner is undoubtedly a divisive figure as well. A prominent surrogate for Mr. Sanders in 2016 and a national co-chairwoman for his campaign in 2020, she has never minced words about what she calls “corporate Democrats.” She has declined to say whether she voted for Ms. Clinton in 2016, and before Election Day in November, she suggested the choice between Donald J. Trump and Mr. Biden was the choice between a full bowl of excrement and half a bowl.Nina Turner, who is running for a House seat in Ohio, was a prominent surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 and a national co-chairwoman for his campaign in 2020.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesAt an event last weekend, Ms. Turner sat beside the rapper Killer Mike, another supporter of Mr. Sanders, as he suggested that Mr. Clyburn sold out cheap to Mr. Biden, delivering his endorsement in exchange for making Juneteenth into a federal holiday.“I think it’s incredibly stupid to not cut a deal before you get someone elected president, and the only thing you get is a federal holiday and nothing tangible out of it,” he said, as Ms. Turner approvingly interjected, “You better talk about it.”To this day, some Democrats say Ms. Turner’s hostility cost Mrs. Clinton key votes on the left in the swing states that decided the 2016 election.In an interview Tuesday, Ms. Turner blanched at any notion of disloyalty to the party for which she has served as a Cleveland city councilwoman, a state senator, the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, and a two-time convention delegate for Barack Obama, when Mr. Biden shared his ticket.“I wish people were more concerned about the suffering that I have enumerated than the colorful words that I have used,” she said.Mr. Clyburn said “colorful words” did not factor in his endorsement, though in an advertisement to begin running on Wednesday, he listed the names of past Black members of Congress who represented Ohio and said they had been effective “because they focused on you, not on themselves.”Both Ms. Turner and Ms. Brown are Black, as is Ms. Fudge, whom Mr. Clyburn aggressively promoted to lead the Agriculture Department before Mr. Biden selected her as housing secretary.Ms. Brown carefully plays on Ms. Turner’s outspokenness in her campaign.“As the leader of this party, I am truly skilled in building bridges and doing it without attacking people or insulting them,” she said Tuesday. If sent to Washington, she added, “I won’t have to start with a long letter of apology.”Ms. Turner has a ready answer for that, pointing to the blistering attack Kamala Harris, then a senator, directed at Mr. Biden during one of the presidential debates, when she said his policies had exacerbated racial injustice.“If those two can be side by side now, then surely the president and I can come together,” she said, though she added that her campaign is “not about loyalty to any one person.”She has been trying to make amends, commending the Biden administration for its pandemic response, its huge coronavirus aid package and its social policy proposals, while saying Democrats need to go further — on student debt forgiveness, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and climate change,And ultimately, ideology, not style, is the biggest issue confronting the Democratic Party.“These generational shifts are absolutely a theme throughout the caucus across a lot of different issues,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “That’s why I think Nina’s groundswell is exciting, because it’s not any one person’s endorsement. It’s really the sum of everything that we’ve seen.” More

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      They Seemed Like Democratic Activists. They Were Secretly Conservative Spies.

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      CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The young couple posing in front of the faux Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas fit right in, two people in a sea of idealistic Democrats who had arrived in the city in February 2020 for a Democratic primary debate.Large donations to the Democratic National Committee — $10,000 each — had bought Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca tickets to the debate. During a cocktail reception beforehand, they worked the room of party officials, rainbow donkey pins affixed to their lapels.In fact, much about them was a lie. Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca were part of an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle, according to interviews and documents.Using large campaign donations and cover stories, the operatives aimed to gather dirt that could sabotage the reputations of people and organizations considered threats to a hard-right agenda advanced by President Donald J. Trump.At the center of the scheme was an unusual cast: a former British spy connected to the security contractor Erik Prince, a wealthy heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune and undercover operatives like Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca who used Wyoming as a base to insinuate themselves into the political fabric of this state and at least two others, Colorado and Arizona.In more than two dozen interviews and a review of federal election records, The New York Times reconstructed many of the operatives’ interactions in Wyoming and other states — mapping out their associations and likely targets — and spoke to people with whom they discussed details of their spying operation. Publicly available documents in Wyoming also tied Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca to an address in Cody used by the former spy, Richard Seddon.What the effort accomplished — and how much information Mr. Seddon’s operatives gathered — is unclear. Sometimes, their tactics were bumbling and amateurish. But the operation’s use of spycraft to manipulate the politics of several states over years greatly exceeds the tactics of more traditional political dirty tricks operations.It is also a sign of how ultraconservative Republicans see a deep need to install allies in various positions at the state level to gain an advantage on the electoral map. Secretaries of state, for example, play a crucial role in certifying election results every two years, and some became targets of Mr. Trump and his allies in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Sofia LaRocca and Beau Maier were in Las Vegas last year for the Democratic primary debate. They had insinuated themselves into the fabric of progressive movements in the West.The campaign followed another effort engineered by Mr. Seddon. He aided a network of conservative activists trying to discredit perceived enemies of Mr. Trump inside the government, including a planned sting operation in 2018 against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and helping set up secret surveillance of F.B.I. employees and other government officials.Mr. Prince had set Mr. Seddon’s work in motion, recruiting him around the beginning of the Trump administration to hire former spies to train conservative activists in the basics of espionage, and send them on political sabotage missions.By the end of 2018, Mr. Seddon secured funding from the Wyoming heiress, Susan Gore, according to people familiar with her role. He recruited several former operatives from the conservative group Project Veritas, where he had worked previously, to set up the political infiltration operation in the West.Project Veritas has a history of using operatives with fake names to target liberal organizations and make secret recordings to embarrass them.The endeavor in the West appears to have had two primary goals: penetrate local and eventually national Democratic political circles for long-term intelligence gathering, and collect dirt on moderate Republicans that could be used against them in the internecine party battles being waged by Mr. Trump and his allies.Nate Martin, the head of Better Wyoming, a progressive group that was one of the operation’s targets, said he suspected that its aim was to “dig up this information and you sit on it until you really can destroy somebody.”Toward the first goal, operatives concocted cover stories and made large campaign donations to gain entree to Democratic events such as the Las Vegas debate and a Washington fund-raiser attended by Democratic lawmakers.They also took aim at the administration of the Republican governor of Wyoming, Mark Gordon, whom hard-right conservatives considered far too moderate and whose candidacy Ms. Gore had opposed in 2018. They targeted a Republican state representative, now the Wyoming speaker of the house, because of his openness to liberalizing marijuana laws — a position Ms. Gore vigorously opposes.Using her Democratic cover identity, Ms. LaRocca got a job working for a consortium of wealthy liberal donors in Wyoming — the Wyoming Investor Network, or WIN — that had decided to back some moderate Republicans. The job gave her access to valuable information.“Getting the WIN stuff is really damaging,” said Chris Bell, who worked as a political consultant for the consortium. “It’s the entire strategy. Where the money is going. What we’re doing long term.”Mr. Seddon, Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca did not respond to requests for comment about the operation or the campaign contributions. Cassie Craven, a lawyer for Ms. Gore, also did not respond to emails or a voice mail message seeking comment about the operation, nor did Ms. Gore herself.When The Times reached out to political activists and politicians who had come to know Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca, informing them of the couple’s true agenda, some said the news confirmed their own suspicions that the pair might not have been on the level. Others were stunned and said they regretted any part they had played in helping them gain entree to political circles in the West.George Durazzo Jr., a Colorado businessman and fund-raiser who coaxed the large donations from Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca and shepherded them around Las Vegas before the debate, said he was both angry and embarrassed. He had planned, he said, to take them to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee before the pandemic turned it into a virtual event.“If they are indeed Benedict Arnold and Mata Hari,” he said, “I was the one who was fooled.”Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca volunteered at a Democratic Party fund-raiser at the Old Wilson Schoolhouse near Jackson, Wyo., in August 2019.Ryan Dorgan for The New York TimesSetting Up in WyomingMs. LaRocca first met Mr. Seddon in 2017, when he ran training for Project Veritas operatives at Mr. Prince’s family ranch in Wapiti, Wyo. Mr. Seddon taught them how to work undercover, build aliases and recruit sources. Mr. Prince, who had recruited Mr. Seddon, is the brother of Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump’s education secretary.Mr. Maier, 36, a brawny and tattooed veteran of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division who fought in Iraq, also trained at the Prince ranch that year. His mother is a baker and was the cook at the ranch, and he is the nephew of Glenn Beck, the conservative commentator. At one point, Ms. Gore came to watch the training at the ranch.The next year, Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca lived in a luxury house in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington that Project Veritas rented for undercover sting operations against government officials that tried to expose “deep state” bias against Mr. Trump.The Women’s March in Cheyenne in 2019.Jacob Byk/The Wyoming Tribune Eagle, via Associated PressPeople who worked for the conservative group identified the couple and linked them to the Georgetown house. Others confirmed Ms. LaRocca was pictured on the website Project Veritas Exposed, where she was identified as “Maria.”Mr. Seddon left Project Veritas in the summer of 2018. He lured Mr. Maier, Ms. LaRocca and others to work with him in Wyoming on a new venture — one that would more closely model his time as a British intelligence officer working overseas. Mr. Seddon wanted to run a classic espionage operation in which undercover agents would burrow into organizations and potentially recruit others to help collect information. As in his days at MI-6, the goal was to spy on potential adversaries or targets without getting caught and then quietly use the information to gain an advantage. If conducted correctly, such operations can last for years.And he found someone to pay for it: Ms. Gore, the Gore-Tex heiress who for years had supported conservative and libertarian causes.Hints of Mr. Seddon’s project surfaced recently in a memoir by Cassandra Spencer, a onetime Project Veritas operative. In the book, she describes being called in June 2018 by an associate of her former colleague, Richard, who was trying to secure funding for a new initiative. The man, whom she calls Ken, told her it was a “pay for play” operation — where clients would put up money for an undercover effort.Ms. LaRocca, 28, first approached the Wyoming Democratic Party in January 2019, fresh off her attendance at the Women’s March in Cheyenne, with an offer to help raise money. Her goal, she told people, was ambitious: help “flip” one of America’s most conservative states into a reliable victory for Democratic presidential candidates — as Colorado had become over the past two decades.Mr. Seddon appears to have directed Ms. LaRocca’s outreach to the Wyoming Democratic Party as a safe first step toward building up her bona fides for future operations. Democrats in the state are vastly outnumbered, have little political clout and are eager for volunteers. Ms. LaRocca quickly declared her candidacy for vice chairwoman of the Wyoming Young Democrats, obtained a contract position at the party as a fund-raiser paid by commission and had meetings with the state party’s top two officials, Joe Barbuto and Sarah Hunt.Sarah Hunt, the executive director of the Wyoming Democratic Party.Chet Strange for The New York TimesHer behavior raised some suspicion. Ms. LaRocca and Mr. Maier lived in Fort Collins, Colo., only about 45 miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming’s capital, but their residence prompted some Democrats to ask how they planned to organize a grass-roots campaign to flip the state while living in Colorado. Ms. LaRocca told others she could not rent a home in Cheyenne because she had a dog, an implausible explanation.Ms. LaRocca had also introduced herself to party officials as Cat Debreau. She eventually told a story about why she later went by the name Sofia LaRocca: She had been the victim of an online stalker, she said, but decided to once again use her original name because the police had told her that her stalker had reformed.“Her story from the start rang very untrue,” said Nina Hebert, who at the time was the digital director for the Wyoming Democratic Party. “The police don’t call you and say, ‘Hey, your stalker is better.’”Ms. Hebert said she began to restrict Ms. LaRocca’s access to the party’s email system in the summer of 2019.At the same time, Mr. Maier was making connections of his own around the state, meeting with Democrats and Republicans on the issue of the medicinal use of marijuana, which he said was particularly valuable for war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.In August 2019, the couple volunteered at a Democratic Party fund-raiser at the Old Wilson Schoolhouse, a community center in the shadow of the Teton mountain range near Jackson. Ms. LaRocca had her picture taken with the event’s headline guest: Tom Perez, the former labor secretary and then the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.Months later, Ms. LaRocca secured a spot in a program training young progressives in the state on the basics of political and community organizing. She dashed off an email to Mr. Martin, the head of the group running the program, saying how thrilled she was to be receiving the training.During the course, she paired up with Marcie Kindred, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Wyoming Legislature; Ms. LaRocca later gave $250 to her campaign. Ms. LaRocca used a picture they took together for her Facebook profile.Ms. LaRocca, left, used a picture with Marcie Kindred as her Facebook profile photo. Ms. Kindred lost a bid for a seat in the Wyoming Legislature.“It was kind of odd she put it on Facebook,” Ms. Kindred said. “We weren’t really that close. Now it makes total sense. She was playing the long game, trying to be my friend in the hopes of me getting into the legislature.”Ms. LaRocca also told Ms. Kindred that she wanted to work on the campaign of Karlee Provenza, a police reform advocate who ultimately won a seat in the legislature in one of a few Democratic districts in the state.She and Mr. Maier eventually began going on double dates with Ms. Provenza and Mr. Martin, the head of Better Wyoming who was then her fiancé and is now her husband.Over dinner one night at Sushi Jeju in Fort Collins, Ms. LaRocca and Mr. Maier made a big announcement: They, too, were engaged. Ms. LaRocca flashed a large diamond ring. Mr. Maier paid for dinner.But the relationship began taking strange turns. Months later, meeting with Ms. Provenza and Mr. Martin in Laramie, Mr. Maier told them to turn off their phones.He then proposed a plan to target Republicans — using some of his contacts who could befriend politicians and dig up dirt on them. Mr. Maier said he had friends in military intelligence who could run background checks on people and suggested he had been on a “kill squad” while serving in Iraq.“This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what they can do,” Mr. Martin recalled Mr. Maier saying, adding that the conversation danced around who would fund the operation.A Wyoming state representative, Karlee Provenza, and her husband, Nate Martin, went on double dates with Ms. LaRocca and Mr. Maier.Chet Strange for The New York TimesDuring the meeting, Mr. Maier described the purpose of the operation, saying they would collect the damaging material and hold it quietly until the person they targeted mattered — a philosophy that seemed to reflect Mr. Seddon’s view on long-term infiltration efforts.Mr. Maier had brought intelligence reports that appeared to be drawn mostly from public records. One was about the Wyoming attorney general, Bridget Hill, Mr. Martin said.Why Mr. Maier proposed this operation is unclear.“We knew something was fishy, but we couldn’t prove it,” Mr. Martin said.Weeks later, Mr. Martin and a colleague hosted an advocacy training event at a library in Laramie County. Mr. Martin was secretly videotaped, in what appears to be a sting operation tied to Mr. Seddon’s project.Shortly afterward, a video clip appeared on a now-defunct website, showing Mr. Martin declaring that he had voted in the Republican primary race. The video’s publication served as an attempt to expose alliances between progressives and moderate Republicans.Mr. Martin said he immediately suspected it was recorded by a woman who had attended the event and approached him afterward, claiming that her name was Beth Price and that she was from Michigan. The woman, whose real name is Alexandra Pollack of Grand Ledge, Mich., acknowledged in a brief interview that she was in Wyoming at the time but declined to answer questions about what she was doing there, saying she had a nondisclosure agreement. Ms. Kindred, who had attended the Laramie event, recognized Ms. Pollack from a photo on her LinkedIn profile.Ms. Pollack lived not far from Ms. LaRocca in Maryland when they were younger, and both are around the same age. She did not respond to an email asking whether she knew Ms. LaRocca.Ms. LaRocca and Mr. Maier attended the debate in Las Vegas in February 2020.Calla Kessler/The New York TimesDonations, Then AccessDemocrats across the country began 2020 with twin goals: ensuring that Mr. Trump was defeated, and pouring energy into key congressional races that could flip the Senate and keep the House in Democratic hands.Achieving those goals meant raising millions of dollars, and the large checks written by Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca opened doors for them into elite political circles.In February, Mr. Durazzo, the Colorado fund-raiser, secured a pledge of $10,000 each from the couple to the Democratic National Committee. “We are all vulnerable to charm and hefty contributions,” he said later. “Ten thousand bucks, you definitely have me by the ears.”Within days, they were in Las Vegas for the Democratic presidential debate, schmoozing with committee staff members and other donors during a party beforehand.Before submitting their names to be cleared by security for the Democratic National Committee events in Las Vegas, Mr. Durazzo said he asked Mr. Maier whether any “surprises” might come up. Mr. Maier revealed that he was the nephew of Mr. Beck but said he did not share his uncle’s politics.He said: “I’m a supporter of your causes,” Mr. Durazzo recalled.George Durazzo Jr., a Colorado businessman and fund-raiser, secured a pledge of $10,000 each from the couple to the Democratic National Committee. Chet Strange for The New York TimesSeparately, Mr. Maier gave $1,250 to the campaign of Jena Griswold, a rising Democratic star in Colorado, for her re-election bid as secretary of state. The donation gained him and Ms. LaRocca an invitation to a Washington, D.C., fund-raiser, where they met Ms. Griswold.A $2,000 donation to the campaign of Mark Kelly, then a candidate in Arizona for a U.S. Senate seat, got the couple on a committee for an April fund-raiser. The next month, Mr. Maier gave $6,000 to the Wyoming Democratic Party.It was not clear where they got the money to make a flurry of generous campaign donations. Under federal law, it is illegal to make campaign donations at the behest of another person, then get reimbursed. So-called straw donations have been at the center of numerous federal investigations.“Sometimes when you’re looking at patterns of contributions, you start to see people with relatively limited resources making sizable political contributions,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center and an expert on campaign finance law. “That can be a red flag.”The operatives also took aim at Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, whom hard-right conservatives considered too moderate.Josh Galemore/The Casper Star-Tribune, via Associated PressA Wealthy Conservative DonorWyoming is a rural state with a small population, a place where cities are separated by hours of open highway, vast prairies and jagged mountains. Statewide political campaigns can be won on a shoestring budget.In this political environment, Ms. Gore has long been a mysterious yet influential figure — quietly using her large fortune to ensure the supremacy of conservative causes.She was one of several children to inherit the wealth of her father, who helped invent the waterproof fabric that came to be known as Gore-Tex.After getting a divorce in 1981, she joined the Transcendental Meditation movement, according to court documents in Delaware, but she became gravely ill and left the movement to convalesce in monasteries for three years. In a bizarre turn two decades later, she tried to adopt her former husband in an attempt to increase their children’s share of the family inheritance.Susan Gore, an heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, has backed conservative causes and been a force in Wyoming politics since she moved to the state in the 1990s.Dan Cepeda/Casper Star-TribuneShe has been a force in Wyoming politics since she moved to the state in the 1990s. In 2008, she established Wyoming Liberty Group, a nonprofit in Cheyenne that pushes libertarian and conservative causes.In 2018, Ms. Gore opposed the candidacy of Mr. Gordon to become Wyoming governor. His main opponent in the Republican primary was Mr. Friess, the wealthy investor who was also a Project Veritas donor. Both Mr. Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had endorsed Mr. Friess, with the president posting on Twitter that “he will be a fantastic Governor! Strong on Crime, Borders & 2nd Amendment.”Mr. Friess lost, in part because a large number of Democrats switched parties to vote for Mr. Gordon. The outcome embittered Mr. Friess and his allies, who saw Mr. Gordon’s victory as part of a worrying trend of creeping progressivism in the state — and believed too many Republicans were part of that trend.Mr. Friess died last month at age 81.2020 StrategyWith months to go before the 2020 election, the biggest political fights in Wyoming were in the Republican Party, between hard-right candidates and more moderate politicians battling to represent the party in November.Mr. Trump was eager to make all elections something of a referendum on his leadership, and in Wyoming, the battle lines hardened between the Trump loyalists and the candidates the right wing of the party derided as “RINOs,” or “Republicans in name only.”Given the barren political landscape for Democrats, a consortium of wealthy liberal donors — the Wyoming Investor Network — made the strategic decision to quietly support certain Republican moderates. One regular donor to WIN is Elizabeth Storer, a Jackson millionaire and granddaughter of George Storer, who amassed a fortune in the radio and television industry.By hiring Ms. LaRocca, the consortium put her in a position that gave her valuable intelligence about which Republican candidates the group was supporting with independent advertising. She took notes during a board meeting and had access to the complete list of the candidates WIN supported.Mr. Maier began making contacts in the offices of moderate Republican legislators and befriended Eric Barlow, now the Wyoming speaker of the house. He told Mr. Barlow that he was passionate about the medicinal uses of marijuana, and the men met several times — including once when Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca had dinner at Mr. Barlow’s ranch.In an interview, Mr. Barlow, a retired veterinarian who said he was open to decriminalizing marijuana and allowing it for medical use, labeled himself a “practical Republican.”“For some people, that’s a RINO,” he said.Mr. Barlow said that he believed he had met Ms. Gore only once, but that she usually gave money to his Republican primary opponents every election cycle.Ms. LaRocca and Mr. Maier at a fund-raiser.Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca often told her colleagues that they were committed to upending the political dynamics in the Mountain West — saying that even a deeply conservative state like Wyoming could eventually turn liberal. Ms. LaRocca said she wanted to continue working at the Wyoming Investor Network and other progressive groups.But then, right before the November election, Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca disappeared. On Oct. 21, she wrote an email to her boss saying that she had to leave the country. “I have a family emergency and am going to Venezuela as my grandmother is gravely ill,” she wrote.Others she had worked with — and befriended — over two years said they had not heard from her in months.“She kind of dropped off the face of the earth,” said Ms. Hunt, the executive director of the Wyoming Democratic Party.In fact, the couple never left the area. Mr. Maier and Mr. Seddon have also been working together on a business venture importing ammunition from overseas, according to a business document linking the two men that was obtained by The Times.Last week, Ms. LaRocca and Mr. Maier married in Big Horn, Wyo. Mr. Beck, the conservative commentator and Mr. Maier’s uncle, delivered a wedding toast.Kitty Bennett More

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      Yang and Garcia Form Late Alliance in Mayor’s Race, Drawing Adams’s Ire

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      Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia campaigned together on Saturday in a show of unity that their top rival, Eric Adams, sought to portray as racially motivated.Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia, two leading candidates in the New York City mayor’s race, joined each other on the campaign trail on Saturday, a late alliance that the contest’s front-runner, Eric Adams, immediately sought to portray as an attempt to weaken the voice of minority voters.Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia stopped short of an official cross-endorsement, with Mr. Yang urging voters to rank Ms. Garcia second on their ballots but Ms. Garcia refraining from doing the same for him. Still, the two distributed fliers at a rally in Queens that featured their photos and names side by side.“Rank me No. 1 and then rank Kathryn Garcia No. 2,” Mr. Yang said.The display of unity, just three days before the Democratic primary scheduled for Tuesday, appeared to be aimed at Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, who has been leading in the polls. Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia are centrists in the top tier of candidates who are trying to stop Mr. Adams’s momentum, and theirs was the first major alliance under ranked-choice voting.The new voting system, in which voters can list up to five candidates on a ballot in ranked preference, has made campaign strategies more complicated. Candidates are not just asking for votes; they need to persuade as many of their rivals’ backers as possible to rank them second or third. If Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia can persuade their supporters not to rank Mr. Adams, that could significantly hurt him.Mr. Adams inserted the notion that Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia were playing racial politics, a provocative claim that his campaign attempted to back up by distributing statements from several of his more prominent supporters, including the former Gov. David A. Paterson and the Bronx borough president, Rubén Díaz Jr., who echoed the accusation.Mr. Adams said that the alliance between Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia was aimed at preventing a “person of color” from winning the race. “For them to come together like they are doing in the last three days, they’re saying we can’t trust a person of color to be the mayor of the City of New York when this city is overwhelmingly people of color,” Mr. Adams said.At a separate news conference, Mr. Yang responded, “I would tell Eric Adams that I’ve been Asian my entire life.” (Mr. Adams clarified that he was accusing Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia of trying to prevent a Black or Latino person from becoming mayor.)The Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, said the Yang-Garcia alliance was an effort to weaken the voices of minority voters in the mayoral election.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesMr. Adams, appearing at a news conference on Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx, where a man was shot this week as two children scrambled to get out of the way, said that Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang were being hypocritical, and he highlighted how Ms. Garcia had previously criticized Mr. Yang. “We heard Kathryn talk about how Yang treated her as a woman,” Mr. Adams said. “We heard how she felt he did not have the experience, the know-how, to run the city.”Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang dismissed Mr. Adams’s allegations. “I’m not even going to respond to that,” Ms. Garcia said. Her campaign later released a statement that accused Mr. Adams of “resorting to divisive politics that erode New York City’s democracy.”Mr. Yang, however, still made it clear that the rally was aimed at Mr. Adams, whom Mr. Yang has criticized in the past as a corrupt and unprincipled politician.“There’s some candidates I do not think should be anywhere near City Hall,” Mr. Yang said before adding, in reference to the police captains’ union and to Mr. Adams, who is a former police captain, “One of them — his union endorsed me this week, and that should be all you need to know.”Ms. Garcia was more circumspect, even about her alliance with Mr. Yang. She praised Mr. Yang and said they shared some of the same stances, but said she would not ask her supporters to rank him second.“I am not telling my voters what to do,” Ms. Garcia told reporters at a news conference in Manhattan, adding that she would be open to campaigning with other candidates.A victory by any of the four leading candidates would be momentous: Mr. Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor; Ms. Garcia would be the first female mayor; and Mr. Yang would be the first Asian American mayor. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, would be the first Black female mayor.The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has not made an endorsement in the race, said that candidates should be free to make their own strategic decisions about how to encourage voter turnout.“My sense is, everybody should do whatever they can to get the vote out,” he said. “I think it would be good if the other candidates teamed up, too, to get the vote out.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Indeed, aides to Ms. Garcia, who has been trying to increase her support in the Black community, said that the campaign of Raymond J. McGuire, a Black candidate and a former Wall Street executive, had contacted her campaign two weeks ago to discuss a cross-endorsement. After a forum, Ms. Garcia approached Mr. McGuire and said, “We should talk.”Ms. Garcia wanted access to the base of Black support that Mr. McGuire had cultivated in Harlem and southeast Queens, and she wanted an introduction to Representative Gregory W. Meeks and Assemblyman Robert J. Rodriguez, both of whom had endorsed Mr. McGuire as their first choice. Ms. Garcia wanted to visit a subway stop in southeast Queens with Mr. McGuire or take a trip to the Bronx with Mr. Rodriguez.The plan was progressing until Mr. McGuire’s campaign leaders changed their minds, feeling that the cross-endorsement would not help them because they already had white supporters, according to a person familiar with the matter.“It didn’t work out,” Annika Reno, a spokeswoman for Ms. Garcia, said, confirming the negotiations. Ms. Wiley suggested on Saturday that she, too, had been offered the opportunity to campaign with Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia. But she said she “couldn’t do it” after Mr. Yang’s comments at the final debate about wanting to get people with mental health problems off the streets.The campaigns of Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia both denied that Ms. Wiley had been invited to Saturday’s events. Ms. Wiley declined to criticize the joint appearance of Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang, even as she seemed to dismiss the possibility of doing something similar.“Candidates gonna candidate,” she said on Saturday. “I’m going to talk to people.”Ms. Wiley also received an endorsement on Saturday from Alessandra Biaggi, a prominent state senator, another sign of momentum for Ms. Wiley among progressive leaders. Ms. Biaggi had endorsed Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, but withdrew her support after he was accused of sexual misconduct. Mr. Sharpton suggested that Mr. Adams’s strategy appeared to be centered on attracting as many Black and Latino voters as possible in places like the Bronx, Central Harlem and Central Brooklyn, and making inroads with moderate white voters. Public polls suggest that Mr. Adams has a clear advantage with Black voters, but Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia are also competing for Latino and moderate white voters.“He’ll get some moderate white voters because of his crime stand,” Mr. Sharpton said of Mr. Adams. “With this uptick in violence, he’s the one that’s taken the definitive stand in terms of public safety.”The Yang-Garcia event did cost Ms. Garcia a ranked-choice vote from Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate. Mr. Williams had endorsed Ms. Wiley as his first choice and announced his secondary choices on Saturday, among them Mr. Adams.Ms. Garcia’s alliance with Mr. Yang, he said, was enough to exclude her from his ballot. “As I’ve said previously, while I have concerns about multiple candidates, at this point I’m singularly most concerned about Andrew Yang for mayor,” he said.Mr. Adams, for his part, seemed to be having fun on the campaign trail. At Orchard Beach in the Bronx, he appeared in swimming trunks, grinning and waving at beachgoers who called out greetings from the sand. Then Mr. Adams waded out into the water.Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard, Katie Glueck and Michael Gold. More

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      Herschel Walker's Cryptic Video Could Upend Georgia Senate Race

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      If the Georgia college football legend Herschel Walker declares his candidacy it could put former President Donald J. Trump’s power as a kingmaker to the test.ATLANTA — In his 1980s prime, Herschel Walker, the Georgia college football legend, ran the ball with the downhill ferocity of a runaway transfer truck. There was no question about which way he was headed.But that was not the case this week, as Mr. Walker tweeted out a cryptic 21-second video that sent the state’s political players into a frenzy of decoding and guesswork.Did the video amount to an announcement that the Heisman-winning Mr. Walker — spurred on by the sis-boom-bah urging of his old friend Donald J. Trump — plans to enter the Republican primary for a chance to run next year against the Democratic senator the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock?That was one plausible interpretation of the clip, in which a smiling Mr. Walker, who lives in Texas, revs the motor of a sports car.“I’m getting ready,” Mr. Walker says, as the camera pans to the car’s Georgia license plate. “And we can run with the big dogs.”If Mr. Walker indeed jumps into the Senate race, it will go a long way toward firming up the 2022 pro-Trump roster in Georgia, where the former president has vowed to handpick G.O.P. candidates to exact revenge on the Republicans who declined to support his false contention that he was the true winner of the 2020 election in the state, which he in fact lost by about 12,000 votes.Mr. Walker, who once played for Mr. Trump’s professional team, the New Jersey Generals, in the short-lived United States Football League, urged Republicans to stick by Mr. Trump in the weeks after Election Day as departing president pressed his unfounded claims of voter fraud. In March, Mr. Trump, in a statement, said it would be “fantastic” if Mr. Walker ran for Senate.“He would be unstoppable, just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the NFL,” Mr. Trump said. “He is also a GREAT person. Run Herschel, run!”But a Walker candidacy may also prove to be the most high-stakes test of whether Mr. Trump’s fervent wish to play kingmaker will serve his party’s best interests in a hotly contested swing state that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.Though Mr. Walker is the most revered player in the modern history of the football-crazy state — Bulldog fans still talk about where they were when they saw his jaw-dropping performance in the 1981 Sugar Bowl, the way other Americans talk about the moon landing — the former running back also brings a complicated post-football story.Mr. Walker, 59, says that he suffers from dissociative identity disorder, an affliction formerly known as multiple personality disorder. His forthrightness on the topic of mental illness, outlined in his 2008 book, “Breaking Free: My Life With Dissociative Identity Disorder,” has earned him praise in some quarters. But others have doubted the diagnosis, calling it a convenient way to excuse bad behavior.In a 2005 application for a protective order, Mr. Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, alleged that Mr. Walker had a history of “extremely threatening behavior” toward her. In one instance, she has said, he put a gun to her temple. In his book, Mr. Walker admitted to numerous instances of playing Russian roulette.Mr. Walker could not reached for comment for this article, but in a 2008 interview with The New York Times, he said he had the disorder under control with the help of therapy.Leo Smith, a Republican political consultant in Georgia, said that he hopes Mr. Walker will remain on the sidelines. “As a political consultant, I’d recommend that Mr. Walker influence politics through fund-raising and donations, not as a candidate,” he said.Senator Raphael G. Warnock of Georgia, center, greeting Vice President Kamala Harris in Atlanta on Friday. Some believe Mr. Walker’s Twitter video was a sign he plans to run against Mr. Warnock next year.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesBut Randy Evans, a former ambassador to Luxembourg appointed by Mr. Trump, said that Mr. Walker may prove to be a “transformational” candidate who crosses boundaries of party and race (Mr. Walker is Black). “He’s got the demeanor to do it,” Mr. Evans said. “I recognize fully the difficulties of brand-new people who run who’ve never run before, but I thought Senator Tuberville did a pretty good job in Alabama, and that Herschel Walker would do a great job in Georgia.”Mr. Evans was referring to Tommy Tuberville, the staunchly pro-Trump Republican and big-time college football coach who easily won election to the Senate in November. But while Mr. Trump remains popular among Republicans in both Alabama and Georgia, the latter has seen Democrats make big inroads in part because of demographic change and a distaste for Trumpism in some important areas, including the suburbs north of Atlanta.Mr. Trump has already endorsed Representative Jody Hice, a hard-right conservative and Baptist preacher who plans to run for Secretary of State in Georgia against the incumbent Brad Raffensperger. Like Mr. Walker, Mr. Hice supports Mr. Trump’s bogus claims of a rigged election, and a Trump endorsement may be enough to hand him a primary victory.But a number of Republicans are quietly concerned that both Mr. Hice and Mr. Walker may wither in the scrutiny of a general election. Suburban, centrist women are likely to take note of Mr. Walker’s ex-wife’s story, as well as Mr. Hice’s comment that he approved of women in politics, so long as “the woman’s within the authority of her husband.”If Mr. Walker does enter the race, he will be the best known among a Republican field that already includes Kelvin King, a construction executive; Latham Saddler, a former Navy SEAL; and Gary Black, the state agriculture commissioner. There is also a possibility that former Senator Kelly Loeffler, who lost the seat to Mr. Warnock in the January runoff election, could try for a rematch.Mr. Warnock is the pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church — the home church of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His victory in January, as well as the victory of his fellow Georgia Democrat, Senator Jon Ossoff, served as a stinging rebuke to Mr. Trump a few weeks after his own loss in the state.Mr. Warnock must defend his seat so soon after his election because he is serving out the remainder of a term begun by former Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican who stepped down because of poor health. Mr. Warnock is likely to run emphasizing his support for social programs and support for Georgia businesses.“Whether it’s Trump’s handpicked candidate Herschel Walker, failed former Senator Kelly Loeffler, or any other candidate in this chaotic Republican field, not one of them is focused on what matters to Georgians,” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia, in a statement.Debbie Dooley, the president of the Atlanta Tea Party, said that she is hoping that Georgia might see a general election in which all four candidates for the two top offices, senator and governor, are Black, allowing voters to take racial matters out of the decision-making process and instead have a clear choice between “competing ideologies.”In the governor’s race, Ms. Dooley is hoping that Vernon Jones, a Black, pro-Trump candidate not endorsed by Mr. Trump, will defeat Gov. Brian Kemp in the Republican primary. And she is assuming, like many other Georgians, that Stacey Abrams will run for governor on the Democratic side.In the Senate race, Ms. Dooley said she wants to see Mr. Walker jump into the primary and win it. “That’s who Trump wants,” she said, although she added that doing so would betray one loyalty: She is a die-hard Alabama fan.“Roll Tide,” she said. More

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      Trump endorses Kelly Tshibaka, Murkowski’s challenger in Alaska’s Senate race.

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      Former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Kelly Tshibaka on Friday in her race against Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, giving his support to an outsider candidate who promoted false claims of election fraud last year and has written articles in support of gay conversion therapy.“Lisa Murkowski is bad for Alaska,” Mr. Trump said in a statement, criticizing her vote to confirm Deb Haaland as secretary of the Interior Department. “Murkowski has got to go!”Ms. Murkowski was censured by the Alaska Republican Party in March for her vote to convict Mr. Trump during his second impeachment trial. The state party said it did not want her, a moderate Republican who has represented the state since 2002, to identify as a Republican in the 2022 election.The National Republican Senatorial Committee, however, has endorsed Ms. Murkowski, noting that its position is to defend Republican incumbents.Despite her political vulnerabilities, Ms. Murkowski has overcome challenges from the right before. In 2010, she became the first sitting senator in half a century to win an election as a write-in candidate, defeating a popular Republican nominee aligned with the Tea Party.Ms. Tshibaka, who is little known in the national political arena, served most recently as commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration before resigning to run for Senate.Hoping to seize on the popularity of Mr. Trump, who twice won Alaska by wide margins, Ms. Tshibaka has positioned herself as a “MAGA”-loving outsider, promoting false theories of voter fraud in the 2020 election.As a student at Harvard Law School, she endorsed “coming out of homosexuality,” writing approvingly of a day “dedicated to helping homosexuals overcome their sexual tendencies and move towards a healthy lifestyle,” according to archives of her work unearthed by CNN’s KFile. She also urged gay people to participate in “pastoral counseling” and “accountability groups.”More recently, she has hired Mr. Trump’s current advisers and former campaign managers, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, as well as his former campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, as advisers.Mr. Trump has been following the race closely, his advisers said, hoping to unseat Ms. Murkowski. He met with Ms. Tshibaka two weeks ago at Trump Tower, according to a person familiar with the meeting.The top four candidates from Alaska’s all-party primary will advance to a general election, which will be ranked choice. More

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      in Elections

      Andrew Yang and Eric Adams Spar Over Police Union Endorsement

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      Andrew Yang and Eric Adams sparred over whether Mr. Adams, once a police captain, had sought the endorsement of his former union, a fiery back-and-forth that represented the complicated role of police unions in a Democratic race dominated by conversations about police reform and public safety.On Monday, Mr. Yang received the endorsement of the Captains Endowment Association, the union that once represented Mr. Adams. When asked at the debate to explain why he was the candidate best equipped to tackle a violent rise in crime, Mr. Yang pointed to the endorsement from Mr. Adams’s old co-workers.“The people you should ask about this are Eric’s former colleagues in the police captain’s union,” Mr. Yang said. “The people who worked with him for years, who know him best. They just endorsed me.”Mr. Adams tried to dismiss the endorsement, suggesting that he hadn’t asked for it and that was the only reason Mr. Yang had received it. But Mr. Yang accused him of lying, saying that NBC had reported otherwise.“I never went in front of them,” Mr. Adams said after a beat, looking more flustered than he has in past debates. “I said, months ago, I’m not taking any of the union’s endorsements.” But Mr. Yang suggested that the head of the captains’ union had said differently.Mr. Yang has said that he thinks it is important for New York City’s mayor to have a good relationship with police. On Tuesday, he expressed openness to receiving the endorsement of the Police Benevolent Association and Sergeants Benevolent Association, the city’s two largest police unions, both of which are run mostly by white conservatives.Mr. Adams has tried to distance himself from both unions recently. At the debate, he said the captains’ union had not endorsed him because of his record of police reform.The captains, he said, remembered him as someone who “fought against the abuse of stop and frisk, who fought against heavy-handed policing, who fought against treating our young people for marijuana arrests.” More