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      Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach

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      A new report, in perhaps the most thorough soul-searching done by either party this year, points to an urgent need for the party to present a positive economic agenda and rebut Republican misinformation.Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.The 70-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.Read the reportThree prominent Democratic groups, Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, conducted a review of the 2020 election.Read Document 73 pagesIn part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina.Overall, the report warns, Democrats in 2020 lacked a core argument about the economy and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic — one that might have helped candidates repel Republican claims that they wanted to “keep the economy shut down,” or worse. The party “leaned too heavily on ‘anti-Trump’ rhetoric,” the report concludes.“Win or lose, self-described progressive or moderate, Democrats consistently raised a lack of strong Democratic Party brand as a significant concern in 2020,” the report states. “In the absence of strong party branding, the opposition latched on to G.O.P. talking points, suggesting our candidates would ‘burn down your house and take away the police.’”Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who lost re-election in South Florida in November, said in an interview that she had spoken with the authors of the report and raised concerns about Democratic outreach to Hispanic voters and the party’s failure to rebut misinformation in Spanish-language media.“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has in some ways lost touch with our electorate,” Ms. Mucarsel-Powell said. “There is this assumption that of course people of color, or the working class, are going to vote for Democrats. We can never assume anything.”The report, chiefly written by a pair of veteran Democratic operatives, Marlon Marshall and Lynda Tran, is among the most significant salvos yet in the Democratic Party’s internal debate about how it should approach the 2022 elections. It may stir skepticism from some quarters because of the involvement of Third Way, which much of the left regards with hostility.A fourth group that initially backed the study, the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United, backed away this spring. Tiffany Muller, the head of the group, said it had to abandon its involvement to focus instead on passing the For the People Act, a sweeping good-government bill that is stuck in the Senate.Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, lost re-election in South Florida last year. She remains worried about her party’s outreach to Hispanic voters.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMr. Marshall and Ms. Tran, as well as the groups sponsoring the review, have begun to share its conclusions with Democratic lawmakers and party officials in recent days, including Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.The study spanned nearly six months of research and data analysis that scrutinized about three dozen races for the House and the Senate, and involved interviews with 143 people, including lawmakers, candidates and pollsters, people involved in assembling the report said. Among the campaigns reviewed were the Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as House races in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas, and in rural New Mexico and Maine.The study follows an internal review conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was unveiled last month. Both projects found that Democratic candidates had been hobbled by flawed polling and pandemic-imposed limitations on campaigning.In the D.C.C.C. report, the committee attributed setbacks at the congressional level to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to attacks calling them police-hating socialists.Some lawmakers on the left have complained that criticism of left-wing messaging amounts to scapegoating activists for the party’s failures.Yet the review by Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund goes further in diagnosing the party’s messaging as deficient in ways that may have cost Democrats more than a dozen seats in the House. Its report offers a blunt assessment that in 2020, Republicans succeeded in misleading voters about the Democratic Party’s agenda and that Democrats had erred by speaking to voters of color as though they are a monolithic, left-leaning group.Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who helms the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”“That’s been a ridiculous idea and that’s never been true,” Mr. Cárdenas said, lamenting that Republicans had succeeded in “trying to confuse Latino voters with the socialism message, things of that nature, ‘defund the police.’”Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that “some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats” had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to “defund” the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.“We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets,” Mr. James said. “That terminology — ‘defund’ — was not popular in the Black community.”A report by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attributed the party’s setbacks to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to Republican attacks.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesKara Eastman, a progressive Democrat who lost her bid for a House seat based in Omaha, said Republicans had succeeded in delivering a “barrage of messages” that tarred her and her party as being outside the mainstream. Ms. Eastman said she had told the authors of the 2020 review that she believed those labels were particularly damaging to women.Matt Bennett, a Third Way strategist, said the party needed to be far better prepared to mount a defense in the midterm campaign.“We have got to take very seriously these attacks on Democrats as radicals and stipulate that they land,” Mr. Bennett said. “A lot of this just didn’t land on Joe Biden.”Democrats maintained a large advantage with voters of color in the 2020 elections, but the report identified telling areas of weakness. Mr. Biden and other Democrats lost ground with Latino voters relative to the party’s performance in 2016, “especially among working-class and non-college voters in these communities,” the report found.The report found that a surge in Asian American turnout appeared to have secured Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia but that Democratic House candidates ran behind Mr. Biden with Asian American voters in contested California and Texas races. In some important states, Democrats did not mobilize Black voters at the same rate that Republicans did conservative white voters.“A substantial boost in turnout netted Democrats more raw votes from Black voters than in 2016, but the explosive growth among white voters in most races outpaced these gains,” the report warns.There has been no comparable self-review on the Republican side after the party’s severe setbacks last year, mainly because G.O.P. leaders have no appetite for a debate about Mr. Trump’s impact.Republicans will continue to have structural advantages in Washington because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College. Erin Scott for The New York TimesThe Republican Party faces serious political obstacles, arising from Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, the growing liberalism of young voters and the country’s growing diversity. Many of the party’s policies are unpopular, including cutting social-welfare and retirement-security programs and keeping taxes low for the wealthy and big corporations.Yet the structure of the American electoral system has tilted national campaigns toward the G.O.P., because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College.Democratic hopes for the midterm elections have so far hinged on the prospect of a strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and on voters’ regarding Republicans as a party unsuited to governing.Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who was briefed on the findings of the report, called it proof that the party needed a strong central message about the economy in 2022.“We need to continue to show the American people what we’ve done, and then talk incessantly across the country, in every town, about how Democrats are governing,” Ms. Sherrill said.Largely unaddressed in the report is the immense deficit Democrats face among lower-income white voters. In its conclusion, however, Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran write that Democrats need to deliver a message that includes working-class whites and matches the G.O.P.’s clear “collective gospel” about low taxes and military strength.“Our gospel should be about championing all working people — including but not limited to white working people — and lifting up our values of opportunity, equity, inclusion,” they write. More

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      Key Question in NYC Mayoral Race: Who Will Get Latino New Yorkers’ Votes?

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      Hispanic voters, who may account for a fifth of turnout, are considered to be up for grabs.Eric Adams was not Representative Adriano Espaillat’s original choice to become New York City’s next mayor, but now that he had landed the coveted endorsement, Mr. Adams was in a forgiving mood.It was more of a come-to-Eric moment than a come-to-Jesus moment, but he credited divine intervention with winning over Mr. Espaillat, the first Dominican-American to serve in Congress.“Today, all of that praying, all of those candles that I’ve burned, all of those incense that I put in place, all of those Hail Marys that I called up,” Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, thundered earlier this month. “Finally, Jesus Christ looked down on me and brought me Congressman Espaillat!”Less than one month before the Democratic primary that will almost certainly determine the city’s next mayor, the battle for Latino voters and endorsers is accelerating, and the fight for that diverse constituency is emerging as one of the most crucial and uncertain elements of the race to lead New York.All the leading Democratic mayoral candidates sense opportunity. In the race’s final weeks, they are pressing their cases through advertising, Spanish-language phone banks and Latino affinity groups, deployment of surrogates and rallies in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods across the city.Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, went up with Spanish-language advertising last week. Others, including Mr. Adams and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller who lost Mr. Espaillat’s initial endorsement, had already released ads in Spanish.The next major Democratic debate, set for Wednesday night, is being co-hosted by Univision 41 Nueva York and the Hispanic Federation, among other sponsors, and may further focus the candidates’ attention on those voters.“When we look back at the winner of this primary, what put them over the top, even with ranked-choice voting, is their ability to connect late with Hispanic voters,” said Bruce Gyory, a veteran Democratic strategist who has closely studied the New York City electorate. “That’s what June is going to be about: Who finds a message that resonates, and who backs it up with resources?”In 2013, the last mayoral primary in New York City without an incumbent in the race, Hispanic voters made up 18 percent of the electorate, according to exit polls, and supported the eventual winner, Mayor Bill de Blasio, making up a vital part of his coalition. Those voters are expected to make up around 20 percent of the electorate again this year, Democratic consultants say, and strategists and lawmakers describe them as motivated by issues including economic opportunity; affordability and support for small businesses; education; public safety; and public health.“We know that Latinos, more than many other groups, were directly impacted in a very negative way” by the pandemic, said Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a New York Democrat who was the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and is supporting Maya D. Wiley in the mayoral race. “So people want to know, what are you going to do to address those inequities that were exposed during Covid-19?”The so-called Latino vote in New York is diverse generationally and geographically, culturally and ideologically. Indeed the political spectrum runs the gamut from young, left-wing Latino New Yorkers typified by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and up-and-coming lawmakers from parts of Queens, to culturally conservative voters across the city who voted for former President Donald J. Trump in surprising numbers last fall.New York City’s immigrant neighborhoods strongly favored President Biden — but virtually every predominantly Latino precinct shifted significantly to the right compared with the 2016 election results, including heavily Dominican neighborhoods in Manhattan and the Bronx, and in Corona, Queens, where there is a large Latino population.But without a front-running Hispanic candidate in the race, the political demographic is considered to be mostly up for grabs.“You have so many candidates running for mayor, and only one is really a Latina,” said the longtime political strategist, Luis A. Miranda Jr. He was referencing Dianne Morales, a left-wing candidate who identifies as Afro-Latina. (Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, is white, though her ex-husband is of Puerto Rican descent and she has referenced the fact that her children are half Puerto Rican.)“You really need validators from our community that are telling you, ‘So-and-so is good for the Latino community, so-and-so is good for the neighborhood you live in,’” Mr. Miranda said. (Neither Mr. Miranda nor his son, the actor and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, has endorsed a candidate in the race.)Mr. Adams may have the most significant institutional support in the field, reflecting his background as a veteran city politician with extensive relationships. He promises to be a “blue-collar” mayor who connects in working-class communities and prioritizes public safety.Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, stars in ads for Mr. Adams and is supporting him, as is Fernando Ferrer, the 2005 Democratic mayoral nominee who built a formidable coalition of Black and Latino voters in his unsuccessful bid.“I saw him in the South Bronx on a street corner where I used to shine shoes,” Mr. Ferrer said of Mr. Adams. “He’s comfortable. And you have to be comfortable with people.”Still, Mr. Adams has not always smoothly navigated his outreach over the years. In 1993, for instance, his remarks criticizing the Puerto Rican-born comptroller candidate, Herman Badillo, for not marrying a Hispanic woman became such a point of controversy that Mr. Badillo highlighted the issue in an advertising campaign.Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate who pledges to be an anti-poverty mayor, has also made a major push for Latino voters.He has been endorsed by a number of prominent younger Latino leaders, from City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, a left-wing Mexican-American who dropped out of the mayoral contest, to Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who identifies as Afro-Latino. Mr. Yang spent Thursday in the Bronx, home to the city’s largest Latino population, laying out his public safety vision.“We know the Latino base is the one everyone is going after,” said Assemblyman Kenny Burgos, a 26-year-old Hispanic Yang supporter who represents the Bronx. “The youth vote, so to speak, is going to be something heavily in effect here.”Then there is Ms. Garcia, who has risen in some recent polls. Last Saturday afternoon, she was at a lively outdoor food market in the Bronx, greeting voters and discussing the biggest issues she hears from Hispanic New Yorkers.“Where’s the economy, do they feel safe, and are you educating the kids? Those are at the top of mind, and housing affordability, you hear it over and over again,” Ms. Garcia said. “They care about boots on the ground. They care about you showing up.”In a ranked-choice election in which voters may back up to five candidates in order of preference, Ms. Garcia’s surname may help her stand out, Mr. Miranda said..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-1jiwgt1{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;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{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-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“The city in which we live, it’s pretty tribal,” he said. “They’ll gravitate to a Spanish name because they’ll believe that person will be Latino.”There is limited public polling available on the mayor’s race overall, much less on Hispanic voters specifically. But a new survey out Wednesday from Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analytics found Mr. Yang virtually tied with Mr. Adams among Hispanic voters, when including voters who leaned in their directions, with roughly a quarter of those voters undecided. Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive, came in third place among Hispanic voters in that poll.Ms. Morales is unlikely to connect with older Latino voters who are leery of calls to defund the police, but she had recently shown promise as a standard-bearer for young, deeply progressive voters from a range of ethnic backgrounds.Dianne Morales, a left-wing candidate who identifies as Afro-Latina, may alienate some older Latino voters because of her calls to defund the police.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times“We might see maybe a little bit of a wild card in this election because young people are so energized by her campaign,” Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas of Queens said in an interview last week. “She’s been very intentional about bringing young people into the conversation.”Later in the week, internal turmoil from the Morales campaign spilled into public view, and it is not yet clear how a late-stage campaign shake-up nearly three weeks before the primary will affect that standing.Ms. González-Rojas, however, said on Wednesday that she stood by her remarks. She has also said that she had pitched Ms. Morales’s candidacy to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s team.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is among the most powerful potential endorsers still remaining on the sidelines of the mayoral race. Ms. Velázquez, who has recorded radio ads on behalf of Ms. Wiley, has spoken with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez directly about the contest, encouraging her to meet with Ms. Wiley, she said.Other candidates are also ramping up their Latino engagement. Ms. Wiley released an agenda aimed at Latino communities last week. In his new ad, Mr. Donovan narrates in Spanish, and he visited a major Latino church in Queens this weekend. Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, has Spanish-language radio ads and the support of, among others, Assemblyman Robert J. Rodriguez of East Harlem. Mr. Stringer, for his part, has long seen opportunities to cement his standing with Latino voters in the final weeks of the race. He lost Mr. Espaillat’s backing, among others, following an accusation that he made unwanted sexual advances during a 2001 campaign, which he has denied.But even lawmakers who retracted their endorsements say that Mr. Stringer remains well known in some of their neighborhoods.He is planning a rally aimed at Latino voters in Washington Heights, where he grew up, on June 12. His stepfather, Carlos Cuevas, is Puerto Rican and narrates a Spanish-language ad for Mr. Stringer, and Mr. Stringer’s extended Puerto Rican family is expected to join him at the rally, his campaign said.Many Latino voters are just starting to take notice of the race, said Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz of Queens, who pulled her endorsement from Mr. Stringer and has not backed anyone else. “They don’t really start talking about the election until like a month out,” she said. “You will see them start paying a lot more attention in the couple weeks leading up to the election itself, unless there’s somebody that completely electrifies them.” More

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      Arizona G.O.P. Passes Law to Limit Distribution of Mail Ballots

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      The new law, signed by Gov. Doug Ducey, will remove people from a widely popular early voting list if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years.PHOENIX — Arizona Republicans passed a law on Tuesday that will sharply limit the distribution of mail ballots through a widely popular early voting list, the latest measure in a conservative push to restrict voting across the country.The legislation will remove voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List, which automatically sends some people ballots for each election, if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years.The vote-by-mail system is widely popular in Arizona, used by Republicans, Democrats and independents. The overwhelming majority of voters in the state cast their ballots by mail, with nearly 90 percent doing so last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, and nearly 75 percent of all voters are on the early voting list. Under the new law, the list will be called the Active Early Voting List.The State Senate voted along party lines to approve the bill, and Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, surprised many observers by signing the legislation just hours later.The bill may be only the first in a series of voting restrictions to be enacted in Arizona; another making its way through the Legislature would require voters on the early voting list to verify their signatures with an additional form of identification.Unlike in other states where Republicans have passed voting restrictions this year, including Florida, Georgia and Texas, the Arizona Legislature did not create a sweeping omnibus bill made up of numerous voting provisions. Republicans in the state are instead introducing individual measures as bills in the Legislature.The new law signed on Tuesday is likely to push an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 voters off the early voting list, which currently has about three million people. Opponents of the bill have said that Latinos, who make up roughly 24 percent of the state’s eligible voters, would make up a significantly larger share of those removed from the early voting list.The G.O.P. voting restrictions being advanced throughout the country come as former President Donald J. Trump continues to perpetuate the lie that he won the election, with many Republican lawmakers citing baseless claims of election fraud, or their voters’ worries about election integrity, as justification for the stricter rules.In Arizona, Republicans who supported the new law argued that it would not stop anyone from voting over all and that it would prevent voter fraud by ensuring no ballots are cast illegally, though there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the state.“In voting for this bill, it’s about restoring confidence for everyone who casts a ballot, no matter what their party is,” said State Senator Kelly Townsend, a Republican who briefly withheld her support for the bill because she wanted to wait for the completion of a widely disparaged audit ordered by the G.O.P.-controlled Senate. “I have been reassured and convinced it is OK to move forward because we are now looking at other issues that need to be fixed for the 2022 election.”.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 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a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In his letter signing the legislation, Mr. Ducey said that the change would “free up dollars for election officials, ensuring that rather than sending a costly early ballot to a voter who has demonstrated they are not going to use it, resources can be directed to important priorities including voter education and election security measures.”The vote came after an hour of debate on the Senate floor, with Democrats arguing that the bill was the latest in a long line of suppression efforts targeting Black and Latino voters.“Making it harder to vote is voter suppression,” said State Senator Juan Mendez, a Democrat.“Governor Ducey’s decision to sign this bill into law is a terrible blow to democracy,” Emily Kirkland, the executive director of Progress Arizona, a coalition of voting rights organizations and community groups, said in a statement. “It is a conscious effort to put barriers in the way of Arizonans trying to make their voices heard.”For nearly a month, the state has been embroiled in an extraordinary Republican-led audit of 2020 presidential election ballots from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. The process could go on for several more weeks or even months.Voting rights activists in Arizona are now likely to put more pressure on Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, both Democrats, to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate and open a path to passing the party’s federal legislation to protecting access to the ballot. More

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      Hispanic Democrats Run Ads Hitting Republicans Over Jan. 6 Votes

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      The political action committee of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is releasing bilingual advertisements targeting four Republicans in Congress over their support for former President Donald J. Trump and their votes on Jan. 6 to challenge the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania.The advertisements from the caucus, which is made up of 38 Democrats, target Republican members who represent heavily Latino districts in Florida, Texas, New Mexico and California, and who each won in a close election last year. The first advertisement focuses on Representative Carlos Gimenez of Florida, the former mayor of Miami, who narrowly defeated Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. The remaining ads will target Representatives Mike Garcia of California, Yvette Herrell of New Mexico and Beth Van Duyne of Texas.“These four Republicans led a misinformation campaign and helped spread the ‘Big Lie’ on social media and conservative news media outlets by sowing doubt about the presidential election results,” said Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona who serves as the chairman of the caucus’s political action committee, BOLD PAC. “They tried to undermine our democracy and in doing so, they helped incite the insurrection. The best way to fight the Republican disinformation campaign is to hold them accountable for their actions.”Mr. Gimenez’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The advertisement opens with footage of the Jan. 6 attack, while a voice-over introduces a police officer describing his experience defending the Capitol.“I experienced a group of individuals who were trying to kill me,” the officer says. A narrator continues: “When an extremist mob attacked the Capitol, Congressman Carlos Gimenez was forced to hide. But hours later, with blood still on the floors of the Capitol, he voted with Trump and helped spread the same lies that left a police officer dead and many others injured.” More

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      In South Texas, Hispanic Republicans Try to Cement the Party’s Gains

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      Conservative Hispanic leaders, especially women, are ascendant in the Rio Grande Valley, where Republicans are trying to forge lasting bonds with voters who swung sharply to the right in 2020.McALLEN, Texas — The front door of the Hidalgo County Republican Party’s office is covered with photographs of high-profile politicians in the party: Gov. Greg Abbott, Senator John Cornyn and former President Donald J. Trump. Nearly all of them are white men.Step inside, and you’ll see a bulletin board with pictures of local Republican leaders: Adrienne Pena-Garza, Hilda Garza DeShazo, Mayra Flores. Nearly all of them are Hispanic women.Hispanic Republicans, especially women, have become something of political rock stars in South Texas after voters in the Rio Grande Valley shocked leaders in both parties in November by swinging sharply toward the G.O.P. Here in McAllen, one of the region’s largest cities, Mr. Trump received nearly double the number of votes he did four years earlier; in the Rio Grande Valley over all, President Biden won by just 15 percentage points, a steep slide from Hillary Clinton’s 39-point margin in 2016.That conservative surge — and the liberal decline — has buoyed the Republican Party’s hopes about its ability to draw Hispanic voters into what has long been an overwhelmingly white political coalition and to challenge Democrats in heavily Latino regions across the country. Now party officials, including Mr. Abbott, the governor, have flocked to the Rio Grande Valley in a kind of pilgrimage, eager to meet the people who helped Republicans rapidly gain ground in a longtime Democratic stronghold.One of those people, Ms. Pena-Garza, the chair of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, grew up the daughter of a Democratic state legislator. As was common for most Hispanic families in the area, she said, voting for Democrats was a given. But after her father switched parties in 2010, Ms. Pena-Garza soon followed, arguing that Democrats had veered too far to the left, particularly on issues like abortion and gun control.“Politics down here did scare me because you didn’t go against the grain,” she said. “If someone’s going to tell you: ‘Oh, you’re brown, you have to be Democrat,’ or ‘Oh, you’re female, you have to be a Democrat’ — well, who are you to tell me who I should vote for and who I shouldn’t?”Ms. Pena-Garza said she was called a coconut — brown on the outside, white on the inside — and a self-hating Latino, labels that have begun to recede only in recent years as she meets more Hispanic Republicans who, like her, embrace policies that they view as helping small business owners and supporting their religious beliefs.Now, she says, the political choice is a point of pride.“You can’t shame me or bully me into voting for a party just because that’s the way it’s always been,” she said.Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, a Republican, is running against Representative Vicente Gonzalez, the Democrat who represents McAllen, in 2022.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesOne of the lingering questions of the 2020 election is just what drove this region — and other heavily Hispanic areas of the country — toward Republicans. The shift appeared to be particularly acute among women who call themselves conservative, according to a post-mortem analysis by Equis Labs, a Democratic-aligned research firm that studies Latino voters.Conversations with voters and activists in Hidalgo County suggested that there is not one answer but many: Women who staunchly oppose abortion voted for the first time; wives of Border Patrol agents felt convinced the Trump administration was firmly on their side; mothers picked up on the enthusiasm for Republicans from friends they knew through church or their children’s school.For many voters in the region, there is a profound sense of cynicism — a feeling that things will not change no matter who is charge. The border, after all, has been the site of a humanitarian crisis under both Democrats and Republicans. Nearly everyone here knows both undocumented immigrants and Border Patrol agents, occasionally even within the same family. And for many here, law enforcement remains one of the easiest paths to the middle class, and Republicans have portrayed national Democrats as hostile toward the police.Both Republicans and Democrats are likely this year to start funneling far more money into the region, where enthusiasm for the G.O.P. in 2020 was not limited to Mr. Trump. For the first time in recent history, a Republican came close to defeating the Democratic incumbent in Texas’ 15th Congressional District, which includes most of Hidalgo County and runs north of McAllen up to San Antonio.In next year’s race for the seat, the Republican candidate, Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, is again challenging Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat — but they may be competing on different political terrain if the district’s “bacon strip” shape is altered in redistricting later this year.At the local Lincoln Reagan Republican dinner in March, Mr. Abbott rallied support for Ms. De La Cruz-Hernandez and encouraged other women like her to come into the G.O.P. fold, speaking in glowing terms about their political potential and saying he had “never been as impressed” with the leadership of a county party.“I’ve never been onstage with so many accomplished, articulate Latinas as I have been tonight with this group of ladies,” he told an enthusiastic crowd. “This is amazing. If I were the Democrats, I would be very afraid right now, because there is a storm coming, a storm that is going to win Hidalgo County. I wanted to be here in person, wanted to say thank you.”“You will knock that damn door down,” Mr. Abbott added. “You will shape and reshape politics in the Lone Star State.”Jessica Villarreal said she had no desire to be politically active while she served in the Army, but now considers herself a faithful Republican and is considering a run for elected office.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesLike many of her supporters, Ms. De La Cruz-Hernandez first registered as a Democrat, largely, she said, so she could vote in local primary elections.“That was just what you do,” she said. She added that while she could not recall ever having voted for a Democrat for president, she had hesitated to voice her political views publicly, fearing that it could hurt her insurance business. “But I never understood the Democratic values or message being one for me,” she said. “And I am convinced that people here have conservative values. That is really who the majority is.”During her last campaign, Ms. De La Cruz-Hernandez relied heavily on local efforts, drawing little attention from the national Republican Party in a race she lost by just three points. Now she is focusing early on building support from donors in Washington. Already, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has named Mr. Gonzalez a “Frontline” member, an indication that it views him as one of the most endangered House Democrats. And in March, the National Republican Congressional Committee put Mr. Gonzalez on its 2022 “Exit List” and began airing ads against him.In an interview, Mr. Gonzalez primarily attributed the closeness of his race last year to the lack of Democratic in-person campaigning amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the high turnout to the particular phenomenon of Mr. Trump, rather than a long-term shift.“For the Republicans to think that there is some dramatic change, that they should pour attention and money into this district, I think they will be sadly mistaken,” he said. “But I am taking nothing for granted.”People waved signs supporting former President Donald J. Trump in McAllen last month.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesLike other Democrats along the Texas border, Mr. Gonzalez has tried to distance himself from national Democrats; this year he asked Mr. Biden to rescind an executive order to temporarily stop new fracking on federal lands. Last month, he traveled to the border with the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan congressional group, and he has urged top Biden administration officials to come to the region.“We’re conservative Democrats down here,” he said. “We support a lot of international trade, we’re an agricultural community, we’re Catholic, we work in the oil fields, we’re avid gun collectors.”He added: “I think that’s pretty distinguishable from the rest of the Democratic Party. We can’t just assume that all Hispanics are going to stick with Democrats.”Mr. Gonzalez also attributed the shift toward Republicans in his district in part to misinformation, particularly on YouTube and other forms of social media. And some first-time Republican voters appeared to be swayed by false conspiracy theories.Elisa Rivera, 40, said she had voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2016, but did not understand the fierce reaction against Mr. Trump.“I was following along the family tradition, my dad is a hard-core Democrat, my father was really for unions, and I thought the Democrats defended the union,” Ms. Rivera said, before adding: “But then I started to research myself and found out the Democrats are supporting witchcraft and child trafficking and things like that, things that get censored because they get labeled conspiracy theory.”Other right-leaning Hispanic voters described a simple ideological shift.Mayra Rivera said her politics do not fit in a neat box.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesAs a child, Mayra Rivera, 42, worked in the fields with her parents, who arrived in the United States through the bracero program, which brought farmworkers to the country from Mexico. When her family struggled financially, she would walk door to door selling cupcakes. The first few times she voted, Ms. Rivera cast her ballot for Democrats. Even now, she said, her politics do not fit in a neat box.“My family doesn’t come from money, I have friends who are undocumented, I support medical cannabis,” she said. “But I definitely think Democrats are pushing free everything, giving the message that there’s no value in your hard work, and that’s not something I can believe in.”Like Ms. Rivera, Jessica Villarreal, 33, was only an occasional voter, and she had no desire to be politically active while she served in the Army. But now she considers herself a faithful Republican and is considering a run for elected office.“There are more of us who realize our beliefs are Republican, no matter what we’ve been told in the past,” Ms. Villarreal said. “I am a believer in God and the American dream, and I believe the Republican Party represents that.” More

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      Eric Adams Endorsed by Top Bronx Leader, Giving Him Lift With Latinos

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      The endorsement from Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, could help Mr. Adams reach Latino and Bronx voters in the New York City mayor’s race.When Ruben Diaz Jr. dropped out of the New York City mayor’s race last year, his decision surprised many. He had the support of the powerful Bronx Democratic Party, an alliance with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and strong ties to Latino voters.But Mr. Diaz, the Bronx borough president, still can influence the race: His endorsement became one of the most coveted in the contest — potentially carrying weight in the Bronx and among Latino voters, who make up roughly one-fifth of Democratic primary voters.On Monday, Mr. Diaz will announce that he is endorsing Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, boosting Mr. Adams’s hopes of trying to assemble a diverse coalition to defeat Andrew Yang, the former presidential hopeful.“There have been so many issues where I witnessed firsthand how much Eric loves New York, but also how critical it is to have someone who has the life experience of a New Yorker to help inform them about how to fight for all New Yorkers,” Mr. Diaz said in an interview.Mr. Diaz, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said that his trust in Mr. Adams was built over a two-decade relationship, and recalled how they met in 1999 at a rally in the Bronx after the police killing of Amadou Diallo, a young Black man whose death became a rallying cry for changes to the Police Department.His endorsement follows other prominent Latino leaders who have backed Mr. Adams: Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president who twice ran for mayor, and Francisco Moya, a city councilman from Queens. None of the leading Democratic mayoral candidates is Latino or has strong roots in the Bronx.Latino voters could be a major factor in the Democratic primary and Mr. Diaz’s endorsement could be significant, said Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist who published a lengthy piece this month examining the demographics in the race.“If you take that endorsement and put resources and energy and outreach behind it, it could become an inflection point for reaching that fifth of the vote that is Hispanic,” he said.With Mr. Yang leading in the limited polling available, Mr. Adams has tried to consolidate support beyond his base in Brooklyn. Mr. Adams was endorsed by six elected officials in Queens last week, and declared himself the “King of Queens.”Mr. Adams said in an interview that Mr. Diaz’s endorsement was important for the coalition he was building in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. He said he believed his campaign would speak to Latino voters.“Public safety, employment, and having affordable housing and a solid school system — these are my messages I’ve been saying for the last 35 years,” he said.Mr. Adams said he would get that message out through ads and mailers in the coming weeks. Mr. Adams had the most money on hand of any candidate as of the last filing date: more than $7.5 million. He has not yet bought any advertising time on television, but was shooting an ad on Saturday.All of the mayoral front-runners have been courting Latino leaders. Mr. Yang was endorsed by Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, the first openly gay Afro-Latino member of Congress.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, has ties to the Latino community through his stepfather and was endorsed by Representative Adriano D. Espaillat, the first Dominican immigrant to be elected to Congress. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was endorsed by Representative Nydia Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in Congress.Asked if Mr. Adams was the strongest candidate to beat Mr. Yang, Mr. Diaz said Mr. Adams was the best person to be mayor, but still chided Mr. Yang for leaving the city during the pandemic for his second home in New Paltz, N.Y.“This is the time when New York needs someone to run the city, not run from the city,” Mr. Diaz said.County party leaders are not officially endorsing in the Democratic primary. The Bronx Democratic Party, which is led by Jamaal Bailey, a state senator, has not made an endorsement, and neither has the Brooklyn Democratic Party, though its leader, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, a state assemblywoman, endorsed Mr. Adams.The city has never had a Latino or Hispanic mayor — except for John Purroy Mitchel, who served a century ago and whom some consider the first Hispanic mayor because he descended from Spanish nobility.In the mayor’s race this year, Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive who is of Puerto Rican descent, is running as a Democrat. Fernando Mateo, a restaurant operator and advocate for livery drivers who was born in the Dominican Republic, is running as a Republican. More

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      The ‘New Redlining’ Is Deciding Who Lives in Your Neighborhood

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      If you care about social justice, you have to care about zoning.Housing segregation by race and class is a fountainhead of inequality in America, yet for generations, politicians have been terrified to address the issue. That is why it is so significant that President Biden has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, a $5 billion race-to-the-top competitive grants program to spur jurisdictions to “eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.”Mr. Biden would reward localities that voluntarily agree to jettison “minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements and prohibitions on multifamily housing.” The Biden administration is off to an important start, but over the course of his term, Mr. Biden should add sticks to the carrots he has already proposed.Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.In the 2020 race, Mr. Biden said he was running to “restore the soul of our nation,” which had been damaged by President Donald Trump’s embrace of racism. Removing exclusionary barriers that keep millions of Black and Hispanic people out of safe neighborhoods with strong schools is central to the goal of advancing racial justice. Over the past several decades, as the sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted, Black people have been integrated into the nation’s political life and the military, “but the civil-rights movement failed to integrate Black Americans into the private domain of American life.”Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.While exclusionary zoning laws are especially harmful to Black people, the discrimination is more broadly rooted in class snobbery — a second problem Mr. Biden highlighted in his campaign. As a proud product of Scranton, Pa., Mr. Biden said he would value the dignity of working people and not look down on anyone. The elitism Mr. Biden promised to reject helps explain why in virtually all-white communities like La Crosse, Wis., efforts to remedy economic segregation have received strong pushback from upper-income whites, and why middle-class Black communities have sometimes shown fierce resistance to low-income housing.If race were the only factor driving exclusionary zoning, one would expect to see such policies most extensively promoted in communities where racial intolerance is highest, but in fact the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities, where racial views are more progressive. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, social psychologists have found that highly-educated elites “may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Class discrimination helps explain why, despite a 25 percent decline in Black-white residential segregation since 1970, income segregation has more than doubled.By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from each other than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”It happened in 1968, when Mr. Biden’s hero Robert Kennedy brought together working-class Black, Latino and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who “wanted to keep certain people out of their community.” More

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      If You Care About Social Justice, You Have to Care About Zoning

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      The Biden administration is off to a good start on housing, but there is much more it could be doing.Housing segregation by race and class is a fountainhead of inequality in America, yet for generations, politicians have been terrified to address the issue. That is why it is so significant that President Biden has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, a $5 billion race-to-the-top competitive grants program to spur jurisdictions to “eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.” Mr. Biden would reward localities that voluntarily agree to jettison “minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing.” The Biden administration is off to an important start, but over the course of his term, Mr. Biden should add sticks to the carrots he has already proposed.Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.In the 2020 race, Mr. Biden said he was running to “restore the soul of our nation,” which had been damaged by President Donald Trump’s embrace of racism. Removing exclusionary barriers that keep millions of Black and Hispanic people out of safe neighborhoods with strong schools is central to the goal of advancing racial justice. Over the past several decades, as the sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted, Black people have been integrated into the nation’s political life and the military, “but the civil-rights movement failed to integrate Black Americans into the private domain of American life.”Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.While exclusionary zoning laws are especially harmful to Black people, the discrimination is more broadly rooted in class snobbery — a second problem Mr. Biden highlighted in his campaign. As a proud product of Scranton, Pa., Mr. Biden said he would value the dignity of working people and not look down on anyone. The elitism Mr. Biden promised to reject helps explain why in virtually all-white communities like La Crosse, Wis., efforts to remedy economic segregation have received strong pushback from upper-income whites, and why middle-class Black communities have sometimes shown fierce resistance to low-income housing.If race were the only factor driving exclusionary zoning, one would expect to see such policies most extensively promoted in communities where racial intolerance is highest, but in fact the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities, where racial views are more progressive. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, social psychologists have found that highly-educated elites “may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Class discrimination helps explain why, despite a 25 percent decline in Black-white residential segregation since 1970, income segregation has more than doubled.By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from one another than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”It happened in 1968, when Mr. Biden’s hero, Robert Kennedy, brought together working-class Black, Latino, and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who “wanted to keep certain people out of their community.”Taking on exclusionary zoning also begins to address two other challenges the Biden administration has identified: the housing affordability crisis and climate change. Economists from across the political spectrum agree that zoning laws that ban anything but single-family homes artificially drive up prices by limiting the supply of housing that can be built in a region. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has left many Americans jobless and people are struggling to make rent or pay their mortgages, it is incomprehensible that ubiquitous government zoning policies would be permitted to make the housing affordability crisis worse by driving prices unnaturally higher. More