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    ‘The Democratic Party in New York Is a Disaster’

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    Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.The stunning failure of the Democratic Party on election night was nowhere more apparent than at Il Bacco, an Italian restaurant on the boulevard where Queens bleeds into Nassau County. That was where a soon-to-be-infamous 34-year-old political neophyte walked out to a cheering throng of Republicans and declared victory in one of America’s most important House contests. “Only in this country can the kid who came from the basement in Jackson Heights … ,” George Santos began, before he was momentarily overwhelmed. “To everybody watching, I want you to know that the American dream is worth fighting for. It’s worth defending, and that’s why I jumped into this race.”In another era — two or four years ago, perhaps — the Santos saga, with its absurd cascade of lies, would have been an amusing sideshow for many Democratic politicians, who would have been able to mock the chaos and move on, comfortably sure that Santos, who fabricated much of his personal and financial biography, would only further hobble a neutered Republican minority. But the new congressman, now under investigation by local and federal authorities, was instead a crucial cog in Kevin McCarthy’s House majority, having flipped the redrawn Third Congressional District in New York, an area that had been represented by Democrats for decades, by eight points.These days, New York is known as the deep-blue state where Democrats lost four seats on the way to losing the House of Representatives and effectively halting President Biden’s domestic agenda for the next two years. Kathy Hochul, who served as Andrew Cuomo’s lieutenant governor before accusations of sexual harassment and assault forced him from office in 2021, won the narrowest race for governor in 28 years, beating Lee Zeldin, a Trump-supporting congressman from Long Island, by less than six points. While forecasts for a national red wave didn’t materialize — Democratic candidates for governor and the Senate were largely triumphant in tossup races across the country, and Chuck Schumer of Brooklyn remained the Senate majority leader — Democrats stumbled in territory on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley that Biden won handily just two years earlier.These disappointments have cast into sharp relief both the divisions within the party and the peculiar void of the state’s Democratic organization itself. Few New Yorkers cared, until late 2022, that the statewide Democratic apparatus operated, for the most part, as a hollowed-out appendage of the governor, a second campaign account that did little, if any, work in terms of messaging and turnout. New Hampshire, a state with roughly half the population of Queens, has a Democratic Party with 16 full-time paid staff members. New York’s has four, according to the state chairman, Jay Jacobs. One helps maintain social media accounts that update only sparingly. Most state committee members have no idea where the party keeps its headquarters, or if it even has one. (It does, at 50 Broadway in Manhattan.)National parties function as enormous umbrella organizations, determining the presidential primary calendar and the process for allocating delegates at the national conventions. The drudgery of running elections is left to the local and state parties, as well as individual campaigns and independent political action committees.Kathy Hochul won the narrowest race for New York governor in 28 years.Olga Fedorova/SOPA Images/Sipa USA, via Associated PressElsewhere in the country, state Democratic parties are much more robust than they are in New York. In Wisconsin, under the leadership of 42-year-old Ben Wikler, the party offered crucial organizing muscle in Gov. Tony Evers’s re-election win, staving off a Republican statewide sweep. The Nevada Democratic Party, despite infighting among moderates and progressives, aided Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s re-election, investing strongly in rural voter engagement. And in California, the party chair position is publicly contested among multiple candidates, with delegates voting as Democrats traverse the state and make their case in the media.As for New York, observers across the ideological spectrum agree that the state is entering an unprecedented era, with warring political factions and a glaring power vacuum. Hochul recently became the first governor in New York history to have the State Legislature, controlled by Democrats, vote down her nominee to the state’s highest court. Progressives spearheaded opposition to the judge, Hector LaSalle, arguing that he was too conservative.In challenging Hochul from the right, Zeldin was savagely effective — “Vote like your life depends on it,” he exhorted, echoing Richard Nixon, in the final days of the campaign — in seizing on suburban anxieties around rising crime that Republicans in other states weren’t able to successfully exploit. While Manhattan and the combined might of upper-income white and middle-class Black voters thwarted Zeldin in the five boroughs, he made notable inroads with working-class Asian Americans, potentially heralding a political realignment for the city’s fastest growing demographic. Hochul’s campaign was assailed for its relative listlessness and failure to counter Republican attacks on crime. “That is an issue that had to be dealt with early on, not 10 days before the election,” Nancy Pelosi chided the governor. (Hochul’s staff did not make her available for an interview.)Within the confines of New York, Democrats remain historically dominant, retaining veto-proof majorities in both the State Senate and State Assembly. All the statewide elected officials are Democrats, as is the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams. But this is a recent shift: Republicans controlled the State Senate almost continuously from the mid-1960s until 2019. George Pataki, a moderate Republican, led the state for 12 years, and Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg ran New York City from 1994 through 2013.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Mississippi Court Plan: Republican lawmakers want to create a separate court system served by a state-run police force for mainly Black parts of the capital, Jackson, reviving old racial divisions.Michigan G.O.P.: Michigan Republicans picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for secretary of state.Dianne Feinstein: The Democratic senator of California will not run for re-election in 2024, clearing the way for what is expected to be a costly and competitive race to succeed the iconic political figure.Lori Lightfoot: As the mayor of Chicago seeks a second term at City Hall, her administration is overseeing the largest experiment in guaranteed basic income in the nation.Heading into 2022, Democrats were confident that after decades of Republican rule in the State Legislature, they could entirely control the state’s redistricting process, engineering favorable House maps for the fall. After a quasi-independent commission deadlocked — critics argued that it was designed to fail when Cuomo helped create it a decade ago — Democratic state legislators redrew lines that strongly favored their party. Republicans sued in court, claiming that the Democrats’ maps violated an anti-gerrymandering clause in the State Constitution. To the shock of many political insiders, the Republicans won their court battle, and an outside special master was appointed by an upstate Republican judge to quickly draw new lines. House primaries were shoved from June to August.With the special master prioritizing competitiveness, not incumbency advantage, Democrats found themselves thrown together in some of the same districts. Representative Jerry Nadler was pitted in a nasty primary against his longtime colleague Carolyn Maloney in Manhattan. (Nadler would prevail.) North of the city, Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a pugilistic centrist, decided to run in a new district spanning Rockland and Westchester that included far more turf than had been represented by Mondaire Jones, a neighboring progressive.“Sean Patrick Maloney did not even give me a heads up before he went on Twitter to make that announcement,” Jones fumed at the time. “And I think that tells you everything you need to know about Sean Patrick Maloney.” Ritchie Torres, a Bronx congressman, accused Maloney of “thinly veiled racism” against Jones, who is Black. Maloney held his ground, and Jones was forced to move to a new district in New York City, where he would lose in an August primary. Maloney fended off a primary challenge from Alessandra Biaggi, a state senator who ran far to his left. Then, despite a titanic war chest, he fell to Mike Lawler, a Republican state legislator, by less than a point. Jones tweeted one word: “Yikes.”And now the Democratic civil war rages. Jacobs, who is also the chairman of the Nassau County Democratic Party and is on his second tour leading the statewide organization, has come in for a drubbing. A week after the election, more than 1,000 Democrats signed a letter calling for Jacobs’s ouster. They included state legislators, City Council members, county leaders and members of New York’s 400-odd Democratic State Committee. Most of them belonged to the state’s progressive wing, which has grown only further emboldened since the fall. On Jan. 3, a number of them gathered outside City Hall to reiterate their demands: Jacobs must go.Protesters outside City Hall in New York in January, including Jumaane Williams, argued that Jay Jacobs, the state Democratic Party chairman, was responsible for losing four congressional seats.Kena Betancur/VIEWpress, via Getty Images“The party has to change, and it can’t change until we change the leadership,” George Albro, a co-chair of the New York Progressive Action Network, a left-wing organization formed from the remnants of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign, said in an interview. “From top to bottom, the Democratic Party in New York is a disaster.”Until Cuomo’s downfall, Jacobs was known as a close ally of the imperious governor. His first tenure as party chairman came under Cuomo’s predecessor, David Paterson, but his second began in 2019, a year after Cuomo won a commanding re-election. That election cycle was notable because Cuomo overcame a primary challenge from the actress Cynthia Nixon, who targeted him from the ascendant left. Though Nixon lost, six insurgent progressives defeated members of the Independent Democratic Conference, a breakaway group of centrist Democrats who had spent the last half decade in an unusual — and incredibly infuriating to progressives — power-sharing arrangement with State Senate Republicans. The I.D.C. had existed with Cuomo’s blessing, joining with Republicans to foil liberal priorities in the State Legislature, like tuition assistance for undocumented immigrants, tougher tenant protections and criminal-justice reforms. For Cuomo, a triangulating centrist determined to avoid having to sign or veto progressive bills while harboring dreams of the national stage, the arrangement worked just fine. (In 2018, I took a break from writing to run for State Senate myself, losing in a Brooklyn Democratic primary.)Since the state party, historically, has been a creature of the governor or the most powerful Democrat in the state, Jacobs is safe as long as Hochul tolerates him. And Hochul, some Democrats say, owes Jacobs for the work he did behind closed doors to ensure that the new governor had a comfortable primary win after Cuomo resigned and immediately began to plot a comeback. Jacobs’s fear was that a divided field could pave the way for a Cuomo revival, and he worked to rapidly hustle up institutional and financial support for Hochul that helped to deter another challenger, Attorney General Letitia James, from running against her.In 2021, after a democratic socialist, India Walton, defeated the longtime mayor of Buffalo and a former chairman of the state party, Byron Brown, in a contentious primary, Jacobs refused to endorse Walton. “Let’s take a scenario, very different, where David Duke — You remember him? The grand wizard of the KKK? He moves to New York, he becomes a Democrat and he runs for mayor in the city of Rochester, which has a low primary turnout, and he wins the Democratic line. I have to endorse David Duke? I don’t think so,” Jacobs said in a television interview, before clarifying that Walton “isn’t in the same category, but it just leads you to that question, Is it a must? It’s not a must. It’s something you choose to do.”Outraged progressives called for Jacobs’s resignation. He refused to go, and Hochul, who is from the Buffalo area and remains close to Brown, did not force Jacobs out. Brown, with tacit approval from the governor and Jacobs, then won the mayoralty with a write-in campaign that November, drawing support from Republicans to crush Walton.A year later, Jacobs explored ways of undercutting the established vehicle for left-wing organizing in the state, the Working Families Party, a hybrid of party activists and labor unions that had endorsed Jumaane Williams over Hochul in the primary. He cut a check to a more moderate Democrat trying to primary Jamaal Bowman, a Westchester County congressman and a member of the Squad, the prominent group of far-left members of Congress, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. After Republicans swept Democrats out of power in the New York suburbs last fall, Jacobs quickly blamed the left. “New York did underperform, but so did California,” Jacobs told the politics publication City & State in November. “What do those two states have in common? Well, governmentally, we’re among the two most progressive states in the country.”Jacobs is under fire from the party’s more progressive wing, which is calling for his ouster, but so far has had Gov. Hochul’s support.Seth Wenig/Associated PressA 67-year-old political lifer, Jacobs has an unrelated day job overseeing a string of popular and lucrative summer camps in upstate New York, in Pennsylvania and on Long Island, where he lives. Democratic business is often run out of a TLC Family of Camps office in Glen Cove, a small town on Nassau County’s Gold Coast. Politicos and journalists who want to reach Jacobs know to email his Camp TLC address; Jacobs cc’d his chief of staff at that summer-camp address to help arrange a telephone interview that lasted an hour, despite Jacobs’s initial hesitancy about going on the record.“People believe that the state party runs all the campaigns, determines the messaging, does the opposition research for every candidate and, you know, when a candidate anywhere loses, it’s the fault of the state party, and all of that is just not an accurate view of the function of the state party and what we actually do,” Jacobs said.Jacobs described the party as a “housekeeping organization” and a “coordinating entity” that works among labor unions, campaigns and other interest groups. He cited the maintenance of a voter file that campaigns use to target the electorate as among its most important work, as well as establishing campaign offices at election time. Fund-raising, too, is a big part of the work, and it’s there where Jacobs has been especially useful. A multimillionaire and prolific donor, Jacobs has given more than $1 million to various Democratic candidates and causes over the last two decades. It can be argued that it’s this wealth, in part, that has allowed him to continuously lead the Nassau County party since 2001. Few staunch Democrats are both better wired and more willing to cut checks than Jacobs.“How I run my businesses and my charitable donations and the rest would indicate, as well as my personal beliefs, would indicate that I’m really, personally, quite progressive, more so than most people would think,” Jacobs said. Rather, he argued, his message is direct: “Slow down. You’re going too fast. What you’re doing is going to lose us votes in the suburbs and rural areas.”In an unusual move for a party leader, Jacobs last year backed the rivals of several incumbent Democrats. His motivation, he told me, was “the behavior of some of these folks that are speaking on behalf of what I’d refer to as the far left. They practice the politics of personal destruction. They won’t argue the merits of what I say, but they’ll condemn me — and others, by the way, not just me — in really vitriolic terms, personal and the rest. Some of the reasons why I personally gave to some of the primaries — it was just a handful of people — it’s because of what they said about me. Personally.”Last August, Jacobs donated $2,900 — the maximum allowable amount — to a county legislator trying to unseat Bowman. The congressman won by 38 points anyway.“I don’t know Jay Jacobs,” Bowman told me. “I’ve never talked to him on the phone. I’ve never met him in my life. Even though I was a newcomer in 2020, I was still duly elected, and I’m a member of the party now. One would’ve thought that the leader of the party would have reached out to have a cup of coffee or have a conversation.”Should Jacobs resign? “The short answer is yes,” Bowman answered. “But the more, I think, comprehensive nuanced answer or question is, What the hell are we even doing? You know, the whole thing about the corporate agenda, which I think Jay Jacobs and maybe even Governor Hochul and maybe others are missing is, when you talk about younger voters, millennials or Gen Z, they are not aligned with corporate interests over labor and working-class people.”But Jacobs has plenty of defenders, including county leaders across the state, who believe he’s an upgrade over his somnolent or domineering predecessors and has a realistic view of what it takes to win beyond the liberal confines of New York City. “It’s hard for me to understand this rancor from certain individuals, by the way, who never seem to be satisfied,” says Jeremy Zellner, the chairman of the Erie County Democratic Party. “Only in New York could Jay win every single statewide election and hold the supermajorities in both the Assembly and Senate and be chastised.”Gregory Meeks, the Queens congressman and chairman of the county organization there, echoes Jacobs’s critique: The progressive and socialist left has cost Democrats in general elections by forcing them to defend positions he believes are alienating. “Extremes cannot be the dominant part of a party, because it isolates everyone else,” Meeks says. “What’s not good for all of us is talking about defunding the police.”Because Hochul inherited Jacobs, his critics have hoped she would ditch him for someone who might take a more active role in the sort of tasks that party chairs in other states care far more about: recruiting candidates, shaping the party’s message, funding voter-outreach campaigns that begin many months ahead of a general election and even hiring a full-time communications director and research staff. Among some Hochul allies, there has been quiet frustration directed at one of her top advisers, Adam Sullivan, who speaks frequently with Jacobs on Hochul’s behalf. Sullivan holds great sway in Hochul’s world because he managed her successful campaign for Congress more than a decade ago. Despite his low profile and the fact that his consulting firm, ACS Campaign Consulting, is based in Colorado, where he lives, Sullivan was one of a select few aides Hochul thanked in her victory speech. Sullivan himself disputes that there’s any behind-the-scenes friction. “The governor is completely committed to building a strong, robust party,” Sullivan says. “Everyone in her orbit is on the same page.” What isn’t clear is whether that page, and the vision for the future of the state party, includes Jacobs.Even Jacobs’s detractors acknowledge that dumping him and hunting for a replacement is only the beginning of a political project that will take many years. (Floated successors include Adriano Espaillat, a congressman who has built a strong operation among Dominican Americans in Upper Manhattan; Grace Meng, a Queens congresswoman and Democratic National Committee vice chairwoman who is the first Asian American elected to the House from New York; and Jessica Ramos, a progressive Queens state senator.)All the ongoing chaos hasn’t escaped the notice of national Democrats. “When I go to D.N.C. meetings,” says a high-ranking New York Democratic official, who requested anonymity to avoid antagonizing colleagues, “there is a sense that New York doesn’t have a state party at all.”Through the first half of the 20th century, Tammany Hall, with origins as an Irish Catholic society in the late 1700s, was the embodiment of the local Democratic Party, using patronage to secure power and dominating state and city politics alike. Nothing equivalent rose to take its place. “I don’t think anybody in their right mind would compare the state party right now to the machine that existed 50, 60, 70 years ago,” says Paterson, the former governor who later served as state party chairman during Cuomo’s tenure.New York never had a Harry Reid figure, a singularly powerful Democrat who took an obsessive interest in party building. The two Cuomos, Mario and his son Andrew, governed the state for a combined nearly 23 years, and each treated the party organization as little more than a tool for self-promotion. A liberal icon to the rest of America for his soaring speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, Mario Cuomo was assailed at home for barely lifting a finger to aid Democrats desperately trying to retake the State Senate. In 1990, The Times reported that Cuomo was hoarding more than $5 million for his own campaign while spending none for the State Senate Democrats, who were outspent 4 to 1 by Republicans. In 1994, the state party spent almost $2 million to aid Cuomo’s failed re-election effort while offering less than $30,000 apiece for the candidates for attorney general and state comptroller. By the end of the year, the party was moribund and completely broke, running up a million-dollar debt.The only Democratic governor in modern times to care about the future of the state party and down-ballot candidates was Eliot Spitzer, who won a landslide victory in 2006 and would resign, a little more than a year later, in a prostitution scandal. Spitzer was a proud liberal who wanted to break the Republican hold on the State Senate. The party, too, was trying to modernize in anticipation of Senator Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for president. For a brief period, under the leadership of Denny Farrell, an influential state assemblyman from Manhattan, talented operatives were hired, and Spitzer’s aides tried to implement a strategy for boosting legislative candidates.“The party itself had really dissipated,” recalls Spitzer, now a real estate developer. His team helped recruit and fund an upstate Democratic candidate who won a pivotal special election for a State Senate seat in early 2008. “It was partly fund-raising, partly finding the right candidates, partly putting the right energy into it.”Andrew Cuomo at a news conference in 2021, a few months before he announced his resignation. The two Cuomos, Andrew and his father Mario, governed the state for a combined nearly 23 years.Mary Altaffer/Getty ImagesThe rise of Andrew Cuomo, who had a near-dictatorial hold on political affairs for nearly the entirety of the 2010s, put an end to nascent party-building plans. Cuomo treated Democratic politics as an extension of Cuomo politics, hoovering up resources and kneecapping Democrats he viewed as a threat. He was content to let Republicans keep the State Senate and rarely campaigned for House candidates. Donald Trump’s election, coupled with Sanders’s 2016 bid, would radicalize a new generation of Democrats. Soon, a democratic socialist candidate was winning a State Senate seat, and Working Families Party-supported insurgents were driving out the conservative Democrats who had chosen to align themselves with the Republican Party.By 2018, Ocasio-Cortez had felled one of the most powerful party bosses in New York, a sign that the left could win its battles against the establishment. “We need Democrats who are not running from their own shadow,” says Sochie Nnaemeka, the New York director of the Working Families Party.The widening fissures are both ideological and geographical. Manhattan and Brooklyn Democrats saved Hochul in November, but so did Westchester County, which once upon a time was a Republican stronghold. Democrats there gave Hochul a 20-point margin over Zeldin after Biden flew in to campaign for her. Westchester has continued to mirror national trends, as affluent suburbs grow Democratic, but Republicans have remained remarkably resilient on Long Island. Home to lavish estates, as well as growing Orthodox Jewish communities and a rising Asian American electorate newly alienated by Democrats, along with a working- and middle-class vote forever skeptical of big-city liberalism, the eastern suburb backed Zeldin by double digits. In recent years, the Hudson Valley has grown bluer, with city residents scooping up comparatively cheaper real estate during the pandemic, yet Zeldin carried Rockland, Dutchess, Putnam and Orange Counties, where Trump-era enthusiasm for Democrats gave way to backlash over rising crime south of the former Tappan Zee Bridge (renamed for Mario Cuomo by his son).Jacobs can credibly argue that the progressivism or outright socialism that wins in Brooklyn or Queens can’t be easily sold in Nassau County. But Bowman and his cohort can ask why he neglects the younger voters moving left — or, for that matter, why he fails to build out an organization that can be credibly called a political party, the kind that is more than one man and a few aides conducting political business from a summer-camp office. In a 10-page report issued in January, Jacobs pinned Democratic losses on historically high Republican turnout, a contention backed by data. But shouldn’t a state party’s task be, in part, to turn out its own voters? Had enough Democrats been motivated to vote, George Santos would never have been sworn in as a congressman.“What we saw is a party that did not know what role they should play,” Nnaemeka says, “and therefore played no role.”Ross Barkan writes frequently on New York and national politics. He is the author of two novels and a nonfiction account of Covid’s impact on New York City. This is his first article for the magazine. More

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      Democrats, Seeing a Weaker Trump, Are Falling in Line Behind Biden

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      Concerns about the president’s age are being overcome by enthusiasm about his record so far, optimism about the G.O.P. field — and the absence of better options.PHILADELPHIA — Nine months ago, amid sky-high gas prices and legislative gridlock, anxious Democrats routinely offered the same assessments of President Biden as a candidate for re-election: too frail, too politically weak, too much of a throwback.But now, as Democratic National Committee members gather in Philadelphia for their winter meeting this week, nearly all have come to the same conclusion: It’s Biden or bust.After Democrats far exceeded their own expectations in the midterms, and now that they are facing the possibility of a rematch against a far more vulnerable Donald Trump, the bickering about Mr. Biden has subsided.With no other serious contenders making early moves to enter the race, the official party structure has united behind the president’s re-election bid — despite the inherent risks in an octogenarian candidate’s undertaking the rigors of a national campaign.Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, who is chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, an organization full of members predisposed to imagine themselves in the White House, said any discussion of possible challenges had gone quiet in recent months.“I don’t hear any chatter of anybody considering taking him on in our party, and I think for good reason,” Mr. Murphy said. “What I see is a guy who’s still on top of his game.”While challenges to a sitting president are rare, the lack of even a whisper of intraparty opposition this year is notable given Mr. Biden’s already record-setting age as president. If he won, he would be 82 when sworn in for a second term.Mr. Biden greeted Avery Tierney, 9, of Marlton, N.J., at the D.N.C. gathering.Al Drago for The New York TimesIn Philadelphia, where delegates chanted “four more years” as Mr. Biden spoke on Friday evening, concerns about his age were confined to quiet conversations — a tacit recognition that the time had passed for Democrats to question the wisdom of nominating a member of the Silent Generation. Despite months of speculation about a restive bench of potential challengers, no serious Democratic contenders appear to be doing the kinds of donor outreach, staff hiring or visits to early-primary states that typically portend a presidential bid.Nor is there any clamoring for a primary race — to hedge Democratic bets or to ensure Mr. Biden addresses any perceived vulnerabilities well before a general election — even amid an expanding investigation into Mr. Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.The Democrats’ Primary CalendarA plan spearheaded by President Biden could lead to a major overhaul of the party’s presidential primary process in 2024.Demoting Iowa: Democrats are moving to reorder the primaries by making South Carolina — instead of Iowa — the first nominating state, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire, Georgia and then Michigan.A New Chessboard: President Biden’s push to abandon Iowa for younger, racially diverse states is likely to reward candidates who connect with the party’s most loyal voters.Obstacles to the Plan: Reshuffling the early-state order could run into logistical issues, especially in Georgia and New Hampshire.An Existential Crisis: Iowa’s likely dethronement has inspired a rush of wistful memories and soul-searching among Democrats there.“Let me ask you a simple question: Are you with me?” Mr. Biden asked the crowd of D.N.C. members on Friday night, to boisterous cheers. An even more overt acknowledgment is to be made on Saturday, when Democrats are set to vote on a measure that would make it vastly more difficult for a potential primary challenger to catch fire. A new primary calendar, devised by Mr. Biden and his advisers, would vault to the front a number of states that propelled him to the nomination in 2020, starting with South Carolina.Still, with the election 641 days away, much remains uncertain. The shape of the Republican field remains unclear, as does the country’s economic forecast. And while Mr. Biden intends to run for re-election, he is unlikely to announce his campaign until the early spring, according to people close to the president, and is still working through key details like hiring a campaign manager. (Were Mr. Biden not to run, Vice President Kamala Harris could benefit from the new calendar, which increases the influence of states where Black voters make up a large portion of the primary electorate.)Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said chatter about possible primary challengers to Mr. Biden had gone quiet.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMany Democrats feel warmly about Mr. Biden, a party stalwart for half a century, and are hesitant to appear disloyal or insensitive by publicly questioning his fitness for a second term. They are also keenly aware of how primary challenges weakened incumbent presidents: Several Biden allies pointedly mentioned Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s failed 1980 primary race against President Jimmy Carter, who then was defeated by Ronald Reagan..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Indeed, Mr. Biden’s age is one reason many Democrats are hoping that Mr. Trump, who at 76 is just four years younger, wins the G.O.P. nomination. After years of worrying about Mr. Trump’s political potency, many Democrats scarred from underestimating him in 2016 now see him as eminently beatable, especially by Mr. Biden.But some fear that a contest between Mr. Biden and a younger challenger, like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida or former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, could create a more challenging contrast for the president.“Trump would be a preferred candidate,” said Jay Jacobs, chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, even as he said he believed Mr. Biden would be strong regardless and noted that Mr. DeSantis was untested on the national stage. But a younger nominee, he added, “mixes it up in a way that you don’t have any ability to judge how it will look going forward.”At a moment when Democrats regard the return of Mr. Trump, or the rise of someone practicing his style of politics, as a threat to democracy, there is enormous pressure from all corners of the party to avoid damaging Mr. Biden.“Speaking as a progressive, Biden was not my first choice for president, but I think he’s done an extremely good job with the hand that he’s been dealt,” said RL Miller, a climate activist and Democratic National Committee member from California. “I find the talk of 2024 challengers to him to be both disrespectful and distracting.”But elections are determined by voters, not party officials, and the Democratic base has concerns about another Biden bid, even if the party’s officials see the president as their strongest option. Majorities of Democrats in surveys conducted in December, a month after the party’s unexpected midterm successes, said they did not want Mr. Biden to seek re-election.“The majority of the party and Biden voters didn’t vote for Biden, they voted against Trump,” said Liano Sharon, a delegate from Michigan who voted for Biden in 2020. “If the party pushes Biden on the grass roots again, a lot of them aren’t going to show up, because of Biden’s policies, broken promises and other big problems,” including his concern that Mr. Biden was showing signs of decline.That view had little support in Philadelphia, however, where the only sign of opposition to a Biden re-election bid was a billboard on the back of a truck circling outside, advertising a group calling itself DontRunJoe.org. Its founder, Jeff Cohen, conceded as much: “We’re beating our heads against the wall here,” he said.Without a viable alternative willing to jump into the race, elected Democrats and top party officials find themselves like the dinner party guests in a horror-film spoof on “Saturday Night Live” last year who are terrified of a 2024 Biden candidacy but even more scared of the other possible candidates. Several Democratic officials brought up the sketch unprompted to describe their attachment to a Biden re-election bid.“What is the alternative? Like, who’s the alternative?” said Representative Ritchie Torres of New York, casting Mr. Biden as a strong contender with “the most consequential presidency in recent history.” He added, “If I’m asked who is best positioned to win in 2024, I’m unaware of an alternative to President Biden.”After Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois pledged allegiance to Mr. Biden, other big-name Democrats seen as White House material followed suit.Michelle Litvin for The New York TimesSo far, no prominent Democrats are taking even cursory steps to establish themselves as presidential timber. Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois made a much-remarked-upon trip to New Hampshire last summer, but he has pledged allegiance to Mr. Biden. Other big names, including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, have followed suit.Only Marianne Williamson, the self-help author who ran a quixotic presidential campaign in 2020, has acknowledged mulling a primary challenge, citing concerns over a Democratic Party that she said had “swerved from its unequivocal and unabashed advocacy for the working people.”In an interview, Ms. Williamson said she would not run “simply to make a point” but to give Americans options. “The question I ask myself is not ‘What is my path to victory?’” she said. “My question is ‘What is my path to radical truth-telling?’ There are some things that need to be said in this country.”Absent more credible potential primary threats, Biden allies are reveling in a sense of vindication after a stressful midterm campaign. Mr. Biden, they say, will counter concerns about his age in his re-election campaign with arguments about the value of his long experience in government.“He’s always underestimated by people in his party and outside his party,” said former Representative Cedric L. Richmond, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Biden at the White House, rattling off a list of the president’s legislative accomplishments. “They said he couldn’t win the presidency. He did.”But the next election may bear little resemblance to the last. Unlike in 2020, when Mr. Biden conducted much of his campaign over video from his basement because of the coronavirus, his re-election bid could require the kind of grueling travel that has long been customary in presidential contests. A noticeably more languid pace by Mr. Biden could set up a stark contrast if Republicans abandon Mr. Trump in favor of a younger nominee.Bill Shaheen, a D.N.C. member from New Hampshire, called Mr. Biden “physically fit” and energetic.But, drawing on personal experience, Mr. Shaheen, who is 79, added, “There’s only so much you can do when you’re our age.”Having helped run primary campaigns in New Hampshire for presidents as far back as Mr. Carter and campaigned for his wife, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Mr. Shaheen said they could be exhausting. “By the time the primaries were done, I was wiped out,” he said. “And the general election, as well — I mean, it is extremely physically demanding.”Still, Mr. Shaheen, who has strongly disagreed with Mr. Biden’s effort to reshuffle the presidential primary calendar — a move that would make New Hampshire the second contest alongside Nevada, rather than the first primary — said that if Mr. Biden wants to run again, “I want him to do it.”Kitty Bennett contributed research. 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      James Weighs a Run As Governor as Hochul Locks Key Endorsement

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      The chairman of the New York State Democratic Party endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul, contending that a multicandidate primary in 2022 could damage the party.The chairman of the New York State Democratic Party on Monday endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul in next year’s primary race, arguing that a fierce multicandidate free-for-all could be damaging to the party — even as several potential contenders take increasingly serious steps toward runs of their own.Jay Jacobs, the party chairman, said that the endorsement was his own, and not that of the state party. But his announcement was seen as an early effort to coalesce support behind Ms. Hochul, who ascended to the governorship after Andrew M. Cuomo resigned in disgrace.But Mr. Jacobs’s effort to bring the whole party along is already facing resistance — and he acknowledged as much, as he alluded to the increasing activity surrounding the race.“From the beginning, I have been urging those interested in looking into running for governor to hold their powder, to wait and allow Governor Hochul to get the job done and to make her mark,” Mr. Jacobs said at a news conference on Long Island. “Unfortunately, over the past few days, it seems that a number of candidates are becoming more anxious.”Indeed, last week the New York City public advocate, Jumaane D. Williams, launched an exploratory committee; the state attorney general, Letitia James, indicated that she was nearing a final decision on whether to run; and other Democrats, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, U.S. Representative Thomas Suozzi of Long Island and the Suffolk County executive, Steven Bellone, are also thought to be interested.“A party torn apart by multiple candidates in multiple primaries for multiple offices will exhaust precious resources, divide us and make us weaker in a year that we need to be at our strongest,” Mr. Jacobs added. “We have a governor that is proving she can do the job and do it with distinction. We have a governor who we know can win against any Republican candidate they put up in the fall.”The backing of Mr. Jacobs, who is also the chair of the Nassau County Democratic Committee, and another endorsement on Monday from Rich Schaffer, the head of the Suffolk County Democrats, underscore Ms. Hochul’s potential strength on vote-rich Long Island ahead of next year’s Democratic primary.Yet even as Mr. Jacobs spoke, perhaps Ms. Hochul’s most powerful would-be rival was about 25 miles away, appearing on a stage that, stylistically if not in substance, could have been mistaken for a campaign tableau.Ms. James was in the South Bronx on Monday morning, kicking off a statewide tour in which “she will begin delivering the first of up to $1.5 billion to combat the opioid epidemic,” her office said, tapping into settlements she negotiated. The tour is run through her government team, and the event was often sober as speakers shared painful stories about how the opioid crisis has ravaged neighborhoods across the city.“We’re not talking about politics, we’re talking about lives today,” she admonished a reporter who asked about Mr. Jacobs’s endorsement.Letitia James, the state attorney general, appeared in the South Bronx on Monday to begin a statewide tour to distribute money to fight the opioid epidemic.Dieu-Nalio Chéry for The New York TimesNevertheless, the tour comes as Ms. James and her allies have made clear that she is weighing a run for governor — and so the event, which illustrated Ms. James’s relationships in diverse communities around New York City, took on a fresh layer of significance.She was flanked by City Council members, Assembly members and state senators, and Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Jamaal Bowman.“With an event like this, she’s an effective A.G., capturing all those dollars to help our communities,” Mr. Espaillat said in a brief interview after the event. “That means that she would probably be an effective governor.”“We’ll be taking a look at all the candidates,” he added. “I think she would make a terrific candidate but that’s her choice.”Questions around whether Ms. James would run and what the rest of the field would look like have stopped some county chairs from joining Mr. Jacobs in making endorsements, though he suggested he expected others to indicate their support in coming days.“Kathy Hochul’s been doing a great job as governor and I hope she succeeds, but I think things need to play out a little bit more,” said Suzanne Berger, the chair of the Westchester County Democratic Committee. “The attorney general, who has also been a great elected official, needs an opportunity and space to make the best decision for herself and the state as well.”Other Democrats were openly critical of Mr. Jacobs’s move to intervene in a primary, especially at a relatively early juncture in the race — though there are few other recent points of comparison. Mr. Cuomo was in office for a decade, and before that, party officials asked Gov. David A. Paterson not to seek a full term after he took over from the disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.Mr. Williams said in a statement that Mr. Jacobs’s role, “and that of the highest ranking Democratic officials in our state, should be to uplift Democratic candidates, Democratic voters, and democratic values.” Mr. Williams also noted Mr. Jacobs’s longtime alliance with Mr. Cuomo, who on Monday released yet another statement ripping into the independent investigation into his conduct released by Ms. James’s office. The ex-governor lamented that “this is not New York at her finest.” There has been considerable speculation around whether Mr. Cuomo — whose resignation speech doubled as a defense of his legacy — would seek to put real money into meddling in the race.Mr. Jacobs said that he had given Mr. Cuomo, among others, a heads-up on the endorsement, a remark that drew some attention on Monday.“I’m not involved in that, I truly am not,” Ms. Hochul said, when asked about Mr. Jacobs’s decision to engage Mr. Cuomo. “I’m proud to have the support of Jay Jacobs, Rich Schaffer and anyone else who wants to line up behind me, but they know that’s not my focus.”And asked about Mr. Cuomo’s missive, she replied, “I’m actually too busy governing New York to worry about emails that are written by people.” More