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      In New York Primaries, Democrats Feel the Heat From the Right

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      The Queens district attorney and several City Council members face more conservative challengers who are criticizing them on issues including public safety.When Melinda Katz ran for Queens district attorney in 2019, her principal opponent in the Democratic primary was a public defender and democratic socialist with a platform of ending cash bail and eventually abolishing the police.With endorsements from progressive prosecutors around the country — as well as from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — Tiffany Cabán, a first-time candidate, lost by fewer than 60 votes after painting Ms. Katz as a regressive Democrat.Four years later, the strongest challenge to Ms. Katz is coming from George Grasso, an opponent running to her right who has accused her of being soft on crime.It’s not the only contest in the city where moderate Democrats are facing opponents on the right in primaries on Tuesday. In several City Council races, from the Bronx to southern Brooklyn, moderate Democrats are being challenged over public safety, affordable housing and education by more conservative members of their own party.“It’s really rare that so many challengers in this primary season are running to the right of the incumbent Democrat,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic consultant who is working on the campaign of Stanley Ng, who is running to the right of the front-runner in the 43rd Council District in southern Brooklyn. “Primary challengers to incumbent Democrats are usually running from the left or making a generational argument about it being time for new leadership.”In the Bronx, Councilwoman Marjorie Velázquez, who ran as a progressive in 2021, is facing two such challengers who have criticized her support of a plan to rezone Bruckner Boulevard in Throgs Neck. In Lower Manhattan, Councilman Chris Marte is facing off against opponents who have accused him of wanting to “defund” the police, which he denies.A councilwoman from Queens, Linda Lee, who represents Bayside, faces more conservative challengers. In Harlem, three moderate candidates are running to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who dropped out. And in the newly drawn 43rd Council District, the three Asian American Democrats running in the primary listed public safety and education as their top two issues.Marjorie Velázquez, a City Council member from the Bronx, said she is a moderate who is falsely viewed as a socialist.Anna Watts for The New York TimesSome see the trend as partially tied to demographic shifts from immigrants who are more conservative on two issues: public safety, especially after a rash of attacks on Asian Americans during the pandemic, and education, where progressives have backed changes to entry exams for specialized high schools with large Asian American enrollment.Between 2010 and 2020, New York City’s population grew by more than 629,000, according to a report from the CUNY Research Consortium on Communities of Interest. More than half of that increase came from a net growth in the Asian population, including a 43 percent growth in Brooklyn and the Bronx.Asian American voters have shifted to the right in recent elections. In the race for governor last year, majority Asian districts remained Democratic but shifted to the right by 23 points from the 2018 election, according to an analysis by The New York Times.Yiatin Chu, president of the Asian Wave Alliance, said Republican candidates are aligned with views that many Asian immigrants value, which she said Democrats have not engaged well on. Others say that Democrats have left themselves vulnerable by not effectively articulating their positions.“What elected official doesn’t care about public safety?” said Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who represents Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and is likely to face a strong Republican challenge in the general election. “But because we’ve allowed the right to paint us with this broad brush that we all want to abolish law enforcement, now Democrats feel compelled to lead with that.”He is supporting Wai Yee Chan, the executive director at Homecrest Community Services, in the 43rd Council District Democratic primary. She is running against Mr. Ng and Susan Zhuang, the chief of staff for Assemblyman William Colton.Sensing a threat from the right, Future NYC, a pro-business super PAC; Labor Strong, a coalition of the city’s most powerful unions; and the New York City District Council of Carpenters are funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars for advertising and on-the-ground support to help several moderate candidates.Future NYC recently pledged to spend approximately $500,000 to support Ms. Velázquez and Ms. Lee, said Jeff Leb, the group’s treasurer.Ms. Velázquez was one of 15 people who left the City Council’s Progressive Caucus in February after it asked members to agree to a statement of principles that included less funding for the police. She was recently endorsed by the conservative Police Benevolent Association. Still, her challengers have criticized Ms. Velázquez as too far left, citing her support of the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning that would bring affordable housing.One of them, Bernadette Ferrara, chairwoman of Bronx Community Board 11, said at a recent debate: “I am not going to let a weak and woke progressive like Marjorie Velázquez destroy a lifetime of work by stuffing the East Bronx with high-density, low-income housing.” Ms. Velázquez said she changed her mind and decided to support the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning, where new buildings will range from three to eight stories, because it would bring jobs and housing for older residents and families. The first Latina to represent her district, she said voters assume that she’s further left than she actually is.“I’ve heard that you’re socialist because you’re like A.O.C., and it’s like, no, I’m not,” Ms. Velázquez said referring to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist. “I am a moderate.”In Manhattan, Mr. Marte, who considers himself a progressive, said he has no plans to leave the Council caucus, and characterized his opponents as being further right than their comments suggested.All three of Mr. Marte’s challengers — Susan Lee, a consultant, Ursila Jung, a private investor, and Pooi Stewart, a substitute teacher — listed public safety as their top issue in the New York City voting guide.In a debate on NY 1, Susan Lee cited hate crimes against Asian Americans as a top public safety priority.And in the same debate, Ms. Jung defended her position by saying, “You can argue the numbers are going down, but a lot of public safety is perception.”Ms. Chu’s group endorsed George Grasso over Ms. Katz and ranked Susan Lee and Ms. Jung as their first two choices in the race against Mr. Marte. The group did not rank Ms. Chan in Brooklyn’s District 43, choosing Ms. Zhuang and Mr. Ng as their first and second choices. The Asian American winner of the Democratic primary in District 43 could face Vito J. LaBella, a former Police Department officer who is a conservative Republican, in what is expected to be a competitive general election. Mr. LaBella lost a close election for the State Senate by about 200 votes last year. He is running against Ying Tan, who works in senior services, in the Republican primary.Ms. Chu said many in her group are wary of “identity politics” and would not have a problem voting for Mr. LaBella in the general election.In the district attorney race, Ms. Katz has fended off attacks from Mr. Grasso, a former administrative judge and former Police Department first deputy commissioner, about her approach to crime.George Grasso, a primary candidate for Queens district attorney, is running as a more conservative Democratic who has accused his opponent of being soft on crime.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I think there’s a gnawing sense among people throughout the city, and Queens in particular, that they’re just not feeling as safe as they felt a few years ago, and they’re not seeing the political leadership respond in an assertive way,” Mr. Grasso said in an interview.Ms. Katz has been endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, both moderates. During her first term, she said she had focused on gang takedowns, gun seizures and retail theft. She accused her opponent of “cherry picking” crime data and courting Republicans.“His claims,” said Ms. Katz, “are ludicrous.”Emma G. Fitzsimmons More

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      Once Scorned, Far Right Secures Foothold in Spanish Cities

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      Local alliances between the center-right Popular Party and the far-right Vox may foreshadow a broader coalition agreement at the national level.Spain’s far right took office in a string of Spanish cities and in a powerful region over the weekend by forging coalition agreements with the moderate right, in a move that may foreshadow a broader alliance to govern the country after next month’s general elections.The agreements came about three weeks after the center-right Popular Party crushed Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing coalition in regional and local elections. To secure control of dozens of cities, the Popular Party struck coalition deals with the far-right Vox, which also performed well, embracing part of the party’s nationalist, anti-migrant agenda.Both parties will now govern together in some 25 cities of more than 30,000 residents, including five regional capitals, giving Vox, a party once considered anathema by most voters, crucial political leverage. They have also teamed up to run the wealthy Valencia region, which accounts for 10 percent of Spain’s population.“It’s something completely new, both in terms of extent and depth,” Sandra León, a political analyst at Carlos III University in Madrid, said of the alliances. “It opens up a new path, a new period in the right-wing bloc.”The growing popularity of Vox, which is already the third-largest political force in the Spanish Parliament, has coincided with the rise of the far right in Europe, at a time when the continent is grappling with fierce identity debates, the economic fallout of a pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.Hard-right forces already govern Italy, and on Friday, Finland’s main conservative party announced a new coalition government with a nationalist party. In France, Marine Le Pen’s normalization strategy is steadily bearing fruit.The leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, bottom right, in Parliament in Madrid in March.Chema Moya/EPA, via ShutterstockSantiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, has made it clear that he intends to make the most of his party’s gains locally. “We are and we will be extending our hand to build an alternative,” he wrote on Twitter this week, just as Vox and the Popular Party were locked in negotiations over regional governments.While municipal councils had to be formed by Saturday, regional governments have more time, and new agreements between Vox and the Popular Party could be reached in the next few days in regions such as Extremadura, in the west, and Murcia, in the east.Ms. León, the political analyst, said the local coalition agreements would help Vox, a party created only a decade ago, gain experience in running cities and provide it with resources to consolidate its organizational base. But she added that the most important outcome of the agreements is that they “have paved the way” for an alliance at the national level.Most polls show the Popular Party, also known by its initials PP, winning most votes in the early general elections that Mr. Sánchez has called for next month. But it would require an alliance with Vox to be able to form a government, a possibility that Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party leader, has not ruled out.“Such clear pacts have been concluded between Vox and the PP” at the local level, Ms. León said, that “we already know they will ally” after the national elections.The prospect of the far right gaining national power has come as a shock in a country where nationalist forces had long been sidelined because of the shadow of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, which ended only in the 1970s.Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain at the White House in May. He called for a snap election next month following gains by the opposition.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn particular, the alliance between the Popular Party and Vox to govern the Valencia region has raised concerns about a rollback of civil rights.The coalition agreement in Valencia promises to “preserve the quality of education by removing ideology from the classroom,” in an apparent allusion to contents on gender equality that form part of the curriculum and which Vox has long criticized. The agreement also makes no mention of climate change, a phenomenon that some Vox leaders have denied is linked to human activity.Ms. León said that the agreement showed that the Popular Party “is willing to compromise on some issues on which it has different views from Vox” in order to govern.The left was quick to use the Valencia agreement as proof that a Popular Party governing in alliance with Vox would be a step backward.“There is something much more dangerous than Vox, and that is a PP that assumes the postulates and policies of Vox,” Mr. Sánchez said in an interview with El País on Sunday. “And this is what we are seeing: the negation of political, social and scientific consensus.”Under pressure, the Popular Party has tried to distance itself from the most controversial positions of the far-right party. After a top Vox leader in Valencia said on Friday that “gender violence does not exist” — an issue that parties from across the political spectrum have long acknowledged and combated — Mr. Feijóo rushed to denounce his remarks.“Gender violence exists,” Mr. Feijóo wrote on Twitter. “We will not take a step back in the fight against this scourge. We will not give up our principles, no matter the cost.” More

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      Eric Adams’s Criticism of Biden Angers Aides and Reveals Democratic Rift

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      The New York mayor has loudly blamed President Biden for an influx of migrants, amplifying concerns many Democrats share but irritating Mr. Biden’s aides and weakening his political position.The Democratic Party is following a standard strategy as President Biden seeks re-election: Do not criticize him publicly under any circumstances, lest it help Donald J. Trump or one of his acolytes take back the White House for Republicans.The one Democrat who appears to have missed the memo is Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.Mr. Adams has taken nearly every opportunity in recent weeks to publicly blame Mr. Biden or his administration for the influx of migrants to New York from border states, many of them on buses dispatched by Republican governors.His eagerness to point a finger at the White House has infuriated top Biden aides, who note the issue’s global complexity. At the same time, the mayor is using his platform to amplify concerns many Democrats share but will not articulate publicly because they don’t want to hurt the president.The recent schism comes as Republicans make Mr. Biden’s immigration policy central to their efforts to dislodge him in 2024. After many Democratic candidates last year successfully used abortion rights against their Republican opponents, Mr. Biden’s nascent campaign would prefer that his allies stay on message — something Mr. Adams has shown scant willingness to do, despite once calling himself “the Biden of Brooklyn.”Migrants in California waiting to be processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. New York and other major cities have had an influx of migrants from the southern border.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesOfficials in New York and Washington insist that the ideologically aligned president and mayor have no personal animus toward each other. But as Mr. Adams has struggled to manage the waves of migrants being sent to New York, he has been more vocal than other mayors in the same situation — and more willing to blame Mr. Biden.Mr. Adams said on Wednesday that it was “baffling” that Washington officials “are not understanding what this is doing to New York City.” He expressed similar sentiments last month, saying, “The president and the White House have failed New York City on this issue.”Mr. Adams and his allies say the White House has ignored many of their entreaties, including their request that the federal government give more asylum seekers access to work permits and develop a plan to more broadly distribute migrants across the nation.“We have reached out to the White House on a number of occasions and stated clearly the things we need,” Mr. Adams said Wednesday. “Allow people to work, which I believe that’s one of the No. 1 things we can do. Allow people to work. And do a decompression strategy at the border. We got 108,000 cities and towns and villages. Why aren’t we spreading this out throughout the entire country?”Since becoming mayor 17 months ago on a platform of taming disorder on city streets, Mr. Adams has repeatedly broken ranks with the Democratic Party. Last year, his language on crime mirrored attacks by New York Republicans as they helped flip the House and mounted a strong challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul.Now, some Democrats worry that Mr. Adams’s messaging on migrants will again undercut Mr. Biden, placing the president at odds with a high-profile ally and seeming to strengthen the arguments of Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida that he is weak on border security.“Abbott and DeSantis and whoever are getting what they want: They got everybody at each other’s throats,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime Adams ally who has tried to serve as a middleman between the mayor and the White House. “On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 12 in frustration, and sometimes in frustration it can come off as more adversarial than you would like.”Some Democrats worry that Mr. Adams’s messaging on migrants will be a useful tool for Republicans to weaken Mr. Biden.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Biden’s aides and allies in Washington — a half dozen of whom spoke about their private discussions on the condition of anonymity — are clearly irritated with the mayor. In their view, Mr. Adams is a grandstanding opportunist, aiming to win headlines for himself without regard to the broader political implications for the president and his re-election.Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor, said in a statement that “Mayor Adams has and always will put the interest of New Yorkers first and foremost, and that’s why we’ve been asking for support for a year.” He added, “We desperately need federal and state support more than ever to quickly manage this crisis.”Last year, some White House officials were annoyed when Mr. Adams released a public letter asking for more monkeypox vaccines and calling the White House’s approach “piecemeal” after it had already told Mr. Adams privately that he would receive the vaccine shipments he had requested.When Mr. Abbott began busing migrants to New York from Texas border towns, Mr. Adams and his team asked the White House for federal support to house migrants, expedite their work permits and move some of them to cruise ships in the city’s harbor. The administration would often reply that many of the mayor’s requests required congressional action — which was unlikely, given the gridlock at the Capitol.On multiple occasions, White House officials told the mayor’s staff that they hoped to continue talking about the issues privately and emphasized the need to move forward as a partnership. Instead, Mr. Adams continued to criticize the administration in public.“He should be looking at Republicans who are purposely causing chaos for their political benefit and refusing to take any action to fix the issue,” said Pili Tobar, a former Biden administration deputy communications director who dealt with immigration.Mr. Biden introduced legislation that would overhaul the immigration system, increasing funding for border security and providing citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants. But Republicans have uniformly opposed the proposals, and they have gone nowhere.The mayor has his own calculations to make. While New York City has long prided itself on being a haven for migrants, more than 67,000 have traveled there in the past year. The city is also unique among major American cities in its legal requirement to shelter people with nowhere to live. Already facing record homelessness, the city is now housing roughly 42,400 migrants. It has run out of room at its shelters and has begun scouting alternative locations.New York has sent migrants upstate while continuing to pay for their housing and services, temporarily housed migrants in public school gyms and floated ideas like putting tents in Central Park. The Adams administration even asked an owner of the mostly vacant Flatiron Building if there was room there. (He said no.)Homeland Security officials in the Biden administration also privately expressed concerns last year about how cities would handle the influx of migrants from Texas and Florida.Last summer, those officials acknowledged that New York City and Washington were already struggling, even with additional volunteers, to process hundreds of migrants bused to their cities, according to internal emails reviewed by The New York Times.More than 67,000 migrants have come to New York City in the past year.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesThe Homeland Security Department was considering a plan in which the federal government would coordinate with local officials to fly migrants to cities, rather than releasing them along the border, and leave Mr. Abbott to continue orchestrating the surprise drop-offs.Supporters of such government-funded flights believed they would alleviate overcrowding at the border and allow federal officials to finish the processing of migrants once they landed. But some thought there were not enough federal resources to complete the plan.The administration instead moved ahead with an “Interior Cities Awareness Campaign,” in which the government would educate city leaders on migrants’ rights and immigration processing — but would leave municipalities to handle the drop-offs of migrants. The Biden administration has made $350 million in federal grants available to local governments grappling with the arrival of migrants; New York received $30 million.The Adams administration says that, beyond the organizational difficulties, the migrants’ arrival will blow a $4.3 billion hole in the city budget, which was already threatened by the decline of the commercial real estate market.Frank Carone, Mr. Adams’s former chief of staff, who is expected to lead the mayor’s re-election campaign, said it was “entirely appropriate for colleagues” to disagree on how to handle immigration.“I would contrast that to what goes on in an oligarch state, like in Russia or China or North Korea, where I doubt very much you’re going to see dissent from Putin’s allies,” Mr. Carone said. “The president and his team realize they’re in a humanitarian crisis. And he’s doing the best he can. Unfortunately, it is falling squarely on the shoulders of New York City.”What makes Mr. Adams’s approach so politically noteworthy — and appealing to Republicans — is that, while he is hardly the only Democrat to argue that Mr. Biden is not properly handling immigration, he is the rare one to do so repeatedly in front of television cameras.Mr. Adams’s repeated criticism of the White House has raised his national profile — no small concern for a man whose three predecessors ran for president. His potshots appear regularly on Fox News and in other conservative news outlets, with a clear message: Even the mayor of liberal New York City has had it with Mr. Biden.The mayor’s outspokenness has earned him the enmity of officials in the White House. Last week he was conspicuously absent from the Biden campaign’s list of surrogates, which included the mayors of Cincinnati; Richmond, Va.; and Madison, Wis.How much political benefit Mr. Adams can gain by attacking Mr. Biden is another question.Representative Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat, said the mayor’s “sentiment is understandable and his grievance against the federal government strikes me as legitimate.”He added: “Do I wish he were more careful in his word choice? Sure.” More

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      Trounced, Conservatives Feel Voters’ Wrath in English Heartlands

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      Defections in the once solidly Conservative southern “blue wall” drove large losses in recent municipal elections.LITTLEWICK GREEN, England — Aged 22 and not long out of college, George Blundell never expected to win when he ran in municipal elections against a Conservative Party bigwig in a region long loyal to the Tories. But for a young, enthusiastic, former politics student it still seemed worth a shot.“I was like, ‘Well, what’s stopping me’? It’s not something you get to do every day, is it?” recalled Mr. Blundell, a member of the centrist Liberal Democrats, as he sipped a beer outside the village pub where he once washed dishes as a summer job.To his surprise, Mr. Blundell is now a councilor representing the area around Littlewick Green, having defeated the powerful incumbent in perhaps the biggest upset from local elections that have sent shock waves through Britain’s governing Conservative Party.Unhappy about Brexit and aghast at the economic chaos unleashed during Liz Truss’s brief leadership last year, traditional Conservative voters are deserting the party in key English heartlands, contributing to the loss of more than 1,000 municipality seats in voting this month.With a general election expected next year, that is alarming for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has earned solid marks as a problem solver and seems to have stanched the party’s bleeding from the Ms. Truss fiasco, but whose party nevertheless lags far behind the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls.In these affluent areas within reach of London — called the “blue wall” after the campaign color of the Conservatives — the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, rather than Labour, made big gains in this month’s local elections. But when the next general election comes, the defection of voters from the Conservative Party could deprive Mr. Sunak of a parliamentary majority and propel Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, into Downing Street.The village pub at Littlewick Green, near Maidenhead.Olivia Harris for The New York TimesIt could also sweep from Parliament prominent Conservatives — like the chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, and the senior cabinet minister, Michael Gove — who hold seats in Conservative southern heartlands, as does the former prime minister, Theresa May, the member of Parliament for Maidenhead.According to Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, they have only themselves to blame because many moderate Conservatives feel their party has abandoned them, rather than the other way around.“Their Conservative Party was about stable government and low taxes, and looking after the City of London,” he said, referring to the financial district to which many voters here commute. “This Conservative government has delivered none of that.”“Rishi Sunak turning up and saying ‘Don’t worry, I know we spent five years burning down the house, but someone who is not an arsonist is in charge now,’” Professor Ford said. “Well, it’s not enough.”Certainly, it proved insufficient in Littlewick Green which, with its village pub, cricket field and pavilion flying British flags, is an unlikely spot for a political insurrection.Yet, so successful was Mr. Blundell that, when he joined a crowd of around 200 people celebrating the coronation of King Charles III, they greeted their newly-elected representative with spontaneous applause.Mr. Blundell, who works as a training adviser for an education firm, said he blushed so hard that “I basically turned into a human tomato.” He added: “I’ve known them all for a long time, and I want to do well by them and help them out — even if it’s the smallest things.”Mr. Blundell prevailed in Littlewick Green, despite its tony image as a place having a cricket field, a village pub, and a pavilion flying British flags.Olivia Harris for The New York TimesIn this quintessential corner of “blue wall” Britain, Mr. Blundell lives with his siblings (he is a triplet) and mother, a vicar, in a house that was once used as a set by the makers of “Midsomer Murders,” a TV detective show featuring gory crimes in scenic English villages.Mr. Blundell attributes his victory to a combination of national politics, local factors and the complacency of local Conservatives. The night of the count was “spectacular,” he added.Simon Werner, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Windsor and Maidenhead, thinks the success can be repeated in a general election. “The ‘blue wall’ is crumbling,” he said. “We’ve proved we can do it on a local basis and now we have to step up and do it at the general election next year.”In part, the events here represent the aftershocks of the polarizing leadership of Boris Johnson, who won a landslide general election victory in 2019 with the support of voters in deindustrialized areas in the north and middle of England. But Mr. Johnson’s bombastic, pro-Brexit rhetoric, disdain for the business sector and focus on regenerating the north of England never endeared him to moderate Conservatives in the south.Most stuck with the Tories in 2019 because Labour was then led by the left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn. But with the more centrist Mr. Starmer now firmly in charge, the prospect of a Labour government is no longer so scary for many traditional Tories, liberating them to abandon the Conservatives.Professor Ford added, the Tories had caricatured and pilloried their own supporters for years, with some Conservative politicians characterizing such voters as a privileged elite.“If you tell people often enough that they are not welcome, eventually they will get the message,” said Professor Ford.Even some Conservative lawmakers admit they are worried by the appeal of the Liberal Democrats to these voters.“Those traditional moderate Conservatives for whom the world works very well — who were happy to be in the European Union because it worked for them — yes, I am concerned to attract them back from the Liberal Democrats,” said Steve Baker, a government minister and lawmaker who represents Wycombe, close to Windsor and Maidenhead.Mr. Blundell chats with his mother in Littlewick Green.Olivia Harris for The New York TimesThere are demographic factors at play as well, as younger voters relocate from London, a Labour stronghold, forced out by high property prices.But local issues are important, too. At Maidenhead Golf Club, which was established in 1896, there is anger that the Conservative-controlled municipality facilitated plans to construct around 1,800 houses on the 132 acres of land the club rents — threatening to make the club homeless.Merv Foulds, a former club treasurer and lifelong Conservative voter, said that on election day he decided not to join his wife at their polling station, adding: “If I had I would not have voted Tory.”Both locally and nationally the Conservatives are seen as untrustworthy, he said, while Mr. Sunak has yet to prove persuasive.“Sometimes, when he speaks, you just get the feeling he is speaking down to you,” said Mr. Foulds, an accountant. “At least with Boris you felt that he was talking to you — even though he might have been talking drivel, and maybe lying through his back teeth as well.”In Woodlands Park, a less affluent district of Windsor and Maidenhead, Barbara Hatfield a cleaner, said she had voted for several parties in recent elections but was worried about hikes in food prices and angry about development in the town center.A house decorated with a Union Jack in Littlewick Green.Olivia Harris for The New York Times“Maidenhead is terrible, it looks like Beirut,” she said of the town, where there has been construction work, adding that she was unsure how she would vote in a general election.Another uncommitted voter is Mr. Blundell’s mother, Tina Molyneux, who ministers at local churches as well as being head of discipleship and social justice in the diocese of Oxford. She has her own theory of why her son was victorious.“Everybody was saying ‘There’s got to be a change,’” she said. “There was something to do with youth and a fresh approach.”Rev. Molyneux said she had previously voted for Mrs. May, whom she still respects, but will not support her at the general election because the Conservatives have “gone to the right.” More

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      Cherelle Parker Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary in Philadelphia

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      If she wins the general election in November, she will be the first woman to lead the city.After a crowded primary, Cherelle Parker, a former state representative and City Council member who campaigned on hiring more police, won the Democratic nomination for Philadelphia mayor on Tuesday night, emerging decisively from a field of contenders who had vied to be seen as the rescuer of a struggling and disheartened city.If she wins in November, which is all but assured in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than seven to one, Ms. Parker will become the city’s 100th mayor, and the first woman to hold the job.Of the five mayoral hopefuls who led the polls in the final stretch, Ms. Parker, 50, was the only Black candidate, in a city that is over 40 percent Black. She drew support from prominent Democratic politicians and trade unions, and throughout the majority Black neighborhoods of north and west Philadelphia. Some compared her to Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, noting her willingness to buck the party’s progressives with pledges to hire hundreds of police officers and bring back what she has called constitutional stop-and-frisk.But she said that many of her proposed solutions had roots in Philadelphia’s “middle neighborhoods” — working and middle-class areas that have been struggling in recent years to hold off decline.“They know it’s not Cherelle engaging in what I call ‘I know what’s best for you people’ policymaking, but it’s come from the ground up,” Ms. Parker said on Tuesday morning at a polling place in her home base of northwest Philadelphia.Solutions should come from the community, she said, “not people thinking they’re coming in to save poor people, people who never walked in their shoes or lived in a neighborhood with high rates of violence and poverty. I’ve lived that.”Ms. Parker did not attend her own victory party on Tuesday. Her campaign told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she had emergency dental surgery last week, and issued a statement saying that she had required immediate medical attention at the University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday evening for a “recent dental issue.” Her Republican opponent in the November general election is David Oh, a former City Council member.If Ms. Parker wins in November, she would be taking the reins of a city facing a host of problems, chief among them a surge in gun violence that has left hundreds dead year after year. Philadelphians routinely described crime as the city’s No. 1 problem, but the list of issues runs long, including crumbling school facilities, blighted housing stock, an opioid epidemic and a municipal staffing shortage.The punishing list of challenges had exhausted the current mayor, Jim Kenney, a Democrat whose second term was consumed with Covid-19, citywide protests and a soaring murder rate, and who spoke openly of his eagerness to be done with the job.The primary to replace Mr. Kenney was congested from the start and remained so into its final days. Up to the last polls, no front-runner had emerged and five of the candidates seemed to have a roughly equal shot at winning, each representing different constituencies and different parts of town.The candidates at the finish line included Rebecca Rhynhart, a former city controller with a technocratic pitch who was endorsed by multiple past mayors; Helen Gym, a former councilwoman endorsed by Bernie Sanders and a range of other high-profile progressives; Alan Domb, who made millions in real estate and served two terms on the City Council; and Jeff Brown, a grocery store magnate and a newcomer to electoral politics.The early days of the race were dominated by TV ads supporting Mr. Brown and Mr. Domb, but other campaigns soon joined the fray and in the final weeks the ad war grew increasingly combative. SuperPACs spent millions on behalf of various candidates and eventually became an issue themselves, when the Philadelphia Board of Ethics accused Mr. Brown, who led in early polls of the race, of illegally coordinating with a SuperPAC.But for all the money and the negative campaigning, no candidate seemed to rise above the crowded field for Philadelphians who were busy with their daily lives.“People have option fatigue,” said State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democrat, who on Tuesday was chatting with candidates and local politicos as they packed into a traditional Election Day lunch at South restaurant and jazz club.In the last polls before the election, large numbers of voters remained undecided, but many of them seemed to break in the end for Ms. Parker, whose win was more substantial than many were expecting.The victory of a moderate like Ms. Parker in Philadelphia stood in contrast to some races elsewhere around the state. In Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh lies, progressives racked up one primary win after another on Tuesday, with candidates from the left flank of the Democratic Party winning the nominations for a range of top offices, including county executive and district attorney.Democrats also held onto their slim control of the Pennsylvania House on Tuesday, as Heather Boyd won a special election in southeast Delaware County. Top Democrats, including President Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, had made a push in the race, framing it as crucial to protecting reproductive rights in Pennsylvania.In a separate special election, Republicans held a safe state House seat in north-central Pennsylvania when Michael Stender, a school board member and a firefighter, won his race.Neil Vigdor More

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      With Local Elections in Much of the U.K., Here’s What’s at Stake

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      Municipalities across England will face voters, including in areas that could sway the next national election. Here’s a guide to the ballots and how to interpret them.Votes will be cast across England on Thursday in local elections that will be a test of the popularity of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has stabilized Britain’s politics but whose government remains unpopular in the face of surging inflation, sluggish economic growth and labor unrest.These votes will not affect the national Parliament that gives Mr. Sunak his power: Members of Parliament face the public every five years or so in a general election. The date is flexible but one isn’t expected until next year.But Thursday’s voting could offer important clues about whether Mr. Sunak, whose Conservative Party trails the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls, can turn things around.At stake are seats for around 8,000 representatives in lower tiers of government: municipalities that control services like garbage collection and construction permitting and raise taxes, within strict constraints, on residential property.It’s not an infallible guide to national sentiment. Turnout will be far lower than at a general election and parochial issues like planned housing developments could sway some races.Still, this may be the largest public vote between now and the next general election, and it’s fought across most of the areas likely to determine the next British government, with national issues often prominent in campaigning.What’s the state of play nationally?Recent surveys show Mr. Sunak cutting into Labour’s lead, though it remains in double digits. So he retains hopes of snatching an unlikely fifth consecutive general election victory for the Conservatives.Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, needs a decent result to sustain his hopes of becoming the next prime minister. Despite moving his party close to power, he has failed to excite voters.The Labour leader Keir Starmer on the eve of local elections in Gillingham, England, on Tuesday.Gareth Fuller, via Associated PressThe local elections will indicate how Labour’s polling lead and Mr. Sunak’s polling progress translate into real votes.Who’s voting and where?The elections on Thursday take place across much — but not all — of England. Scotland and Wales aren’t voting, and Northern Ireland has local elections on May 18.Up for grabs are seats for representatives in 230 municipalities. The last time these seats were contested was in 2019, when Parliament was gridlocked over Brexit and the two main parties were about equally unpopular. Many big cities are voting (London excepted) but so are more rural areas.Both main parties hold a lot of these seats, but the Conservatives are defending the most — around 3,500 — and polling suggests they will lose plenty.How many is the key question: The parties traditionally seek to massage expectations. Greg Hands, the chair of the Conservatives, has talked of estimates that his party could lose 1,000 seats — a high number that some analysts think he inflated in an effort to portray lower losses as a triumph.Which are the results to watch?Some the most closely watched votes will be in so-called red wall areas in northern England and the Midlands. These deindustrialized regions used to be heartlands of the Labour Party. Mr. Sunak’s predecessor but one, Boris Johnson, fought a pro-Brexit general election campaign in late 2019 that won many of them for the Conservatives.With support dwindling both for the Conservatives and for Brexit, Labour hopes to regain some former strongholds, for example in northeastern England in areas like Middlesborough and Hartlepool.In the south, analysts will watch how the Conservatives perform in their traditional strongholds, prosperous towns like Windsor and Maidenhead, now sometimes known as blue wall areas. Here, Mr. Johnson alienated anti-Brexit Conservative voters, allowing independent candidates and a centrist party, the Liberal Democrats, to make gains. Mr. Sunak hopes his more technocratic style has arrested that slide.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London in April. The local elections will indicate how Labour’s polling lead and Mr. Sunak’s polling progress translate into real votes.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockSome results should emerge overnight — the northern city of Sunderland, for instance, prides itself on having all its votes counted just hours after the polls close, at 10 p.m. local time — but many places start counting the next day. There won’t be a reliable picture of votes across England until later on Friday.What’s the likely impact on British politics?Earlier this year, when Mr. Sunak’s leadership looked shaky, these elections seemed like a potential trigger for a leadership crisis and a comeback opportunity for Mr. Johnson, whose own fall was accelerated by local election losses last year.Since then, Mr. Sunak has struck a post-Brexit deal with the European Union on Northern Ireland, and stabilized the economy after upheavals under Liz Truss, Mr. Johnson’s short-lived successor. By contrast, Mr. Johnson is embroiled in an inquiry into whether he lied to Parliament about lockdown-busting parties during the pandemic.So Mr. Sunak’s position looks secure for now. But a bad result could demoralize party workers, shake confidence in his prospects, embolden his critics and confirm expectations that he will postpone calling a general election until late next year (it must take place by January 2025). A better-than-expected result for the Conservatives would strengthen Mr. Sunak and increase pressure on Mr. Starmer.If the Conservatives do suffer, the prime minister has one big thing going for him: timing. On Saturday, all the British media’s attention will shift to the pomp and pageantry of the coronation of King Charles III. More

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      Green Savior or Deadly Menace? Paris Votes on E-Scooter Ban

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      For five years, the French capital has permitted the renting of electric scooters, which have proven both popular and perilous. On Sunday, voters will decide whether to end the experiment.PARIS — Manil Hadjoudj was handing out fliers at the entrance to Sorbonne University, tirelessly repeating, “Do you care about electric scooters?” to passing students, most of whom seemed indifferent to his plea.“I care about our pension system right now,” one of them said without stopping.Mr. Hadjoudj, 18, had been hired by the three electric scooter rental companies in Paris to try to persuade young riders to help save their businesses in a vote this Sunday, when the French capital is holding a referendum on whether to ban renting the scooters within city limits.Five years after the motorized version of the two-wheeled scooters flooded the streets and sidewalks of Paris, this transportation option — whose human-powered version has long been popular with children — has become a topic of adult fury, delight and tension.City Hall calls them a threat to public safety and environmentally questionable, and wants them gone. The rental companies counter that their scooters are eco-friendly, ease getting around the city and create jobs. They see Paris as a model for good scooter practices around the world.And Parisians? They have mixed emotions.“They come in handy at night when you get out of a party and miss the last metro to get home,” said Axel Ottow, 20, stepping out of a subway station. But while he said he used them on rare occasions when no better option was available, he pointed out a commonly citied drawback: He found them “dangerous to ride.”When the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, opened the rental scooter market to 16 operators in 2019, the city seemed to have all the characteristics of a gold mine for the companies.Its small geographic size compared to Los Angeles, Berlin or London was ideal for short-distance trips. Many bike lanes had already been installed, offering paths away from cars. And tourists, who turned out to be major clients, could get in some additional sightseeing as they zipped from the Louvre en route to L’Arc de Triomphe.In 2022, Paris recorded about 20 million trips on 15,000 rental scooters, making it one of the largest markets in the world.But at least initially, the machines created chaos, with many riders zooming wherever and however they wanted — on sidewalks, down one-way streets, weaving between cars.“It was an urban jungle,” said David Belliard, the deputy mayor in charge of transportation.Scooters from Lime, a San Francisco-based company, at a warehouse in Lisbon in February.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe electric scooters could race up to 19 miles an hour and were parked anywhere and everywhere — sprawled across roads, sidewalks and even chucked into the Seine.In 2019, a rider was hit by a van and killed, becoming the first but far from the last rental scooter fatality in the city.Alarmed, the city drafted rules. Scooters were deemed motorized vehicles and forbidden to travel on sidewalks. Their maximum speed was reduced to about 12 miles an hour and even lower near schools, and specific parking spaces were created. The city introduced a fine of 135 euros, or $147, for riding on sidewalks or carrying a cuddling passenger on the vehicles meant for one, which had become a romantic Parisian cliché.In 2020, the city narrowed the number of operators to three: the San Francisco-based company Lime, the Dutch start-up Dott and Tier, a German start-up.“Since that initial period of chaos, we have seen an incredible amount of improvement in our service,” said Erwann Le Page, a spokesman for Tier, who said the company provided scooters in towns and cities across France, including other cities like Lyon and Bordeaux. Operators say that they made the vehicles heavier to increase stability and that 96 percent of the machines are now parked where they should be.But even with all the rule changes, the number of fatal accidents has increased along with scooters’ popularity.In 2021, 24 people were killed in France while riding a personal or rental scooter or other motorized devices like hoverboards and gyropods, and 413 were seriously injured, according to figures provided by the State Road Safety Department. Last year, 34 people died and 570 were seriously injured in the country. Accidents on scooters have become “a major health problem,” the French National Academy of Medicine said.“Scooters have an image of lightness and carelessness, but they also cause drama and death,” said Arnaud Kielbasa, who set up an association in 2019 for scooter victims after someone riding one knocked down his wife, who had been carrying their 7-week-old baby girl, who was hospitalized with a concussion.With 20 million trips taken last year, however, it’s obvious that a huge number of riders accept the danger. For scooter riders, helmets are recommended but not required by law, and the National Academy of Medicine has said that nationally, “in serious crashes, helmets were not worn nine out of 10 times.”For the employees of the scooter companies, their livelihood is also on the line in Sunday’s vote.“I don’t know what I’ll do next if the company has no choice but to fire me,” said Salifou Kaba, 26, a Tier employee whose job is to ride around Paris on an electric cargo bike to change the scooters’ batteries. The job has brought him a better place to live, bank loan approvals and stability, he said. “That’s why I’m afraid of Sunday’s results,” Mr. Kaba said.An official from the Paris mayor’s office moving electric scooters away from car parking spaces along a Paris street in 2019.Olivier Morin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe companies insist that their scooters, which run on electrically charged batteries, offer a low-carbon alternative to cars, which should, they say, make them attractive to Paris and its mayor, who has championed green initiatives.The vehicles “helped reduce pollution in about 600 cities in the world, including 100 in France,” said Mr. Le Page, pointing to a city-sponsored study that showed that 19 percent of scooter trips would have otherwise been made by car.That same study, however, found that more than three-quarters of the users would have otherwise walked, taken public transportation or biked if scooters were not an option.“Sure, scooters don’t emit any pollution like a car,” countered Mr. Belliard, a member of France’s Green party. “But a big majority would have used modes of transportation that are already decarbonized.”Nationwide, more than 750,000 electric scooters were sold in 2022, after a record 900,000 in 2021, according to the Federation of Micro-Mobility Professionals, which includes scooter distributors and retailers. And the mayor of Lyon, France’s third largest city, has just agreed to a four-year extension of its contract with Tier and Dott.But Paris’s City Hall, once excited to bring the new transportation choice to the French capital, is now keen to see it gone. Instead of banning the scooters outright, Ms. Hidalgo and her deputies decided to let the public vote in the referendum. A recent poll showed that 70 percent would vote against keeping them.If Tier, Lime and Dott lose Sunday’s vote, their contracts with the city will not be renewed, and the scooters’ zigzagging presence in Paris will be gone by the end of August.The operators have mounted a campaign in favor of keeping the scooters. They have criticized the fact that online voting — rare in France — was not allowed, arguing that its absence deters younger voters from participating. They have also complained that the geographic boundaries of who can vote were too restrictive, excluding people in the suburbs.In the week before the vote, the social network TikTok was buzzing with messages using the hashtag “sauvetatrott” (“save your scooter”), and Parisian social influencers have expounded on the importance of saving the “most romantic thing to do in Paris” or the only transportation service that’s “not affected by national strikes.”But many Parisians would find their ban a relief.“I don’t call them scooters, I call them garbage,” said Olivier Guntzberger, 45, an electronics salesman. Outside his storefront on a narrow street near the Champs-Élysées, 20 scooters were piled in a parking space. “I’m not going to cry over them,” he said.Catherine Porter More

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      It Would Be Foolish to Ignore What Just Happened in Chicago

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, the biggest political news from last week was the resounding defeat of the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, in the primary. Your thoughts on her political downfall?Gail Collins: Well, running Chicago is a very tough job in the best of times, and Mayor Lightfoot was stuck doing it in the pandemic era.Bret: Hmmm …Gail: OK, that was my best shot at defending her. She was a huge disappointment — in a place like Chicago, you expect the mayor to get into a lot of fights, but she seemed to pick a new one every hour.If you’ve got a city beset by crime and economic problems, any incumbent mayor would need a great plan and a whole lot of emotional connection to the average voter to deserve another term. None of that there.What’s your opinion?Bret: Every thriving city needs to get two basic things right: It has to be safe for people and safe for commerce. Under Lightfoot, homicides, carjackings and shoplifting skyrocketed, and businesses fled the city. Nearly a third of Michigan Avenue’s retail space is vacant. Boeing decided to move its headquarters out of the city. When the McDonald’s C.E.O. complained about crime, Lightfoot scolded him. So I’m glad Chicago voters had the good sense to give her the boot. I just hope they also have the good sense to go with the centrist Paul Vallas in the runoff election instead of his opponent, Brandon Johnson, who may be even further to the left than Lightweight — er, Lightfoot.Gail: We’re gonna have more to discuss on that point.Bret: The election will also have national implications, Gail. Notice that President Biden has said he won’t veto a bill in Congress that would reverse a District of Columbia law that lightened sentences for various felonies. Higher crime rates are going to dog Democratic candidates everywhere until they start to get as tough on the issue as they were when Biden was in the Senate, promoting the federal crime bill.Gail: Doubt there’s a Democrat in America who isn’t sensitive to the crime issue now. But as we follow this story, just want to leave you now with one thought: Getting tough on lawbreakers is not enough to make a great chief executive. Nearly. Remember Rudy Giuliani.Bret: A highly successful mayor who brought down crime, made the city livable again and was endorsed in 1997 for a second term by the editorial board of … The New York Times. Granted, it’s a shame about the rest of his career.Gail: Now Bret, here’s a change of subject for you. Masks! Been so eager to converse about your anti-mask column the other day. Eager in part because people keep stopping me on the street and yelping: “Bret! Masks!”Bret: Oh, yeah. I’m aware.Just to be clear, Gail, my column was not against masks per se. It was anti-mask mandates as an effective means of curbing communitywide spread. Masks can obviously work in tightly controlled settings, like operating rooms. People who correctly wore high-quality masks probably protected themselves and others, at least if they never removed them in public.Gail: Go on …Bret: But the mandates didn’t work, and it’s not just on account of the recent Cochrane analysis that I cited in my column. Our Times colleague David Leonhardt came to basically the same conclusion last year based on U.S. data. What can work at the individual level can, and often does, totally fail at the collective level.It’s also common sense. If you’re required to wear a mask on an airplane but allowed to take it off to eat or drink, the requirement becomes useless. If you’re supposed to wear a mask while walking to a table at a restaurant but not when sitting down, it’s useless. If you’re supposed to wear a mask but nobody is very concerned about whether it’s an N95 or a cloth mask, it’s useless.Gail: “Less useful” yeah. But my understanding has always been that the masks aren’t as important for protecting the healthy as they are critical for keeping people who are already infected from spreading germs to others.Those folks are going to go out sometimes whether we like it or not, and if they’re the only ones who have to wear masks, it’s like a walking declaration of disease — ringing a bell to warn that the leper is coming.Make sense? Why do I suspect I haven’t persuaded you?Bret: Human nature. People who are infected but don’t know it will be no better about wearing masks properly than anyone else. People who are infected, know it and irresponsibly walk around with the disease are probably not going to be responsible mask-wearers, either.There’s also the fact that, in a culture like America’s, there was never a chance we’d get the kind of compliance we need to make a real difference. Maybe in China, which could be draconian in its enforcement, but I don’t think any of us would have wanted that here.Bottom line, the government would have been wiser telling people: If you are immunocompromised or you have a potential comorbidity like obesity or diabetes, please wear N95 masks at all times in public. If you aren’t, please be respectful of those who do wear them.Gail: Not necessarily. One of the things that struck me when mask wearing began was how it kinda defined community. Folks declaring solidarity with their fellow citizens in joining together to fight a common battle.Bret: To me, the lesson was the opposite. Many of the people who were most emphatic in their belief in mask wearing — particularly those with media bullhorns — worked the sorts of jobs that didn’t require them to wear masks all their working hours. Not like waiters or store clerks or Uber drivers who had to wear them 8, 10, 12 hours a day, and sometimes wound up with sores in their mouths. The mandates didn’t just polarize us politically, they also exacerbated class divides.Gail: I got into the habit of telling Uber drivers to feel free to take off the mask. Most of them didn’t, which made me presume they were voluntarily protecting themselves against the passengers.Bret: Gail, you scofflaw!Gail: But on to another topic entirely — the Murdaugh murder trial! I have to say when you spend most of your life listening to reports about political drama, a major murder trial reminds you how nondramatic that stuff can be.Did you follow the case? I did and figured he’d be convicted. But I was shocked by how fast the jury came to a decision.Bret: You and our colleague Farhad Manjoo, who looked at the case through a technological lens and offered a terrific, contrarian take on the trial. That said, from what I watched of the trial, Alex Murdaugh struck me as evil incarnate. My wife will probably kill me for saying this — er, so to speak — but while I can at least grasp how someone can murder a spouse, I simply can’t comprehend how anyone could murder his own child.Gail: Yeah, but about the jury: I remember years and years ago, being a juror on a trial where the defendant had punched an old lady on a bus. In front of a lot of other people. Tons of testimony and the defendant himself — if I recall this correctly — took the stand to offer the excuse that he found the old lady really irritating.Still, we deliberated for hours! Not because there was any doubt about what we were going to do. It just seemed to show respect for the process. And, maybe, to qualify for another excellent free courthouse lunch.Bret: Spoken like a true journalist: Anything for a free lunch.Gail, before we go, I hope all of our readers spend some time with Hannah Dreier’s moving and brilliantly rendered report on the thousands of migrant children, sometimes as young as 12, who came to this country alone and are now working grueling hours in factories, kitchens, construction sites, garment makers, slaughterhouses and sawmills trying to survive and sending what little extra money they have to help their families back home. It’s a powerful reminder that the migration crisis isn’t just happening at the southern border. In many ways, it’s just beginning there.Gail: Bret, I love the way you point to the great work our colleagues are doing. Hannah’s reporting on the migrant children was heartbreaking. Politically, both sides agree there’s a terrible problem here in regulating both migration itself and what happens to people who arrive in hopes of creating better lives.But do you see any hope — any at all — of their getting together on a solution? Even a partial one?Bret: The problem shouldn’t be difficult to solve through compromise. Discipline and order at the border combined with compassion and aid toward those who are vulnerable and suffering. America has shown in the past that we can meet that challenge. We just need to muster the will to meet it again.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More