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      L.A. Drops Criminal Charges Against Election Software Executive

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      Before the arrest of its founder and chief executive, Eugene Yu, Konnech repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in statements to The New York Times.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesLos Angeles County dropped criminal charges against the top executive of an elections technology company on Wednesday, bringing to an abrupt end an unusual case that became the focus of Americans who distrust the country’s electoral system.The district attorney’s office said in a statement that it had dropped the case against the executive, Eugene Yu, because of concerns about the “pace of the investigation” and the “potential bias in the presentation” of evidence in the case. The office said the county had assembled a new team to “determine whether any criminal activity occurred.”The prosecutors did not respond to questions about the decision.“Mr. Yu is an innocent man,” Gary Lincenberg, Mr. Yu’s lawyer, said in a statement, adding that “conspiracy theorists” were using the arrest to “further their political agenda.”Last month, Los Angeles prosecutors accused Mr. Yu, the chief executive of Konnech, a small election software company in Michigan, of storing data about poll workers on servers in China, a breach of the company’s contract with the county. The charges related only to poll worker data and had no impact on votes or election results.Mr. Yu, 64, has repeatedly denied sending data to China. The New York Times published an article about the claims and his denials as a part of its coverage of misinformation and elections. Los Angeles prosecutors arrested Mr. Yu the day after the article was published.The abrupt dismissal left several unanswered questions about the case and Mr. Yu’s suspected activities. The district attorney’s office did not clarify whether the company had, in fact, stored data in China. It was also not clear whether additional criminal or civil charges could be filed against Mr. Yu or Konnech from Los Angeles County or dozens of other counties that use Konnech’s election management software.Konnech has about 20 employees in the United States and about 20 customers. It plays no role in the tabulation or counting of votes in American elections. But some election deniers have suggested that Konnech gave the Chinese government a back door to manipulate America’s election process.True the Vote, an organization that claims to be devoted to uncovering election fraud, said at a conference this summer that its team had found and downloaded Konnech’s poll worker data from servers in China. It provided no evidence that it had downloaded the data, but said it had delivered a hard drive to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Konnech sued True the Vote, along with Catherine Engelbrecht, its founder, and Gregg Phillips, an election denier and longtime associate of the group, accusing them of defamation and hacking. The pair were briefly jailed last week after refusing to release the name of a person involved in the suspected hack of Konnech’s data.In an earlier court filing, Mr. Phillips said he had spoken with the grand jury in Los Angeles County that eventually indicted Mr. Yu. More

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      A Climate Change Skeptic’s Change of Heart

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      More from our inbox:How to Help the Homeless in Los AngelesDemocratic Wishes That Came True, Alas!Divorce and Politics Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Yes, Greenland’s Ice Is Melting, But … ,” by Bret Stephens (column, Oct. 30):Mr. Stephens’s piece is right on point — had it been written 20 years ago. Regrettably the environment did not wait for him or others “to be brought around” about “the need for action.” Rather, with scientific consensus building around an expected rise of two to three degrees Celsius by 2100, the partial solutions Mr. Stephens champions will leave us facing extreme climate impacts.Better that we adopt a more radical approach in the hope that we can stem the coming tide. Indeed, as Mr. Stephens suggests, we should focus on fixing the environment for our great-grandchildren, and need to consider family planning policies that reduce the size of future generations to help achieve a better balance between humanity and nature.Scott MortmanManalapan, N.J.The writer is an environmental lawyer and an adviser to the Fair Start Movement, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing child welfare and family planning.To the Editor:Bret Stephens wisely recommends that a lack of self-righteousness and an open mind would do a lot to advance public thinking about climate change, using his own evolution on the subject as Exhibit A. However, his fears about government playing a big role in addressing rising temperatures ignores some important recent history.Mr. Stephens points out that nuclear power will have to play a role in a less carbon-intensive future but fails to mention that its very existence was brought about by a massive program of government-funded and -directed research and development. He also points out that cheap natural gas produced by fracking has helped reduce our carbon footprint, and ignores the fact that both public and private funding played an important role in funding the research and development for that technology.And, perhaps most significant, he doesn’t mention the pivotal role played by German and Chinese government subsidies in driving down the price of solar panels by bringing their production up to scale.Fighting climate change is a very complex matter and will require carefully intertwining public and private initiatives. To see the marketplace as the sole possible agent of change fails to acknowledge how progress has occurred.Joshua MarkelPhiladelphiaTo the Editor:Letting market forces drive the consumption of goods and services might work for much of our economy, but it clearly hasn’t worked when it comes to protecting the health and well-being of our planet and its inhabitants from global warming. It takes too long.In 1888, the first U.S. wind turbine produced electricity. In 1900, more than a third of vehicles on our roads were electric. In 1954, Bell Labs developed solar energy. American clean energy science and innovation were there all along, but the oil and gas lobby was a powerful headwind to its usage.Our government needs to push against the destructive effects of global warming. We are running out of time.Fred EganYork Harbor, MaineTo the Editor:For the better part of 10 years, I have tried to convince my father of the seriousness of climate change and, for the most part, those conversations have not been fruitful. But after sending Bret Stephens’s article to him, we had a very thoughtful discussion about the importance of addressing it.I appreciate Mr. Stephens’s vulnerability and willingness to admit that his views have changed as he has learned more. In doing so, he gives conservatives an avenue not just to engage with the issue, but potentially to lead.I would like to hear more from Mr. Stephens about how climate activists could be more persuasive to climate skeptics. As he pointed out, climate change should not be just a left-of-center concern. We must be able to persuade everyone that we need to address global warming.Brendan HastingsChicagoHow to Help the Homeless in Los AngelesA homeless encampment adjacent to a parking lot in Venice, Calif., that has been designated for an affordable housing development.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Way Los Angeles Is Trying to Solve Homelessness Is ‘Absolutely Insane,’” by Ezra Klein (column, nytimes.com, Oct. 23):Mr. Klein is absolutely right: It is insane to try to solve Los Angeles’s housing crisis without a radically innovative approach. Fortunately, Los Angeles voters will be able to vote for one on the same ballot as their new mayor. Measure ULA would raise more than $900 million annually to prevent homelessness and create housing. It replaces politics as usual with the urgency and innovation we need.Written by housing providers and homelessness experts, Measure ULA dedicates 70 percent of revenues to affordable housing, the majority to support fast-moving, less expensive and other kinds of affordable housing that Mr. Klein wants to see.Sophisticated construction methods can bring down housing costs, as can the purchase of existing apartments and hotels for long-term housing. The measure also encourages community land trusts, single-family homes, residential hotels, accessory dwelling units and cooperative living models.Prevention is by far the cheapest solution to homelessness, and Measure ULA also funds rental assistance and legal services for tenants facing eviction.L.A.’s housing and homelessness crises are persistent and challenging, but they are not insoluble. Measure ULA attacks the problems at the root, and that is why it is the best hope in a generation for making meaningful progress toward housing every Angeleno with dignity.Stephanie Klasky-GamerNorth Hollywood, Calif.The writer is the president and C.E.O. of LA Family Housing, an affordable housing developer and homeless services provider.Democratic Wishes That Came True, Alas! Nicole Craine for The New York TimesTo the Editor:I remember that back during the primary season the Democrats were not only wishing that extreme Republican candidates would win, but in some cases they were actually helping them get the nomination because “they would be so easy to defeat!” At the time that practice seemed ill advised and downright insane.And sure enough, now there are extreme, election-denying Republican candidates poised to win office around the country. What the Democrats failed to recognize is that during the general election campaign, fringe candidates gain legitimacy.In the primary they’re the loony among several candidates who usually split the vote. Then the extremist voters coalesce around the extreme candidate and, presto chango, they’re the legitimate Republican nominee. Then established Republicans, for fear of any Democrat ever winning anything, endorse the extremist.The Democrats should have been more mindful of that old saw “Be careful what you wish for”!Ozzie SattlerPhoenixDivorce and PoliticsTo the Editor:As a man who has experienced the slow deterioration that leads to a divorce, I have wondered why I didn’t do more to stop the process. I think the answer is that my pride allowed many small irritations, over many years, to fester and grow past a breaking point. Once that happens, reason leaves, anger replaces it and the end point becomes almost inevitable.The political situation we are now in, as a country, feels very much like the downward spiral that ends in a divorce. Things that, at one time, could and needed to be discussed and debated to reach compromise have become weapons to attack the other side. Anger and hate grow, and it seems that the breaking point is in sight.But, unlike a divorce, we can’t just split the assets and go our separate ways, keeping the tears and pain within the family and friends. And whatever the outcome, there will be no do-overs when we look back. So I pray that we come to our senses and realize the incredible risks we are taking by letting pride and anger replace patriotism and respect for all.Mike WroblewskiAtlanta More

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      Democrats Ushered In the Los Angeles Sheriff. Now Many Want Him Gone.

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      Alex Villanueva’s combative approach has antagonized many officials and spurred an extraordinary ballot measure that would allow county leaders to oust him.The deputies wore tactical gear as they descended on the white colonial in Santa Monica, Calif. Search warrant in hand, they pounded on the door. A helicopter thrummed above.The house belonged to Sheila Kuehl, 81, a former actress and attorney and a powerful longtime politician who emerged barefoot and agitated. Soon her computers and files — even photographs from her time starring on the sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” — were carted away.According to the warrant, it was part of an investigation into a nonprofit run by Ms. Kuehl’s friend Patricia Giggans, whose home was also raided. But for many, the dramatic events in September represented a new level of retaliation ordered up by a confrontational leader: Alex Villanueva.Elected four years ago as sheriff of Los Angeles County, Mr. Villanueva, 59, has become one of California’s most polarizing figures, his tenure punctuated with what many see as combative behavior, perplexing politics and the antics of a cowboy lawman.Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s double-decker campaign bus at a rally last month.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesRecoiling from efforts to regulate his power, he has battled with public officials and antagonized his critics. Among them are Ms. Kuehl, who serves on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors — the governing body that oversees the sheriff’s department budget — and Ms. Giggans, who sits on the county’s civilian oversight commission. Both have called for the sheriff’s resignation.Unlike police chiefs who are appointed, sheriffs in most states answer directly to voters, giving them largely unchecked powers over an array of law enforcement matters, from issuing gun permits to running the jails. Few have pushed the bounds of their authority like Sheriff Villanueva.In his first term running the largest sheriff’s department in the nation, he has been accused of opening criminal investigations into his detractors, covering up inmate abuse and deputy misconduct, unlawfully reinstating a friend fired for alleged domestic abuse and bullying a county executive, which led to a $1.5-million settlement.He has done all of it with an air of braggadocio, gaining a new following while infuriating the Democratic political establishment that runs Los Angeles. Despite being a Democrat, he has expressed his disdain for “the woke left,” scoffed at the notion of tension between the police and the Black community, and denounced county vaccine mandates for his employees.His actions have prompted the county supervisors to place an extraordinary measure on the ballot allowing them to oust him — if he survives the election on Tuesday against a former police chief, Robert Luna, who has been endorsed by prominent Democrats and labor unions.Should Sheriff Villanueva win, he has no plans to curb his public clashes with local leaders.“I will call them out for doing something wrong,” he said in an interview at his campaign office. “I’ve never hesitated on that. And I won’t now.”Robert Luna, left, the former police chief of Long Beach, Calif., has been backed by prominent Democrats in his campaign for Los Angeles County sheriff against Alex Villanueva, the candidate they once supported.Pool photo by Myung J. ChunA Frustrated DeputyThe first time Mr. Villanueva announced he was running for sheriff, he was just seven years into his career. It was 1993, and he was assigned to the East Los Angeles station, a place where deputies tended to be hardened by the travails of facing off against the Maravilla gangs. There was also a reputed culture of deputies forming their own gangs within the station itself.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Mr. Villanueva was considered an oddity. “Alex was more of an intellectual bookworm who undoubtedly had a hard time fitting in,” said Matt Rodriguez, a former captain who was once close friends with him and was among more than two dozen people interviewed by The Times for this story. “He can’t get out of his own way, because he believes he knows more than anybody else.”The idea of Mr. Villanueva leading the department was absurd to many — at one point, he was put on bike patrol, taking to the streets in a white polo shirt with green shorts — and he eventually faded from the race.But Mr. Villanueva said he was well received and respected as a deputy. “I didn’t fit the normal mold, I didn’t try to blend in,” he said.Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, left, and his wife, Vivian, a retired deputy, sharing a light moment during his swearing-in ceremony in 2018.Jae C. Hong/Associated PressMr. Villanueva often complained that he did not get promoted and said it was because of racial discrimination. He wrote letters to newspapers, penning several to The Los Angeles Times.“In law enforcement in particular, the ‘good ol’ boy’ network routinely promotes less-qualified male whites over more-qualified minorities, the untold twist of affirmative action,” he wrote in 2002.The son of a second-generation Polish American mother and Puerto Rican father, Sheriff Villanueva said that he has experienced being an outsider ever since he was 9, when his family moved from New York to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. He had to quickly learn Spanish, while his blue eyes led to calls of “gringo.” His father ran a print shop, and the family was poor enough that he felt like a second-class citizen at his Catholic school, he said.Commander John Satterfield, who is now the sheriff’s chief of staff, said he and Mr. Villanueva used to sit and talk over lunches brought from home back when they were sergeants at the training academy. Neither was the type to get beers after work. “Even back then, he had said, ‘There’s one position they can’t keep me out of and that’s sheriff, so maybe one of these days, I’ll run,’” Commander Satterfield said.Mr. Villanueva was promoted to lieutenant after settling a lawsuit with the department in which he said he had been passed over for promotions because he was Hispanic.In 2017, Mr. Villanueva announced his plan to try for the top position once more.Democrats rallied around his promises of transparency and criminal justice reform, and he pulled off a stunning victory, beating an incumbent and jumping six ranks overnight. He characterized his win as the triumph of an insider willing to “speak truth to power.”Sheriff Villanueva sent deputies to Venice Beach to clean up homeless encampments. The effort was dismissed by critics as showboating since the area is in Los Angeles Police Department territory.Sarah Reingewirtz/The Orange County Register, via Associated PressQuestions From Day 1On Dec. 3, 2018, Sheriff Villanueva was in a black Suburban, on his way to his swearing-in ceremony, his wife, son and granddaughter by his side. Also in the car was Caren Carl Mandoyan, a deputy fired under the former sheriff and with whom Mr. Villanueva had recently grown close.The route included a planned stop: the East Los Angeles station, the same place he had launched his campaign the year before with little fanfare. When he got out of the car this time, deputies greeted him eagerly, asking for photos. Many were later seen at the ceremony sitting in a reserved section up front.“He reminds me of the kid who was always picked last for the baseball team growing up,” said Bob Olmsted, a former top administrator who worked for Mr. Villanueva. “Now he’s the sheriff, and he owns the ballpark, the bat and glove, everything. And he gets to pick who he wants on his team.”Mr. Olmsted had been among those hired to replace more than a dozen fired administrators who had worked for the sheriff’s predecessor, Jim McDonnell. Optimistic about Sheriff Villanueva, Mr. Olmsted soon saw him as vindictive and impressionable and left after a year.He recalled how he and Ray Leyva, who had taken on the role of undersheriff before being fired, showed up for their first official meeting at the sheriff’s home in La Habra. To their surprise, the agenda included executive promotions for people whom they believed were considerably underqualified. “He said, ‘I owe it to them because they helped me get elected,’” Mr. Olmsted said. “Ray and I looked at each other and go, ‘This is ludicrous.’ And that was Day 1.”In an email, the sheriff’s campaign director, Javier González, defended personnel decisions, saying that Mr. Villanueva “had a limited batch he could trust.”Sheriff Villanueva would soon develop a reputation for instigating questionable criminal inquiries into public officials that never would result in charges, a pattern that the chair of the civilian oversight commission said suggested ulterior motives. He was also accused of basing decisions on personal loyalty.It was the sheriff’s promises to his friend and former deputy Mr. Mandoyan that widely signaled a leader who did not want to be reined in. Mr. Mandoyan had been fired after being investigated for domestic abuse, but the sheriff reinstated him with $200,000 in back pay and told The New York Times last month it was “a horrendous, wrongful termination.” Courts disagreed and allowed the county to remove Mr. Mandoyan, including a state court of appeals that found that the sheriff had acted unlawfully.“Carl Mandoyan was Villanueva’s shot across the bow,” said Carol Lin, a department administrator before the firings. “It was a signal to the rank-and-file that ‘I’m going to stand up to the powers that be.’”The sheriff has defended his investigations as legitimate probes into potential criminal activity, and he and his supporters say he has been a principled and fair leader who cleaned up the department. They pointed out that his investigation into corrupt deputies led to dismissals. Among his other accomplishments, the sheriff said, were implementing body-worn cameras and diversifying the work force.He also frequently says that he made good on a promise to prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from accessing the jails, though critics say he did so only under pressure from county supervisors and watchdog organizations.Mr. Villanueva, left, walking in a procession behind a coroner’s van transporting the body of Joseph Gilbert Solano, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, in 2019. Mr. Solano was shot in an off-duty attack at a fast-food restaurant.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressHis work often has been overshadowed by his hostility. He responded to criticism from Max Huntsman, the watchdog for the Sheriff’s Department, by opening criminal investigations into him, calling him a Holocaust denier and ultimately banning his access to the department’s facilities, personnel and databases.“I resist unethical, weaponized oversight, which is what they’re doing,” the sheriff said. Mr. Huntsman has not been charged with any crimes.Villanueva campaigning for re-election door-to-door last month in Carson, Calif.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesIn the spring, Mr. Villanueva drew national attention when he held a news conference to announce an investigation into a Los Angeles Times reporter who wrote about a department cover-up involving a deputy who knelt on an inmate’s head. Deputies allege in lawsuits that the sheriff helped hide the incident and retaliated against the whistle-blowers. Mr. Villanueva called the lawsuits frivolous.“How he ran, and what he ended up being — it’s so, so different,” said Eli Vera, who had been a top adviser to the sheriff but was demoted after he decided to try to unseat his boss in this year’s election.Shortly before resigning in March, a lawyer for the county sent an 84-page document to the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, requesting that he intervene in Sheriff Villanueva’s “intimidating, politically motivated investigations.”Initially, the attorney general said only that he would review the matter. But in September, Mr. Bonta announced he would take control of the inquiry into Ms. Kuehl, the county supervisor who has publicly dueled with the sheriff, saying the “unprecedented investigation” had raised serious questions for residents.It was just days after the raid on Ms. Kuehl’s home, and the move appeared to be a sign that a higher authority was taking charge — one who could restrain Sheriff Villanueva’s power.The sheriff, who said the Kuehl raid was not personal, responded with a different take, posting a letter on social media thanking the attorney general for looking into the city’s corruption.Then, just last week, Sheriff Villanueva held a news conference in which he questioned Mr. Bonta’s objectivity and whether he was obstructing justice.He declared a plan to request that the attorney general’s investigation now be monitored by the U.S. attorney’s office.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Why Won’t Gavin Newsom Back Karen Bass or Rick Caruso?

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      As the race for Los Angeles mayor has tightened to a dead heat between Representative Karen Bass and billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, the veteran congresswoman has deployed a who’s who of endorsements from fellow Democrats.President Biden. Hillary Clinton. Senators Alex Padilla and Bernie Sanders. Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor, was beside her for her campaign kickoff. Former President Barack Obama endorsed her recently.Increasingly striking, however, has been one notable absence: Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has steadfastly refused to endorse either candidate, both Democrats.“I have deep respect for both of them, and I have not gotten involved in that race,” Mr. Newsom said in a television interview this summer after a runoff narrowed the field in the officially nonpartisan race to the two contenders.Mr. Caruso, he noted, had been “incredibly helpful and supportive” on a statewide economic development task force the governor had created during the pandemic, and Ms. Bass was “a remarkable leader going back — well before my time, even — in politics.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.In other statements, the governor has added that he prefers not to endorse in contests between two fellow Democratic contenders. Mr. Caruso, a former Republican who has spent nearly $100 million dollars, most of it his own money, on a record-setting campaign for the city’s top office, registered as a Democrat shortly before he announced his candidacy. A spokesman for the governor responded to a request for comment with his former remarks.But political observers in Sacramento and Los Angeles note that the governor has abandoned that stance in at least two races. In a hotly contested state Senate contest in Sacramento, Mr. Newsom has endorsed a Sacramento City Councilwoman, Angelique Ashby, over Dave Jones, who won the state party’s endorsement. And in a race for Los Angeles County supervisor on the affluent Westside of the city, he endorsed the former state Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg over the mayor of West Hollywood, Lindsey Horvath.Mr. Caruso and Mr. Newsom also share a political consultant. But other clients of that firm, Bearstar Strategies, including Sen. Padilla, have endorsed Ms. Bass.“I think this is personal for him,” Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic strategist in Los Angeles, said on Thursday. “I think he feels like he has a good relationship with both of them, and from everything I know, that’s true.”And, Mr. Carrick and others said, there are obvious downsides for the governor in picking a favorite.“Karen Bass has been a good, strong Democrat for a long time and is a supernice person, and if you’re the governor of California, you don’t want to antagonize the entire Democratic base,” said David Townsend, a veteran Democratic political consultant in Sacramento. “But if you’re thinking about your future, you also don’t want to pick fights with people who have a lot of money.”Mr. Newsom’s national profile has risen sharply in the year since he beat back a Republican-led recall, and his name has come up as a future contender for the White House, although he has insisted that he has “sub-zero” interest in a presidential run.In liberal Los Angeles, it was unclear how much difference Mr. Newsom’s backing would make at this point, with the voting deadline only days away.“It’s interesting to insiders,” said John Shallman, a Los Angeles political strategist with long experience in local races. “But I don’t think voters would care — and for her, it wouldn’t matter unless it came with resources.”Mr. Caruso has outspent Ms. Bass by more than 10-to-one, he noted: “She needs more than names — she need money now.” More

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      In California, Democrats Square Off in Fierce 2022 Warfare

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      The liberal state, where Democrats often run against fellow Democrats in November thanks to an unconventional election system, is the unlikely backdrop of some of this year’s most bitter political campaigns.LOS ANGELES — The mailers and online ads vividly paint David Kim as a right-wing extremist, accusing him of running for a House seat in California “with QAnon-MAGA support” from “QAnon Republicans.”But Mr. Kim is not a Republican. He’s a progressive Democrat who supports “Medicare for all” and a Green New Deal. And the attacks come from a fellow progressive Democrat, Representative Jimmy Gomez, who is fighting to keep his seat in Congress.The vitriol in what is normally a quiet race for a decidedly safe Democratic seat illustrates how liberal California, of all places, has become home to some of this year’s most vicious political mudslinging — and not across party lines.Unlike a vast majority of the country, where voters are mulling the yawning ideological gaps between Republicans and Democrats on their midterm ballots, California has a top-two open primary system, which means two Democrats can — and often do — square off against each other in general elections. And in many cases, those candidates prove strikingly similar on policy, forcing them to dig deep to distinguish themselves.Lately, it’s grown pretty nasty.Democrats are running against Democrats in six House races, 18 state races, and dozens of municipal and local elections around California in November. In many contests, the candidates have resorted to extreme and divisive language, in a reflection of the growing polarization of American politics.An array of mailers and ads have targeted Mr. Kim.Illustration by The New York TimesThat’s particularly the case in azure-blue Los Angeles, where nearly every elected office is held by a Democrat, only a single Republican has served as mayor in the past half-century, and an explosive racism scandal involving three members of the City Council plunged the city’s political world into chaos just weeks before the election.Take the race to be the city’s next controller, typically a dull contest with few, if any, pyrotechnics. But this year, Paul Koretz, a progressive city councilman with more than three decades in public office, has taken to calling his opponent, Kenneth Mejia, “dangerous,” saying he is an antisemite and an “anarchist” who is little different from the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.“He’s the phoniest Democrat you can find,” Mr. Koretz said in an interview of Mr. Mejia, a relative political newcomer and former Green Party member who has supported a reduction in police funding and backs a national tenants’ bill of rights.Mr. Mejia’s campaign manager, Jane Nguyen, called Mr. Koretz’s accusations “ridiculous smears” and said he was “out of touch.” Since the leak this month of a recording of City Council members in a discussion that involved offensive comments, she and other allies of Mr. Mejia have sought to portray Mr. Koretz as a racist, accusations he denies.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.Some Democrats worry that the poisonous environment is bad for party unity.“There are wild charges going back and forth about whether one candidate is a closet conservative and one is a closet Marxist,” said Garry South, a longtime Democratic strategist. “I just don’t think these runoffs between Democrats should turn into a derby about who can accuse the other of being the most extreme. That’s not a healthy debate to have.”Mr. South and other consultants pointed out several other races where the animosity was at full pitch, including a contest for a City Council seat on the wealthy Westside of Los Angeles. One candidate, a centrist Democrat with a background in employment law, has tried to link her progressive opponent, a criminal defense lawyer, to pedophiles and rapists. That lawyer, in turn, has called her a racist.Mr. Kim checking in with his campaign team and volunteers after canvassing in Los Angeles on Saturday.Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesIn a race for a State Senate district encompassing parts of Downtown and South Los Angeles, two Democrats with nearly identical policy positions have accused each other of being pro-business and anti-tenant..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.“It’s a race to the bottom,” Mr. South said.For more established candidates, the negative messaging may come from a place of desperation: Even before the controversy consumed City Hall early in October, an anti-incumbent mood seemed to have settled over Los Angeles.In the June 7 primary, two sitting City Council members lost decisively to inexperienced challengers, one by a wide enough margin to preclude a runoff.In their primary, Mr. Mejia walloped Mr. Koretz by nearly 20 percentage points, though he fell short of the 50 percent threshold that would preclude a runoff. Afterward, Mr. Mejia gained several key endorsements, including from The Los Angeles Times and Councilman Mike Bonin, whose son was the subject of some of the racist comments at the heart of the unwinding scandal.Mr. Koretz, by contrast, had been endorsed by all three City Council members caught on the now-infamous recording. After the scandal broke, his campaign website was scrubbed of mentions of their support, cached versions of the site show.In their race for Congress, Mr. Gomez and Mr. Kim have a history.In 2020, Mr. Gomez, who has served in the House since 2017, also faced Mr. Kim, an immigration lawyer. That time, Mr. Gomez won the primary by almost 30 points and went on to the general election without paying much, if any, attention to his rival. “He never even mentioned my name,” Mr. Kim said over a breakfast burrito at a restaurant this month.Representative Jimmy Gomez with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Washington in 2020.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesBut Mr. Gomez ended up winning the 2020 general election by a surprisingly slim margin of six points. In April 2021, he asked the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to inject money into the contest for what has traditionally been a safe seat for the party, telling donors he was “in a very tough race,” HuffPost reported.This past August, Mr. Gomez’s campaign unveiled a website titled “Who Is the Real David Kim?” that accuses him of failing to support democracy and of hiding a “QAnon MAGA endorsement”; a core falsehood of QAnon is that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is trying to control politics and the news media. In October, Mr. Gomez has sent out three mailers juxtaposing photos of Mr. Kim with an image of Jan. 6 rioters climbing up the walls of the Capitol, and has paid for internet ads with side-by-side pictures of his rival and former President Donald J. Trump.The QAnon reference, explained Steven Barkan, a consultant for Mr. Gomez’s campaign, stems from the fact that, in 2020, Mr. Kim asked for and received endorsements from the losing candidates in the primary. One of them, Joanne Wright, a Republican, turned out to have embraced conspiracy theories, and had a “Q” image on her Twitter page before being kicked off the platform. Mr. Barkan said that Ms. Wright’s views were exposed before the primary, and he argued that Mr. Kim either knew or should have known whom he was dealing with. (Ms. Wright did not respond to requests for comment.)“It is correct to say we don’t think he’s QAnon,” Mr. Barkan conceded. “But he ran with QAnon support. It is serious when people like Kim give credibility to QAnon.”Some of the Gomez campaign’s attacks have also centered on the fact that Mr. Kim was once a registered Republican; Mr. Kim says he was raised in a Republican family but long ago changed his registration.Mr. Kim called the advertising campaign a dirty tactic and said the endorsements, which included one from a Democrat he defeated, showed that he was “a unifying candidate and leader” willing to work with people who hold different viewpoints. He also pointed out that the endorsement occurred in the 2020 race, yet was being misleadingly presented as if it happened in the current campaign.Mona Perez, left, talking with Mr. Kim about student loan debt.Alisha Jucevic for The New York Times“People like Jimmy continue to add to the extreme polarization of our country and government,” Mr. Kim said.Bill Przylucki, the executive director of Ground Game LA, a nonprofit group that promotes progressive politics and candidates, frowns on messaging that associates left-wing candidates with extremists at a time when more than 370 Republican candidates for influential offices nationwide have cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.“Given the national picture, I think that’s a bad strategy overall for the Democrats,” Mr. Przylucki said, comparing the approach to “red-baiting.”Some political observers note that it has scarcely been a decade since California moved to an open primary system, and say that some adjustment is necessary. But Mr. Przylucki argued that the hostilities emerging in the current system called for a complete rethinking of traditional Democrat-versus-Republican politics.“Democrats are trying to figure out what it means to be a party in a place like Los Angeles,” he said. “Or whether it even makes sense.” More

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      As Republicans Campaign on Crime, Racism Is a New Battlefront

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      As Republicans seize on crime as one of their leading issues in the final weeks of the midterm elections, they have deployed a series of attack lines, terms and imagery that have injected race into contests across the country.In states as disparate as Wisconsin and New Mexico, ads have labeled a Black candidate as “different” and “dangerous” and darkened a white man’s hands as they portrayed him as a criminal.Nowhere have these tactics risen to overtake the debate in a major campaign, but a survey of competitive contests, particularly those involving Black candidates, shows they are so widespread as to have become an important weapon in the 2022 Republican arsenal.In Wisconsin, where Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, is the Democratic nominee for Senate, a National Republican Senatorial Committee ad targeting him ends by juxtaposing his face with those of three Democratic House members, all of them women of color, and the words “different” and “dangerous.”In a mailer sent to several state House districts in New Mexico, the state Republican Party darkened the hands of a barber shown giving a white child a haircut, next to the question, “Do you want a sex offender cutting your child’s hair?”And in North Carolina, an ad against Cheri Beasley, the Democratic candidate for Senate, who is Black, features the anguished brother of a white state trooper killed a quarter-century ago by a Black man whom Ms. Beasley, then a public defender, represented in court. The brother incredulously says that Ms. Beasley, pleading for the killer’s life, said “he was actually a good person.”Appeals to white fears and resentments are an old strategy in American elections, etched into the country’s political consciousness, with ads like George Bush’s ad using the Black convict Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and Jesse Helms’s 1990 commercial showing a white man’s hands to denounce his Black opponent’s support for “quotas.”If the intervening decades saw such tactics become harder to defend, the rise of Donald J. Trump shattered taboos, as he spoke of “rapist” immigrants and “shithole countries” in Africa and the Caribbean. But while Republicans quietly stood by advertising that Democrats called racist in 2018, this year, they have responded with defiance, saying they see nothing untoward in their imagery and nothing to apologize for.“This is stupid, but not surprising,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Republican Senatorial Committee, whose ads in North Carolina and Wisconsin have prompted accusations of racism. “We’re using their own words and their own records. If they don’t like it, they should invent a time machine, go back in time and not embrace dumb-ass ideas that voters are rejecting.”Amid pandemic-era crime increases, legitimate policy differences have emerged between the two parties over gun violence, easing access to bail and funding police budgets.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Florida Governor’s Debate: Gov. Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist, his Democratic challenger,  had a rowdy exchange on Oct. 24. Here are the main takeaways from their debate.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.Last Dance?: As she races to raise money to hand on to her embattled House majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in no mood to contemplate a Democratic defeat, much less her legacy.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.But some of the Republican arguments could scarcely be called serious policy critiques.This month, a Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, said Democrats favored reparations “for the people that do the crime,” suggesting the movement to compensate the descendants of slavery was about paying criminals. And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, made explicit reference to “replacement theory,” the racist notion that nonwhite, undocumented immigrants are “replacing” white Americans, saying, “Joe Biden’s five million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you.”Such language, as well as ads portraying chaos by depicting Black rioters and Hispanic immigrants illegally racing across the border, have prompted Democrats and their allies to accuse Republicans of resorting to racist fear tactics.“I think that white people should be speaking out. I think that Black people should be speaking out,” said Chris Larson, a Democratic state senator in Wisconsin who is white and has denounced Republican ads against Mr. Barnes. “I think that all people should be speaking out when there is vile racism at work.”When former President Donald J. Trump rallied for Representative Ted Budd in Wilmington, N.C., last month, he made a joke about “the N-word,” saying it meant “nuclear.”Jonathan Ernst/ReutersDemocrats themselves are dealing with intraparty racial strife in Los Angeles caused by a leaked recording in which Latino leaders are heard using racist terms and disparaging words toward their Black constituents.But it is Republicans’ nationwide focus on crime that is fueling many of the attacks that Democrats say cross a line into racism.The conservative group Club for Growth Action, backed by the billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Diane Hendricks and Jeff Yass, pointed with pride to the crime ads it has run against Ms. Beasley. “Democrats across the country are getting called out for their soft-on-crime policies,” said the group’s president, former Representative David McIntosh. “Now that their poor decisions have caught up with them, they’re relying on the liberal media to call criticisms of their politically inconvenient record racist, and it won’t work.”.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.The 2022 midterms include the most diverse slate of Republican congressional candidates ever, competing against Democratic candidates who would add to the House’s representatives of color and improve on the Senate’s lack of diversity. But it is also the first cycle since Mr. Trump’s presidency, when he set a sharply different tone for his party on race.It was at a rally with Mr. Trump in Arizona this month that Mr. Tuberville and Ms. Greene made their incendiary comments. At another rally in Wilmington, N.C., late last month with a Senate Republican candidate, Representative Ted Budd, Mr. Trump told the audience that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had mentioned “the N-word. You know what the N-word is?” When the audience hooted, he corrected them, “No, no, no, it’s the nuclear word.”Representative Alma Adams, Democrat of North Carolina, who is Black, said, “Donald Trump is fueling this fire.”Still, a rise in violence recently has given openings to both parties.Cheri Beasley, a Democratic candidate for Senate in North Carolina, addressed supporters and patrons during a campaign stop in Charlotte last month.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesIn North Florida, a flier distributed by a Democratic group depicts the face of a Black Republican, Corey Simon, who is challenging a white state senator, on what Republicans have called a shooting target and Democrats call a school easel, with bullets shown strewn underneath. The message was about gun control and school shootings, staples of Democratic campaigns, and identical mailers targeted two other Republican candidates, who are white and Latino.Republicans say their attacks are capturing voters’ anxieties, not feeding them. Defending Mr. Tuberville, a former football coach at Auburn University, Byron Donalds of Florida said crime had become a leading issue because of “soft-on-crime policies and progressive prosecutors in liberal cities.” Mr. Donalds, one of two Black Republicans in the House, added, “As a coach and mentor to countless Black men, Tommy Tuberville has done more to advance Black lives than most people, especially in the Democratic Party.”Ms. Greene and Mr. Tuberville did not respond to requests for comment.Then there is the Republican mailer in Wisconsin that clearly darkened the face of Mr. Barnes.“If you can’t hear it when they pick up the bullhorn that used to be a dog whistle, you can see it with your own eyes,” said Mr. Larson, the Wisconsin state senator.The darkening of white hands in a stock photo of a barber on a Republican mailer in New Mexico prompted outrage there. The New Mexico Republican Party said that Democrats were trying to divert attention from their record on crime. A Republican leader in the state House of Representatives, Rod Montoya, told The Albuquerque Journal that the hands were darkened to make the fliers “gloomy.”Some liberal groups do seem intent on discerning racism in any message on crime. After Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, who is white, ran an ad opening with a clip of Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, who is Black, calling for defunding the police, Iowa Democrats called it racist because Ms. Reynolds’s Democratic challenger, Deidre DeJear, is also Black, and, as she has said, bears a resemblance to Ms. Bush.Progressive groups say their concern is merited.“Crime in America has always, at least in modern times, been racially charged,” said Christopher Scott, chief political officer at the liberal group Democracy for America. “The ads aren’t getting to policy points. They are images playing on their base’s fears.”But the policy differences between the two parties are real. Democrats have pushed for cashless bail, saying the current system that requires money to free a defendant before trial is unfair to poor people. Republicans say cash bail is meant to get criminals off the streets. Democrats have expressed solidarity with racial justice protesters and helped bail out some who were arrested after demonstrations over the murder of George Floyd turned destructive. Republicans have said those actions condoned and encouraged lawlessness.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene made explicit reference to “replacement theory,” the racist notion that nonwhite, undocumented immigrants are “replacing” white Americans.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesSkin color is beside the point, said Jonathan Felts, a spokesman for Mr. Budd’s campaign in North Carolina, as he defended the blitz of crime advertising against Ms. Beasley. One ad toggles between images of white children — victims of brutal crimes — and the face of Ms. Beasley, her expression haughty or bemused.“The images used in the ad match up to the victims of the criminals she went easy on,” Mr. Felts said. “Are you suggesting the ad makers should make up fake victims, or are you suggesting she shouldn’t be held accountable for her judicial and legal record?”In fact, the judicial and legal records portrayed in at least one of the ads have been determined to be distorted, at best. The first version of the Republican Senatorial Committee’s ad, which portrayed child crime victims from different races, was pulled down by North Carolina television stations in June after they agreed that some of the assertions were false. In a later version, the committee made slight word changes to satisfy the channels but added a more overt racial contrast.“All communities are concerned about public safety,” said State Representative Brandon Lofton, a Democratic Black lawmaker whose South Charlotte district is largely white. “There is a way to talk about it that is truthful” and does not cross racial lines, he said.The campaigns themselves have steered clear of charging racism.Dory MacMillan, a spokeswoman for Ms. Beasley, said, “Our race remains a dead heat, despite Congressman Budd and his allies’ spending millions of dollars to distort Cheri’s record of public service.”In Wisconsin, a spokeswoman for Mr. Barnes, Maddy McDaniel, similarly declined to go further than to say that “the G.O.P.’s fear-mongering playbook failed them last cycle, and it will fail again.”Mr. Barnes, for his part, seemed to make playful use of his portrayal in one of the Republican attack ads as “different” during his first debate with Senator Ron Johnson, the two-term incumbent. He was, indeed, different, Mr. Barnes said, “We don’t have enough working-class people in the United States Senate.” More

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      En Los Ángeles, la política es más compleja que el escándalo racista

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      El audio filtrado de líderes latinos que usan un lenguaje racista también expuso su ambición de acumular más poder. Sin embargo, en el distrito más latino de la ciudad, han apoyado a candidatos negros.LOS ÁNGELES — Aunque en algún momento llegó a ser un sinónimo de la cultura negra, el sur de Los Ángeles ha experimentado un cambio demográfico dramático.Ahora hay misas católicas en español en el teatro donde Duke Ellington solía presentarse. En los pasillos de la escuela secundaria Thomas Jefferson, cuyos famosos exalumnos negros incluyen a Alvin Ailey y Dexter Gordon, aproximadamente nueve de cada 10 estudiantes son hispanos. En la histórica Central Avenue, la música ranchera resuena en las tiendas de comestibles.Pero en el Noveno Distrito de la ciudad, que abarca el tramo de Los Ángeles que alguna vez se conoció como South Central, hay un elemento que no ha cambiado: los votantes han elegido candidatos negros para integrar el Concejo Municipal durante casi seis décadas, incluido su actual concejal, Curren Price.En una grabación filtrada que ha trastornado la escena política de Los Ángeles este mes, se escuchó a cuatro líderes latinos discutiendo sobre cómo rediseñar los distritos políticos para su beneficio, usando términos racistas y palabras despectivas que fueron ampliamente condenadas. El audio también expuso las frustraciones de que no haya más latinos en cargos electos, en un momento en que representan la mitad de la población de la ciudad.Décadas de acuerdos y decisiones políticas han dado como resultado la composición actual del Concejo Municipal, donde los líderes blancos y negros ocupan más escaños de lo que podrían sugerir los datos demográficos. La divulgación de la grabación también ha abierto un debate sobre cuánto importan las políticas de bloques raciales de generaciones anteriores.La participación electoral en el Noveno Distrito es baja y algunos residentes dijeron que prestan poca atención a la política de la ciudad, a pesar de sus preocupaciones cotidianas por los delitos y la falta de vivienda. Mientras llevaba a casa a su hijo de 8 años que había salido de la escuela en el sur de Los Ángeles, María Robles, de 30 años, se preguntaba qué harán los políticos locales para resolver los problemas.“No voto, simplemente no lo hago”, dijo. “No creo que ningún político esté representando a los latinos. No nos defienden”.Sin embargo, en los círculos políticos de la ciudad, la brecha entre la población latina y su nivel de influencia ha sido un viejo problema. En ninguna parte es más evidente que en el Noveno Distrito, donde el 80 por ciento de los residentes son latinos.“La gente se siente incómoda hablando de esto, pero los latinos en Los Ángeles están subrepresentados”, dijo Fernando Guerra, director del Centro para el Estudio de Los Ángeles en la Universidad Loyola Marymount. Guerra realiza encuestas y grupos de discusión con residentes de la ciudad, y dijo que “cuando hablamos con los latinos en esas comunidades, les gustaría tener representación latina”.En la década de 1980, aumentó la cantidad de inmigrantes latinos que se mudaron al sur de Los Ángeles, huyendo de las guerras civiles centroamericanas y la perturbación económica de México. Al mismo tiempo, los trabajos de manufactura estaban desapareciendo, la violencia de las pandillas y las drogas proliferaba, y la clase media negra se estaba mudando a otros lugares. Para 1990, según los datos del censo analizados por SocialExplorer.com, por primera vez más de la mitad de los residentes de la zona eran latinos.María Robles, de 30 años, y su hijo Alex Salgado, de 8, caminan por el Noveno Distrito de Los ÁngelesLauren Justice para The New York TimesA menudo, la representación política va a la zaga del cambio demográfico, y Los Ángeles no ha sido la excepción. En algunos casos, los líderes latinos llegaron a acuerdos de beneficio mutuo para preservar los límites del distrito que protegían a sus colegas negros. En otros, el movimiento laboral mayoritariamente latino de Los Ángeles ha respaldado a los líderes negros confiables y establecidos por encima de los contrincantes latinos que no habían ocupado cargos públicos. Los miembros del sindicato brindan el apoyo voluntario y económico necesario para atraer votantes a las elecciones locales en las que, de otro modo, la participación podría ser mediocre en una ciudad grande y transitoria.Ahora los residentes latinos constituyen el grupo étnico más grande en 10 de los 15 distritos municipales de la ciudad, según datos de las autoridades. Pero su participación en la población votante elegible es menor que su participación en la población general, una brecha que reduce su poder electoral.Incluso antes de que Nury Martinez, una demócrata latina, renunciara como presidenta del Concejo Municipal y dejara su escaño en el Concejo la semana pasada debido al alboroto por la grabación de audio, solo cuatro de los quince escaños del Concejo estaban ocupados por latinos.La conversación filtrada ha tenido el efecto de reducir el poder de los latinos, al menos temporalmente. El martes, Martinez fue remplazada como presidenta por Paul Krekorian, un armenio estadounidense. Los otros dos miembros que se escuchan en la grabación, Gil Cedillo y Kevin de León, han sido despojados de sus tareas de comité y no han asistido a las reuniones durante una semana.El Noveno Distrito era considerado un escaño latino en la década de 1950, cuando Edward R. Roybal se convirtió en el primer concejal latino de la ciudad desde fines del siglo XIX. Cuando Roybal fue al Congreso en 1962, se nombró a Gilbert W. Lindsay, un organizador comunitario negro con fuertes lazos laborales, para remplazarlo. Lindsay se convirtió en uno de los políticos más poderosos de la ciudad, rigió durante tres décadas y se autodenominó como “el Emperador del Gran Noveno”. Sus tres sucesores en el Concejo han sido negros.Curren Price ha representado al Noveno Distrito desde 2013.Tracy Nguyen para The New York TimesCuando Price, un demócrata a favor de los trabajadores y exlegislador estatal, se postuló por primera vez para el escaño del Noveno Distrito en 2013, el millón de dólares que recaudó en contribuciones directas a la campaña se complementó con unos 700.000 dólares que los grupos laborales gastaron de forma independiente para apoyarlo.Los líderes laborales han respaldado a Price, para consternación de los retadores que pensaron que había llegado el momento de la representación latina.“Le dije a la gente que me iba a postular y me miraron como si tuviera covid”, dijo Jorge Nuño, de 45 años, activista local y propietario de una pequeña empresa que creció en el Noveno Distrito y perdió ante Price en la elecciones de 2017. “Me dijeron: ‘No, hombre, no lo hagas, los sindicatos van a quedarse con Curren’”.Dulce Vasquez, de 36 años, administradora universitaria y demócrata progresista que lo desafió este año, recibió más de 500.000 dólares en apoyo total, pero fue solo alrededor de un tercio de lo que consiguió Price, y no pudo competir con los bancos telefónicos del sindicato y los activistas que lo respaldaban.Price también recibió el respaldo de sus cuatro colegas latinos en el Concejo en su campaña contra Vásquez. Ganó abrumadoramente su tercer mandato en junio.Sin embargo, al caminar por las comunidades, Nuño y Vasquez dijeron que encontraron una sed genuina de conexión cultural entre los votantes latinos. “La gente quiere ver un liderazgo que se parezca a ellos”, dijo Nuño. “Quieren a alguien que, por ejemplo, pueda ir a sus salas de estar y tomar pan con café”.Ambos predijeron que los líderes sindicales respaldarán a un candidato latino cuando Price, de 71 años, deje el cargo. El veterano político está entrando en su mandato final de cuatro años bajo las reglas de límites de mandato de la ciudad. En otra grabación filtrada, Ron Herrera, quien desde entonces renunció como titular de la Federación del Trabajo, se refirió a esa posibilidad. Cuando se le preguntó acerca de encontrar un candidato latino para suceder a Price, dijo: “Tenemos a alguien”.Price, un abogado educado en Stanford y oriundo de Los Ángeles que también trabajó en el Concejo Municipal de Inglewood, dijo que el cuarto de millón de personas que viven en el Noveno Distrito lo han mantenido en el cargo porque comprende sus problemas básicos.La semana pasada, afuera de su oficina en Central Avenue, un mercado de agricultores ofrecía fresas, tarros de miel, cartones de huevos y consejos sobre el compostaje. El concejal dijo que expandir el mercado fue idea suya para traer productos y brindarles a las personas un lugar para reunirse y encontrar información sobre cupones de alimentos y recursos comunitarios.Al otro lado de la calle, todos los días, hay un mercado informal donde los comerciantes latinos venden mazorcas de maíz, bolsas de duros, ropa y juguetes alrededor del estacionamiento de una tienda departamental de descuento. Mientras paseaba por esa zona, Price los miró y dijo que también eran bienvenidos.Señaló carteles que presentan detalles en inglés y español sobre puntos de referencia del apogeo del área como un centro próspero para la comunidad negra: el Teatro Lincoln en la calle 23, apodado el “Apolo de la Costa Oeste” en referencia al famoso lugar de entretenimiento negro en Harlem. La Asociación de Ahorros y Préstamos de Liberty, una empresa de propiedad negra que ofrecía hipotecas a los residentes locales cuando los prestamistas blancos no lo hacían.“No es solo para los negros”, dijo Price sobre los hitos históricos. “También es para que la gente morena entienda nuestra historia”.La joya de la corona fue el Hotel Dunbar, donde grandes artistas como Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne y Ellington se hospedaron cuando atraían multitudes de personas afroestadounidenses a sus presentaciones en Los Ángeles, pero no se les permitía quedarse en hoteles para blancos. Dunbar sirve ahora como vivienda asequible para personas mayores.Tiendas de campaña para las personas sin hogar junto a la Iglesia de Jesucristo Judá.Lauren Justice para The New York TimesSin embargo, José Andrade, un músico de mariachi, se quejó de que el ayuntamiento no había respondido a las solicitudes para instalar topes de velocidad en las calles residenciales para impedir las carreras callejeras. “Estos muchachos corren como si estuvieran en la autopista”, dijo, “y nadie está haciendo nada al respecto”.Nacido en El Salvador, Andrade dijo que emigró con su esposa, Iris, a Los Ángeles en 1983 y se establecieron en el Noveno Distrito porque no podían pagar los alquileres en otros lugares de la ciudad.“Había pandillas en cada esquina”, dijo sobre esos días, mientras paseaba por los pasillos de una tienda de comestibles en Central Avenue y hablaba sobre la música mexicana. “Vivías con miedo de que te asaltaran o te robaran”.Las familias negras pudientes empacaron sus pertenencias y se mudaron a San Bernardino o Antelope Valley, donde las casas eran más grandes y las calles más seguras. Llegaron más inmigrantes, atraídos por los precios más bajos de las viviendas en la localidad. La economía comenzó a mejorar, impulsada por el auge tecnológico de California. Y, por diversas razones, las tasas de criminalidad cayeron.Para el año 2000, Andrade había comprado una casa de tres dormitorios por 170.000 dólares que alguna vez estuvo ocupada por una familia negra. Plantó árboles de limón, aguacate y mango y construyó dos apartamentos en la parte de atrás, que alquila a inmigrantes. Tres de sus cuatro hijos adultos han dejado el vecindario para ir a la universidad y dedicarse a sus carreras profesionales.Andrade se convirtió en ciudadano estadounidense hace unos años y dijo que no votó por Price porque no confiaba en el concejal.Leobardo Juan Camilo, carnicero en Laguna Market, uno de muchos comercios latinos en la Avenida Central Avenue en el Noveno DistritoLauren Justice para The New York TimesPrice reconoció que satisfacer las necesidades de su distrito ha sido un trabajo inacabado. De alrededor de 100.000 votantes registrados en el distrito, solo unos 12.500 votaron en las primarias de febrero en las que fue elegido.“Muchas veces, la gente dice: ‘Oye, tengo que asistir a mi tercer trabajo, no tengo tiempo para ir a una reunión, o no tengo tiempo para presentar una queja porque, de todos modos, nada va a pasar’”, dijo Price.Elmer Roldán, un guatemalteco estadounidense, se instaló en el vecindario en 1989. Dijo que durante mucho tiempo los residentes del Noveno Distrito han deseado más parques y tiendas de comestibles, y que sentía que la zona de la ciudad cerca de la Universidad del Sur de California recibía muchos recursos y atención.Sin embargo, Roldán comentó que la raza de su concejal no tiene nada que ver con el estado del vecindario. Dijo que los residentes latinos deberían asociarse con las personas negras “que tienen más cosas en común con nosotros, tanto política como económicamente”.“Los latinos no creen que no están recibiendo ayuda porque Curren Price sea negro”, dijo Roldan, quien votó por Price. “Sienten que los políticos, sin importar quiénes sean, no responden a las necesidades del vecindario”.“No creo que tener un integrante latino del Concejo cambie estas condiciones”, agregó.Mientras Price volvía caminando a su oficina, los electores que le hicieron señas tenían mucho que decir. Una mujer que vendía pozole y mojarras fritas afuera de una tienda que ofrece clases de zumba le informó que una luz urbana se había apagado cerca y estaba preocupada por la seguridad. Otro estaba preocupado por un farol de otra cuadra y quería que se instalara un semáforo.Le hablaban en español. Una vocera, que caminaba con Price, le tradujo lo que decían los vecinos.Corina Knoll es la jefa de la corresponsalía en Los Ángeles. Fue reportera en la sección Metro y antes trabajó más de una década en The Los Angeles Times, donde colaboró con dos Premios Pulitzer y participó en la investigación sobre cómo una lista secreta de oficiales problemáticos de un alguacil de condado obstruyó la justicia. @corinaknollShawn Hubler es corresponsal en California con sede en Sacramento. Antes de unirse al Times en 2020, pasó casi dos décadas cubriendo el estado para Los Angeles Times como reportera itinerante, columnista y escritora de revista. Compartió tres premios Pulitzer con el equipo Metro del periódico. @ShawnHublerMiriam Jordan es corresponsal en la sección Nacional. Cubre el impacto de la migración en la sociedad, la cultura y la economía de Estados Unidos. Antes de unirse al Times, cubrió inmigración por más de una década en el Wall Street Journal y fue corresponsal en Brasil, Israel, Hong Kong e India. More

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      in Elections

      The Mess in Los Angeles Points to Trouble for Democrats

      by

      Democrats in cities across America are having trouble holding their coalitions together.In Los Angeles, the battle is over power in the form of representation on the City Council; in San Francisco and New York, it’s over affordable housing and access to public schools; across the nation, it’s over tough versus tolerant criminal prosecution and lenient versus punitive approaches to homelessness.These tensions are, in turn, aggravated by white gentrification and have one thing in common: limited or declining resources, with shuttered businesses no longer paying taxes evident on downtown streets. An absence of growth prevents elected officials from expanding benefits for some without paring them for others.Political tensions between African American, Hispanic American, Asian American and white communities in Los Angeles are now on full display as a result of the publication of a secretly taped conversation that exposed the crude, racist scheming of three Hispanic City Council officials and a Hispanic labor leader — who were, in the main, angling to enhance their power at the expense of Black competitors.These zero-sum conflicts epitomize the problem for liberals struggling to sustain a viable political alliance encompassing core minority constituencies.“In general, conflict among groups is more likely to emerge when resources are scarce,” Vasiliki Fouka, a political scientist at Stanford, and Marco Tabellini, a professor at Harvard Business School, said by email, in response to my inquiry about Democratic intraparty tensions. “This is especially true when groups perceive each other as different and have different priorities and preferences.”Fouka and Tabellini, authors of the 2021 paper “Changing In-Group Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the United States” noted in their email that “when the size of the pie is growing, everyone enjoys larger benefits and groups are less likely to view each other as competitors.”“Education,” they added,is a case where we have recently seen such zero-sum dynamics. One example is the controversy over the admissions system of Lowell High School in San Francisco — from selective criteria based on grades, which led to higher representation of Asian and white students, to a lottery system that increased admissions of Black and Latino students. That case ended with the recall of school board members, due to pressure exerted largely by Chinese American voters. The San Francisco case demonstrates that political power is key for settling disputes and allocating resources across other battlegrounds like education and housing.The City Council redistricting process in Los Angeles epitomizes “I win-you-lose” politics. Fifteen districts of equal population must be drawn every 10 years within the confines of a city with rapidly changing demographics. The gains of one group almost inevitably come at the expense of another.Nearly 60 years ago — in 1963 — Los Angeles became “almost a parable of rainbow politics,” Harold Meyerson, editor at large of The American Prospect, wrote last week in “L.A. Backstory: The History Behind the City Council’s Racist Tirades.”That year, Meyerson explains, three Black Democrats, including Tom Bradley, a former police lieutenant, won seats on the City Council. In 1973, Bradley was elected mayor, winning the first of five elections with a multiracial, multiethnic coalition that kept him in office for a record 20 years.In order to maintain this bloc, “a delicate dance ensued,” Meyerson continues:Since the 1960s, the three of the city’s 15 council districts located in and around heavily Black South Central had been informally designated as Black seats, and Latino political leaders agreed not to contest them, even as the Black share of the city’s population shrank from 15 percent in the 1970 census to 8 percent in the 2020 census, and even as the city’s share of Latinos rose to 48 percent in 2020.I asked Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, about the history of racial and ethnic politics in Los Angeles as well as the current situation. He wrote back by email: “Between 1900 and 1949, there were no City Council members who were African American, Latino, Jewish or Asian American.” In 1949, Ed Roybal became the first Hispanic member of the council and held his seat until 1962 when he successfully ran for Congress, Sonenshein noted. But “then there was a long hiatus with no Latino members until 1985, all during the heyday of the Bradley Black-Jewish coalition.”Now, according to Sonenshein, “there are three African American and four Latino ‘seats’ on the council,” with the strong possibility of a fifth Hispanic seat depending on the outcome of a Nov. 8 runoff. Black Democrats have held three council seats every cycle since 1963 despite the sharp decline in the African American share of the city’s electorate, the result, Sonenshein wrote, of “a long-term Black-Latino détente and at times strong alliance.”I asked Sonenshein about the all-or-nothing element of redistricting in Los Angeles, and he replied that the unusually strong powers held by the City Council make the competition for seats particularly intense:The conflict is further enhanced by the unique nature of the L.A. council. It is certainly the most powerful council in any city with a mayor-council system. The relatively small size of the council and the visibility of the council as the most public-facing institution in the city government make each seat immensely valuable. L.A.’s growing stature as a key political force in California and even national Democratic politics causes state legislators to consider abandoning their seats when a council position opens up. (Can you imagine that happening in N.Y.C. or Chicago?)Conversely, Sonenshein argued, there are two factors mitigating conflict: “strong incentives in communities to build and maintain progressive cross-racial and cross-ethnic coalitions on the Tom Bradley model and crosscutting elite political alliances that link together members in different communities.”Sonenshein described the current situation in Los Angeles as themirror image of the 1990s. As the Latino population grew in the 1980s and 1990s in what was then known as South Central Los Angeles, there was considerable intergroup tension at the street level. Jobs, housing, services, all played a role. It took a while for those tensions to bubble up to the political level.David Sears, an emeritus professor of psychology and political science at U.C.L.A., emailed his response to my query about racial and ethnic politics in Los Angeles:The zero-sum character of redistricting surely exacerbates intergroup conflict. In L.A., such conflicts are barely below the surface in general. Especially Black-brown. Latinos have moved into historically Black neighborhoods in large numbers in L.A. and now generally outnumber Blacks. City Council representation has not adjusted to reflect that change. Black-brown political coalitions do form but they can be evanescent, with the tensions generally sub rosa rather than displayed out in public.In peaceful times, Sears wrote, “the theory of ‘common in-group identity’ argues that coalitions can form around a common superordinate identity. One example would be the Democratic Party in the California legislature,” where there are “lots of pressures to bind the coalition together — e.g., maintaining a supermajority.”Sears cautioned, however, that “subordinate group identities can sometimes fracture that common identity when subordinate group identities are made salient, as in redistricting (or ticket composition) decisions. The current controversy is a textbook example of these dynamics.”Sears pointed out possible future developments. On one hand, he again mentioned “lots of pressures to bind the coalition together.” At the same time, however, he noted:Centrifugal pressures include upward mobility among Latinos, who are rapidly moving into being small-business entrepreneurs. The younger generation is getting a lot better educated: e.g., the numbers of Latinos admitted to U.C.L.A. are rising rapidly. And intermarriage with whites is very common in post-immigrant generations.“Expect more ethnic conflicts,” Sears concluded,despite the incentives for coalition building. The fragmentation of neighborhoods leads to fragmentation in the schools. Many lighter-skinned Latinos have an easier road of it than African Americans in terms of upward mobility. I believe that broken families are still much more common in the Black community, which has its costs.Redistricting is a redistribution of political power, and political power determines the allocation of crucial resources. Cecilia Menjívar, a professor of sociology at U.C.L.A., emailed me her analysis of the role of scarcity in the struggle for power:Ethnic conflict does not happen in a vacuum of other social forces, especially material resources such as income and especially inequality — absolutely and relative — in personal income but also resources such as housing and school funding, etc., which varies quite a bit by place, neighborhood, etc. This is important because it’s not just income and material resources but increased inequality — the uneven distribution of resources that shapes perceptions about a sense of scarcity that groups (and individuals) perceive.Income and access to resources and benefits are all key, Menjívar continued, “but inequality, the uneven distribution and access to resources and society’s benefits, is absolutely vital to consider here because it is perceptions of unequal access, unequal distribution of benefits, etc., that I see more than income distribution alone.”Along similar lines, Betina Wilkinson, a political scientist at Wake Forest University, emailed me to say that her survey and focus group data “reveal that for some Blacks and Latinxs, social, economic and political opportunities are zero-sum since they feel that their sociopolitical power and struggles are comparable to those of the other minoritized group, that there are limited resources and opportunities and thus that the other group poses a threat to them.”Limited economic opportunities granted to Black and Hispanic Americans, Wilkinson argued,along with many employers’ deep-seated racism against Blacks and favorability toward Latinxs prompts some Blacks to regard Latinxs as economic threats. What matters is perceptions. Perceptions of one’s sociopolitical standing and perception of the opportunities and resources that one and one’s group has to move up the socioeconomic ladder.Karen Kaufmann, a lecturer at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at U.C.L.A., argued in a 2007 paper, “Immigration and the Future of Black Power in U.S. Cities,” that biracial and multiethnic coalitions in Los Angeles and other cities have produced only modest gains for minorities in patronage and set-aside contracts, posing little threat to the white establishment:Scholars assume that Blacks and Latinos would obviously be individually and collectively better off if they governed in unity. This perspective assumes that minority mayors and legislators are particularly responsive to poor urban communities, especially in contrast to white-led administrations. This assumption, regardless of how reasonable it appears, is not a matter of fact. The preponderance of evidence to date suggests that minority representation does quite little to advance minority interests above and beyond policies and programs that already exist under White regimes.Since “minority-specific rewards in the realm of local government are largely inelastic,” Kaufmann argued, “Blacks and Latinos have powerful incentives to compete with one another for control of these resources.”To the extent “that the pool of minority benefits such as government jobs, appointments, contracts and redistributive monies will not be appreciably larger under a minority-led regime than it is under a White-led government,” Kaufman continued, “minority groups will be better off as the most powerful minority in a coalition with Anglos than as the second most powerful in a minority-led administration.”For Black and Hispanic Americans, according to Kaufmann, “the impetus for political inclusion is not so much about opening up new sources of minority opportunity as it is about controlling those already established. From this perspective, the absence of minority coalition building at both the elite and the mass level generally constitutes rational, group-interested behavior.”A series of Public Opinion surveys of Los Angeles residents conducted by Loyola Marymount University in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2022 suggested a recent deterioration in race relations in the city.The Loyola study found a sharp drop in optimism concerning race relations in 2022. For example, from 2017 to 2022, the percentage of Los Angeles residents saying race relations had improved fell from 40.6 to 19.3 percent. The percentage saying relations had worsened grew from 18.0 to 38.5 percent.Similarly, the percentage of resident saying riots were likely to happen in the near future grew from 40.8 in 2015 to 64.7 percent in 2022. From 2019 to 2022, the percentage of residents saying racial and ethnic groups were getting along well fell from 72.4 to 61.2 percent.Los Angeles and cities everywhere can look forward to constrained budgets restricting spending on everything from schools to housing to street repairs to policing. These limits drive relentless competition, foment resentment and ravage coalitions.in “Nury Martinez’s Racism Feeds Into Black Angelenos’ Worst Fear. It’s Us Versus Them,” Erika D. Smith, a Los Angeles Times columnist, describes the brutal realpolitik in the covertly recorded conversation I mentioned earlier, which included Nury Martinez, then the City Council president:It wasn’t just a forum for swapping the kind of racist remarks and “jokes” you might hear at a Trump rally. It was ostensibly convened to talk about the redistricting of City Council seats that was happening at the time. But it very quickly veered into strategies for manipulating district maps to deprive Black people of political power and provide it to Latinos instead.The controversy in Los Angeles raises a key question: Is the City Council debacle an exception or is it a warning sign that the bitter, if often submerged, battles involving intraparty competition — part of the package of tensions continually inflamed by Donald Trump — will further endanger Democratic prospects this year and in 2024?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