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These 8 Democrats Want to Be Mayor of New York City. We Have Questions.
“How’s it going?”
“Thought we’d make an entrance.”
“Hello, everyone.”
“How you living?”
“OK, let’s go through this way.”
[music]
“Am I just going
to the chair?”
“There’s lot of cameras.”
“I could go into
the movie business
I feel pretty good.”
“I’ve never walked
out on an interview yet.”
“All right.
Tell me what you need.”
“So starting with pandemic.”
“What is the first
thing you would
do to help
New York City recover?”
“Systemic racism.”
“Educational losses.”
“Amazon headquarters.”
“A car-free Manhattan.”
“What is the key to improving
public transportation?”
“Police reform.”
“Traffic congestion.”
“Climate change, in general.”
“That’s an interesting way to ask it.”
“Do I get choices?
Do I get to choose
amongst my answers?”
“I don’t talk as much as
the other guys.”
“That is a secret.”
“I know, what does that say about me?”
“Do you want me to
expound on that?”
“No questions about my cats?” More - in Elections
‘It Is Time to Pass the Baton’: Atlanta Mayor Won’t Seek Re-Election
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Keisha Lance Bottoms Won’t Seek Second Term as Atlanta Mayor
Ms. Bottoms, who was mentioned briefly as a potential running mate with President Biden, is the latest mayor to move on after a year of pandemic challenges and social justice protests.ATLANTA — Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first-term Atlanta mayor who rose to national prominence this past year with her stern yet empathetic televised message to protesters but has struggled to rein in her city’s spike in violent crime, will not seek a second term in office, according to two people who were on a Zoom call with the mayor on Thursday night.The news shocked the political world in Atlanta, the most important city in the Southeast and one where the mayoral seat has been filled by African-American leaders since 1974, burnishing its reputation as a mecca for Black culture and political power.It is unclear why Ms. Bottoms, a Democrat, is not seeking another term, but 2020 took a toll on mayors nationwide. It was one of the most tumultuous years for American cities since the 1960s, with the social and economic disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic as well as racial justice protests that sometimes turned destructive.In November, St. Louis’s mayor at the time, Lyda Krewson, announced she would not pursue a second term. A month later, Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle announced she would not run for re-election. Several mayors in smaller cities have also declined to run again, exhausted or demoralized by the ravages of 2020.Two contenders who have been seeking to unseat Ms. Bottoms in the November election have promised to do a better job fighting what Ms. Bottoms has called a “Covid crime wave,” which includes a 58 percent spike in homicides in 2020.But Ms. Bottoms, 51, was expected to mount a formidable defense. She has a loyal ally in President Biden, whom she was early to endorse, and who repaid her loyalty with an appearance at a virtual fund-raiser in March. Ms. Bottoms was mentioned briefly as a potential vice-presidential running mate and said that she later turned down a cabinet-level position in the Biden administration.Ms. Bottoms, who served as a judge and a city councilwoman before being sworn in as mayor in 2018, is also blessed with a voice — measured, compassionate, slightly bruised and steeped in her experience as a Black daughter and Black mother — that seemed uniquely calibrated to address the challenges of the past year.It was in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that Ms. Bottoms went on live television and became a national star as she spoke directly to protesters. Some of their demonstrations had descended into lawlessness, with people smashing windows, spray-painting property and jumping on police cars.“When I saw the murder of George Floyd, I hurt like a mother would hurt,” she said. Then she scolded the protesters, insisting that they “go home” and study the precepts of nonviolence as practiced by the leaders of the civil rights movement. More
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Many Mayors Cite Covid Burnout as a Reason for Their Exit
Local officials nationwide are announcing plans to step back from elected office. Many offer the same explanation: Covid burnout.NEWBURYPORT, Mass. — Donna Holaday is the kind of mayor who does not say no to an invitation.She shows up for lesser ribbon cuttings, at Radiant U Esthetics and the Angry Donut. She is there for the dinky parades, three or four blocks to the waterfront and back. Funerals, fund-raisers, National Honor Society inductions, she does them all.Over four terms as mayor of Newburyport, a coastal city of around 17,000, she learned that she could always perk herself up by getting up on a podium, reflecting back the energy of a roomful of people. Not this past year.“There is nothing. Nothing on my calendar. It’s just the way it has been for a year,” said Ms. Holaday, 66. Through the shutdown, she made a point of spending the day in her empty City Hall, if only so people could see the light on in her office.But they were long days she described as “Whac-a-Mole, you take care of one thing and 15 things pop up.” And the calls she fielded were not about normal problems, like trash collection or snow removal, but matters of profound suffering: a loved one forced to die in solitude, or families running out of food.“It was so traumatic, with people calling us crying, distressed,” said Ms. Holaday, who has announced she will not run for a fifth term. “I was sitting in my corner office feeling quite alone, there is no question about it.”Though coronavirus cases are down from their winter peak and several states are well into the reopening process, many mayors are leaving their posts because of burnout.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York TimesIt has been an exhausting season for America’s mayors.Mayors are hands-on officials in the best of times, barraged with criticism and individual pleas for help. Over the last year, they found themselves weighing matters of life or death — devastating local businesses by prolonging shutdowns, canceling gatherings treasured by voters, unable to provide comfort by being there in person.And this spring, many American mayors are explaining their decision to leave office with the same reason: that the pandemic response demanded so much that they could not both campaign and perform their duties; or that the work had become so stressful that their families had recommended that they step away.“They are just spent,” said Katharine Lusk, executive director of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities, which carries out an annual survey of mayors. Mayors surveyed last summer expressed deep anxiety about the effects of lost tax revenue on their budgets, as they juggled the pandemic, economic recovery and their core responsibilities.Meanwhile, Ms. Lusk said, the positive aspects of the job were stripped away.“They will tell you it’s the most personal job in politics,” she said. “If you can’t interact with the community, all of the things that sort of fuel mayors — the inputs that build up that reservoir of energy — that aspect of the job has been taken from them.”There is little national data on local elections, so it is impossible to say whether this year’s turnover of mayors is unusual. In Massachusetts, nearly a fifth of the state’s mayors have announced they will not run again, as CommonWealth, a politics journal, reported, but that is not an unusual portion, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association.Decisions to step down are rarely made for one reason, and the year has increased pressure on leaders on many fronts, including conflicts over policing and racial justice. Among those who have offered an explanation, however, Covid fatigue comes up a lot. Michelle De La Isla, the mayor of Topeka, Kan., told The Topeka Capital-Journal that campaigning would make her workload unmanageable, and there “there was no way I was going to be able to do this at the same time” as heading coronavirus response.Mayor Grover C. Robinson IV, of Pensacola, Fla., said he decided not to run out of frustration with the politicized reaction to health directives, after returning from a vacation and attending yet another contentious meeting. Similar explanations have come from the mayors of Highland, Ill., Pascagoula, Miss., and Seattle, among others.Thomas M. McGee, the mayor of Lynn, Mass., a large, blue-collar city north of Boston, described parts of last year as “a blur,” as the virus raced through crowded neighborhoods that were home to multiple generations of families.Lynn was classified as a high-risk zone for all but two weeks of the past year, and the sense of crisis has never abated, even now that the vaccination drive is underway.“Do you remember the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Thailand? I feel like we’re running on the beach, up to a higher ground, and the tsunami is behind us,” he said. “Are we going to get to higher ground before the pandemic comes rushing back in and surges over us?”Mayor Thomas McGee of Lynn, Mass., is also stepping down. He described parts of last year as a blur and said the sense of crisis never abated.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York TimesMr. McGee, a Democrat, ran for mayor of Lynn, his hometown, in 2016, after 22 years in the State Legislature. But nothing, he said, prepared him for the intensity of being a mayor last year.“After 27 years and this, in some ways, lost year,” he said, “my family was like: ‘You’re stressed. It’s really had a substantial impact on you. And we’ll support you 100 percent whatever you want to do. But we think you should consider making a step back.’”Mr. McGee’s account of the past year is laced with frustration at the federal government, which he said left local officials to cope with a fast-moving public health emergency, while former President Donald J. Trump contradicted basic messaging about safety.“It became apparent, and I’d say it on calls, and while we were making decisions, ‘You know, we’re on our own here,’” he said. “They left a lot of us in the lurch, and we were left to really kind of navigate this on our own.”His frustration was echoed by Joseph A. Curtatone, 54, the mayor of Somerville, Mass., a city of 81,000, who is leaving office after nearly 18 years, amid speculation that he will run for governor.“We’re the first to hear if someone has lost a loved one, we’re the first to hear if someone is being evicted and has no place to live,” he said, joking that his brief moments of relief came when he was allowed to talk about snowstorms.Mayors, Mr. Curtatone said, were forced to coordinate policies on such grave matters as shutdowns and school closings among themselves, putting collective pressure on the state government to follow their lead.“Trump pushed it onto the states, and they pushed it onto the cities and towns,” he said.Nearly two-thirds of big-city mayors are Democrats, many in Republican-controlled states whose leaders were more skeptical of shutdowns and mask mandates.That tension has exacerbated mayors’ “sense of being embattled,” even as coronavirus case numbers decline, said Ms. Lusk, of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities.Jospeh Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, Mass., is leaving office after four terms.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York Times“I think the cyclicality of the pandemic meant they’ve never been able to let their guard down, they’ve never been out of the woods,” she said.Thomas Bernard, the mayor of North Adams, a city of about 14,000 in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, said he desperately missed ordinary interactions, like reading picture books to schoolchildren.He recalled the holiday season as a difficult time, as he was forced to make decisions that, as he put it, “really strike at the spirit of the community.”“I was the person who stole fun from North Adams for a year,” he said. “It feels that way sometimes. I was making the decisions, like other mayors, that led to the cancellation of the things we all love.”He announced in February that he would not run for re-election — the second time in nearly 40 years that an incumbent mayor will not appear on the ballot — so that he could focus on containing the virus and rebuilding the economy.“I feel behind the curve on the recovery, and adding the campaign, it didn’t feel tenable,” he said. “It didn’t feel like I could bring the best of myself to all three of those things.”Mr. Bernard, who recently turned 50, is unsure what he will do after he steps down.“There will be days, as it gets more toward election season, and I’m not doing a spaghetti dinner, you know, I’m probably going to have a twinge,” he said. “There are going to be days — the last holiday tree-lighting as mayor, the last high school graduation — those are the moments I’m going to feel most emotional about.”“I wear my heart on my sleeve as it is,” he said, “but it’s going to be a complex flood.” More
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Could Andrew Yang Really Be New York’s Next Mayor?
Andrew Yang rolled up for opening day at Yankee Stadium on April 1 with the crackling force field of celebrity surrounding him. A bank of photographers and videographers walked backward before him. A small entourage of aides trailed behind. Fans, lined up for New York’s first professional baseball game with live spectators since Covid shut down the city, called out, “There’s the next mayor of New York!” and “Good luck!” People milled around to have their photos taken with him. Yang bumped elbows and gave high fives; it was the most casual human contact I’d seen in a year.When I asked Yang supporters why they want him to be mayor, I heard, over and over, variations on the words “change” and “energy.” “He’s young, he’s energetic, he’s a new face,” said Laivi Freundlich, a businessman and synagogue cantor from Brooklyn. “I’m tired of the old guard.” Some associated Yang, in an undefined way, with technological dynamism. “It’s a feeling,” said Thomas Dixon, a 61-year-old from the Bronx, about how Yang would “bring about necessary changes. Because like the country, New York City needs to move into the 21st century.”With about 10 weeks until New York’s mayoral primaries, both public and private polling show Yang ahead in a crowded field, though up to half of voters remain undecided. In a survey released by Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analytics in March, Yang was the top choice of 16 percent of respondents, followed by 10 percent for Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. (Everyone else was in the single digits.) The Yang campaign’s private polling shows him with 25 percent of the vote and Adams with 15 percent.The essence of Yang’s campaign is this: He wants to make New York fun again. He has a hip-hop theme track by MC Jin and a platform plank calling for to-go cocktails — a pandemic accommodation for struggling bars and restaurants — to become a regular fixture of city life. He’s constantly out and about, cheerleading each facet of New York’s post-Covid rebirth. He was there the first day movie theaters reopened, taking his wife, Evelyn, to see Eddie Huang’s coming-of-age basketball drama, “Boogie.” But for a kidney stone that landed him in the hospital, he and Evelyn would have gone to an off-Broadway concert on April 2, the day indoor shows restarted.The day after that hospitalization, Yang was doing the finger-snapping dance from “West Side Story” down Brooklyn’s Vanderbilt Avenue. Several blocks were closed to traffic to make room for open-air bars and cafes, another pandemic-era policy that Yang wants to make permanent. The gentrified brunch crowd responded to the candidate much like the baseball fans at Yankee Stadium: People shouted, “There’s Andrew Yang!” and “Yang Gang!” and posed for grinning photos.His campaign will soon unveil a new slogan, “Hope Is on the Way.” It is planning a series of events to make up for milestones people lost during Covid, like a prom for high school graduates and maybe even a group wedding at city hall, where Andrew and Evelyn got married, for those who had to postpone their nuptials.On Thursday, I had an al fresco dinner with Andrew and Evelyn Yang at a Mediterranean restaurant near their Hell’s Kitchen apartment. He argued that there’s a serious purpose behind his campaign’s celebratory vibe. “We need to get tourists back, we need to get commuters back, we need to get the jobs back online in order for the economy to come back,” he said, adding, “I just want New York City to work again. And in order for New York City to work, people need to feel safe having fun.”Photographs by Adam Pape for The New York Times On one level, the idea of Yang as the mayor of New York City — surely one of the most complicated administrative jobs in the country — seems absurd. He has no government experience and has been so detached from city politics that he never before voted in a New York mayoral election. Before he ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, he founded a midsize nonprofit, Venture for America, that set out to create 100,000 jobs. Vox reported that as of 2019, it had created fewer than 4,000. Nothing in his background indicates a special aptitude for running a gargantuan urban bureaucracy at a moment of harrowing crisis.Yet in a traumatized city, people are responding to his ebullience. Yang, said Chris Coffey, his campaign’s co-manager, is “giving people hope after a year of death and sadness and Zooms and unhappiness.” You don’t have to agree with Yang’s politics to see how powerful this is.About those politics: They’re pretty conservative, at least by the standard of a New York Democratic primary. Yang is pro-charter schools and has criticized the 190,000-member United Federation of Teachers for the slow pace of school reopenings. He’s slammed Mayor Bill de Blasio for not instituting a hiring freeze and is hesitant to raise taxes on the rich. Yang wants to offer tax breaks to companies that bring their employees back to the office, which those who like the flexibility of remote work might resent.A number of his plans depend on corporate partnerships. “There’s a lot of potential and pent-up energy among companies and leaders in New York who want a mayor they can work with, who want a mayor who’s not going to beat up businesses big and small because they’re businesses,” he told me.It’s hard to tell whether Yang is leading because of his pro-business centrism, or in spite of it. Many backers I spoke to view him as progressive, particularly those who associate him with the call for a universal basic income, which animated his presidential campaign. Some supporters don’t think of him in ideological terms at all. Others expressed not so much a desire for a right turn in citywide politics as doubt that the left has all the answers.“I think he’s progressive, but I also think he’s kind of pragmatic, so I think that’s probably what draws me to him,” said Maya Deshmukh, a dentist who’s also an actress and a comedian, after she posed for a photo with Yang outside an upscale Vanderbilt Avenue ice cream shop. “He’s Asian-American; I’m Indian, so I like someone who’s going to be in our corner.”I asked Deshmukh what she wanted from post-pandemic New York, and she said she wanted it to be more small-business-friendly, and safer. “Manhattan, there is some level of unsafeness that I feel, and I hope that that can change in a way that’s not going to continue to put Black and brown people in jail.”Some left-wing Asian activists hate Yang’s plan to combat a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes by increasing funding for the New York Police Department’s Asian Hate Crime Task Force, but there’s no sign that most ordinary Asian-Americans voters do. His campaign’s polling shows him winning 49 percent of the Asian vote, with the other candidates in the single digits.It’s not just Asian-American voters who seem excited about the idea of an Asian-American mayor. Cynthia Cotto, a 58-year-old Black woman who works at Catholic Charities, told me she decided to back Yang after video emerged in late March of an Asian man being beaten unconscious on a subway. Supporting Yang “says that we’ve got faith” that not everyone is racist, she said. “That’s why I want him to win.” But that wasn’t the only reason. “He needs a chance,” she said. “He’s young. We need young blood.”Yang makes a point of ignoring progressive social media, where he’s frequently derided as either a neoliberal menace or a clueless tourist. “One of the big numbers that informs me is that approximately 11 percent of New York City Democratic voters get their news from Twitter,” he said, referring to a figure from his campaign’s internal polling. “If you pay attention to social media you’re going to get a particular look at New Yorkers that is going to be representative of frankly a relatively small percentage of New York voters.”Still, other candidates hope that once they’re able to contrast Yang’s positions and experience to their own, his support will erode. “What we’re seeing is more about what names are recognizable, but the vast majority of folks are still saying, ‘I’m trying to make up my mind, I’m trying to get on top of this,’” said the mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, a former counsel to de Blasio. “What folks are looking for is not someone who shoots from the hip, but someone who actually has deep plans and policies.”Wiley’s spokeswoman, Julia Savel, has been harsher. “Our city deserves a serious leader, not a mini-Trump who thinks our city is a fun plaything in between podcasts,” she said recently.There’s much that’s unfair about the Trump analogy — Yang is no buffoonish demagogue — but there are also real parallels. He’s a charismatic novice with good branding dominating in a fragmented field of experienced political figures. Yang throws out screwball ideas — like putting a casino on park-filled Governors Island, which would be illegal — to see what sticks. He makes gaffes, but they haven’t dragged him down. He has a self-perpetuating way of sucking up all the media oxygen: to write about the Yang phenomenon, as I am here, is to contribute to it.Photographs by Adam Pape for The New York TimesThose opposed to Yang are waiting for something or someone to stop him, though it’s not clear who or what that will be. The political consultant Jerry Skurnik said of Yang’s lead, “It’s lasted longer than I thought it would, so it might be real.”The operative word is might. It’s still very early in the race. Ten weeks before the 2013 mayoral primary, it looked like the top candidates were Anthony Weiner and Christine Quinn, then the City Council speaker. This year will be New York City’s first time using ranked choice voting in such a primary, and no one knows quite what that’s going to mean. It could help Yang because he’s so well known, leading supporters of other candidates to pick him as their second or third choice. Or it could hurt him by consolidating the votes of constituencies Yang has alienated.John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is skeptical that the Yang boom will last. His “gut feeling,” he said, is that the energy around Yang is mostly based on the press appreciating “how he’s interacting with people when they see him, and not much beyond that.” Mollenkopf argues that mayoral primaries are hard to poll, since only a fraction of Democrats — around 20 percent in 2013 — vote in them.And he believes that celebrity and excitement don’t win Democratic primary elections in New York City. What does? “Having an organic relationship to the constituencies that follow city politics and depend on city politics,” he said, particularly “the various unions that represent people who are directly or indirectly dependent on government money, contracts, support for nonprofit organizations and so on.”In Mollenkopf’s analysis, the city’s politics, unlike the country’s, are still mediated by a thick web of institutional relationships. Yang agrees that this has been true in the past. He just thinks that this time will be different.“The more the electorate expands, the better it is for someone like me,” he said. “And I think the electorate will expand this time. And this is knowing full well that just about any time a candidate makes the case that the electorate will expand and that’s how they’re going to win, they lose.” He’s convinced that “there are a lot of folks who have not been plugged into New York City politics who are actually going to vote this time.”Not long after Yang said this, a young man walking by the restaurant did a double take, eyes widening. He pointed at Yang: “I am so excited for you to be the mayor, man!”Luke Hawkins, a 36-year-old actor and dancer, described discovering Yang on the Joe Rogan podcast. “I wish he were the president,” he said. “I can’t stand pandering politicians. Just the fact that there’s no BS, he’s just completely genuine.” Hawkins said he leans left but doesn’t like what he calls the “woke stuff” and viewed Yang as a “problem-solver.”So, I asked, would he definitely vote in the primary? “I frickin’ hate politics,” he said. “But I will vote for him.” Then he asked, “When is the primary?” It’s June 22. The future of New York City may hinge on how many voters like him remember.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
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Oh Se-hoon Wins Seoul Mayoral Election
Conservative opposition candidates won two mayoral races that were seen as a referendum on President Moon Jae-in and a bellwether for next year’s presidential contest.SEOUL — In his last year in office, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has seen his approval ratings in a tailspin. His trademark North Korea diplomacy remains in tatters. Citizens are fuming over his repeatedly botched attempts to arrest soaring housing prices.And on Wednesday, voters in South Korea’s two biggest cities dealt another crushing blow to the beleaguered leader.Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party lost the mayoral elections in Seoul and Busan to the conservative opposition, the People Power Party. Critics are calling the results of the two by-elections a referendum on Mr. Moon and his government.“The people vented their anger at the Moon government through these elections,” said Kim Chong-in, head of the People Power Party, referring to large margins by which its candidates won.South Korea’s Constitution limits Mr. Moon to a single five-year term. But he had hoped that a candidate backed by his party would succeed him in the presidential election next March and continue his progressive legacy, including a policy of engagement toward North Korea.Wednesday’s mayoral elections showed that the Democratic Party faces steep challenges as voters once loyal to Mr. Moon — especially those in their 20s and 30s — abandon it in droves.Oh Se-hoon, the People Power Party candidate, won the race in Seoul, the capital city of 10 million people. He routed Park Young-sun, the Democratic Party candidate and a former member of Mr. Moon’s cabinet, by more than 18 percentage points, according to voting results announced by the National Election Commission.The Seoul mayor is considered South Korea’s second-most powerful elected official after the president.In Busan, on the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula, Park Heong-joon, another candidate affiliated with the opposition party, beat his Democratic Party rival by another large margin, according to the commission.A polling station on Wednesday in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, which also held a by-election for mayor.Yonhap/EPA, via ShutterstockThe by-election in Seoul was called after Park Won-soon, the former mayor, died by suicide last year following accusations of sexual harassment. The former mayor of Busan, Oh Keo-don, stepped down last year amid accusations of sexual misconduct from multiple female subordinates.The former mayors were both members of Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party and the president’s close allies. Their downfall weakened the moral standing of Mr. Moon’s progressive camp, which has cast itself as a clean, transparent and equality-minded alternative to its conservative opponents. Mr. Moon’s two immediate predecessors — Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak — were both conservatives and are now in prison following convictions on corruption charges.Mr. Moon was elected in 2017, filling the power vacuum created by Ms. Park’s impeachment. As a former human rights lawyer, he enthralled the nation by promising a “fair and just” society. He vehemently criticized an entrenched culture of privilege and corruption that he said had taken root while conservatives were in power, and vowed to create a level playing field for young voters who have grown weary of dwindling job opportunities and an ever-expanding income gap.Mr. Moon spent much of his first two years in power struggling to quell escalating tension between North Korea and the United States, successfully mediating diplomacy between the two countries. He shifted more of his attention to domestic issues after the two summit meetings between North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Donald J. Trump failed to produce a deal on nuclear disarmament or the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.But things quickly turned sour on the home front as well.In 2019, huge outdoor rallies erupted over accusations of forgery and preferential treatment in college and internship applications surrounding the daughter of Cho Kuk, Mr. Moon’s former justice minister and one of his closest allies.The scandal flew in the face of Mr. Moon’s election promise of creating “a world without privilege,” and prompted outrage against the “gold-spoon” children of the elite, who glided into top-flight universities and cushy jobs while their “dirt-spoon” peers struggled to make ends meet in South Korea’s hobbled economy.President Moon Jae-in and his wife, Kim Jung-sook, casting early votes in Seoul on Friday.Choe Jae-Koo/Yonhap, via Associated PressSouth Koreans expressed their growing cynicism over what they considered the hypocritical practices of Mr. Moon’s progressive allies with a popular saying: naeronambul. It roughly translates to, “If they do it, it’s a romance; if others do it, they call it an extramarital affair.”Nonetheless, the Democratic Party won by a landslide in parliamentary elections last year as Mr. Moon leveraged his surging popularity around South Korea’s largely successful battle against the coronavirus. But Mr. Moon’s virus campaign has lost its luster.In recent months, South Koreans have grown frustrated with prolonged social-distancing restrictions, a distressed economy and the government’s failure to provide vaccines fast enough. On Wednesday, the government reported 668 new coronavirus infections, the highest one-day increase in three months.Mr. Moon’s most devastating setback came last month when officials at the Korea Land and Housing Corporation — the state developer — were accused of using privileged insider information to cash in on government housing development programs. Kim Sang-jo, Mr. Moon’s chief economic policy adviser, stepped down last month when it was revealed that his family had significantly raised the rent on an apartment in Seoul just days before the government imposed a cap on rent increases.“People had hoped that even if they were incompetent, the Moon government would at least be ethically superior to their conservative rivals,” said Ahn Byong-jin, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. “What we see in the election results is the people’s long-accumulated discontent over the ‘naeronambul’ behavior of the Moon government exploding. Moon has now become a lame duck president.”The real-estate scandal dominated the campaign leading up to Wednesday’s election. Opposition candidates called Mr. Moon’s government a “den of thieves.” Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party called Mr. Oh, the new mayor in Seoul, an incorrigible “liar.” Mr. Oh resigned as Seoul mayor in 2011 after his campaign to end free lunches for all schoolchildren failed to win enough support.Pre-election surveys this month showed that voters who planned to vote for Mr. Oh would do so not because they considered him morally superior to his Democratic Party rival. Instead, it was because they wanted to “pass judgment on the Moon Jae-in government.”Posters showing candidates for mayor of Seoul.Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press More
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Will Cuomo’s Scandals Pave the Way for New York’s First Female Mayor?
The women running for mayor have sharply criticized Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo as sexual harassment allegations pile up against him, and they say they offer a different style of leadership.In the race to become mayor of New York, there is a glass ceiling, unbroken but not unmentioned by the several women running for the position this year: The city has had 109 mayors, not one of them a woman.So at gatherings like a recent fund-raiser for Kathryn Garcia, a Democratic hopeful, that barrier has been top of mind.The online fund-raiser, which was attended by dozens of women, many of them veterans of city government, was held last week on International Women’s Day. But Ms. Garcia’s mission was particularly relevant for another reason, too: Earlier that day, two high-powered lawyers were named to lead an independent investigation of sexual harassment accusations made against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.It was a moment that Ms. Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, leaned into.“New York’s governor is reminding us it is time to see more women in positions of power,” Ms. Garcia told the group. “In 2021, there is no right man for the job of mayor.”The women running for mayor have all touched upon the historic nature of their political campaigns, highlighting it in fund-raising pitches and on social media.And more recently, they have underscored the need to end the male-dominated political culture that gave rise to the sexual harassment scandal surrounding Mr. Cuomo.Many of the governor’s strongest critics have been women. Two Democrats, Ms. Garcia and Maya Wiley, were among the first mayoral hopefuls to urge Mr. Cuomo to resign. A third, Dianne Morales, has called for his impeachment.With only three months left until the June 22 Democratic primary for mayor, the political world is abuzz over Mr. Cuomo’s scandals. Two of the race’s more prominent male candidates, Andrew Yang and Eric Adams, have taken a more cautious approach to addressing Mr. Cuomo’s political straits, only recently saying that he should step aside until the investigations are complete.The governor’s problems have given the female candidates more ammunition to make their case that it is time for a woman to lead New York City.They have rebuked Mr. Cuomo and shared their stories of sexual harassment and sexism in politics. And they have argued that they would offer a more inclusive style of leadership than Mr. Cuomo, one that empowers staffers and does not rely on bullying.Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and the former head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, who is the strongest female candidate in the polls and fund-raising, has called on the men in the race to join her in urging Mr. Cuomo to resign.“It is clear that this is a man who behaves this way,” Ms. Wiley said. “This isn’t a single mistake. This isn’t a misinterpretation. This is a set of behaviors, and this is who he is.”Maya Wiley, center, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, has also called on Mr. Cuomo to step down. Mary Altaffer/Associated PressPolitical experts have many theories about why New York is such a difficult environment for women running for office, from overt sexism to machine politics and the challenges of raising large amounts of money.Ruth W. Messinger, a former Manhattan borough president, said she experienced all three hurdles in 1997, when she ran as the Democratic nominee against the Republican incumbent, Rudolph W. Giuliani.Voters said she was unattractive, unions were “bastions of male domination,” and men were reluctant to donate to her, she said in an interview. During a focus group, Ms. Messinger recalled, a man commented, “I would never date her.”She would meet with major donors and thought it went well, and then husbands told their wives to write a check.“The women wrote smaller checks,” Ms. Messinger said.In the 2013 mayoral race, Christine Quinn, the former New York City Council speaker, had been a front-runner, but she lost to Mr. de Blasio in the Democratic primary after some voters said they found her unlikable — a word deeply influenced by gender bias and often a sexist trope, researchers on women and politics say. Ms. Quinn was also closely linked to the incumbent, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose popularity had fallen after three terms.Ms. Quinn said she wished she had been more authentic and embraced her brusque reputation.“That’s probably exactly what you want in the mayor of New York — a bitch with a big heart, and I’m both,” she said.Major cities like Chicago and Houston saw voters elect their first female mayors in the 1970s and ’80s. Women now run 27 of the nation’s 100 largest cities, including Lori Lightfoot in Chicago and Keisha Lance Bottoms in Atlanta.New York also has never had a female governor, with the state decades behind more conservative states like Texas and Alabama in electing a woman. But if Mr. Cuomo were to resign or be removed from office, a woman — Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul — would succeed him.“The larger point here is that Cuomo’s behavior unfortunately isn’t isolated — it’s a symptom of a culture that can be toxic for women, not just in Albany but at City Hall,” said Marti Speranza Wong, executive director of Amplify Her, a group that works to elect women. “We can’t really expect an environment that is supportive of women if we don’t have women in positions of power.”Female candidates in New York and beyond have been encouraged by the success of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose upset primary victory in 2018 over the Democratic incumbent, Joseph Crowley, demonstrated how women can go around party officials to reach voters directly.“Machine politics is a machine that was built by and for men,” Ms. Morales said. “In New York City, I’m not sure we’re as progressive as we like to think we are.”Of the leading female candidates this year, two are women of color: Ms. Wiley, who is Black, and Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive, who is Afro-Latina.The women in the Democratic primary are focusing on different issues: Ms. Morales is running to the left of the field and wants to cut $3 billion from the police budget; Ms. Wiley has emphasized her civil rights background and a plan to create 100,000 jobs; Ms. Garcia has highlighted her experience in government and wants to improve basic services and quality of life in the city. (Another female candidate, Loree Sutton, a retired Army brigadier general, dropped out of the Democratic race last week.)As the candidates continue to make appearances in an endless series of online forums, the women seem to be forming a bond. At one forum where candidates were asked to pick a second choice for mayor, Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales named each other.Ms. Morales said she felt strongly that it was time for a woman of color to be elected.“There’s a level of solidarity that we all feel toward each other, and a recognition of the barriers and obstacles that we’re overcoming on a daily basis just to be in this space,” she said.Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said she felt strongly that it was time for a woman of color to be elected.Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesThe women’s response to the allegations against the governor illustrate that common ground.Ms. Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst with a loyal following on social media, took to Instagram last month and called Mr. Cuomo’s behavior disgusting. She shared in a video that a boss had once asked her if she believed in monogamy.In an interview, Ms. Wiley provided further details: She was a young lawyer alone in his office where he told her that he was open to multiple partners.“I looked this man dead in the eye and said, ‘Yeah, I believe in monogamy,’” she said. “I said it with a particular attitude — let me say that — and my attitude was, ‘Really, dude? Did you just ask me that question?’”“This is why when you hear Charlotte Bennett’s story, you know exactly what they’re asking you,” she said in reference to a female staffer who accused Mr. Cuomo of trying to groom her for a sexual relationship. “You’re being asked if you’re willing.”Many of the comments on Ms. Wiley’s Instagram video were supportive. Others said she was jumping the gun and told her to “be quiet” and “shut up.”Ms. Morales said that news reports about Mr. Cuomo’s treatment of women reminded her of a job she had while she was in her 20s.“I’ve experienced a male boss closing the door in a small office and backing me into a corner and screaming at me at the top of his lungs and then storming out, and people surrounding me to see if I was OK,” she said.Sara Tirschwell, a former Wall Street executive who is running in the Republican mayoral primary, once filed a sexual harassment complaint against her boss, and has also called on Mr. Cuomo to resign. She quotes Maya Angelou on her campaign website: “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it, possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”While women have made strides in state legislatures and Congress, some voters still cannot picture a woman as president, governor or mayor, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.“When you’re the place where the buck stops, there needs to be a sense of strength and authority,” Ms. Walsh said. “That has been one of the challenges that women have faced — the stereotype that women aren’t strong or tough enough.”That stereotype particularly rankles Ms. Garcia, who served as Mr. de Blasio’s go-to crisis manager, taking on the top job at the New York City Housing Authority and running the city’s pandemic meal program.She said that people constantly underestimate her as she runs for mayor, and some have suggested she would make a great deputy mayor.“It’s frustrating that you’re considered the most qualified for the job and are pigeonholed that you should be a less-qualified guy’s No. 2,” she said. 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