Nadler, Jerrold

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The New York Times’s Interview With Jerrold Nadler

      by

      Jerrold Nadler is a congressman who has represented neighborhoods on Manhattan’s West Side and parts of Brooklyn in New York’s 10th District since 1992.This interview with Mr. Nadler was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on July 26.Read the board’s endorsement of Mr. Nadler for the Democratic congressional primary for New York’s 12th District here.Kathleen Kingsbury: Congressman, I understand that you have to reject the premise of this question. So please excuse me in advance. But I hope we could start by talking about what you think you’d be able to accomplish in a Republican-controlled Congress, and is there one big idea that you would pursue on a bipartisan basis?Well, yeah. Remember, I was ranking member of the Judiciary Committee before I was chairman, so we’ve gone through this. I think we could accomplish some antitrust stuff. [Inaudible] and I are working well on that. We discussed the tech antitrust deals that we reported out a few months ago, we got very — we got bipartisan support to it. That would be the most obvious thing.Mara Gay: So inflation is hitting very hard across the country, obviously. But especially in New York, where the cost of living is already very high, especially in housing. What would you do to ease that burden for your constituents?Well, first of all, inflation is not just a New York problem. It’s not just an American problem, it’s a worldwide problem. Probably caused to a large extent by the dislocations due to the pandemic and the resulting problems to supply chains and [inaudible].The best thing we can do on the national level is to sharply raise taxes. Raise taxes on very rich people, that would cool down the demand side, which would have an impact on inflation. In New York, obviously, the housing is a big crisis. We have to build more housing. There’s no question.Mara Gay: What can you do as a member of Congress to do that?Well, we have to fund it. Nydia Velázquez and I two years ago introduced the bill for — to increase funding for NYCHA by — well, not for NYCHA, for public housing. NYCHA is the majority of public housing in the country. So, in effect, for NYCHA, by $72 billion.[Representatives Velázquez and Nadler introduced a bill in 2019 seeking to allocate $70 billion for public housing capital repairs and upgrades and $32 billion for the New York City Housing Authority.]There’s additional money to the Build Back Better bill, which, unfortunately, we haven’t been able to pass. But we will be if a Democratic Senate — we’ll pass that.[The Senate passed the climate, health and tax bill on Aug. 7 and the House on Aug. 12, both after this interview took place.]And we just have to fund housing a lot more. And we have to allow the construction of housing by removing a lot of the restrictions on density housing. The Urban Renewal Corporation — it always changes names, the Urban Development Corporation — has that authority to remove local zoning. So use it for other purposes as you use it for this.Jyoti Thottam: What do you think the Democrats should do to secure voting rights and, more broadly, protect democracy?Well, as you know, I’ve been leading the fight on that. Voting rights is — the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore — and in fact would restore Section 5 preclearance underneath the Voting Rights Act, and would undo a lot of what the Supreme Court has done in narrowing down Section 2. So we restore the Voting Rights Act through Section 2.Section 2 is of limited use because they play Whac-a-Mole. That’s a terrible bill. We’re suing the court. Takes three years to get rid of it and they do another one. That’s why Section 5 is so important for preclearance.And that’s why I applaud the passage of that bill placed in the Judiciary Committee. And on the floor, we passed in the House. We cannot pass it in the Senate. And, again, we need two more Democratic senators.Patrick Healy: Do you think —That’s the answer for a lot of things. We need two more Democratic senators.Patrick Healy: Do you think Democratic elected officials are out of step with voters on immigration, on L.G.B.T.Q. rights, on any important issue of the day?Well, we’re obviously out of step with half the voters, roughly. But I think those half of the voters — this country is a very polarized country. Almost half the voters — I hope they’re almost half and not half — are impervious. They live in a different world. They get all their information from Fox News and Newsmax.They think that the crime is terrible in these Democratic-led cities, where, in fact, it’s not higher than in rural areas. They think that Antifa burned up half our cities. They live in a different world.Patrick Healy: What about Democratic voters?Democratic voters do not live in that world. I think Democratic voters are ready for real change. And they’re showing people, I think, people have voted for systemic change. That’s why we’ve had — the Democratic Party is a broad coalition. If you were in Europe, it would be five political parties.But that’s truly the American political system generally. The Electoral College system forces everybody into two parties. And we need, frankly, a center-left party, the Democrats, a center-right party, the Republicans.Unfortunately, the Republicans are not a center-right party these days. They’re more like a cult group. But Democratic voters have supported very substantial steps. They’ve supported all our voting rights legislation. They supported our gay rights legislation, our L.G.B.T.Q. legislation. They supported our women’s legislation.So Democratic voters, with coaxing, we can bring them on what we need.Eleanor Randolph: Hi. So these are yes-or-no questions. And we’d appreciate it if you’d just limit the answer to either yes or no, which, I know it’s hard. Do you support expanding the Supreme Court?Yes, it’s my bill.Eleanor Randolph: Do you support ending the filibuster?Yes.Eleanor Randolph: Should there be a term limit for members of Congress?No.Eleanor Randolph: How about an age limit?No.Eleanor Randolph: And should President Biden run for a second term?That I can’t give a yes or no answer. I’ll simply say to that, I think the interests of the Democratic Party and the country are best served by waiting till after the midterms before we begin discussing that.Eleanor Randolph: OK.Alex Kingsbury: I’d like to ask about Ukraine. And I’m wondering if there should be an upper limit on the amount of tax dollars that we spend on the war in Ukraine. And how do you talk to your constituents about the fact that we’re spending billions of dollars on a war we’re not officially a party to, and that money isn’t going to, say, projects in your district?I don’t think there should be an upper limit. The Russians have broken the barrier, really, imposed by World War II. You just don’t invade another country for territorial acquisition. That’s the foundation of the world order.And if they can get away with that, you’ll have chaos and lots more wars. If this country were attacked, we would spend far, far more than we’re spending on Ukraine now. And we can afford to spend more on Ukraine. We have to spend whatever it takes because they’re fighting our battle for us.And the country can afford it. This country has — we can afford that. And we can afford much greater social services simply by increasing taxes on the rich, which would also help with inflation, as I said before.Nick Fox: Given the continued opposition to climate action by the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, what can Democrats do to move us forward on that?Well, the president’s taken a number of actions within his jurisdiction. That’s what he can do. And what Congress can do is we can check that — again, we need two more votes. But we can pass very strong legislation on gas emissions. We could mandate the very, very quick convergence to electric cars.We can mandate that there are no new coal-fired plants built. We could mandate the conversion of those coal-fired plants to green plants, rapidly. And in fact, it’s cheaper today to build and operate a renewable plant than it is a coal plant. We can do that if we have a few more votes.Mara Gay: What further action can Congress take on gun violence at this point? Let me guess. We need two more votes.Well, I led the passage in the Judiciary Committee and in the House of the Save Our Kids Act, which is an amalgamation of seven bills that — with the passage of — we’ve seen them pass the red flag law. We can pass those.[The Protecting Our Kids Act passed the House in June.]We are taking up an assault weapons ban, which is my bill. We passed that out of committee, we should be taking that up on the floor this week.Ditto for a bill to repeal the liability exemption for gun manufacturers. That was imposed by the Republicans back in 2005. We passed that out of committee. We should be taking that up on the floor this week.Now, most of those won’t go through Senate. Get us two more votes and they will. But I’ll say this. We did pass into law Senator Murphy’s bill. And I’ll use, just for the purposes of illustration — [inaudible] these figures. I’m just making them up. But if our bill could save 100,000 lives and the Murphy bill we passed could save 10,000 lives, I’ll take — I’ll take the 10,000 and I’ll continue to fight for the 100,000.Mara Gay: And what about on abortion rights? Anything more that can be done?Yeah. We can — there are a number of things that can be done. Again, we can pass and we should pass the bill to codify abortion rights. I introduced the original version of that, the Freedom of Choice Act, about 10 or 12 years ago, because they didn’t trust the Supreme Court for the future.[Mr. Nadler reintroduced the Freedom of Choice Act in 2006.]It’s now the Women’s Health Act. It’s sponsored by Judy Chu. We passed it in the House. And the Senate is the problem. We can make sure that the pill method — mifepristone, et cetera — is legal. We can mandate that.I think we could probably tell the post office not to adhere to any bans in delivery by … states. We’re passing a bill to guarantee the right of free passage from state to state. But, frankly, I think the Constitution mandates that anywhere [inaudible]. We’re passing a bill on that.And let me tell you my fear. My fear is far worse than this. If you look at the logic of the Supreme Court’s decision — and [Samuel] Alito said that, in differentiating himself from [Clarence] Thomas — Thomas was basically saying that the logic of substantive due process should endanger Obergefell and Lawrence — that is to say, gay marriage and, essentially, sodomy. And he didn’t say Loving, but … it could apply there, too.But even Roberts, his concurring opinion when he said, no, no, we don’t have to go that far, we’re just deciding abortion for now. He said that abortion was different because the fetus is a person.[In his majority opinion, Justice Alito argues that the constitutional rights recognized in Obergefell v. Hodges, Lawrence v. Texas and other cases aren’t threatened because they don’t involve destroying a fetus.]Follow that logic. If a fetus is a person, the 14th Amendment guarantees any person life, liberty or — says you can’t deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. My fear is that within the next — I don’t know how many years — but at some point in the next few years, the Supreme Court is going to decide just that. That a fetus is a person you can’t deprive of life, liberty or property without due process of law.And therefore abortion is unconstitutional without any exceptions as a matter of constitutional law. And Congress can’t do anything about that, which is one reason that Senator Markey and I and two other colleagues of mine in the House proposed to expand the Supreme Court about a year ago, because that is the only answer. We’ve got to get rid of the filibuster. We’ve got to expand the Supreme Court.Kathleen Kingsbury: What should Congress do to address the increasing threat of domestic terrorism? We’ve seen some horrific incidents over the past few months.We passed the — I held hearings — I directed hearings in the Judiciary Committee, I think it was last year, to expose the threat of domestic terrorism, to show that 95 percent of the domestic terrorism comes from right-wing, racist groups and not from Antifa or other such nonsense. We held those hearings. And we passed the domestic terrorism bill. Again, in the House.Mara Gay: OK. So we have a lightning round question for you.OK.Mara Gay: So the first question is, how does Plan B work?By Plan B, you mean the medical —Mara Gay: The morning-after pill.The morning-after pill. You take one pill. And I think a few days later, you take a second pill. [Inaudible.]Mara Gay: Not quite. But I’m just wondering if you could tell us, medically speaking, if you know how Plan B works. What you were talking about, I believe, is referring to medication abortion.I think it’s designed to prevent the implantation.Mara Gay: That’s close. It delays or prevents ovulation.OK.Mara Gay: Do you own a gun?No.Mara Gay: Have you ever fired a gun?Yes.Mara Gay: In what context?When I was a kid, we lived on a farm, chicken farm in Jersey. And my father had — I don’t remember if it was a shotgun or a gun or a rifle — which he used to shoot the fox that was preying on the chickens. And once or twice, he let me — with him standing there — fire the gun. I was maybe 8, 9 years old.[A phone rings.]Mara Gay: What is the —Sorry.Mara Gay: Oh, sure.Let me get that. Sorry.Mara Gay: What’s the average age —[The phone continues ringing.]Mara Gay: What’s the average age of a member of Congress?I don’t know.Mara Gay: Fifty-eight.OK.Mara Gay: What about the Senate?If congress is 58, the average age of the Senate is probably somewhat higher — 65.Mara Gay: Sixty-four. Close. Please name a member of Congress, dead or living, whom you most admire and would potentially emulate yourself after if re-elected.Jamie Raskin.Mara Gay: What is your favorite restaurant in your district?[The phone rings again.]My favorite restaurant is Cafe Arte.Mara Gay: Thank you.I’m not going to take the call. I’m just trying to —Mara Gay: If you hit the right side, yeah.Kathleen Kingsbury: Congressman, you were first elected to Congress 30 years ago. And you chair the Judiciary Committee. How would you use your seniority to help residents in your district going forward? In your next term.Well, I will use the seniority going forward exactly as you said. I would say that seniority gives you clout. And it has enabled me to bring a lot more transportation and other infrastructure projects to the district. I was the senior northeast representative on the T. & I., the Transportation Infrastructure Committee, for many years.And so I used the seniority to be able to get [inaudible] every five years — funding for the Second Avenue subway, funding for gateway, funding for the rail freight tunnel, which I’ve [inaudible] for many years. I’ve funded all kinds of transportation projects. And seniority helps. Helps me go to other committee chairs and get all kinds of other things.Jyoti Thottam: So, again, just in your role on the Judiciary Committee, I want to ask you about Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, who our paper has reported has urged lawmakers in Arizona to overturn the 2020 election results. She’s been widely criticized for her communication with the White House during that period.Yep.Jyoti Thottam: Why hasn’t the Judiciary Committee done more in its oversight role? Do you think there’s a conflict of interest there?I certainly think there’s a conflict of interest there. We have been asked by the speaker to defer all such things to the Jan. 6 commission until they finish.Jyoti Thottam: So you just — there’s nothing else that you can do.There’s nothing else we can do until the Jan. 6 committee is finished, which we anticipated will be in September and apparently will.Patrick Healy: How do you feel personally about the idea of impeachment for Justice Thomas?I think it’s probably a good idea. I can’t say that for certain until we know more about what Ginni Thomas’s role was. She has agreed to testify at the Jan. 6 committee. And I think a lot more information will come out of that.Patrick Healy: Could you tell us about an issue or position on which you’ve changed your mind?Sure. I voted to repeal Glass-Steagall back in 1998. I think that was a terrible mistake. And I regretted it for a long time.[Mr. Nadler voted in favor of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which overturned much of the Glass-Steagall Act.]Mara Gay: Congressman, could you talk —I bought into the — excuse me.Mara Gay: Sorry.I bought into the deregulationary rhetoric of the Clinton administration. That was a mistake.Jyoti Thottam: So, then, just related to antitrust — so now we’re at this position where you’re trying to get antitrust bills through the committee. But it’s not clear if they will actually go through.Well, they’ve gone through the committee. They have considerable bipartisan support, surprisingly. And there’s considerable bipartisan support in the Senate. Senator Klobuchar is negotiating with Senator Grassley. They’ve gotten, I think, nine Republicans so far. If they get one more Republican, it will pass.Kathleen Kingsbury: I want to follow up on something from earlier. But I think this will be a relatively quick question. You mentioned earlier that right-wing media has perpetuated the perception of crime being up in blue cities, yet we all live in New York City. And I think that it’s safe to say right now there is a perception that crime is up and that the city is less safe than it was, particularly before the pandemic.No question.Kathleen Kingsbury: Can you talk a little bit about what you think the city should be doing more of, and maybe if there are national solutions there?Well, crime is up all over the country, in rural as well as city areas.Kathleen Kingsbury: Right, OK.And it’s no more uptick. It’s no more uptick. It’s not further up in —Kathleen Kingsbury: Got it.In city areas and rural areas. And that’s probably as a result of the pandemic, the social dislocations of the pandemic. And there’s not much we can do about the past. But I think there are a number of things we can do now.No. 1, in no particular order — No. 1, we got to get the guns off the streets. And as you know, I’ve been the leader, one of the leaders on the anti-gun legislation. We just passed — well, I mentioned some legislation we passed this week, how we’re going to do the anti-assault-weapons ban on the floor. And this week, we’re going to do the bill to revoke the companies’ liability protections.Secondly, in addition to guns, there is a whole social services — we’ve got to get more social services into cities, especially into areas of color, because that’s where a lot of the problem is. And those are some things you’ve got to do.Nick Fox: How do you get the guns off the street?Jyoti Thottam: Nick, Mara had a question she’s been waiting to ask.Mara Gay: Thanks. I just want to make sure we talk about this campaign, which is quite unusual. Could you talk to us about your path to victory? And not only is it an unusual race, but one of your opponents, Carolyn Maloney, I believe has — a bigger portion of her current constituents happen to live in this new district. So how do you overcome that?What has your campaign been like? How many doors are you knocking on? That kind of thing.Well, first of all, Carolyn is saying that the 60 percent of the district is her own district. I don’t know whether she means by the population or acreage. When you look at the number of registered Democrats, it’s about even.And when you look at the number of prime Democrats, which is to say people who voted in two of the last three primaries, it’s about 52 percent from the West Side. When you look at super primes, people who voted in three of the last three primaries, it’s about 53 percent or 54 percent from the West Side. And this primary being in the dog days of summer, the worst time you can hold a primary, it’s most likely to be the super primes who vote. So I think there’s an advantage there and a disadvantage.Secondly, we are executing a fine program. We’ve got hundreds of volunteers out making thousands of phone calls a week, identifying people. Have a direct mail program to get — not a direct mail program, a program to incentivize people who are not going to be in town to get these absentee ballots.We’ve gotten tremendous endorsements. I’ve got an endorsement from Senator Elizabeth Warren. I’ve got the endorsement of 1199 [S.E.I.U., a health care union], the Working Families Party, just about every elected official in my old district. So I think we’re in good shape.Mara Gay: Thank you.Nick Fox: I just wanted to follow up. When you said get the guns off the street, I was wondering how you’re going to do it.Well, I wish we could do what Australia did. But it’s not in the cards. We’re just never going to do that.Jyoti Thottam: You mean the buybacks?Under penalty of criminal law, they did that. You get the guns off the street by seeking to do a number of things. You ban ghost guns, which our legislation has done. You ban ammunition clips greater than 15, so you can’t convert a weapon into a semiautomatic weapon. You ban bump stocks for the same reason. And you enforce it nationwide. Those are some of the ways of getting guns off the street.Patrick Healy: Some New Yorkers may wonder what the biggest difference is between you and Congresswoman Maloney. Could you tell us from your point of view what you see is the biggest difference between the two of you?Yeah. Well, let me start by saying that Carolyn and I have worked together for a long time on many things. We worked together on the Zadroga Act. We work together on getting, funding a lot of infrastructure projects, including the Second Avenue subway and others. And we’ve worked together for a long time.Having said that, there are differences. There are some differences in our voting record. I’ll mention three. She voted for the war in Iraq. I voted against it.She voted for the Patriot Act. I voted against it, even though 9/11 was in my district. And she voted against the Iran deal. I voted for it.And I must say that voting for the Iran deal, I thought I was taking my political life in my hands because I watched as every single — remember, Netanyahu came and spoke against Iran. And I watched as every single Jewish organization in the country, one by one, excluding the most liberal, came out against it. And I watched as, one by one, every Jewish member of the tristate area came out against it.And I was standing there alone. And I really thought I was going to take my political life in my hands. I thought I had to do the right thing because when the real test comes like that, why are you there otherwise? And I knew I’d have a primary as a result of it. I did have a primary as a result of it.But I did what I thought I had to do. And I voted for it. And I published a 5,200-word essay, which really was the record of my thoughts. This argument [inaudible] by this argument. Because I was undecided initially.I went through a decision process. And I put it on paper. You can read it if you want. It’s online. I don’t know why you would want to read at this point. But it was an essay explaining in great detail. Now, I used the opportunity to get some guarantees from the president in terms of Israeli-American relationships. But I would have voted for it even if I hadn’t gotten that.I just used the opportunity. I would have voted for it in any event. I thought it was — ultimately, I had to do what you have to do.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

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Nadler and Maloney Are Collegial at Debate. Their Rival Is Combative.

      by

      After decades of working together as House colleagues and ultimately ascending to powerful committee leadership posts, Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney took the stage on Tuesday night as reluctant foes in a three-way Democratic debate.If fireworks were expected, then the debate was something of a washout: The two longtime Democrats stood and sat side by side, each collegially allowing the other to recite decades of accomplishments and showing an unusual degree of deference.It fell to the third candidate, Suraj Patel, a lawyer who has never held elected office, to play the energetic aggressor, criticizing the records of the New York political fixtures and suggesting that voters would be better served by a younger representative, and perhaps House term limits, too.The debate, hosted by NY1 and WNYC, offered the broadest opportunity for the three leading Democratic candidates seeking to represent New York’s newly drawn 12th Congressional District to distinguish themselves ahead of the Aug. 23 primary. (A fourth candidate, Ashmi Sheth, will appear on the ballot but did not meet the fund-raising requirement to appear onstage.)In a debate with few standout moments, the most notable exchange had little to do with the primary contest itself.Errol Louis, one of the moderators, asked the three candidates whether they believed President Biden should run for re-election in 2024.Mr. Patel, who is running on the importance of generational change, was the only candidate to respond in the affirmative. Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney, who are running on the argument that seniority brings clout and expertise, both dodged the question.“Too early to say,” Mr. Nadler said.“I don’t believe he’s running for re-election,” Ms. Maloney said.It seemed like a rare break from Democratic solidarity for Mr. Nadler, 75, and Ms. Maloney, 76, who were elected to office in 1992 and have often worked together as they climbed the ranks of Congress.About halfway through the 90-minute debate, Mr. Nadler was asked to expound on the differences between himself and Ms. Maloney. “Carolyn and I have worked together on a lot of things,” he said, stumbling a bit. “We’ve worked together on many, many different things.”New York’s 2022 ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.N.Y. Governor’s Race: This year, for the first time in over 75 years, the state ballot appears destined to offer only two choices: Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, and Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican. Here is why.10th Congressional District: Half a century after she became one of the youngest women ever to serve in Congress, Elizabeth Holtzman is running once again for a seat in the House of Representatives.12th Congressional District: As Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, two titans of New York politics, battle it out, Suraj Patel is trying to eke out his own path to victory.“There are some differences,” he added, stumbling a bit more before going on to name three votes in particular.But even as the two essentially made cases for their political survival, Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney largely refrained from attacking each other or offering strong reasons for voters to choose one of them over the other. When given the opportunity to cross-examine an opponent, both chose to question Mr. Patel.Ms. Maloney even admitted she “didn’t want to run” against Mr. Nadler, her “good friend” and ally.Mr. Nadler pointed to three key votes that set him apart from Ms. Maloney — he opposed the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, which expanded government surveillance powers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, while she voted for them; he supported the Iran nuclear deal, which she opposed. But he refrained from criticizing her votes outright. Mr. Patel was more forceful, at one point calling Ms. Maloney’s vote on Iraq his “single biggest issue with her voting record.”Mr. Patel, 38, who has twice unsuccessfully attempted to defeat Ms. Maloney, at times tried to use their amity to his advantage. At one point, Mr. Patel questioned why Mr. Nadler had previously endorsed Ms. Maloney despite her past support for legislation that would have mandated that the government study a discredited link between vaccines and autism.“In the contest between you and her, I thought she was the better candidate,” Mr. Nadler said.“What about now?” Mr. Patel shot back.“I still think so,” Mr. Nadler responded.With three weeks until the primary contest and no clear front-runner, Mr. Patel sought to draw a sharp contrast with his two opponents. He pointed to their corporate donors and their adherence to party orthodoxy and tried to liken himself to younger, rising party stars like Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“It’s 2022,” he said in his opening statement. “It is time to turn the page on 1992.”Mr. Patel’s performance seemed energetic, in starkest contrast to that of Mr. Nadler, who gave a halting opening statement in which he misspoke and said that he had “impeached Bush twice” when he meant to refer to former President Donald J. Trump.“I thought Suraj performed well,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist who is unaffiliated in the race. “I thought Carolyn did fine. And I thought Nadler struggled at times.”It was only toward the end of Tuesday’s debate that Ms. Maloney seemed to set her sights on Mr. Nadler. In a conversation about infrastructure, she argued that he had wrongfully taken credit for helping fund the Second Avenue Subway, a long-sought project in her district.Ms. Maloney said that she had advanced the project, while Mr. Nadler had yet to secure funds for a proposed freight tunnel that would run beneath New York Harbor, a project that he has championed for years.“It’s still not built,” Ms. Maloney pointed out.The exchange drove home the end of decades of political harmony predicated on a dividing line between the two elected officials’ districts: Ms. Maloney represented most of Manhattan’s East Side, while Mr. Nadler served constituents on the West Side. Over their time in office, their reach grew to neighborhoods in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, after changes made in the state’s redistricting process. Both had endorsed each other’s previous re-election bids, supporting their respective journeys to becoming New York City political icons.But the alliance fractured in May, when a state court tasked with reviewing New York’s congressional map approved a redistricting plan that threw the two powerful allies into the same district, one that combined Manhattan’s East and West Sides above 14th Street into a single district for the first time since World War II.Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney ultimately chose to run against each other rather than seeking a neighboring seat — a decision that guaranteed that at least one of the two will lose their position, robbing New York’s congressional delegation of at least one high-ranking member with political influence.Ms. Maloney leads the House’s Oversight and Reform Committee, a key investigative committee. Mr. Nadler chairs the Judiciary Committee, a role that vaulted him into the national spotlight during both of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trials.For months, the two have engaged in a crosstown battle for their political survival that has riveted the Democratic establishment. Both Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney have drawn on political ties to try to pressure old allies and wealthy donors they once shared to back one of them.All three of the candidates at Tuesday’s debate and political analysts alike have acknowledged that the race’s outcome may largely depend on who casts ballots. Even as they tried to appeal to voters, Ms. Maloney, Mr. Nadler and Mr. Patel acknowledged they largely share political viewpoints on key issues like abortion and gun control.“We are, on this stage, star-crossed lovers,” Mr. Patel said. “We are arguing right now, but the fact of the matter is, we’re on the same team.”Nicholas Fandos More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Carolyn Maloney Uses Personal Fortune in Primary Against Jerrold Nadler

      by

      Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York holds a commanding financial advantage over her crosstown Democratic primary opponent, Representative Jerrold Nadler, thanks to a familiar benefactor: herself.She personally lent her campaign $900,000, according to new filings released late Friday. The loan, combined with another $600,000 or so in outside donations in the second quarter, gives Ms. Maloney $2 million in the bank before the Aug. 23 primary, a closely watched and highly abbreviated contest between two long-serving House committee leaders.“There was never a doubt that I would continue to fight for the people in my district,” Ms. Maloney, 76, who is one of the richest members of Congress, said of the race in New York’s 12th Congressional District. “Thus, I decided to use some of my retirement savings to invest in this campaign.”Bob Liff, a spokesman for Ms. Maloney, clarified that the funds had come from her House retirement account.Mr. Nadler, 75, reported $500,000 in contributions, but he did not lend his campaign any money, leaving him with $1.2 million in cash.“I’m the son of a chicken farmer — no fortune over here!” Mr. Nadler wrote on Twitter, gently knocking Ms. Maloney. Julian Gerson, a co-manager of Mr. Nadler’s campaign, added that Mr. Nadler would “have the resources we need to run a campaign that’ll talk to every voter.”A third candidate campaigning on a platform of generational change, Suraj Patel, ended the quarter with about half that amount of cash, filings show.Mr. Patel blasted both his opponents for accepting campaign contributions from corporate donors, a practice he avoids. “The 60 years of incumbency in this race are desperate to hold onto their seats,” he said.Ms. Maloney’s loan came in late May, after New York’s courts had invalidated congressional districts drawn by Democrats in Albany, and unexpectedly drew replacements that combined her longtime district rooted on the East Side of Manhattan with Mr. Nadler’s on the West Side.The same reshuffling created an outright melee among more than a dozen Democrats in the neighboring 10th District, which stretches from Lower Manhattan into Brooklyn.Friday’s filings showed that Representative Mondaire Jones had extended a commanding fund-raising lead with $2.8 million in cash on hand. Mr. Jones, who jumped from the suburban Westchester County district he currently represents to the new 10th District to avoid a messy party primary with a fellow incumbent, entered the race with a significant head start. But he will likely need every penny in order to introduce himself to unfamiliar voters and overcome accusations of carpetbagging.Other candidates were also assembling sizable campaign war chests.Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the first impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump, quickly raised $1.2 million and ended the quarter with more than $1 million in cash. Bill de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, raised over $500,000; Carlina Rivera, a Manhattan city councilwoman, collected just over $400,000 in contributions; and Yuh-Line Niou, an assemblywoman from Chinatown, reported $240,000 in donations.Mr. de Blasio’s haul included substantial contributions from New York City’s real estate industry and several of his former mayoral appointees, including $1,000 from Dean Fuleihan, Mr. de Blasio’s deputy mayor, and $500 from Steven Banks, the head of social services under Mr. de Blasio. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      In Nadler-Maloney Matchup, Does Suraj Patel Stand a Chance?

      by

      Suraj Patel has few illusions about what he’s up against as he takes on two titans of New York politics, Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, in this summer’s blockbuster Democratic primary. But he does take hope from a theory about coffee shops.“There’s a Starbucks there and a Starbucks there, and then there’s some brand-new hipster coffee shop here,” the candidate said one recent weekday morning, whirling around 180 degrees in Velcro Stan Smith sneakers. “If all the people going to Starbucks split themselves half and half, then the third spot gets about 40 percent of the foot traffic.”“That,” he wagered a little optimistically, “is what we’re doing.”No doubt the Aug. 23 contest has been dominated by the bitter head-to-head confrontation between Ms. Maloney and Mr. Nadler, two septuagenarian fixtures of Manhattan’s political power structure who have been drawn into a single seat after serving three decades side by side in Washington.But in a summer when Democrats of all ages are reeling from stark losses on guns, abortion rights and the environment, Mr. Patel, 38, believes that discontent over the party’s aging leadership might just run deep enough for him to pull off a monumental upset.A frenetic Indian American lawyer who was just 9 when his opponents took office, Mr. Patel has adopted a less-than-meek approach. Campaigning recently in the heart of Mr. Nadler’s West Side stronghold, he sought to tie himself to Barack Obama and, when chatting up a retired apartment worker and union member, paraphrased the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic: “Fear is the mother of all sin.”“We’ve lost every major battle to Mitch McConnell and Republicans in the last decade, and the people who have been in office have no new answers,” Mr. Patel told him. “What we’re offering is a completely new set of arguments on inflation, on public safety, on economic growth and climate change.”The pitch landed. “I’m similar: proactive, go-getter, and you make sense,” replied the union man, Mario Sanders, keeping cool in an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt. He walked off down 72nd Street with glossy Patel leaflets in one hand and his dog, Juicy, cradled in the other.Flipping enough votes to actually win, though, will be vastly more difficult, as Mr. Patel learned in two previous attempts to defeat Ms. Maloney, 76.He came closest in 2020, when he lost by less than four percentage points, winning diverse areas in Brooklyn and Queens that have since been removed from the district.Because the courts shuffled the district lines this spring, he only has weeks to try to reintroduce himself to New Yorkers who, in some cases, have enthusiastically supported his opponents since the 1970s, and to push younger voters to show up.Key Results in New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsOn June 28, New York held several primaries for statewide office, including for governor and lieutenant governor. Some State Assembly districts also had primaries.Kathy Hochul: With her win in the Democratic, the governor of New York took a crucial step toward winning a full term, fending off a pair of spirited challengers.Antonio Delgado: Ms. Hochul’s second in command and running mate also scored a convincing victory over his nearest Democratic challenger, Ana María Archila.Lee Zeldin: The congressman from Long Island won the Republican primary for governor, advancing to what it’s expected to be a grueling general election.N.Y. State Assembly: Long-tenured incumbents were largely successful in fending off a slate of left-leaning insurgents in the Democratic primary.With the party establishment shunning him, his most notable endorser is Andrew Yang, the former presidential and mayoral candidate who subsequently left the Democratic Party.Nor is Mr. Patel drawing the sort of sharp ideological contrasts that have propelled challengers to victory in recent cycles. He shares his opponents’ support for left-leaning policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, though many on the left view him skeptically. “I respect the hell out of it,” he said of Mr. Nadler’s voting record.“That’s a hard needle to thread,” said Christina Greer, a political scientist at Fordham University. “Essentially, he’s saying, I will do the same thing they are doing, just minus 40 years’ experience.”Ms. Greer added that Mr. Patel had a heavy lift “to convince people he’s not just another young Obama upstart who thinks they are entitled to cut ahead of the queue.”Ms. Maloney and Mr. Nadler, flanking Gov. Kathy Hochul, were pushed into the same district after a court-ordered redistricting process.Anna Watts for The New York TimesMr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney appear torn between trying to ignore and to eviscerate Mr. Patel. They have dismissed his approach as ageist and warned that the city would suffer if it replaces two senior members with someone they charge has spent more time running for Congress than accomplishing anything of substance. “Most people do not go with that sort of ageism, most people look at people’s records,” Mr. Nadler, 75, said in May, not long after allies of both incumbents quietly tried to steer Mr. Patel to run in a neighboring district.Ms. Maloney recently told The West Side Rag that there was too much at stake for “on-the-job training” and accused Mr. Patel of “bigotry and lack of experience in dealing with critical issues I have dealt with my entire career.”In an interview over coffee (iced with Splenda, no milk) at an upscale cafe (Daily Provisions, neither Starbucks nor hipster), Mr. Patel insisted he was not worried about the institutional support lining up against him, nor his opponents’ critiques.He accused Ms. Maloney of using her perch in Congress to give oxygen to anti-vaccine activists (she says she supports vaccination) and knocked Mr. Nadler for taking corporate campaign funds.“Man, if you think people vote anymore on endorsements and other political leaders telling you who to vote for, then you’re missing the point,” he said.He showed up to greet voters in Chelsea on a Citi Bike, whipped out his iPhone to show off the average of seven miles a day he traverses on foot, and discussed his plans to start bar crawl canvassing, complete with coasters with his face on it. (He drew blowback for using the dating app Tinder to contact potential supporters in 2018.)His policy proposals skew technocratic, built around what Mr. Patel calls “the Abundant Society,” a plan for federal investments in education, child care, manufacturing and research.Mr. Patel came within four percentage points of upsetting Ms. Maloney in the 2020 primary.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesThe son of Indian immigrants, he lived above the family bodega in Bloomfield, N.J., where 13 people crammed in a one-bedroom apartment. The family moved to Indiana when he was 6 and bought its first motel.Mr. Patel tends to say less about how the business grew into a multimillion-dollar development and hotel management operation that made the family rich, spawned labor complaints and helped him finance a pricey East Village apartment and, until recently, a house in the Hamptons.In a city where politicians often rise through local office or activism, Mr. Patel dabbled in different lines of work: He helped the family business, including during the coronavirus pandemic; staffed Mr. Obama’s campaigns and White House travel; and taught business classes at N.Y.U.Mr. Patel would be the first Indian American from New York in Congress, and his campaign has drawn support from South Asians across the country. Indian American Impact, a national group, said it would run a WhatsApp messaging program to try to drive up turnout among the district’s small slice of South Asians. (Another Indian American, Ashmi Sheth, is also running.)“Democrats can’t just repackage the status quo and sell it back to voters as different when, in reality, people are looking for a clean break,” said Neil Makhija, the group’s leader.Across the district, though, responses to Mr. Patel’s overtures were more mixed.“Soon, when Nadler retires, then I’ll vote for you,” Roz Paaswell, 83, told him as he approached with a flier on the Upper West Side. “You’ve going to have a place in the city and in politics, but not in this seat.”Later, Ms. Paaswell heaped praise on Mr. Nadler and said she had never missed a vote. “He has seniority. He has clout. I love him,” she said.Vanessa Chen, 35, was equally blunt as she walked laps during her lunch break a few days later around Stuyvesant Town, one of the largest voting blocs in the district, just a stone’s throw from Mr. Patel’s apartment.“We just need new blood,” said Ms. Chen, a software engineer. “The Boomers are going. They don’t know how the new world works.”But does she plan to vote in August?“Probably,” she laughed, adding that she had not been aware of the primary date until a reporter informed her.Susan C. Beachy More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Court Ruling on Guns: The Legislature’s Options

      by

      It’s now up to Albany to pass restrictions on gun ownership that would be allowed under the Supreme Court decision invalidating New York’s law.Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at what the Legislature can do now that the Supreme Court has invalidated New York’s concealed-carry gun law. We’ll also look at how changing demographics are reflected in a House race in Manhattan.Michael Reynolds/EPA, via ShutterstockIn procedural terms, the Supreme Court decision striking down New York’s concealed-carry gun law sent the case back to lower courts. In practical terms, the decision sent the issue of gun control and gun violence to lawmakers in Albany, where Gov. Kathy Hochul called the ruling “shocking, absolutely shocking.”She was preparing to sign a school safety bill when the Supreme Court decision was announced and became visibly angry as she described the 6-to-3 ruling, which was built on a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment that is likely to make it harder for states to restrict guns. Hochul said she would call the Legislature back to Albany for a special session, probably next month, and that aides had already prepared draft legislation with new restrictions.She also said the state was considering changing the permitting process to create basic qualifications for gun owners, including training requirements. And she said New York was considering a system where businesses and private property owners could set their own restrictions on firearms.In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams said the decision was “just not rooted in reality” and “has made every single one of us less safe from gun violence.”“There is no place in the nation that this decision affects as much as New York City,” he said.But the question of the day was what the Legislature in Albany could do.“The hardest thing for the Legislature is to calmly write legislation that is not going to please everybody,” said Paul Finkelman, the chancellor and a distinguished professor at Gratz College in Philadelphia, who follows the New York Legislature. “It’s not going to please everyone who says we’ve got to get rid of firearms. That’s not where the world lives today.”He suggested setting an age threshold for gun permits, much like the ones for drivers’ licenses, and taxing firearms, much like gasoline or cigarettes.Vincent Bonventre, a professor at the Albany Law School, said the Legislature could restrict the possession of firearms by categories, putting guns out of the reach of convicted felons or people convicted of misdemeanors involving violence, for example. “It’s going to take some thought” to develop restrictions that would pass muster, “but not that much,” he said.Jonathan Lowy, the chief counsel of the gun control group Brady, has argued that letting more people carry hidden handguns would mean more violent crime — “in other words, more Americans will die,” he wrote in the New York University Law Review last year. On Thursday, the group estimated that more than 28,000 people had died from gun violence since the case was argued before the court last Nov. 3.Among those shot was Zaire Goodman, 21, who survived the May 14 supermarket massacre in Buffalo, N.Y. On Thursday his mother, Zeneta Everhart, said she feared the Supreme Court decision would contribute to more gun violence.“What else has to happen before this country wakes up and understands that the people in this country don’t feel safe?” she asked. “The government, the courts, the lawmakers — they are here to protect us, and I don’t feel protected.”WeatherIt will be mostly sunny, with temperatures reaching the high 70s. At night, it will be mostly clear with temps around the high 60s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until July 4 (Independence Day).The latest New York newsBrittainy Newman for The New York TimesCoronavirus vaccinesMandates: Mayor Eric Adams has not enforced the city’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for private businesses, and has no plans to do so.Parents’ relief: Families seeking vaccine shots for their children under age 5 trickled into vaccine hubs in Harlem and the Bronx. One parent said vaccinating his 3-year-old after 18 months of waiting gave him “peace of mind.”More local newsPenn Station woes: Nearly everyone agrees that something must be done to fix the chaos at Penn Station. Now comes the hard part of devising a solution that will steer clear of controversy.Maxwell’s sentencing: Federal prosecutors in Manhattan asked a judge to sentence Ghislaine Maxwell to at least 30 years in prison for helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit and abuse girls.Why Jewish political power has ebbed in New YorkRepresentative Carolyn Maloney, left, and Representative Jerrold Nadler are running against each other.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressAs recently as the 1990s, about half of the lawmakers whom New York City voters sent to the House of Representatives were Jewish. Now there is one, Representative Jerrold Nadler, and he is fighting for political survival because his district was combined with parts of Representative Carolyn Maloney’s on the Upper East Side. She’s running against him in the Aug. 23 primary. (That’s the right date. The congressional primaries are not being held next Tuesday with the primaries for statewide offices like governor and lieutenant governor. A federal judge ordered the House primaries delayed after the congressional districts were redrawn.)Last month we looked at the collision course that Nadler and Maloney are on. This week I asked my colleague Nicholas Fandos, who covers politics in New York, to put the race in the context of a changing New York.New York was long the center of Jewish political power in the United States. As recently as the 1990s, lawmakers who were Jewish made up about half of New York City’s delegation in the House of Representatives. What changed?It’s a complicated story, but it largely boils down to demographic change. New York’s Jewish population peaked in the 1950s, when one in four New Yorkers were Jewish. Today, there are about half as many Jewish residents in the city, and they tend to vote less cohesively than they once did. The exceptions are growing ultra-Orthodox communities, primarily in Brooklyn.Redistricting over the years has really reinforced this pattern.At the same time, New Yorkers of Black, Latino and Asian heritage have been gaining seats at the table that they historically did not have. So where in the early ’90s, eight New York City House members were Jewish, today nine of the 13 members representing parts of the city are Black or Latino, and another is Asian American.How did redistricting help Nadler in the past, and what happened this time around?Nadler’s current district was that way by design. Mapmakers in the past intentionally stitched together Jewish communities on the West Side of Manhattan with growing Orthodox ones in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, sometimes going to great lengths to connect them.But this year, a court-appointed mapmaker severed the connection. The mapmaker, it seems, was not persuaded that the communities shared enough interests to remain connected in such a geographically counterintuitive way.What about Nadler’s opponent in the primary, Representative Carolyn Maloney. She’s a Presbyterian running in what’s believed to be the most Jewish district in the country.Maloney is competing hard for the Jewish vote. She has been racking up endorsements. On the campaign trail, she touts a bill she’s passed on Holocaust education and her opposition to President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which Israel’s government vehemently opposed at the time. (Nadler supported the deal.)What about pro-Israel political groups? Which one are they backing, Nadler or Maloney?So far, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has been quite active in Democratic primaries this year, is staying neutral, or supporting both candidates actually. J Street, the pro-Israel lobby that tries to be a liberal counterweight to AIPAC, is raising money for Nadler.METROPOLITAN diaryDoughnut manDear Diary:It was 1950. My grandmother would pick me up after school on Seventh Street near Avenue B and take me for ice cream and a pretzel rod or some other treat.On this particular day, she said we were going to the Second Avenue Griddle, my favorite place for jelly doughnuts. They were topped with crunchy sugar. You could bite into them anywhere, and real raspberry jam would ooze onto your fingertips.I could hardly contain my excitement as we walked the three long avenue blocks to Second Avenue. We walked into the store, and the counterman handed me a doughnut in wax paper. I bit into it and immediately had jelly all over my face. I was in doughnut heaven.The counterman motioned for me to come behind the counter. He pointed to a tray of freshly baked doughnuts and handed me a clean white apron that hung to my ankles. Then he handed me a doughnut in wax paper and showed me how to glide it onto the nozzle of the jelly machine.With my free hand, I was to push the handle of the machine slowly down so the jelly streamed into the doughnut without shooting out the other side. I became proficient enough to move things along, and soon all the doughnuts were filled.I washed my hands and handed the apron back when I was finished. My grandmother and I left for home.“Your Uncle Lenny must love you very much,” she said as we were walking. “If the owner of the store had come in, he would have been in a lot of trouble.”— Sandy SnyderIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Could New York City Lose Its Last Remaining Jewish Congressman?

      by

      Three decades ago, Jewish lawmakers made up just over half of New York City’s House delegation. Now there is one: Jerrold Nadler, who faces a tough primary battle.The clock was nearing midnight on Shavuot, the Jewish Feast of Weeks, when Ruth W. Messinger offered a prophetic political warning to a crowd munching on holiday cheesecake at the Jewish community center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.For a century, New York has been the center of Jewish political power in the United States. So much so that as recently as the 1990s, Jewish lawmakers made up roughly about half of New York City’s delegation to the House of Representatives.Now, Ms. Messinger said at the event earlier this month, gesturing to the frumpily dressed older man sitting beside her, there is only one left — Representative Jerrold Nadler — and he could soon be ousted in this summer’s primary.“For those of you who are old and don’t believe this because you remember the glorious past, it would mean that New York City would no longer have a single Jewish representative in Congress,” said Ms. Messinger, an elder stateswoman in Manhattan’s liberal Jewish circles, who is backing Mr. Nadler.“This is, as far as I know, the largest concentration of Jews anywhere in the world,” she added, “so that’s pretty dramatic.”Mr. Nadler, an Upper West Side Democrat who is the longest-serving Jewish member of the House, finds himself fighting for political survival this summer after a court-appointed mapmaker combined key parts of his district with the Upper East Side seat represented by Representative Carolyn Maloney.The Aug. 23 contest between two powerful Democratic House committee chairs, both nearing the end of storied careers, will undoubtedly turn on many factors, grand and prosaic: ideology, geography, longstanding political rivalries and who turns out to the polls in New York’s sleepy end of summer.But for Jews, who once numbered two million people in New York City and have done as much as any group to shape its modern identity, the race also has the potential to be a watershed moment — a test of how much being an identifiably Jewish candidate still matters in a city where the tides of demographic and political clout have slowly shifted toward New Yorkers of Black, Latino and Asian heritage.“At a gut level, New York City without a Jewish representative would feel like — someplace else,” said Letty Cottin Pogrebin, an author, founding editor of Ms. magazine and self-described “dyed-in-the-wool New York Jew.”“You know, there are 57 varieties of Jews. We are racially and politically and religiously diverse to the point of lunacy sometimes,” she said. “You need somebody in the room who can decode our differences and explain the complexity of our issues.”A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, will face off against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in a Democratic primary on June 28.Adams’s Endorsement: The New York City mayor gave Ms. Hochul a valuable, if belated, endorsement that could help her shore up support among Black and Latino voters.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A Trump prosecutor. An ex-congressman. Bill de Blasio. A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Maloney vs. Nadler: The new congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.Mr. Nadler, 75, has acknowledged his particular status on the campaign trail, and wears his Jewishness with pride. Raised Orthodox in 1950s Brooklyn, he attended a Crown Heights yeshiva before his desire to study neuroscience led him to Stuyvesant High School. He still speaks some Yiddish, worships at B’nai Jeshurun, a historic Upper West Side synagogue, and sent some of his constituents swooning when he showed up to Donald J. Trump’s impeachment vote toting a babka from Zabar’s.Mr. Nadler attends religious services at B’nai Jeshurun, a synagogue on West 88th Street in Manhattan.Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images — LightRocket, via Getty ImagesSo far, though, he has mostly left it to others to make an identity-based case for his candidacy, opting to spend his own time talking about his record as a progressive stalwart. Mr. Nadler declined an interview request.New York sent its first Jewish representative, a merchant named Emanuel B. Hart, to Congress in 1851. By 1992, when Mr. Nadler arrived in the House, there were eight Jewish members representing parts of New York City alone.Today, nine of the 13 members representing parts of the five boroughs are Black or Latino. Another is Asian American.No one is suggesting that Jewish politicians will be locked out of power permanently in New York if Mr. Nadler loses. There are other Jewish candidates running for city House seats this year, including Max Rose, Daniel Goldman and Robert Zimmerman, though each faces an uphill fight to win. Others will undoubtedly emerge in future elections, including from the city’s fast-growing ultra-Orthodox communities. And Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, is also Jewish.But the rise and fall of Jewish influence is a clear, familiar arc in a city that has absorbed waves of immigrants, who grew in numbers, economic power and, eventually, political stature — only to be supplanted by those who followed. It happened to the Dutch, English, Germans, Irish and Italians, and now to New York’s Jews, who at their peak in the 1950s accounted for a quarter or more of the city’s total population and gained footholds at all levels of government.Since then, large numbers of Jews have left the city, said Daniel Soyer, a historian at Fordham University who has written about New York Jewish history, bringing the present population to just over one million. At the same time, many American Jews began to assimilate and secularize, weakening the shared identity that drove them to vote as a cohesive group and elect their own candidates; some left the Democratic Party, their longtime home.The exception has been ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley. But while they have succeeded in electing their own to state and local offices, they exercise less sway at the congressional level.Successive cycles of redistricting have not helped, forcing New York to shed congressional seats and fracturing Jewish enclaves between districts. Mr. Nadler’s current seat, New York’s 10th District, had been deliberately drawn to connect Jewish communities on the West Side of Manhattan with Orthodox ones in Brooklyn’s Borough Park. This year, the court mapmaker severed the two areas.“When I was in Congress, you could have a minyan in the New York delegation,” said Steve Israel, a Democrat who once represented Nassau County and parts of Queens in Congress. “We went from a minyan to a minority to hardly anybody.”The dwindling was gradual, and in some cases merely a matter of chance. In 1992, Bill Green, a liberal Republican from the Upper East Side, lost to a young upstart, Ms. Maloney. The same year, Representative Stephen J. Solarz saw his Brooklyn district cracked in redistricting and lost in a bid for a neighboring seat drawn to empower Hispanic voters.Gary L. Ackerman, another long-tenured Jewish lawmaker known for importing kosher deli food for an annual Washington fund-raiser, retired during the last redistricting cycle in 2012, when mapmakers stitched together growing Asian populations, which in turn led to the election of the city’s first Asian congresswoman, Grace Meng.“There are new groups coming in who are flexing their political power,” said Eliot L. Engel, a former Jewish congressman from the Bronx who lost a Democratic primary in 2020 to Jamaal Bowman, a young Black educator. “I guess that’s what makes America great.”Those changes have helped push Jews toward coalition building, de-emphasizing the need for Jewish candidates to represent Jewish interests.Mr. Israel recalled a meeting with the Israeli consul general in New York as early as 2016 in which the diplomat talked openly about the need to recalibrate his country’s outreach to cultivate stronger relationships with a rising cohort of Black and Latino lawmakers.“They saw this coming and realized that being able to count on a delegation of Engels, Ackermans, Nadlers and Israels was not going to last for long,” Mr. Israel said.The new 12th Congressional District — which covers the width of Manhattan, from Union Square roughly to the top of Central Park — is believed to be the most Jewish in the country, home to a diverse array of Orthodox, conservative, reform and secular Jews. Ms. Maloney, who is Presbyterian but represents a sizable Jewish population on the East Side, has positioned herself as a staunch ally of Israel and American Jews.Her campaign is challenging Mr. Nadler for Jewish votes and has highlighted her authorship of a bill promoting Holocaust education and, above all, a vote against former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. That position won her plaudits from more conservative segments of New York’s Jewish community, which condemned Mr. Nadler for supporting the deal.“It’s not about the religion, it’s about the beliefs,” said Harley Lippman, a New York businessman active in Jewish-Israeli relations. He argued that non-Jews like Ms. Maloney were often more effective “because no one could say they are biased.”Ms. Maloney accused Mr. Nadler of using his Jewishness as a divisive campaign tactic.Mary Altaffer/Associated Press“We may take a certain pride — like an Italian-American would if he sees a congressman with a vowel at the end of the last name — but it’s not much more than trivia,” said Mr. Lippman, who is registered to vote in Florida, but is raising money for Ms. Maloney.Ms. Maloney was less forgiving in an interview, accusing Mr. Nadler and his allies of wielding his Jewishness as a “divisive tactic” in the race. (A third Democrat, Suraj Patel, is also competing in the race.)“It’s a strange way to run, it’s sort of like, ‘Vote for me, I’m the only woman, or I’m the only white person, I’m the only Black person,’” she said. “Why don’t you put forward your statement, your issues, what you’ve done and the merit you bring to the race?”Major pro-Israel political groups, who have spent millions of dollars in Democratic primaries across the country this year, appear to be split on the Nadler-Maloney race.Marshall Wittmann, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, pointed out that the group’s PAC had contributed to both candidates earlier this year “in recognition of their support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.”J Street, the pro-Israel lobby that tries to act as a liberal counterweight to AIPAC, plans to raise as much as six figures to support Mr. Nadler.Mr. Nadler’s allies argue that on matters of substance, representation and gut-level identity, he brings qualities to his role that are different from those a non-Jewish person could offer.In an era when his party’s left flank has grown increasingly hostile to Israel, his supporters contend that Mr. Nadler has used his position as the informal dean of the House Jewish caucus to try to bridge more traditional Zionists and Israel’s progressive critics on issues like the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement and support for Israeli defense.His 2015 vote for the Iran deal — detailed in a 5,200-word essay — soured his relationship, perhaps permanently, with some ultra-Orthodox communities he represents. But it also opened the door for greater support.“No one doubts Jerry’s progressive bona fides and no one doubts his commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said Representative Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who is retiring to lead the American Jewish Committee. “That’s a really, really important role, especially at this moment.” More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Maloney vs. Nadler? New York Must Pick a Side (East or West)

      by

      New congressional lines have put two stalwart Manhattan Democrats on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary. Barney Greengrass is staying neutral.As he sat in the shade of Riverside Park on a sparkling recent weekday morning in Manhattan, Representative Jerrold Nadler tried to make sense of how two powerful allies suddenly found themselves at war.A court-ordered redrawing of New York’s congressional district lines had combined the East and West Sides of Manhattan into a single district for the first time since World War II, putting Mr. Nadler and Representative Carolyn Maloney, a longtime colleague, on a potentially disastrous collision course in the Aug. 23 Democratic primary.Attempts to broker a peace settlement were made, but Mr. Nadler, over a chilled Diet Coke, acknowledged that they were somewhat halfhearted.He recalled telling Ms. Maloney in a private conversation on the House floor in Washington a few days earlier that he would win, suggesting she run for a neighboring seat.“She said basically the opposite, and so it was an impasse,” Mr. Nadler said, “and we left it at that.”On an island known for Democratic infighting, Mr. Nadler, 74, and Ms. Maloney, 76, have managed to coexist more or less peacefully for three decades.They built parallel political machines and accumulated important committee chairmanships. Along the way, they had become powerful stalwarts — if not political mascots — in their districts: Ms. Maloney, a pathbreaking feminist and the widow of an investment banker, represents an East Side district so wealthy it was once christened the silk-stocking district; Mr. Nadler, a proudly opinionated old-school progressive, holds down the West Side.But their long truce came to a shattering end last week, when a state court imposed a significant revision on New York’s congressional map. The new lines have roiled Democrats across the state, but perhaps nowhere has the change been more disruptive than Manhattan.“I’d say it’s sad,” Ms. Maloney said in an interview near her Upper East Side home. “It’s sad for the city.”The primary matchup between Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney may be one of the most bruising political spectacles in living memory, a crosstown clash between two respected party elders in the twilight of their careers. And it will play out in one of the most politically influential pockets of the United States — home to financiers, media titans and entertainers, and the source of millions of dollars in campaign donations each election cycle.Not since Bella Abzug challenged fellow West Side representative William Fitts Ryan in a 1972 race pitting two liberal icons against each other has New York City faced a primary contest with the potential to be quite so fraught.“No one ever forgot that,” Harold Holzer, a historian and former aide to Ms. Abzug, said of the primary contest. “Maybe this will be more heartbreaking than it is infuriating. But for those who lived through the first one and remained pained by it for years, it’s history repeating itself.”Representative William Fitts Ryan beat Representative Bella S. Abzug in a 1972 primary. He died two months later.Stanley Wolfson/World Telegram & Sun, via Library of CongressAfter Mr. Ryan’s death, Ms. Abzug defeated his wife to retain a seat in the House.Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesAnd yet neither Mr. Nadler nor Ms. Maloney has wasted any time working the phones to pressure union leaders, old political allies and wealthy donors — many of whom the two have shared for years — to pick sides.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.Allies of Ms. Maloney whispered doubts about Mr. Nadler’s health. (His aides say his health is good.) Mr. Nadler’s associates circulated old news articles about Ms. Maloney’s obsession with pandas, and suggested that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is officially neutral in the race, really preferred him.For all their superficial differences, Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney have had broadly similar career arcs.Both came up through local New York City politics in the 1970s. Mr. Nadler was a precocious young lawyer who started a group of self-styled reformers, the West Side Kids, and won a State Assembly seat in 1976. Ms. Maloney, a former teacher, was a top legislative aide in Albany before winning a City Council seat in 1982. She was the first Council member to give birth while in office and the first to introduce legislation giving rights to same-sex couples.They arrived in Congress within two months of each other in the early 1990s. Mr. Nadler inherited his safely Democratic West Side seat when the incumbent died of a heart attack on the eve of the primary. Ms. Maloney had to work harder for hers, upsetting a long-serving liberal Republican, Bill Green, to win the East Side seat once held by Mayors John V. Lindsay and Edward I. Koch.Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney are among the House’s most progressive members and both lead prestigious committees. Ms. Maloney is the chair of the Oversight and Reform Committee, which most recently oversaw an overhaul of the Postal Service. Mr. Nadler leads the Judiciary Committee, a role that earned him national attention during President Donald J. Trump’s two impeachments.Neither lawmaker grew up in Manhattan. Ms. Maloney is from Greensboro, N.C. Mr. Nadler, the son of a one-time chicken farmer, was mostly raised in Brooklyn. Both have strongly rebuffed pleas to retire.“I’ve never been more effective,” Ms. Maloney said.Mr. Nadler, the city’s only remaining Jewish congressman, was even more direct: “No. No. No. No. No. No.”Ms. Maloney, center, at a 1992 reception for her and other incoming female House members.Laura Patterson/CQ Roll Call, via Getty ImagesMr. Nadler campaigning in the Bensonhurst section in 1994, when the area was in his district.Donna Dietrich/Newsday, via Getty ImagesMs. Maloney enters the contest with an apparent, if slight, demographic edge: She already represents about 60 percent of the voters in the new district. The spread narrows among Democratic primary voters, according to data complied by the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center.Political analysts are warning that the outcome may depend on who casts ballots in a primary in late August, when many residents of the Upper East and West Sides decamp to the Hamptons or the Hudson Valley.A third Democrat, Suraj Patel, is also running. His premise is that it is time to give a younger generation a chance to lead. He came within four percentage points of beating Ms. Maloney in the primary two years ago. (Mr. Nadler, by contrast, has not had a close election in nearly 50 years.)“If you are satisfied with the state of New York, the country or the Democratic Party, they are your candidates,” Mr. Patel, 38 said.For now, predictions about which candidate will win appear to correlate with proximity to the Hudson and East Rivers.“The West Side votes heavily, that’s to our advantage,” said Gale Brewer, a former Manhattan borough president who now represents the area on the City Council. She added of Mr. Nadler, whom she is backing: “He’s got a brain that is frightening.”Rebecca A. Seawright, an assemblywoman from the Upper East Side supporting Ms. Maloney, said that the congresswoman has “endless energy” and an innate understanding of women’s priorities that her allies believe will resonate with voters in a year when the Supreme Court may strike down Roe v. Wade.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Approves N.Y. House Map, Cementing Chaos for Democrats

      by

      The new district lines, approved late Friday night, will create pickup opportunities for Republicans and force Democratic incumbents to run against each other.A state court formally approved New York’s new congressional map late Friday, ratifying a slate of House districts drawn by a neutral expert that could pave the way for Democratic losses this fall and force some of the party’s most prominent incumbents to face off in primary matches.The map, approved just before a midnight deadline set by Justice Patrick F. McAllister of State Supreme Court in Steuben County, effectively unwinds an attempted Democratic gerrymander, creates a raft of new swing seats across the state, and scrambles some carefully laid lines that have long determined centers of power in New York City.Jonathan R. Cervas, the court-appointed mapmaker, made relatively minor changes to a draft proposal released earlier this week whose sweeping changes briefly united both Republicans and Democrats in exasperation and turned Democrats against each other.In Manhattan, the final map would still merge the seats of Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, setting the two Democratic committee leaders, who have served alongside each other for 30 years, onto an increasingly inevitable collision course.Another awkward Democratic primary loomed up the Hudson in Westchester County, where two Black Democratic House members were drawn into a single district. But the worst outcome for Democrats appeared to be averted early Saturday morning when one of the incumbents, Representative Mondaire Jones, said he would forego re-election in his Westchester seat. He said he would run instead in a newly reconfigured 10th Congressional District in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, a race that has already drawn the candidacy of Bill de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, but which no other sitting House member is expected to enter.Republicans were already eying pickup opportunities in the suburbs of Long Island and in the 18th and 19th Districts in the Hudson Valley that could help them retake control of the House. Representative Mondaire Jones said he would run in a newly reconfigured 10th Congressional District.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesAnd in New York City’s only Republican-held district, Representative Nicole Malliotakis breathed a sigh of relief that Mr. Cervas had reversed one of the boldest moves by the Democratic leaders in the State Legislature, when they inserted liberal Park Slope, Brooklyn, into her Staten Island-based district.Some of the most notable changes between the initial and final district lines came in historically Black communities in Brooklyn, where Mr. Cervas reunited Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights into single districts. He had faced uproar from Black lawmakers and civil rights groups after his first proposal divided them into separate seats.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.Responding to feedback from community groups, Mr. Cervas also revised the map to reunite Manhattan’s Chinatown with Sunset Park in Brooklyn, another heavily Asian American community, in the 10th Congressional District. In each case, he said the communities had been “inadvertently split” in his first proposal.Justice McAllister’s order approving the congressional and additional State Senate maps on Friday makes New York one of the final states in the nation to complete its decennial redistricting process. But both parties were already girding late Friday for the potential for civil rights or political groups to file new, long-shot lawsuits challenging the maps in state or federal court.Justice McAllister used the unusual five-page order to rebut criticisms leveled at Mr. Cervas and the court in recent days, as the maps were hastily drafted out of public view. He conceded that the rushed time frame was “less than ideal” but defended the final maps as “almost perfectly neutral” with 15 safe Democratic seats, three safe Republican seats and eight swing seats.“Unfortunately some people have encouraged the public to believe that now the court gets to create its own gerrymandered maps that favor Republicans,” wrote Justice McAllister, a Republican. “Such could not be further from the truth. The court is not politically biased.”The final map was a stark disappointment for Democrats, who control every lever of power in New York and had entered this year’s decennial redistricting cycle with every expectation of gaining seats that could help hold their House majority. They appeared to be successful in February, when the Legislature adopted a congressional map that would have made their candidates favorites in 22 of 26 districts, an improvement from the 19 Democrats currently hold.The new map reverses one of the boldest moves by Democratic leaders: inserting Park Slope, Brooklyn, into Representative Nicole Malliotakis’s Staten Island-based district.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut Republicans sued in state court, and Justice McAllister, a judge in the state’s rural Southern Tier, ruled that the maps violated a 2014 state constitutional amendment outlawing partisan gerrymandering and reforming the mapmaking process in New York. In late April, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, upheld the decision and ordered a court-appointed special master to redraw the lines.Justice McAllister appointed Mr. Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon with few ties to New York and scant experience drawing state lines, and delayed the congressional and State Senate elections until Aug. 23.On Friday, Mr. Cervas produced a 26-page report explaining the rationale of his map, in which he tried to balance the need to protect communities of shared interest, existing districts, and other constitutional requirements.Mr. Cervas eliminated one district overall, carving it out of central New York to shrink the state’s congressional delegation to 26. The change was required after New York failed to keep pace with national population growth in the 2020 census.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More