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      Sue Altman Will Run for Tom Kean Jr.’s House Seat in NJ

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      Sue Altman, the leader of a progressive organization in New Jersey, announced Wednesday that she would run for the House seat currently held by Representative Tom Kean Jr., a Republican.New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District was redrawn last year specifically to boost the chances of Republicans. It worked.Now, Democrats are trying to win back the seat. But rather than turn to a centrist who mirrors the conservative ethos of the region, the party appears to be coalescing around a candidate who for four years has been the face of New Jersey’s progressive left: Sue Altman.Ms. Altman, who leads the state’s liberal-leaning Working Families Alliance and is an ally of Gov. Philip D. Murphy, announced her candidacy Wednesday morning.“We’ve trained hard in New Jersey to fight corruption,” Ms. Altman, 41, said in an interview. “And I’m ready to turn these skills toward a bigger, much more urgent fight.”Last year, redistricting shored up the odds of victory for the incumbent party in 11 of New Jersey’s 12 congressional districts. The only incumbent to lose was Tom Malinowski, a two-term Democrat who represented the Seventh District, which stretches from one side of northern New Jersey to the other and takes in mainly suburban and rural communities.Tom Kean Jr., a former Republican state lawmaker and namesake of a well-liked governor, defeated Mr. Malinowski in November by 8,691 votes, or roughly three percentage points, to join Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s fractious, narrow majority in Washington.The seat has been identified as a key target of Democrats hoping to regain control of the House. Over Memorial Day weekend, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran an ad on a highway billboard that yoked Mr. Kean to former President Donald J. Trump, offering a peek at what is likely to be a nationwide strategy next year in races that coincide with the presidential contest.With a year and a half before the election, it is likely that additional Democratic challengers to Mr. Kean will emerge. But Ms. Altman’s early entry and name recognition gives her a clear edge in a race that even the state’s Democratic Party chairman, LeRoy J. Jones Jr., acknowledges will be an uphill fight.“Sue Altman is a formidable candidate — and so far the only candidate,” Mr. Jones said. “Without hearing from anyone else, Sue is in a position to make her case to ultimately be the Democratic nominee.”It is by some measures a counterintuitive choice. The candidate will be running from the left in a district where registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats by 16,000 voters.Harrison Neely, a top political adviser to Mr. Kean, said Ms. Altman represented the “most divisive and extreme aspects of the fringe of her party.”Mr. Neely said Mr. Kean’s focus on reducing the cost of living in New Jersey and his efforts to work across the aisle as a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus illustrated his “common-sense solutions to our national challenges.” He said he was confident Mr. Kean would be re-elected.Ms. Altman said she too intended to focus on making New Jersey more affordable, while stressing the importance of abortion rights, the environment and gun safety.“Moms and dads should not feel afraid to drop off kids at school, worried about a mass shooting,” she said. “We absolutely have to do something to stop it.” Ms. Altman grew up in Clinton, N.J., and now lives in Lambertville, both of which are in Hunterdon County, an affluent region known for its horse farms.A star high school and college basketball player, Ms. Altman also played at Oxford University while earning her M.B.A.Her organizing tactics have earned her a reputation as a firebrand willing to throw punches.She has led protest singalongs outside the offices of Representative Josh Gottheimer, a fellow Democrat, over his brinkmanship during negotiations over key pillars of President Biden’s infrastructure and social welfare agenda.She handed out fake million-dollar bills to mock George Norcross III, a longtime political power broker and frequent nemesis, and sparred with former Republican Gov. Chris Christie over school funding at a 2016 town hall.“Pity the policy staffer whose job it is to explain something to Sue Altman,” said Jennifer Holdsworth, a Democratic strategist based in Washington with two decades of experience with campaigns in New Jersey.“Even her detractors, her adversaries, would say she is incredibly smart on the issues.”Robert Torricelli, a Democrat who lives in the Seventh District and represented New Jersey in both chambers of Congress, said he anticipated the race would be one of the premier nationwide matchups as Democrats work to chip away at the Republicans’ House majority.“I actually think she’s exactly the right contrast to Tom Kean,” said Mr. Torricelli, who was influential in selecting candidates to run for Congress when he led the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee between 1999 and 2001. “Sue brings enormous energy.”Mr. Torricelli said Ms. Altman’s anti-establishment résumé and her ability to appeal directly to women were likely to gain traction in a district filled with independent-minded voters.“This is the kind of district where people think they’re Republicans,” he added. “But they’re also pro-environment, pro-choice and culturally progressive.” More

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      in US Politics

      Muslim mayor turned away from White House Eid event: ‘There is a secret list’

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      The US Secret Service denied security clearance for Mohamed Khairullah, the longest-serving Muslim mayor in New Jersey, and prevented him from attending a White House Eid al-Fitr event on Monday afternoon marking the end of Ramadan.Khairullah, who was critical of the Trump administration’s travel ban in 2017 that restricted entry to the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries, received the call from the Secret Service while he was en route to the White House. President Joe Biden revoked that ban in 2021.“It’s disappointing and it’s shocking that this continues to happen under our constitution which provides that everyone is innocent unless proven guilty,” Khairullah, 47, told NewJersey.com. “I honestly don’t know what my charge, if you want to put it that way, is at this point, to be treated in such a manner.”In a statement to the newspaper, United States Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Khairullah was denied entry to the event on Monday night, regretting “any inconvenience this may have caused” and noting that they were unable to “comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House”.Two days earlier, Khairullah, who has been mayor of Prospect Park, New Jersey, a small town of 6,000 people, for more than 17 years, appeared alongside the state’s governor, Phil Murphy, at the gubernatorial mansion for an Eid celebration.Khairullah, who was born in Syria before fleeing persecution as a teenager and moving to the United States with his parents in the 1990s, served as a volunteer firefighter and delivered humanitarian aid to refugees in Syria and Bangladesh for the Syrian American Medical Society and the Watan Foundation. In 2019, Khairullah had been detained for three hours at John F Kennedy international airport after he returned from a trip to Turkey with his family.Khairullah told NewJersey.com that he sought out more information from federal officials on why he was detained but they would not disclose their reasoning. After he informed the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of what happened, the group reviewed a leaked copy of the federal terrorist screening dataset, which contains details on more than 1 million people suspected of being involved in terrorist activities, and informed him that his name and birthdate appeared in it.The Council on American-Islamic Relations has criticized the list for containing “almost entirely lists of Arabic and Muslim names” and called on the Biden administration to stop the FBI from spreading information from that terrorism dataset. Representatives for the group condemned the White House’s denial of entry to Khairullah, with the New Jersey chapter’s executive director, Selaedin Maksut, describing it as “wholly unacceptable and insulting”.“If these such incidents are happening to high-profile and well-respected American-Muslim figures like Mayor Khairullah, this then begs the question: what is happening to Muslims who do not have the access and visibility that the mayor has?” Maksut told the local New Jersey news outlet.Khairullah lamented that he could not enter the “People’s House”, telling NewJersey.com that “there is a secret list I can’t clear my name from and it still haunts me and follows me where I go”.“It’s not a matter of ‘I didn’t get to go to a party.’ It’s why I did not go. And it’s a list that has targeted me because of my identity,” Khairullah added to Al Jazeera. “And I don’t think the highest office in the United States should be down with such profiling.” More

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      in Elections

      New Jersey Gov. Murphy Signs Bill That Reshapes Campaign Finance Laws

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      The bill doubles New Jersey’s campaign contribution limits and quashes investigations by a watchdog agency.In January, a watchdog agency created 50 years ago to safeguard the integrity of campaign fund-raising in New Jersey filed four complaints. Three cited irregularities in powerful Democrat-led accounts, and one dinged a committee set up to elect Republicans.All of the complaints had the potential to result in hefty fines. And all of them vanished Monday afternoon when the governor, Philip D. Murphy, signed a controversial bill that fundamentally reshapes New Jersey’s campaign finance laws.The bill, which narrowly cleared the State Legislature last week, began as a way to double donation limits to candidates and to require some so-called dark money fund-raising groups to disclose large donors, whose identities are currently secret.But as the legislation moved through Trenton, where Democrats control the Assembly and Senate, amendments were added that make it harder to rein in — or police — campaign spending.One change gives Mr. Murphy an easier way to replace the executive director of the Election Law Enforcement Commission, known as ELEC. Another lets state and county political committees collect contributions to pay for operating expenses — funds that Philip Hensley, a policy analyst for the League of Women Voters of New Jersey, has decried as unregulated “slush money.”And a third alteration to the bill slashes the time for investigating allegations of impropriety to two years, down from 10. The change is retroactive, and the four complaints filed in January, which stem from fund-raising done in 2017, will be quashed, along with an estimated 80 percent of the agency’s other open investigations, officials have said.On Monday afternoon, the governor’s office sent an email that noted he had signed the bill, but it offered no additional comment.The overhaul of New Jersey’s campaign finance rules comes 13 years after a United States Supreme Court ruling in favor of Citizens United unleashed limitless federal spending by corporations and unions. Since then, some Republican and Democrat-led states have also taken steps to curb the enforcement powers of agencies set up to limit the influence of money in government. “At a time when people everywhere are concerned about the health of democracy in our country,” Mr. Hensley said, “this is just the antithesis of good government.”He called New Jersey’s new law a “frontal assault on some of the rules that have protected good government.”After the bill passed, the election agency’s three commissioners — two Democrats and one Republican — resigned in protest. The fourth seat on the board had been vacant.Stephen M. Holden, a Democrat and former state judge who quit the board last week, called the legislation a “transparent abuse of power.”“It eviscerates our authority and independence,” he said.The two-year time clock for investigations will start at the moment an infraction occurs. But allegations of impropriety rarely surface until at least six months to a year after an election, Mr. Holden said.“If we didn’t get to you within two years, you’re home free,” he said ruefully.Nicholas Scutari, the Democratic president of the State Senate and a sponsor of the bill, has defended the altered statute of limitations, likening the 10-year time frame to a police officer writing a ticket long after a traffic infraction.The agency’s executive director, Jeffrey M. Brindle, had argued that a five-year window would be appropriate, bringing New Jersey in line with many other states.Opponents of the bill said that the two-year statute of limitations was a bald political effort to quash pending investigations and to be free of risk from any as-yet-undiscovered campaign finance violations that took place before April 2021.“What is in those previous eight years yet to be investigated that they don’t want to be investigated?” asked Assemblyman Brian Bergen, a Republican and one of the most vocal opponents of the bill.“Just wiping it off the books? This doesn’t pass the sniff test,” he added.He found rare common cause with many of the state’s left-leaning advocacy organizations, which fought for over a month against the bill.“It rolls back decades of reform,” Mr. Bergen said.The bill became intertwined with the Murphy administration’s efforts to remove Mr. Brindle from a job he has held for 14 years after the discovery of an email he wrote, which the attorney general’s office later concluded was “demeaning” to members of the gay community.Mr. Brindle has since sued the governor and several aides for what his lawyer has said was an effort to extort Mr. Brindle’s resignation by threatening to publicize the email. Mr. Murphy’s spokesman has said that Mr. Brindle was never threatened.The new law gives Mr. Murphy 90 days to appoint an entirely new four-person election board, circumventing the traditional approval needed from the State Senate. The commissioners, who are empowered to hire and fire the agency’s executive director, would also be paid a $30,000 annual stipend.In Mr. Murphy’s most recent comments about the legislation, during a March 22 radio broadcast, the governor declined to discuss the merits of the bill, instead noting that his administration had expanded voting access over the last several years.“Anything that we believe is on the side of transparency that is responsible, that opens up democracy, that shines a light as opposed to the opposite, assume that we’re going to be for it,” he said, noting that at the time, the bill was still being amended. “I think we wait and see what the final, what this looks like as it iterates.” More

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      in US Politics

      American Ramble review: a riveting tale of the divided United States

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      In spring 2021, Neil King trekked 330 miles from his Washington DC home to New York City. He passed through countryside, highways, towns and churchyards. His 25-day walk was also a journey through time. He looked at the US as it was and is and how it wishes to be seen. His resultant book is a beautifully written travelog, memoir, chronicle and history text. His prose is mellifluous, yet measured.In his college days, King drove a New York cab. At the Wall Street Journal, his remit included politics, terror and foreign affairs. He did a stint as global economics editor. One might expect him to be jaded. Fortunately, he is not. American Ramble helps make the past come alive.In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, King stops at the home of James Buchanan, the bachelor president from 1857 to 1861, who sympathized with the south and loathed abolition. Ending slavery could wait. Of the supreme court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, Buchanan highly approved.Also in Lancaster, King visits a townhouse once owned by Thaddeus Stevens, the 19th-century Republican congressman and radical abolitionist. At the start of the civil war, Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, viewed the conflict as the vehicle for preserving the Union. He opposed slavery but opposed secession more. For Stevens, slavery was an evil that demanded eradication.Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, King describes how the ancestors of one town greeted Confederate troops as heroes while another just 20 miles away viewed them as a scourge. Forks in the road are everywhere.King pays homage to the underground railroad, describing how the Mason-Dixon Line, the demarcation between north and south, free state and slave, came into being. Astronomy and borders had a lot to do with it. All of this emerges from the scenery and places King passes on his way.Imagining George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, he delivers a lesson on how such rivers came to be named. Names affixed to bodies of water by Indigenous peoples gave way to Dutch pronunciation, then anglicization. The Delaware, however, derived its moniker from Lord De La Warr, a “dubious aristocrat” otherwise known as Thomas West.Yet joy and wonder suffuse King’s tale. He smiles on the maker’s handiwork, uneven as it is. American Ramble depicts a stirring sunset and nightfall through the roof-window of a Quaker meeting house. Quiet stands at the heart of the experience. The here and now is loud and messy, but King ably conveys the silent majesty of the moment. The Bible recounts the Deity’s meeting with the prophet Elijah. He was not in the wind, a fire or an earthquake. Rather, He resided in a whisper.King recalls an earlier time in a Buddhist monastery. Warned that surrounding scenery would detract from solitude and commitment, he nevertheless succumbed. King is nothing if not curious.The quotidian counts too. He pops cold beers, downs pizzas and snarfs chicken parmesan. A wanderer needs sustenance. He is grateful for the day following the night. Predictability is miraculous, at times invaluable.King is a cancer survivor and a pilgrim. He is a husband and father, son and brother. Life’s fragility and randomness have left their mark. His malady is in remission but he moves like a man unknowing how long good fortune will last. His voice is a croak, a casualty of Lyme disease. He is restless. Life’s clock runs. He writes of how his brother Kevin lost his battle with a brain tumor.King puts his head and heart on the page. His life story helps drive the narrative, a mixture of the personal, political and pastoral. But it is not only about him. He meets strangers who become friends, of a sort. At times, people treat him as an oddity – or simply an unwanted presence. More frequently, they are open if not welcoming. As his walk continues, word gets out. Minor celebrity results.The author is awed by generosity, depravation and the world. He is moved by a homeless woman and her daughter. Traversing the New Jersey Turnpike presents a near-insurmountable challenge. A mother and son offer him a kayak to paddle beneath the traffic. He accepts.A Colorado native, King is at home in the outdoors. Nature is wondrous and sometimes disturbing. Rough waters complicate his passages. He studies heaps on a landfill. He meets a New Jerseyan with pickup truck adorned by Maga flags. The gentleman bestows beer, snacks and jokes. King divides the universe into “anywheres” and “somewheres”. He puts himself in the first camp and finds placed-ness all around.American Ramble captures the religious and demographic topography that marks the mid-Atlantic and north-eastern US. Here, dissenters, Anabaptists, German pietists, Presbyterians and Catholics first landed. King pays homage to their pieces of turf. His reductionism is gentle. He appreciates the legacy of what came before him. Landscapes change, human nature less so, even as it remains unpredictable.“When I crossed the Delaware two days before,” he writes, “I had entered what I later came to call Presbyteriana, a genteel and horsey patch settled by Presbyterians and Quakers.” Princeton University stands at its heart.E pluribus unum was tough to pull off when the settlers came. It may even be tougher now. King quotes Nick Rizzo, a denizen of Staten Island, New York City’s Trumpy outer borough: “We are losing our ability to forge any unity at all from these United States.”Rizzo joined King along the way. In the Canterbury Tales, April stands as the height of spring. It was prime time for religious pilgrimages, “what with Chaucer and all, and it being April”, Rizzo explains.“Strangers rose to the occasion to provide invaluable moments,” King writes. Amen.
      American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal is published in the US by HarperCollins More

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      in Elections

      New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy Has an Eye on Washington

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      The New Jersey governor, re-elected in 2021, is term-limited and has an eye on Washington.It was a whirlwind few days for New Jersey’s term-limited governor, Philip D. Murphy.On a Tuesday in mid-February he publicly chided Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, by name, calling his education policies “shameful.” The next day at noon, he proposed requiring all new cars sold after 2035 to be electric, following California’s lead. By early Thursday, Mr. Murphy, a Democrat, had made an unannounced stop in Ukraine en route to a security conference in Germany.Back home in Jersey, the message was clear: The governor’s slow-windup romance with Washington was now a full-boil courtship, though his primary audience might have trouble finding Trenton on a map.“You don’t fade into the woodwork if you have national ambitions,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University, who for decades has watched New Jersey politicians use the state’s quirky off-year election cycle and proximity to New York’s media market as a springboard toward higher office.“You never know when opportunity might strike.”The 2024 presidential contest is well underway. President Biden is expected to run for a second term and the list of Republicans who have announced campaigns or are expected to run already includes Mr. DeSantis (who did not respond to Mr. Murphy’s criticism), former President Donald J. Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina.Mr. Murphy has consistently said he would be Mr. Biden’s No. 1 booster if he runs again, and he recently signed on to an advisory board of Democratic loyalists who are expected to be deployed as Biden surrogates when the campaign ramps up.Still, Mr. Murphy, a wealthy former Democratic National Committee finance chairman and ambassador to Germany who amassed a fortune at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, has never completely closed the door to running for the White House should the president’s plans change.And, either way, he appears as intent as ever at cultivating a national image, aware, perhaps, that there are often consolation prizes.On Saturday, Mr. Murphy will try to spit-polish his résumé with humor when he takes the mic at the annual Gridiron Club dinner, a famously irreverent white-tie-and-tails roast that draws Washington’s top journalists and political insiders. (The other speaker that night will be Mr. Pence.)Close associates say Mr. Murphy, who declined to comment for this article, is genuinely unsure about the job he might want next, but they speculate that he could be interested in again being an ambassador or perhaps even secretary of state.A graduate of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania who grew up outside of Boston, he now counts the musician Jon Bon Jovi among his closest friends. But he comes from humble means, the youngest of four children in a working-class Irish-Catholic family. Only his mother graduated from high school; his father worked for a time managing a liquor store near their home.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Phil Murphy: A trip to Ukraine. A jab at Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. What is New Jersey’s term-limited governor up to? Recent moves suggest he has an eye on Washington.No Rest for Congressional Mapmakers: What used to be a once-a-decade redistricting fight between parties is now in perpetual motion, and up to 29 seats in 14 states are already at risk of being redrawn.In Michigan: Democrats in the state are pressing ahead with a torrent of liberal measures, the boldest assertion yet of their new political power since taking full control of state government.John Fetterman: A dozen miles from the Capitol, the first-term Democrat from Pennsylvania is keeping up with his Senate work while being treated for severe clinical depression.Always social, Mr. Murphy has become a retail-politics pro. He gamely drapes his arm around shoulders when asked to pose for selfies, his grin wide and pointer finger aimed, showman-style, toward the new best friend at his side.But it is the hundreds of off-camera calls he made to families that lost relatives to Covid-19 that his chief of staff, George Helmy, cites when calling him “one of the most authentic human beings I’ve ever seen.”Mr. Murphy greets customers on the first day of legalized recreational marijuana sales at a dispensary in Elizabeth, N.J., last year.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMr. Murphy came to Trenton with few allies, yet has managed a notable share of wins.During his first term, New Jersey lawmakers increased taxes on income over $1 million, approved a $15 minimum wage, legalized marijuana, strengthened gun-control laws, locked in paid sick leave for workers and reduced long-ignored pension debt by billions of dollars, resulting in several upgrades to the state’s credit ratings.But after being re-elected in 2021 by a narrower margin than expected, Mr. Murphy has made an overt effort to appeal more to moderate voters, leaving some of his left-leaning base frustrated by what they see as a lack of urgency to finish up strong.Michael Feldman, a communications consultant and friend of Mr. Murphy, said none of the governor’s policy victories had been “a layup.”“His ambition now is to try to help advance the agenda that he’s pursued in New Jersey — to help advance some of these issues at a national level,” said Mr. Feldman, who was a senior adviser to former Vice President Al Gore.“I don’t know what the job is or will be, but there’s plenty of places that a person with his experience could be helpful in getting some of these things done.”New Jersey governors cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. And for the past year observers wondering about Mr. Murphy’s next move have taken note of his suddenly youthful hairdo, hip new glasses and shifting rhetoric.The governor who once suggested that New Jersey was not the best fit for residents or businesses concerned mainly about low taxes now describes himself as a “coldblooded capitalist.” His budget address concluded with an ode to the value of hard work. And his State of the State stressed the importance of bipartisanship, buried in a humblebrag about his friendship with the Republican governor of Utah, the vice chairman of the National Governors Association, which Mr. Murphy now leads.Mr. Murphy, 65, is also chairman of the Democratic Governors Association — the first governor to hold both leadership posts at the same time. He has leveraged the roles to his advantage.During a recent trip to Los Angeles for the National Governors Association, he and his wife, Tammy, dined with leaders of film studios to pitch New Jersey’s assets as a moviemaking hub, while also raising funds for the four political accounts they now juggle. Alliances he has formed have led to speaking gigs in Nevada and Florida. And both of the governors’ associations are holding major conferences this year in New Jersey.There are younger Democratic governors with bigger names or bigger bank accounts, including Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.But during Mr. Biden’s presidency, New Jersey has been a regular stop for members of the administration, with at least two visits apiece by the president, the first lady, Vice President Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary.If Mr. Biden were to win re-election and tap Mr. Murphy for a job he found enticing enough to take, it could mean leaving Trenton before his term ends in 2026, making the race for governor — already shaping up to be a grab-the-popcorn thriller — even livelier.Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey speaks alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg during a news conference at a rail yard on the west side of Manhattan.John Minchillo/Associated PressStill, even among liberals inclined to support him, Mr. Murphy’s second-term reviews have grown increasingly mixed.Last year he reinstituted a bear hunt he had vowed to outlaw, enraging animal rights activists. He opened the door to private development in Liberty State Park, the state’s largest and busiest public oasis, at the urging of groups funded by the billionaire owner of an adjacent golf club. And there are so many judicial vacancies that some counties have had to halt divorce trials.A coalition of environmental groups is suing the state to force Mr. Murphy to follow through on ambitious climate-change rules he ordered as part of a 2019 law. “A poster child for actions not meeting the rhetoric,” David Pringle, a leader of the coalition, said.And residents of communities as disparate as Jersey City, Newark and Gibbstown, in the rural southwest portion of the state, are furious over Mr. Murphy’s support for expanding the turnpike near New York City and failing to stop six new fossil-fuel projects, which are expected to worsen air quality in minority communities already overburdened by pollution.“The governor has a lot of words for environmental justice but does not actually demonstrate leadership on behalf of our community,” said Maria Lopez-Nuñez, who lives in Newark and is fighting to block the construction of a backup power plant in the city’s Ironbound neighborhood.Ms. Lopez-Nuñez is also a member of Mr. Biden’s White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.“I would love to cheer on the governor,” she said. “But I need to see the work.”A spokesman for Mr. Murphy, Mahen Gunaratna, said some opposition was to be expected, particularly after a first term in which Mr. Murphy delivered on so many of the campaign promises his progressive base held dear. His second-term priorities are hewing closer to the center.At least part of his change in tone is tied to November’s legislative races. Democratic leaders who control the State Legislature remain jittery over the loss of seven seats in 2021, and Republicans believe that they are in striking range of regaining majority control — an outcome that would undermine Mr. Murphy’s legacy.A January poll by Monmouth University suggested that Mr. Murphy’s popularity was holding steady at 52 percent. But fewer than a third of those surveyed said he would make a good president.Only one governor from New Jersey has ever been elected president: Woodrow Wilson, whose memory is now so tainted by his racist policies that Princeton removed his name from its school of public and international affairs.Other New Jersey luminaries have also had designs on the White House in recent years: Senator Bill Bradley was eclipsed in the 2000 Democratic primary by Mr. Gore; Gov. Chris Christie ended his campaign in 2016 before endorsing Mr. Trump; and Senator Cory Booker bowed out of the last presidential contest after a yearlong campaign.Mr. Booker, 53, a Democrat and former mayor of Newark, appears to be keeping his options as open as Mr. Murphy. “I’m not running in ’24 if Joe Biden is running,” Mr. Booker said in a recent television interview.“My goal in life is to put more ‘indivisible’ back into this ‘one nation under God,’” he said, adding, “so we’ll see about the future.”Jennifer Palmieri, a Democratic strategist who was director of communications for President Barack Obama, has known Mr. Murphy since 2005 and considers him a friend. She said she did not know what he was hoping to do next. But, she added, “it does not seem like he’s anywhere near done.” More

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      in US Politics

      California gun laws can’t stop mass shootings without federal support

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      AnalysisCalifornia gun laws can’t stop mass shootings without federal supportJoan E GreveThe Golden State will struggle to stop mass shootings and protect citizens until uniform federal laws on firearms are signed The recent mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay have brought devastation, outrage and shock to Californians. As the state grieves the loss of 19 residents, one question continues to arise: how could this happen in the state with some of the strongest gun laws in the US?Victims named in mass shooting at Half Moon Bay mushroom farms in CaliforniaRead moreCalifornia’s gun laws include bans on the military-style assault weapons and large-capacity magazines that have been used in many mass shootings. It is one of just two states, along with New Jersey, to receive an “A” rating from the gun safety group Giffords, based on the strength of its firearm regulations.Gun rights proponents have cited the two shootings as evidence of the ineffectiveness of California’s laws, but groups like Giffords fiercely reject those arguments. California’s firearm mortality rate has declined dramatically in the years since tougher regulations were enacted, gun safety groups note.But in a nation where firearms outnumber people, the groups say, such horrific attacks will continue without a coordinated federal response to gun violence.“California is one state of 50,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice-president for law and policy at the gun safety group Everytown. “There’s just no question that strong, uniform federal laws are substantially better than a mixed bag of strong and weak state laws.”‘Gun violence across America requires stronger action’Research indicates that California’s many gun laws have proven quite effective in reducing the number of deaths caused by firearms. According to the gun safety group Brady, California’s rate of firearm mortality rate declined by 55% between 1993 and 2017, compared to a decrease of 14% across the rest of the US in the same time period. Advocates credit the decline to California’s gun regulations, a number of which went into effect in the early 1990s.“California has transformed itself in the past generation,” said Ari Freilich, state policy director at Giffords. “People came together time and again to strengthen gun safety laws [and] learn from tragedy.”California now has 107 gun laws on the books, more than any other US state. In addition to the bans on military-style assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, California has a ban on gun silencers. Like 18 other US states, California has a “red flag law” that allows authorities to seize guns owned by those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. In situations of domestic violence or workplace harassment, California residents can petition a court for a restraining order to have firearms taken away from their partner or employee.The gun used in the Monterey Park shooting appears to fall under the state’s definition of an “assault weapon”, so it is unclear how the attacker was able to purchase the firearm in 1999, when California had already banned such weapons. The sale of large-capacity magazines like the one used in Monterey Park is now illegal in California, although that state ban may not have been in effect when the shooter purchased the magazine. Authorities have said that the semi-automatic weapon used in Half Moon Bay was legally purchased by the gunman.Unfortunately, a gun violence restraining order was not issued before the attacks in Monterey Park or Half Moon Bay. As Freilich said, an important piece of lawmakers’ work must be ensuring that citizens know their legal options so they can be prepared to respond if they suspect potential gun violence.“Sometimes it’s making sure the right judge files the right paperwork at the right time,” Freilich said. “That’s the kind of unglamorous work that will save a victim’s life.”In addition to the need for more education around existing laws, Giffords released a memo outlining further legislative steps that California can take to reduce gun violence. The proposals include creating a gun violence prevention and victim recovery fund and strengthening restrictions on the sale and marketing of ghost guns, which are untraceable firearms often assembled at home from kits bought online.Even if California legislators can enact those policies, the state still faces significant challenges. The conservative-leaning US supreme court has displayed its willingness to challenge state gun policies, ruling last year to strike down a New York law that placed strict regulations on carrying firearms in public.‘Tragedy upon tragedy’: why 39 US mass shootings already this year is just the startRead moreAnd the looser gun laws of neighboring states pose another challenge. Many California residents can easily travel to Arizona, where assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not banned.“In this country, a state’s gun laws are only as strong as its closest neighbor with weak gun laws,” Suplina said. “It’s important to remember just how easily weapons are bought and sold in neighboring states.”That reality underscores the urgent need to pass more gun regulations at the federal level, Suplina and his allies argue. Last week, Joe Biden once again called on Congress to swiftly pass a nationwide assault weapons ban that could help prevent mass shootings in the future.“Even as we await further details on these shootings,” Biden said, “we know the scourge of gun violence across America requires stronger action.”‘California has the strictest gun laws’Additional federal action on gun safety currently seems unlikely now that Republicans, who show little appetite for tackling the issue, have regained control of the House.The gun lobby and its allies on Capitol Hill have embraced a markedly different perspective on the lessons to be learned from the most recent tragedies.In the days after the shootings that rocked his home state of California, Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy dismissed questions about the possibility of enacting more federal regulations to combat gun violence.“Having lived in California my entire life,” McCarthy said last week, “California has the strictest gun laws there are and apparently that did not work in this situation.”Suplina attacked such talking points, which often surface in the wake of mass shootings that occur in liberal-leaning states, as “straw man arguments”.“Advocates on the other side like to point to every aberration and say that that must mean that nothing is working, but we don’t do that in other areas,” Suplina said. “We don’t say that seatbelts don’t work because there’s an accident in the car that leads to a fatality.”Gun reformers feel history is on their side despite bleak outlook in CongressRead moreDespite widespread Republican opposition, Biden was able to sign one gun safety bill, the Bipartisan Safer Communities, into law last year. The bill expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers and invested in mental health and violence intervention programs, but advocates acknowledge that the law does not go far enough.Without a more robust, coordinated federal response to gun violence, every American state remains vulnerable to attacks, advocates say.“California has the strongest gun safety laws in the country overall and some of the weakest gun safety laws in the western world,” Freilich said. “A lot of folks wonder how this could happen in California. Well, there are more than a million guns that were legally bought and sold in California last year.”Tragedies like those in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay remind Americans of that painful truth, Suplina said. As California mourns another 19 lives taken by guns, this moment could serve as a call to arms for the many Americans seeking change.“When we go through calamities like California has recently, more people step up to do more at the local, state and federal level,” Suplina said. “There really aren’t any communities that are immune from gun violence in America. And more and more people are taking action to do something about it.”TopicsUS gun controlCaliforniaNew JerseyGun crimeUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      New Jersey councilmember shot and killed outside her home

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      New Jersey councilmember shot and killed outside her home‘She just wanted to make a better community for all our children’: colleagues mourn Eunice Dwumfour, 30, who was elected in 2021 A New Jersey borough councilmember was found shot to death in an SUV outside of her home, authorities said.Eunice Dwumfour, 30, was found at around 7.20pm on Wednesday, according to the Middlesex county prosecutor’s office. She had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene.Woman, 29, arrested for allegedly posing as high school student in New JerseyRead moreDwumfour, a Republican, was elected to her first three-year term in 2021, when she ousted a Democratic incumbent. Colleagues recalled her as a soft-spoken devout Christian who could maintain her composure in contentious situations.“She was a 30-year-old woman. To have this happen in such a tragic way, I mean, our hearts are just broken and everybody wants an answer,” said Karen Bailey Bebert, the local GOP chairwoman who served as her campaign manager. “So we’re waiting with bated breath.”Authorities have not made any arrests or said whether they believe the motive for the killing might be personal or political or a random act.In a 2021 campaign interview, Dwumfour described herself as a proud graduate of Newark public schools who earned a degree in women’s studies at William Paterson University while working part-time as an EMT.She said she moved to Parlin, a section of Sayreville, after graduating “because of the tremendous public safety work the community does”. That interest fueled her run for council, where she served as a liaison to the police department now helping to investigate her death.“She just wanted to make a better community for all our children,” said Bebert.Dwumfour, who had a school-age child, announced at a fall council meeting that she had recently gotten married, Bebert said. She was active in her church in Newark, she said.Dwumfour worked in information technology, according to her LinkedIn page, where she posted last month that she was looking for a new opportunity. Her résumé also said that she worked for six years with a religious nonprofit group.Her nextdoor neighbor Chyann Brown said she arrived home on Wednesday evening just as police were “flying in the complex”. She had no idea that Dwumfour, whom she described as kind and respectful, had been shot.“When I came to park my car, there were shell cases everywhere … I [saw] the car was still rolling down the street,” she said of Dwumfour’s vehicle.Brown said she had spoken with Dwumfour several times over the past year, but did not realize she was involved in local politics. “She’s a very nice woman. She’s always well-dressed,” she said. “I can’t believe she would be involved in such a tragic incident.”Several high-ranking state leaders, including the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, issued statements expressing their grief over her death. John Wisniewski, a former Democratic state assembly member from Sayreville, had spoken to her at a few council meetings.“Almost always her comments were about God, divine providence. She was a woman of faith,” Wisniewski said.Bebert described Dwumfour as an outgoing person who “always had that beautiful smile on her face that you see in her picture”.Sayreville, a borough of roughly 45,000 people, is about 30 miles (about 48.2km) south of Manhattan. At the scene on Thursday, another car in the parking lot had damage apparently sustained when Dwumfour’s car struck it.Bebert described Sayreville as a peaceful community and said Dwumfour lived in an attractive complex near an elementary school. She hopes to organize a vigil to celebrate what she called “a life cut too short by such a heinous criminal act”.“She was so young,” she said. “It’s just rippling through the town.”TopicsUS newsNew JerseyGun crimeUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      A Times Square Hotel Was Set To Become Affordable Housing. Then the Union Stepped In.

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      At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Paramount Hotel, sitting empty in Times Square, was on the verge of turning into a residential building, offering a rare opportunity to create affordable housing in Midtown Manhattan.A nonprofit was planning to convert the hotel into apartments for people facing homelessness. But after 18 months of negotiations, the plan collapsed this year when a powerful political player intervened: the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the union representing about 35,000 hotel and casino workers in New York and New Jersey.The union blocked the conversion, which threatened the jobs of the workers waiting to return to the 597-room hotel. Under the union’s contract, the deal could not proceed without its consent.The Paramount reopened as a hotel this fall, an illustration of how the union has wielded its outsized political power to steer economic development projects at a critical juncture in New York City’s recovery.The pandemic presented a devastating crisis for the city’s hotel workers, more than 90 percent of whom were laid off. But as the union has fought harder to protect them, its political muscle has also drawn the ire of hotel operators and housing advocates, who say the group’s interests can be at odds with broader economic goals.After the conversion failed, the Paramount reopened this fall, saving about 160 hotel jobs.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe union’s impact ripples throughout New York. It can block or facilitate the conversion of large hotels into housing and homeless shelters, a consequential role in a year when homelessness in the city reached a record high of about 64,000 people. The union pushed for the accelerated expansion of casinos, which could transform the neighborhoods of the winning bids. And it was a driving force behind a new hotel regulation that some officials warned could cost the city billions in tax revenue.The union’s influence stems from its loyal membership and its deep pockets, both of which it puts to strategic use in local elections. Its political strength has resulted in more leverage over hotel owners, leading to stronger contracts and higher wages for workers.In this year’s New York governor’s race, the union was the first major labor group to endorse Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose winning campaign received about $440,000 from groups tied to the union. The group was also an early backer of Eric Adams, whose mayoral campaign was managed by the union’s former political director.“H.T.C. is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic political strategist, referring to the union’s more common name, the Hotel Trades Council. “They’re just operating on a higher playing field.”Origins of the union’s powerHistorically, the Hotel Trades Council avoided politics until its former president, Peter Ward, started a political operation around 2008.Mr. Ward and the union’s first political director, Neal Kwatra, built a database with information about where members lived and worshiped and the languages they spoke. This allowed the union to quickly deploy Spanish speakers, for instance, to canvass in Latino neighborhoods during campaigns.Candidates noticed when the Hotel Trades Council, a relatively small union, would send 100 members to a campaign event while larger unions would send only a handful, Mr. Kwatra said.The Aftermath of New York’s Midterms ElectionsWho’s at Fault?: As New York Democrats sought to spread blame for their dismal performance in the elections, a fair share was directed toward Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.Hochul’s New Challenges: Gov. Kathy Hochul managed to repel late momentum by Representative Lee Zeldin. Now she must govern over a fractured New York electorate.How Maloney Lost: Democrats won tough races across the country. But Sean Patrick Maloney, a party leader and a five-term congressman, lost his Hudson Valley seat. What happened?A Weak Link: If Democrats lose the House, they may have New York to blame. Republicans flipped four seats in the state, the most of any state in the country.To recruit members into political activism, the union hosted seminars explaining why success in local elections would lead to better job protections. Afterward, members voted to increase their dues to support the union’s political fights, building a robust fund for campaign contributions. Rich Maroko, the president of the Hotel Trades Council, said the union’s “first, second and third priority is our members.”Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe Hotel Trades Council ranked among the top independent spenders in the election cycle of 2017, when all 26 City Council candidates endorsed by the union won. Some of these officials ended up on powerful land use and zoning committees, giving the union influence over important building decisions in New York.In a huge victory before the pandemic, the union fought the expansion of Airbnb in New York, successfully pressuring local officials to curb short-term rentals, which the union saw as a threat to hotel jobs.Mr. Ward stepped down in August 2020, making way for the union’s current president and longtime general counsel, Rich Maroko, who earned about $394,000 last year in total salary, according to federal filings.The union’s sway has continued to grow. Some hotel owners, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say they are fearful of crossing the union, which has a $22 million fund that can compensate workers during strikes. In an interview, Mr. Maroko pointed out that the hotel industry is particularly vulnerable to boycotts.“The customer has to walk through that picket line,” he said, “and then they have to try to get a good night’s rest while there are people chanting in front of the building.”The Hotel Trades Council’s contract is the strongest for hotel workers nationwide, labor experts say. In New York City, where the minimum wage is $15 an hour, housekeepers in the union earn about $37 an hour. Union members pay almost nothing for health care and can get up to 45 paid days off.During the pandemic, the union negotiated health care benefits for laid-off workers, suspended their union dues and offered $1,000 payments to the landlords of workers facing eviction.Along the way, the union has become known for its take-no-prisoners approach to politics, willing to ally with progressives or conservatives, with developers or nonprofits — as long as they support the union’s goals.“There may be no union which has more discrete asks of city government on behalf of its members,” said Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, who was endorsed by the union. “You can’t placate them with nice rhetoric. To be a partner with them, you really need to produce.”Political wins during the pandemicLast year, the union scored a victory it had sought for more than a decade, successfully lobbying city officials to require a special permit for any new hotel in New York City.The new regulation allows community members, including the union, to have a bigger say over which hotels get built. The move is expected to restrict the construction of new hotels, which are often nonunion and long viewed by the Hotel Trades Council as the biggest threat to its bargaining power.Budget officials warned that the regulation could cost the city billions in future tax revenue, and some developers and city planners criticized the rule as a political payback from Mayor Bill de Blasio in the waning months of his administration after the union endorsed his short-lived presidential campaign in 2019. Mr. de Blasio, who did not return a request for comment, has previously denied that the union influenced his position.In the next mayoral race, the union made a big early bet on Mr. Adams, spending more than $1 million from its super PAC to boost his campaign. Jason Ortiz, a consultant for the union, helped to manage a separate super PAC to support Mr. Adams that spent $6.9 million.Mr. Ortiz is now a lobbyist for the super PAC’s biggest contributor, Steven Cohen, the New York Mets owner who is expected to bid for a casino in Queens.The union, which shares many of the same lobbyists and consultants with gambling companies, will play an important role in the upcoming application process for casino licenses in the New York City area. State law requires that casinos enter “labor peace” agreements, effectively ensuring that new casino workers will be part of the union.A new threatDuring the pandemic, as tourism stalled, there was growing pressure to repurpose vacant hotels. With New York rents soaring, advocates pointed to hotel conversions as a relatively fast and inexpensive way to house low-income residents.But the union’s contract, which covers about 70 percent of hotels citywide, presented an obstacle. A hotel that is sold or repurposed must maintain the contract and keep its workers — or offer a severance package that often exceeds tens of millions of dollars, a steep cost that only for-profit developers can typically afford.A plan to convert a Best Western hotel in Chinatown into a homeless drop-in center was scuttled by city officials after the effort failed to win the union’s endorsement.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesEarlier this year, Housing Works, a social services nonprofit, planned to convert a vacant Best Western hotel in Chinatown into a homeless drop-in center. There was opposition from Chinatown residents, but city officials signed off on the deal. It was set to open in May.Right before then, however, the Hotel Trades Council learned of the plan and argued that it violated the union’s contract.Soon, the same city officials withdrew their support, said Charles King, the chief executive of Housing Works. He said they told him that Mr. Adams would not approve it without the union’s endorsement. Mr. King was stunned.“Clearly they have the mayor’s ear,” Mr. King said, “and he gave them the power to veto.”A spokesman for the mayor said the city “decided to re-evaluate this shelter capacity to an area with fewer services,” declining to comment on whether the union influenced the decision.The Chinatown hotel remains empty.An obstacle to affordable housingIn the spring of 2021, state legislators rallied behind a bill that would incentivize nonprofit groups to buy distressed hotels and convert them into affordable housing. They sought the Hotel Trades Council’s input early, recognizing that the group had the clout to push then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to oppose the bill, according to people involved in the discussions.The union supported the conversions, but only if they targeted nonunion hotels outside Manhattan. Housing groups have said that, unlike large Midtown hotels, nonunion hotels are not ideal candidates for housing because they tend to be much smaller and inaccessible to public transit.As a compromise to gain the union’s support, the bill allowed the Hotel Trades Council to veto any conversions of union hotels.“While we certainly support the vision of finding shelters and supportive housing for the people that need it,” Mr. Maroko said, “our first, second and third priority is our members.”One housing advocate involved in the legislation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she warned elected officials that the veto provision would diminish the law’s effectiveness.The law, which passed last year, came with $200 million for conversions. Housing experts criticized the legislation for not sufficiently loosening zoning restrictions, prompting another law this spring that made conversions easier.Still, no hotels have been converted under the new law.Now, with tourism rebounding, housing nonprofits say the window of opportunity has largely passed.“It’s not like hotel owners are clamoring to sell the way they were two years ago,” said Paul Woody, vice president of real estate at Project Renewal, a homeless services nonprofit.How the Paramount deal endedIn the fall of 2020, the owners of the Paramount Hotel began discussing a plan to sell the property at a discount to Breaking Ground, a nonprofit developer that wanted to turn it into rent-stabilized apartments for people facing homelessness.But as the deal neared the finish line, Breaking Ground failed to anticipate pushback from the Hotel Trades Council. In a series of meetings last year, the union said its obligation was to fight for every hotel job and it proposed a range of solutions, including keeping union employees as housekeepers for residents. Breaking Ground, however, said the cost was too high.The nonprofit even asked Mr. Ward, the union’s former president, to help facilitate the conversion. Mr. Ward said he agreed to call Mr. Maroko to gauge his interest in Breaking Ground’s severance offer.This spring, lobbying records show, union representatives met with Jessica Katz, Mr. Adams’s chief housing officer, and other officials about the Paramount. Soon after, Ms. Katz called Breaking Ground and said city officials would not be able to make the conversion happen, according to a person familiar with the conversation. A spokesman for the mayor said the city “cannot choose between creating the housing the city needs and bringing back our tourism economy,” declining to comment on whether the union swayed the decision on the Paramount.The failed conversion saved about 160 hotel jobs, and the Paramount reopened to guests in September.It was a relief for workers like Sheena Jobe-Davis, who lost her job there in March 2020 as a front-desk attendant. She temporarily worked at a nonunion Manhattan hotel, making $20 less per hour than at the Paramount. She was ecstatic to get her old job back.“It is something I prayed and prayed for daily,” she said. More