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    Tom Kean’s Strategy in Run for Congress: Say Less

    Ahead of next month’s primary, Tom Kean Jr., running in New Jersey’s most competitive House race, hopes to avoid alienating moderate swing voters while facing challengers from the right.Tom Kean Jr., a New Jersey Republican locked in the state’s most competitive congressional race, has refused to debate his primary opponents.He has avoided talking to most reporters.And he has dodged questions about whether he agrees with the Republican National Committee’s characterization of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol as “legitimate political discourse.”Mr. Kean, the scion of a storied political family, has adopted what appears to be a core strategy as he tries to avoid alienating moderate swing voters while facing challengers from the right: to keep his mouth, basically, shut.“I’m calling it the vow of silence,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.Julie Roginsky, a Democratic political consultant, said a key question will be whether Mr. Kean’s strategy — however cynical — works.“Did Tom Kean figure out a winning formula in these kinds of swing districts? Which is to say nothing?” she said.“Then use the media’s castigation of you for keeping your mouth shut as a dog whistle to the base?” she added.Whether the political calculation works or not, the results of next month’s primary are likely to be seen as a measure of former President Donald J. Trump’s grip on the G.O.P. in a state better known for a moderate brand of Republican politics once epitomized by leaders like Mr. Kean’s father, a popular two-term governor.Most of Mr. Kean’s six primary opponents have tried to dent his credentials as a conservative as they compete for the attention of voters loyal to Mr. Trump.One opponent, State Assemblyman Erik Peterson, a leader among Republican lawmakers who staged a public challenge to a State House Covid-19 vaccine mandate, said Mr. Kean had “never been a conservative until this race.” Another, Phil Rizzo, a former evangelical Christian pastor who has promoted Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud and said he remained unconvinced of President Biden’s victory, has highlighted what he calls Mr. Kean’s “liberal voting record.”A former state assemblyman and senator, Mr. Kean, 53, has the institutional support of county and state leaders and a prime spot on ballots. The large field of candidates is expected to splinter the conservative vote, benefiting Mr. Kean, who has raised nine times as much campaign cash as his next closest opponent, Mr. Rizzo.If Mr. Kean wins the primary on June 7, he is likely to again face the incumbent, Tom Malinowski, a second-term Democrat who narrowly beat Mr. Kean in 2020.The primary may also offer hints about whether Republicans in vital swing districts will remain as energized as they appeared to be last year.Largely affluent and suburban, the Seventh Congressional District is filled with the type of well-educated swing voters who helped Democrats across the country flip control of the House in 2018 and who are seen as crucial to November’s midterm elections.Registered Democrats in New Jersey outnumber Republicans by more than one million voters. Yet Republican turnout surged in November, and Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, won a second term by a far narrower margin than expected. The Democratic Party retained control of the Legislature but lost seven seats, including one held by the powerful Senate president, Stephen M. Sweeney.Gov. Philip D. Murphy is the first Democrat to win re-election in New Jersey since 1977. But he won by a far smaller margin than expected. Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times“The question is going to be whether or not Republican enthusiasm continues to be at an elevated rate,” Professor Rasmussen said.Mr. Kean’s campaign said he was not available for an interview and said it did not provide his public schedules, while noting that he planned to attend several parades and events over Memorial Day weekend.Last weekend, at a large block party that drew candidates for state and federal races, Mr. Rizzo was filmed asking Mr. Kean, “We going to debate or not?” Mr. Kean did not respond, and Mr. Rizzo, 45, posted the video on Twitter.At the same time, Mr. Kean has actively played to the more conservative wing of the G.O.P., a fact the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has tried to exploit in regular email blasts.Mr. Kean stood with Kevin McCarthy, the polarizing Republican minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, to announce his candidacy. He traveled to the Mexican border to highlight his opposition to Mr. Biden’s immigration policy, even though it is not an issue that separates him from his primary opponents.Last year, on Jan. 6, Mr. Kean and a liberal former Democratic senator, Loretta Weinberg, issued a joint statement urging Capitol protesters to “go home immediately or face the full force of the law.”“What we are witnessing in Washington,” the statement read, “is not how our democracy is supposed to function.”But he remained silent earlier this year as other prominent New Jersey Republicans like former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and Leonard Lance — who in 2018 lost to Mr. Malinowski — signed a letter calling the Republican National Committee’s stance on the Jan. 6 events “an affront to the rule of law, peaceful self-government and the constitutional order.”The state’s largest news outlet, The Star-Ledger, criticized his decision not to take a position in an editorial that ran under a headline that described Mr. Kean as a “cowering candidate.”The Seventh Congressional District takes in New York City commuter towns like Westfield, where Mr. Kean lives, reaches north into one of the most conservative sections of the state and west into well-heeled communities dotted with genteel estates.With a winning mix of college-educated voters and, in 2018, widespread anti-Trump fervor, it was one of four New Jersey congressional districts that flipped to Democratic control during the last midterm cycle.But Mr. Trump is no longer in the White House and Mr. Biden’s popularity is waning. 401(k) retirement plans have stopped their meteoric ascent. And gas prices are ticking toward $5 a gallon as affordability becomes the watchword among politicians.In 2020, in his third run for Congress, Mr. Kean came within 5,329 votes of toppling Mr. Malinowski.Then, late last year, Mr. Kean’s odds of winning got better: The district’s boundaries were redrawn to include more Republican-dominant towns in a process designed to reflect statewide demographic shifts in the 2020 census. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has since assigned the race a “leans Republican” rating.The Seventh Congressional District now includes Hunterdon and Warren Counties and parts of Morris, Somerset, Sussex and Union Counties.Morris County offers a vivid example of the type of political shift that contributed to Mr. Biden’s victory. It is roughly 70 percent white, more than half of its residents have four-year college degrees and the median income is $117,000.Republicans outnumber Democrats there by 21,000, but that advantage has narrowed since 2016, when the G.O.P. had a 39,000 voter edge, according to New Jersey’s Department of State.In 2016, Mr. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 9 percentage points among voters in the portion of Morris County then included in the Seventh Congressional District, according to the Daily Kos. Four years later, Mr. Trump lost to Mr. Biden there by less than 1 percentage point.Ms. Roginsky said November’s elections will offer a window into whether the swing voters who cast ballots against Mr. Trump remain in the Democratic fold when the polarizing former president is not on the ballot or in the White House.“Whether that realignment is permanent — or whether that was just a reaction to Donald Trump’s presidency,” she said. “That to me is the biggest question mark of this election.”One unknown factor is abortion, and how a possible decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the legal precedent that has for nearly 50 years given women a right to terminate pregnancies, might energize female voters. Another is an investigation by the House Committee on Ethics into allegations that Mr. Malinowski failed to properly disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock trades. Mr. Malinowski has blamed “carelessness on my part” for the lack of disclosure and said he regretted and took full responsibility for it.Assembly members Erik Peterson, right, and Brian Bergen, refused to comply with a State House rule requiring Covid-19 vaccination or a negative test.Mike Catalini/Associated PressMr. Rizzo and Mr. Peterson, who has been endorsed by New Jersey Right to Life, both said they do not believe abortion had factored heavily into the primary race against Mr. Kean, who voted against a bill that codified abortion rights in New Jersey.Mr. Rizzo, a real estate developer, does not live within the district where he is running, but said he and his family were in “a process of moving” there. He came in second in last year’s Republican primary for governor, and said the attraction voters have to people like him and Mr. Trump — whom he said he did not vote for in 2016 — was uncomplicated.“We have two parties in New Jersey: the political class and everybody else,” Mr. Rizzo said. “And nobody’s representing the everybody else.” More

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    Dr. Oz, Celebrity Candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate Race. What’s Trump Not to Like?

    “His show is great. He’s on that screen. He’s in the bedrooms of all those women telling them good and bad.”This was Donald Trump at a May 6 rally in Greensburg, Pa., looking to sell Republican voters on Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon he has endorsed for Senate.“Dr. Oz has had an enormously successful career on TV,” reasoned Mr. Trump, “and now he’s running to save our country.”As political pitches go, this one may sound vague and vacuous and more than a tad creepy. But Mr. Trump was simply cutting to the heart of the matter. Dr. Oz’s chief political asset — arguably his singular asset in this race — is his celebrity. Beyond that, it is hard to imagine why anyone would consider him for the job, much less take him seriously.By championing the good doctor, Mr. Trump is putting his faith in the political value of celebrity to its purest test yet. Upping the drama are signs that the move could backfire. In recent days, there has been a grass-roots surge by another candidate in the Republican primary on Tuesday, Kathy Barnette, a hard-right gun-rights champion, abortion foe and Fox News commentator seen as harnessing conservative unease and annoyance over Mr. Trump’s Oz endorsement.The bomb-throwing Ms. Barnette has made the race even more chaotic and is freaking out some Republicans — including Mr. Trump. “Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the general election,” he asserted Thursday, citing “many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted.” Doubling down on Dr. Oz, Mr. Trump insisted that “a vote for anyone else in the primary is a vote against victory in the fall!”Kathy Barnette, who is challenging Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Republican primary.Matt Rourke/Associated PressThe decision to go all in on Dr. Oz tells you much about Mr. Trump’s view of what makes a worthy candidate — and maybe even more about his vision for the Republican Party.It is hard to overstate the importance of the Pennsylvania Senate contest. The seat being vacated by Pat Toomey, a Republican, is widely considered the Democrats’ best hope for a pickup in November, making the race crucial in the brawl for control of the Senate, now split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris casting tiebreaking votes.Dr. Oz drifted into the Republican battle last fall, just over a week after Mr. Trump’s first endorsee, Sean Parnell, bowed out following accusations of abuse from his estranged wife. There were other Republican contenders happy to debase themselves in pursuit of Mr. Trump’s blessing, most notably David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive and Bush administration official. But Mr. Trump — surprise! — ultimately went with the sycophant who was also a television star. That really is his sweet spot.“You know when you’re in television for 18 years, that’s like a poll,” Mr. Trump has explained of his decision. “That means people like you.”Even after Mr. Trump’s endorsement, the race has remained tight. At the Greensburg rally, some in the crowd repeatedly booed the mention of Dr. Oz. Many had questions about his authenticity and values — or, more basically, what the heck a longtime Jersey guy is doing in their state.Anyone who takes public service and leadership seriously should be troubled by Dr. Oz’s glaring lack of experience in or knowledge of policy, government and so on. That, sadly, applies to few people in today’s Republican Party, which regards experience, expertise and science as a steaming pile of elitist hooey.Even more disturbing may be Dr. Oz’s devolution from a highly regarded, award-winning cardiothoracic surgeon to a snake-oil peddling TV huckster. Before this race, his closest involvement with the Senate was when he was called before a panel in 2014 to testify about the sketchy weight-loss products he had been hawking on his show.Then again, Republicans elected a shameless TV huckster to the presidency. This clearly isn’t a deal breaker for them.But MAGA world has its own concerns about Dr. Oz. For starters, his Turkish heritage — he holds dual citizenship and trained in the Turkish Army — has put him crosswise to the Republican Party’s ascendant nativism. His primary opponents and their supporters have suggested his Turkish ties make him a national security risk. Mike Pompeo, Mr. Trump’s former secretary of state and C.I.A. director, has said Dr. Oz owes voters a clear sense of the “scope and the depth of his relationship with the Turkish government.”The fact that Dr. Oz is a Muslim also disquiets some in the party.In combating suspicions that he is an outsider, it does not help that Dr. Oz doesn’t have deep ties to Pennsylvania. He lived in New Jersey for decades, and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he used his in-laws’ address to register to vote in Pennsylvania in 2020.As for his values, over the years Dr. Oz has committed numerous conservative heresies: pointing out the scientific inaccuracy of some fetal-heartbeat bills; discussing transgender kids in something other than horrified, apocalyptic terms; promoting Obamacare; acknowledging systemic racism. He has repeatedly come across as squishy on gun rights. Perhaps worst of all, he had Michelle Obama as a guest on his show. And he was nice to her! This has all made great fodder for his primary opponents.Not that such messy details matter. For Mr. Trump, Dr. Oz’s lack of political and policy chops — or even firm principles — is a feature, not a bug. The fewer established positions or values that a candidate holds, the easier it is for Mr. Trump to bend him to his will.In fact, Mr. Trump can only be delighted at the cringe-inducing desperation with which Dr. Oz has been refashioning himself into a MAGA man. The campaign ad of the candidate talking tough and playing with guns is particularly excruciating.For Mr. Trump, the perfect political candidate is one who has no strongly held views of his own. Whether candidates are in touch with the needs and values of their constituencies is of no interest — and could, in fact, be an inconvenience. Mr. Trump clearly prefers a nationalized Republican Party populated by minions willing to blindly follow orders in his unholy crusade for political restoration and vengeance.In part, Pennsylvania Republicans will be choosing between someone like Ms. Barnette, whose candidacy is focused on her (extreme and somewhat terrifying) beliefs and someone like Dr. Oz, whose candidacy is all about his personal fame — and his dependence on Mr. Trump.“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Mr. Trump once vilely bragged of his penchant for groping women. “You can do anything.”What the former president values these days in Republican candidates are stars willing to let him do anything he wants.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    Gov. Murphy Tones Down Liberal Message in Bid for Suburban Voters

    In the first budget address of his second term, Gov. Philip Murphy responded to New Jersey voters’ discontent at a time of surging gas costs and high taxes.Gas prices are soaring. The war in Ukraine has rattled the stock market. And, months ahead of midterm elections, voters in key suburban swing districts in New Jersey are restive, contributing to increased dissatisfaction with the state’s Democratic leader, Gov. Philip D. Murphy.For much of his first term, Mr. Murphy governed as a steadfast liberal eager to talk about his successful efforts to protect abortion rights, legalize marijuana and enact stricter gun control laws.But on Tuesday, in his first budget address since winning re-election by just three percentage points in a state where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans, Mr. Murphy offered a radically tempered message.The sweeping liberal rhetoric that defined his first budget address in 2018 was replaced by a recalibrated definition of progress and a promise to make New Jersey — where the cost of living is among the highest in the nation — a more affordable place to live.Months after remnants of Hurricane Ida crippled large parts of the state, killing at least 25 people, he did not utter the phrase “climate change.” There were no overt references to criminal justice, racial equity or immigrant rights. He cited a signature first-term win — lifting the minimum wage to $15 — just once, and instead chose to talk about tax cuts and rebates and a one-year “fee holiday” that would allow residents to visit state parks and renew driver’s licenses for free.“If you compare the really sharp racial justice messaging from last year to this year, there is a really big disconnect,” said Sara Cullinane, director of Make the Road New Jersey, a left-leaning coalition focused on immigrant and worker rights.“It seems that there’s a pivot,” she added.Instead of the unabashedly left-leaning budget message that set the tone for his first term, there were 24 mentions of the words “affordable” or “affordability.”“The Democratic Party is looking down at the 2022 midterms coming and knowing that its message needs to be revamped,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.“Many voters, probably most voters, are disenchanted.”Mr. Murphy is scheduled to move from vice chairman to chairman of the National Governors Association in July and to take over leadership of the Democratic Governors Association for the second time next year. Democrats must defend governorships in the key battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, races seen as must-wins to stave off Republican restrictions on voting rights.The governor has made it clear that he heard the message voters sent in November in Virginia and New Jersey, where Republican turnout surged and Democrats lost seven seats in the Legislature, including the Senate president’s.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“Quite frankly,” Professor Koning said, “they’re not interested in hearing about climate change and racial justice.”Democrats worry that the same factors that contributed to Mr. Murphy’s re-election by smaller-than-expected margins — pandemic fatigue, rising costs and President Biden’s waning popularity — could also spell trouble during November’s midterm congressional elections.Just before Mr. Murphy delivered Tuesday’s address, the Eagleton Center released a poll showing that the number of voters with a favorable impression of the governor had dropped to 33 percent, down from 50 percent in November. Of the people surveyed, more than 40 percent gave him failing grades in connection with New Jersey’s high property taxes and cost of living.“Governor Murphy has never wavered in his vision to make New Jersey stronger and fairer for everyone who calls our state home,” Mr. Murphy’s spokeswoman, Alyana Alfaro Post, said.“This year’s budget proposal builds on that progress,” she added, “and continues opening doors of opportunity for all New Jerseyans.”During his first term, Mr. Murphy accomplished many of his most ambitious policy goals: adding a tax on income over $1 million; legalizing adult-use marijuana; establishing paid sick leave for workers; and giving undocumented immigrants access to driver’s licenses.On Tuesday, he talked about the millionaires’ tax but did not mention the other victories, referring only to the “many steps we took together over the past four years,” before focusing on property taxes.“This budget attacks two of New Jersey’s most difficult and intractable problems: property taxes and affordable housing,” Mr. Murphy told a joint session of the Legislature, in a marked shift from comments he made in 2019 minimizing concerns over the state’s high taxes.“If you’re a one-issue voter and tax rate is your issue, either a family or a business — if that’s the only basis upon which you’re going to make a decision,” Mr. Murphy said three years ago, “we’re probably not your state.”This year’s budget proposal — a record-high $48.9 billion spending plan — did not appear to veer from priorities Mr. Murphy set during his first term and would continue to fund programs important to Mr. Murphy’s progressive allies.The plan, which the Legislature must approve by July, sets aside more money for education, mental health programs, health care for children of undocumented immigrants, addiction treatment and lower-cost housing. For the second year, Mr. Murphy has proposed making a full payment to the state’s underfunded public-employee pension system.Just as he did in his first budget address, Mr. Murphy quoted the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic — someone who knows “the price of everything and the value of nothing.” But that is where the parallels end.Gone was the fiery rhetoric from 2018, when he talked about the state’s high poverty rate, income inequality and the importance of embracing “the immediacy of the problems before us.”There was no renewed mention this week of initiatives to narrow the state’s racial income gap using tools like so-called baby bonds, an ultimately unsuccessful budget proposal he made in 2020 to give most newborns $1,000, payable with interest when they turned 18.Instead, a plan to set aside money to build 3,300 units of lower-cost housing was depicted as a win for the working class, not the working poor.“Let’s not lose sight of who actually benefits when we build more affordable housing,” Mr. Murphy said of units available to people with low to moderate incomes. “It’s the educator or first responder who can finally live within the community they serve. It’s also the server at the local diner, the cashier at the grocery store.”Julia Sass Rubin, a professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, said the speech represented a change in messaging, but not a “major retraction” of Mr. Murphy’s left-leaning priorities.“If you keep walking the walk, maybe they think they can adjust the talk a little bit, without substantively changing the direction,” Professor Rubin said.“It’s a way of trying to shore up what could be a vulnerability — both for the midterm elections and Democrats more broadly,” she added.Mr. Murphy emphasized “affordability” in his speech and played down progressive themes.Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesJack Ciattarelli, Mr. Murphy’s Republican challenger who came close to unseating the governor, said the budget address showed Mr. Murphy was “definitely feeling the pressure from the closeness of the race and the themes that we hit on repeatedly, which up until this point he’s been tone-deaf on.”But the contents of the plan, he said, were the “same old, same old.”“There’s never been a better opportunity to completely reform the way we do property taxes,” said Mr. Ciattarelli, who plans to run for governor again in four years.Officials with left-leaning advocacy groups said that they found things to like in the budget draft, as well as missed opportunities.Ms. Cullinane, of Make the Road, praised the roughly $100 million the governor set aside for undocumented immigrants and working families who have been ineligible for federal pandemic-related aid. Andrea McChristian, law and policy director for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, applauded Mr. Murphy’s efforts to expand college access and to fund a pilot program designed to keep juveniles out of prison. But she questioned the absence of any discussion about closing juvenile lockups, making reparation payments to Black residents harmed by slavery or a renewed push to implement baby bonds.“That’s definitely a missed moment,” Ms. McChristian said.The missing emphasis on social justice is particularly worrisome in a year when New Jersey is flush with cash from sales tax collections, revenue generated by the robust housing and stock markets and federal stimulus funds, Ms. McChristian said.“This is the moment to be bold,” she said, adding, “We have huge racial disparities here.”Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey, called it a “status quo” budget that continues to provide vital support for offshore wind energy but fails to take other meaningful steps toward addressing the climate crisis or establishing a guaranteed source of funding for public transit.“New Jersey should be investing in climate change solutions,” Mr. O’Malley said, “not fighting this fight with one hand behind its back.” More

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    After an Unexpected Rise, Hochul Cements Her Front-Runner Status

    Gov. Kathy Hochul, who will become the state Democrats’ standard-bearer today, was not a sure bet when she replaced Andrew Cuomo last summer.Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll look at how Gov. Kathy Hochul assembled a campaign juggernaut. We’ll also look at the difficulties facing would-be small business owners who dream of becoming marijuana retailers in New Jersey.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThink back to last summer, when Kathy Hochul became governor. She had made friends, but not headlines, in her six years as lieutenant governor. New York’s political class did not see her as the kind of powerhouse they were accustomed to — assertive, even audacious. And perhaps most of all, male.The Democratic primary was little more than nine months away, to be followed by the election for a full four-year term a few months later. Many Democrats figured there would be a battle for the Democratic nomination for governor, with Hochul struggling to keep her job.My colleague Nicholas Fandos writes that they could scarcely look more wrong now.She is set to win the Democratic Party’s endorsement for nomination to a full term on Thursday. And, in a nod to Hochul’s history-making status as the first woman to lead New York, Hillary Clinton is scheduled to introduce her at the state Democratic convention in Midtown Manhattan.[How Kathy Hochul Went From Unexpected Governor to Clear Front-Runner]Hochul has reached this moment after a brisk campaign to corner party leaders and crowd out potential rivals that was as efficient as it was congenial. She put a new face on a state government mired in scandal. She also amassed $21 million in campaign contributions by January, more than her rivals combined.It is all the more remarkable given that just a year ago, her political career appeared headed toward a dead end. Before former Gov. Andrew Cuomo became caught up in allegations of sexual harassment, his aides had curtly informed Hochul that he planned to remove her from the ticket when he ran for a fourth term in 2022.Since then, Hochul has benefited from repeated good fortune, including the decision by her most serious rival, Letitia James, the state attorney general, to abandon a campaign for governor. Polls now show Hochul with a comfortable lead.But she faces accusations from her primary opponents — Representative Tom Suozzi and Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate — that she is obfuscating on issues like crime and housing, or kowtowing to special interests that have contributed to her campaign. And political strategists say there are signs that Hochul is not yet generating the kind of enthusiasm among the Black, Latino and young voters around New York City that she may need to assemble a winning general election coalition.“Enthusiasm means everything,” said Gabby Seay, a labor strategist who served as James’s campaign manager. “She has to work in order to build that relationship where folks are on fire about her candidacy. The question is, does she have time to do that while she is governing?”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}For her part, Hochul told reporters on Tuesday that she intended to “run like an underdog until it’s over.”WeatherA southwest wind will drive in mild air with temps approaching 60. Expect rain overnight and a low of 54 as a cold front approaches.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Feb. 21 (Washington’s Birthday).Slimming down the city budgetMayor Eric Adams’s first budget proposal called for across-the-board cuts of about 3 percent for most city agencies along with a gradual reduction in the city’s work force, which had grown to the largest ever under his predecessor, Bill de Blasio.Adams’s $98.5 billion spending plan is $4 billion less than the current budget. He said it fulfilled a campaign promise to uncover savings and make city government more efficient.Adams announced higher funding for priorities like a summer youth jobs program. But he said funding for the Police Department would remain “basically flat” at about $5 billion. Saying he disagreed with efforts to defund the police, he said he could improve public safety by moving officers from desk jobs to street duty.“We’re going to redeploy our manpower, we’re going to make sure that everyone who is supposed to be on the streets doing their job is doing their job,” said Adams, a former police captain, “and then we will make the analysis if we have to put more money into it.”Adams shielded some city agencies from his budget cutting, among them the Correction Department, which faces a crisis at the Rikers Island jail complex, and the Health Department, which oversees City Hall’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.The latest New York newsKen Kurson, a close friend of former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was facing felony charges of spying on his former wife. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in a plea deal.Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro retired after 53 years in the F.D.N.Y.A city program gives 260,000 low-income New Yorkers half-price transit rides. Advocates and transit leaders want Mayor Eric Adams to expand financing and eligibility.The New York attorney general’s office recovered over $400,000 for consumers who said they were misled by coronavirus testing labs.The rocky road to a retail marijuana storeBryan Anselm for The New York TimesNew Jersey is legalizing marijuana, and hundreds of entrepreneurs are scrambling to be ready to apply for licenses to become cannabis retailers. But there are twists and turns on the road to opening a business in a new industry.Lawmakers drafted the cannabis law to remedy wrongs in the state’s criminal justice system, which disproportionately ensnarls Black and Latino people. As recently as 2018, Black residents were more than three times as likely as white residents to be charged with possessing marijuana, although roughly the same numbers of Black and white New Jerseyans use marijuana.For Black men like Michael White, who was charged with low-level drug possession as a teenager decades ago, running a shop that sells marijuana would be a way to write a new ending to a familiar war-on-drugs story.His mother, Bessie White, is 78 and determined to get a license for a store that she, he and the next generation of the family could oversee. They have a name for it — Simple ReLeaf. The play on the word “relief” reflects their focus on homeopathic remedies. But they say the hurdles are high for small-business owners in an industry dominated by deep-pocketed corporations.If they win approval, they will face competition. At least eight companies that already operate medical marijuana dispensaries have applied to become retailers. Each claims it has stockpiled enough cannabis to satisfy patients and recreational users alike — a gauge for dispensaries that want to move into the adult-use market.Some companies have pressed the state to speed the process. Lawmakers had hoped the adult-use market would be up and running by Feb. 22, but the state will not meet that deadline. Some of the companies claim that cannabis they stockpiled to sell to retail customers will grow moldy if it is stored much longer. Others have said they may fire workers they have already hired.The Whites and their relatives also face another roadblock — marijuana remains illegal under federal law. My colleague Tracey Tully writes that this makes banks reluctant to lend money or open accounts for cannabis businesses. Landlords, worried that a cannabis store could jeopardize their federally backed mortgages, are similarly reluctant to sign leases.Bessie White’s niece, Theresa Howard, said the owner of a storefront they considered renting in Plainfield, N.J., increased the price to $7,200 a month — from $3,500 a month — after learning what business they had in mind. They are considering buying property instead, with help from a consultant who runs a private equity fund and has offered $500,000 in start-up money.“We’re trying to have Plan B and C, and, if we need it, D,” Howard said.What we’re readingBlack unemployment rates in New York City are stuck above 15 percent, The City reports.Gothamist says the future of outdoor dining is “roadway cafes.”METROPOLITAN diaryHistory lessonDear Diary:My husband, son and I were on a Q train from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The car was fairly crowded, and we had to stand near one of the poles.A young girl who was sitting next to her father leaned over to him. She might have been about 8.“This train is really old,” I heard her whisper into his ear.A young man of perhaps 22 with hair dyed bright yellow was standing nearby.“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, “I couldn’t help overhear. But did you know they started making this train when my grandfather was a boy?”Other passengers started to smile.“And now they put them into the ocean when they’re done with them,” the young man added.“Yeah,” someone else said. “They grow reefs in them!”People started to nod in agreement.“Your hair is golden!” an older woman shouted to the young man.He laughed.“My friends and I had a little bit too much fun last night and this is what happened,” he said. “My mom’s going to kill me.”“Well, I think you look spunky,” the older woman said.— Suzanne PettypieceIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Sadiba Hasan, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Olivia Parker and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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    Menendez’s Son Prepares to Run for His Father’s Old House Seat

    Robert Menendez Jr., 36, has won backing from key Democrats in the northern New Jersey congressional district.Robert Menendez Jr., the 36-year-old son of New Jersey’s senior United States senator, has told political leaders that he will run for Congress to replace Representative Albio Sires, who announced on Monday that he will not seek re-election.If elected, Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, and his father, Senator Robert Menendez, the 67-year-old chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, would be likely to serve together in Washington.The younger Mr. Menendez is a practicing lawyer who would be making his first run for public office, and he is expected to face challengers from the left in the Democratic stronghold that includes heavily urban parts of Hudson, Essex and Union Counties. He did not return calls or emails.But even before Mr. Sires confirmed that he intended to step down when his term ends next year, powerful political leaders had already begun to coalesce support behind Mr. Menendez.In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Sires, a former mayor of West New York, N.J., who has served in the House of Representatives since 2006, said the younger Mr. Menendez told him that he planned to run and asked for his support.Senator Menendez, who declined to comment through a spokesman, held the same seat in the House before being appointed to the Senate in 2006 to fill a position vacated by Jon Corzine after he was elected governor; the borders of the district, now known as the Eighth Congressional District, have since been slightly redrawn.In June, Mr. Menendez was appointed a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after being nominated by Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a fellow Democrat.“I think he’s the perfect fit for the district,” said Mr. Sires, 70, who emigrated from Cuba as an 11-year-old.As a moderate who also is of Cuban heritage, Mr. Menendez would connect well with voters, Mr. Sires said.“He’s bright. He’s articulate. He’s energetic,” Mr. Sires said. “He comes from good stock.”“He told me, ‘Whatever I can do to help him, please do,’ ” Mr. Sires added. “I told him I would be there.”Brian Stack, a state senator who is also the mayor of Union City, a largely Latino community that is a key voting bloc in the district, also quickly expressed support for Mr. Menendez.“He will be a great congressman,” Mr. Stack told the New Jersey Globe, which first reported that Mr. Sires was retiring and that Mr. Menendez planned to run for the empty seat.Hector Oseguera, a left-leaning Democrat who challenged Mr. Sires last year and lost by a large margin, said that running in the district required a deep understanding of the Democratic political machine in Hudson County.“You can’t really parachute in,” said Mr. Oseguera, who said he would consider running again only if “nobody emerges from the progressive movement.”Ravi Bhalla, a progressive Democrat who was re-elected mayor of Hoboken last month, had been considered a potential candidate for the seat. But on Tuesday Mr. Bhalla, the first Sikh elected mayor in New Jersey, dashed talk that he had any interest in running and strongly suggested that he would support the candidate tapped by the Democratic Party leadership.“While I’m honored and humbled to have been approached by members of the Sikh and South Asian community, along with other stakeholders to run for Congress,” he wrote on Twitter, “I’m 100% committed to serving the residents of Hoboken as mayor.”Mr. Sires, who has served on the House transportation and foreign affairs committees, said that he considered passage of President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill — and the benefits it offers for public transit in New Jersey — the capstone of his career.He is one of 25 members of Congress who have announced that they were quitting politics.“It was time,” said Mr. Sires, who also served in the New Jersey Legislature, where he was the first Latino Assembly speaker. “I’m very grateful for the opportunity this country gave me, and I’m happy to have had the chance to give back.”He said the hyperpartisan political divide in Washington had played a role in his decision.“Washington is a very difficult place to work now,” he said. “You either have to be part of the left or part of the right. There seems to be no room in the middle.”Senator Menendez’s quest for power is markedly different than his son’s. Before he was 21, the senator was elected to the school board in Union City, where he was raised, the son of Cuban immigrants. He went on to become the mayor of the city and a state legislator.Decades later he survived an admonishment from a Senate panel for accepting gifts from a wealthy doctor and a 2017 federal trial on corruption charges. He emerged years later as one of the most powerful Democratic members of Congress.Only two of New Jersey’s 12 House representatives are Republicans. But a redistricting commission is expected to release the state’s new congressional map on Wednesday, and several Democrats in swing districts are likely to face fierce challenges for re-election as Mr. Biden’s popularity wanes.It is not uncommon for a child to follow a parent into Congress; it has occurred at least 42 times in the Senate alone between 1774 and 1989, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.But only a handful of children have served in Congress at the same time as their parent, and there are no pairs in the current 117th Congress, according to the Library of Congress.Mr. Menendez, who is registered to vote in Jersey City, N.J., is a 2008 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to a biography on his law firm’s website. He and his father both graduated from Rutgers Law School.Representative Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat who has worked closely with Mr. Sires in the House, called Mr. Sires “a giant in every sense of the word.”“Albio has battled for Amtrak and our commuters. He has battled for immigrants and human rights. And he’s battled to give the Garden State its rightful share of the pie we are so often denied,” Mr. Pascrell said in a statement.“He’s my buddy and I’m going to miss him greatly,” he added. “We have big shoes to fill.” More

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    Edward Durr Jr.: The Trump Republican Who’s Riding High in New Jersey

    “If anything, my election showed nobody’s untouchable,” said Edward Durr Jr., who pulled off a stunning victory to win a New Jersey State Senate seat.Edward Durr Jr., a Republican who this month toppled New Jersey’s second most powerful lawmaker, had three children under 13 when a mortgage company began foreclosure proceedings on his 1,200-square-foot, one-story home in South Jersey in 1997.Within two years, he and his first wife had filed for bankruptcy, identifying $64,784.99 in debts to J.C. Penney, an insurance company and a bank, court records show.“My kids didn’t really know what was going on,” said Mr. Durr, who dropped out of high school when his father, a self-employed carpenter, got sick and needed help at work. “We kind of sheltered them from that.”Two decades later, New Jersey’s high property taxes and cost of living would become centerpieces of Mr. Durr’s campaign, cementing his improbable win against Steve Sweeney, a Democrat who had held a near-final say over all legislation in Trenton as president of the State Senate.A commercial truck driver, he describes himself as a “blue-collar, Christian, Second Amendment supporter.” He is a strong backer of former President Donald J. Trump, who called to congratulate him on his win, and an opponent of vaccine and mask mandates and what he calls government “tyranny.”Mr. Durr’s victory and the region’s strong Republican turnout are considered emblematic of evaporating enthusiasm for Democrats in suburban and rural areas and wide dissatisfaction with President Biden. That mix contributed to a Republican win in Virginia and Gov. Philip D. Murphy’s unexpectedly close re-election in New Jersey, and is seen as an ominous sign for the Democratic Party ahead of next year’s congressional midterms.“If anything, my election showed nobody’s untouchable,” Mr. Durr said.During the campaign, Democratic operatives used mailers and a video ad to highlight Mr. Durr’s past financial troubles, but he won by about 2,300 votes anyway, pulling off one of the biggest political upsets in state history.“Not for nothing,” said Steve Kush, a Republican consultant who worked with Mr. Durr’s campaign, “but those kinds of attacks actually backfired this time. There’s a lot of other people going through some very hard times. Who hasn’t had problems with financing?”Since the Nov. 2 election, Mr. Durr, 58, has become a mini-celebrity, unable to walk through Walmart or ShopRite or pick up chicken wings from his local pub, Wilson’s, without being asked to pose for a selfie.Mr. Durr, a Republican who won an upset race against one of the most powerful Democrats in New Jersey, has said his newfound fame made him queasy.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesHe does not take office until Jan. 11. But he is already using a new domain name, edthetrucker.com, to raise funds for re-election and hawking “Ed the Trucker” hats, “Riding DURRty” bumper stickers and “Dangerous Durr” T-shirts and mugs, co-opting a term Mr. Murphy used to describe him.His campaign flew so far under the radar that it was not until after Election Day that a reporter for WNYC, a public radio station, publicized incendiary comments he had made on Twitter that disparaged the Muslim Prophet Muhammad and called Islam a “false religion.”On the day Mr. Sweeney conceded, Mr. Durr met with Muslim leaders at a masjid near his campaign headquarters, reiterating his public apology for the comments and offering a commitment to “stand against Islamophobia and all forms of hate.”“As long as you know somebody, it’s hard to hate somebody — don’t you think?” he told reporters gathered outside, holding a Quran given to him during a two-hour meeting with members of the state’s Council on American Islamic Relations. “It’s very easy to hate somebody that you don’t know.”At home in Logan Township, 15 miles outside Philadelphia, Mr. Durr himself remains largely unknown. He did not win a majority of votes in the Democrat-led town where he lives near the Delaware River, in an area known as Repaupo.In Penns Grove, where the three-bedroom, one-bath house he lost in foreclosure last sold for $22,000, neighbors said they had not heard of him before Election Day, if at all.“He didn’t win his own town,” said Frank Minor, Logan’s Democratic mayor. “That tells you a lot right there.”“He’s been anti-Muslim, anti-vax,” Mr. Minor added. “He’s a Trump Republican. That’s what he is. That’s what he’s going to do.”After disparaging Islam, Mr. Durr met with Muslim leaders at Al Minhal Academy of Islamic Education in Washington Township, N.J. He left carrying a Quran.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesRural and predominantly white, southern New Jersey is one of the most conservative parts of the state. Democrats in Mr. Durr’s district outnumber Republicans, yet Mr. Trump narrowly won more votes than his Democratic opponent in 2016 and in 2020.Buoyed by Mr. Sweeney and the influence of George E. Norcross III, a well-connected political boss, Democrats controlled most local and state offices. That also changed on Election Day.Mr. Durr’s two Republican running-mates ousted incumbent Democrats in the Assembly, and Republicans flipped two seats on the Gloucester County Board of Commissioners, the legislative body where Mr. Sweeney cut his political teeth.Mr. Durr said he shed 55 pounds during the campaign, weight loss he attributed to walking and knocking on doors in places Republicans seldom consider competitive: Mr. Sweeney’s hometown, West Deptford, and the city of Bridgeton, a tight-knit enclave of mostly Latino immigrants.“People were, like, shocked,” Mr. Durr said. “They’d say, ‘Nobody’s ever been here.’”Mr. Durr said he hoped to keep his job as a truck driver for the Raymour & Flanigan furniture chain, and the health insurance it provides, even after he is sworn in as a senator, a part-time position that pays $49,000. Lawmakers who took office after 2010 are not eligible for health coverage.He rides a 2012 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, spoils his three pit bulls — “I call them my fur babies” — and, with his five siblings, takes care of his mother, a recent widow who lives next door.Before joining the furniture company, he worked in construction and said he often held multiple jobs, including making pastries for Dunkin’ Donuts and working in a farm supply store. During two growing seasons, he drove trucks for East Coast Sod and Seed.“He was on time,” said Andy Mottel, the manager of the Pilesgrove, N.J., farm, which transports sod across the country and provides the field grass for Yankee Stadium. “He worked every day. He has that strong voice — very knowledgeable about sports.”Mr. Durr completed his G.E.D. through Gloucester City High School, and he has made no secret of his unease with his sudden stardom. (“I feel like I’m about to throw up,” he said the day Mr. Sweeney conceded.) He will be a member of the minority party in the State House, making it unlikely he will have significant power to steer or stonewall legislation.When ticking off his legislative priorities, he mentions goals like “bringing jobs here, bringing businesses here,” and he is the first to say he has a lot to learn about how Trenton works. “If it’s an issue that concerns New Jersey citizens, I’m going fight for it,” he said.It was his fourth campaign for public office. He ran for State Assembly as an independent in 2017 and as a Republican in 2019, and he ran last year for Logan Township council.It is unclear how much he spent to win. The latest financial reports show he spent roughly $2,300, but he has said that the final figure will be between $5,000 and $10,000.New Jersey has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and Mr. Durr said he originally decided to run for public office after learning he could not get a license to carry a concealed weapon.“I’ve been on every military base as a truck driver on the East Coast,” he said. “Why am I being refused my right to self-protect? The Second Amendment says I have a right to self-protect.”Mr. Durr’s Islamophobic remarks in 2019 were not his only controversial comments on social media.He also appeared to equate public acquiescence to pandemic-related mandates to remaining silent during the Holocaust. After a violent racist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, he offered comments reflecting the legitimacy of “both sides,” a position similar to Mr. Trump’s initial response.Officials with the Islamic council said that they worried that Mr. Durr’s past hate speech, left unchecked, could lead to violence. During the meeting at the masjid, they offered him examples of relatives who had been targeted for being Muslim.Three people who participated said that he was engaged and appeared genuine in his desire to learn more about the Muslim faith. The group shared snacks, and Mr. Durr observed a 10-minute prayer service.“He was open minded,” said John Starling, the imam of a mosque in Cherry Hill, N.J. “He was without hesitation ready to make the situation right.”Atiya Aftab, who teaches in the Middle Eastern Studies program at Rutgers University and also attended the meeting, said she understood it as the start of an ongoing conversation.“I’m not second-guessing his intent,” Professor Aftab said. “I did feel that it was genuine and authentic. But ultimately it’s actions that will speak louder than words.”Camille Furst contributed reporting and Susan C. Beachy contributed research. More

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    SALT Deduction That Benefits the Rich Divides Democrats

    House Democrats are poised to lift a cap on the state and local tax deduction, a gift to wealthy homeowners in some blue states.WASHINGTON — A plan by House Democrats to reduce taxes for high earners in states like New Jersey, New York and California in their $1.85 trillion social policy spending package is becoming an early political albatross for the party, with Republicans already mobilizing to accuse Democrats of defying their populist principles in favor of cutting taxes for the rich.The criticism offers a preview of the emerging battle lines ahead of next year’s midterm elections and underscores the challenge that Democrats face when local politics collide with the party’s national ambitions to promote economic equity. For Republicans who have defended their 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, the proposal by Democrats to raise the limit on the state and local tax deduction is an opportunity to flip the script and cast Democrats as the party of plutocrats.“I think they’re struggling to maintain their professed support for taxing the wealthy, yet they are providing a huge tax windfall under the SALT cap,” said Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, referring to the acronym for state and local taxes. “If your priorities are working families, make that the priority, not the wealthy.”Republicans, looking for ways to finance their own tax cuts in 2017, capped the amount of state and local taxes that households could deduct from their federal tax bills at $10,000. Democrats from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California have spent years promising to repeal the cap and are poised to lift it to $80,000 through 2030, before reducing it back to $10,000 in 2031. The cap, which is currently set to disappear in 2025, would then expire permanently in 2032.The bill would cut taxes sharply for the next five years by increasing the value of the deduction, but it would mean higher taxes in the following five years than if the cap were allowed to expire. The Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday that over the course of a decade, the changes to the deduction would amount to a tax increase that would raise about $14.8 billion in revenue.The House proposal is likely to change in the Senate, where it has its own champions and detractors. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has embraced a more generous deduction while Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has sharply criticized the House proposal. He joined Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, in negotiating an income cap — as high as $550,000, though that number is in flux — on who can receive the deduction.This week, the National Republican Congressional Committee released survey data that it said suggested most voters in battleground states would be less likely to vote for Democrats who supported a policy that gave tax cuts to rich homeowners in New Jersey, New York and California. It said that the Democratic Party would have “to defend its politically toxic policies which penalize hard working families to reward liberal elites.”Prominent tax and budget analysts have argued that expanding the deduction amounted to an unnecessary giveaway to the rich.According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a family of four in Washington making $1 million per year would receive 10 times as much tax relief next year from expanding the state and local tax deduction as a middle-class family would receive from another provision in the social policy package, an expansion of the child tax credit. Citing calculations from the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the group said that two thirds of households making more than $1 million a year would get a tax cut under the legislation because of the increase to the state and local property tax deduction.The proposal has put some Democrats on the defensive.Rep. Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said this week that tax giveaways to millionaires sounded like something that Republicans would have come up with.“Proponents have been saying that the BBB taxes the rich,” Mr. Golden said on Twitter, referring to the bill known as the Build Back Better Act. “But the more we learn about the SALT provisions, the more it looks like another giant tax break for millionaires.”The issue is further complicating passage of the bill, which Democrats are trying to get through both the House and Senate without Republican support. Given their thin majorities in both chambers, Democrats can afford to lose no more than three votes in the House and none in the Senate.Some Democrats in Congress from states with high taxes have made the inclusion of the more generous deduction as a prerequisite for their backing the bill.“There’s a series of competing views on SALT, but I mean, it’s pretty obvious something has to be in there, that’s for sure,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.The unexpectedly tight race for governor of New Jersey was a clear reminder that the state’s high property taxes — and the limit on their deductibility — are high on voters’ lists of worries, strategists and other political observers said.“As Covid kind of recedes, taxes are taking its place as the top issue in New Jersey,” said Michael DuHaime, a Republican political strategist with Mercury Public Affairs.The SALT cap “essentially resulted in a pretty large tax increase for a lot of families” in the suburbs of New York City, Mr. DuHaime said. With Democrats in power, those homeowners are counting on some relief, he said.Now that former President Donald J. Trump is out of office, New Jersey has “reverted to its mean” of being deeply concerned about the state’s affordability, said Julie Roginsky, a strategist who advised Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, during his first campaign in 2017. The average homeowner in the state pays about $10,000 in property taxes, she said, with the cap hitting about one-third of New Jersey residents.“I think it’s absolutely a line in the sand that some of these vulnerable members of Congress need to draw,” Ms. Roginsky said.Several Democrats who represent affluent suburban areas where most homeowners pay much more than $10,000 a year in property taxes will face stiff challenges in the midterm election next year, strategists said. Their short list of vulnerable House members include Josh Gottheimer, Mikie Sherrill and Tom Malinowski from North Jersey, and Andy Kim, who represents part of the Jersey Shore, all of whom support raising the SALT cap.If the Democrats can engineer a change to the SALT deduction that is retroactive to cover 2021 taxes, those incumbents can campaign on having provided a tax cut, Ms. Roginsky said. But if they fail, their Republican opponents — like Thomas Kean Jr., a state senator who is challenging Mr. Malinowksi — will be able to use that against them, she said.Several House Democrats who represent affluent suburbs, including Mikie Sherrill, whose district includes part of Montclair, N.J., are expected to face stiff challenges in next year’s elections.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“It may not play well in Vermont or in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district, but if you’re Nancy Pelosi, you understand that the road to your majority runs through places like suburban New Jersey and suburban California and suburban New York,” Ms. Roginsky said.Ben Dworkin, the director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., cited the unexpectedly close race for New Jersey governor this year. He noted how effective Mr. Murphy’s challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, was in playing to voters’ feelings about the state’s high taxes.“He hammered home that issue,” Mr. Dworkin said.Public polling leading up to that election showed that affordability in general was the “top issue” in the state, he said.Biden’s ​​Social Policy Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 6A proposal in flux. More

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    Gov. Murphy’s Republican Foe, Jack Ciattarelli, Will Concede

    It took nine days. But Mr. Ciattarelli is expected to acknowledge on Friday that he has lost the race for governor of New Jersey.Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican vying to unseat Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, will concede defeat on Friday, acknowledging that there is no chance he can overcome the 74,000-vote gap now separating the candidates, according to two people close to his campaign.The Associated Press and other national news outlets had declared Mr. Murphy, a first-term Democrat, the winner a day after the Nov. 2 election when he held a roughly one percentage point advantage over Mr. Ciattarelli.Over the last nine days, Mr. Murphy’s lead only grew as mail and provisional ballots were slowly tallied in liberal-leaning strongholds, prompting Democratic strategists to accuse Mr. Ciattarelli of stoking distrust in the election system as he used the inconclusive race results to raise campaign funds.Mr. Murphy’s campaign manager, Mollie Binotto, criticized the delay as an “assault on the integrity of our elections,” and the governor called it “dangerous.”Still, Mr. Murphy’s relatively narrow win jolted Democratic Party leaders and suggested an erosion of support among suburban and independent voters as the party prepares for what will be an uphill battle to retain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.Some Democratic lawmakers in swing districts in New Jersey are expected to face stiff challenges from Republicans eager to reverse Democratic gains.By Thursday, Mr. Murphy’s lead had reached 2.9 points — a full percentage point greater than the margin of victory in Virginia, where the former Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, conceded his race against a Republican businessman, Glenn Youngkin, the morning after polls closed.Earlier this week, Mr. Murphy said that the convention of a losing candidate accepting and conceding defeat goes to the heart of “what it is to be an American.”“It’s bigger than winning or losing,” he said.New Jersey’s vote count was unusually slow this year. The delays were blamed on a learning curve linked to new electronic voting equipment and the high volume of paper mail ballots, which represented about one-fifth of the total vote and had to be counted manually, starting on Election Day.Mr. Ciattarelli had maintained that it was statistically possible he could come within one point of Mr. Murphy after the approximately 70,000 emergency provisional ballots were counted, a threshold at which his campaign said it would consider asking a judge to authorize a recount.But it became clear on Thursday that the gap was unlikely to shrink significantly, campaign officials said, even though emergency provisional ballots in a handful of counties had not yet been evaluated or counted.Mr. Ciattarelli is expected to appear at 1 p.m. on Friday in Raritan, N.J., where he lives, to formally concede defeat.Mr. Murphy’s campaign had no immediate comment. More