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      Black Mayors of 4 Biggest U.S. Cities Draw Strength From One Another

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      The mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston have banded together as they confront violent crime, homelessness and other similar challenges.As the race for Los Angeles mayor began to tighten late last year, Karen Bass, the presumptive favorite, received some notes of encouragement from a kindred spirit: Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago.Ms. Lightfoot had successfully navigated a similar political path in 2019, becoming the first Black woman to be elected mayor of her city, much as Ms. Bass was trying to do in Los Angeles.And even though Ms. Bass’s billionaire opponent had poured $100 million into the race and boasted endorsements from celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry, Ms. Lightfoot urged her Democratic colleague to keep the faith in a series of personal visits and text messages.“She was up against somebody who was very, very moneyed and was leaning into people’s fears about crime, about homelessness — frankly, very similar to the circumstances that I’m facing now in my city in getting re-elected,” Ms. Lightfoot said in an interview. “I just wanted to make sure that she knew that I was there for her.”Ms. Lightfoot and Ms. Bass belong to an informal alliance of four big-city mayors tackling among the toughest jobs in America. They happen to be of similar mind in how to address their cities’ common problems, like violent crime, homelessness and rising overdose deaths.They also happen to be Black: When Ms. Bass took office in December, the nation’s four largest cities all had Black mayors for the first time.The Democratic mayors — Ms. Bass, Ms. Lightfoot, Eric Adams of New York City and Sylvester Turner of Houston — say their shared experiences and working-class roots as Black Americans give them a different perspective on leading their cities than most of their predecessors.Mr. Adams visited Mayor Lightfoot last year during a fund-raising trip to Chicago.Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressIn interviews, the four mayors discussed how their backgrounds helped shape their successful campaigns, and how they provide a unique prism to view their cities’ problems.“We have to be bold in looking at long entrenched problems, particularly on poverty and systemic inequality,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “We’ve got to look those in the face and we’ve got to fight them, and break down the barriers that have really held many of our residents back from being able to realize their God-given talent.”Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Michigan G.O.P.: Michigan Republicans picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for secretary of state.Dianne Feinstein: The Democratic senator of California will not run for re-election in 2024, clearing the way for what is expected to be a costly and competitive race to succeed the iconic political figure.Lori Lightfoot: As the mayor of Chicago seeks a second term at City Hall, her administration is overseeing the largest experiment in guaranteed basic income in the nation.Union Support: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. Democrats hope it will lead to increased union strength.To do so can require navigating a delicate balancing act.Ms. Bass was a community organizer who witnessed the riots after the Rodney King verdict; Mr. Adams drew attention to police brutality after being beaten by the police as a teenager.As a congresswoman, Ms. Bass took a leading role in 2020 after George Floyd’s death on legislation that aimed to prevent excessive use of force by police and promoted new officer anti-bias training. It was approved by the House, but stalled in the Senate, and President Biden later approved some of the measures by executive order.In Chicago, Ms. Lightfoot served as head of the Chicago Police Board and was a leader of a task force that issued a scathing report on relations between the Chicago police and Black residents. Mr. Adams founded a group called “100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care” in the 1990s.As mayors, all now in their 60s, they have criticized the “defund the police” movement, yet have also called for systemic policing changes.In Chicago and New York, Ms. Lightfoot and Mr. Adams have pushed for police spending increases and have flooded the subway with officers. That has invited criticism from criminal justice advocates who say they have not moved quickly enough to reform the departments.“As a city, we have to have a police department that is successful,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “And to me, successful is defined by making sure that they’re the best trained police department, that they understand that the legitimacy in the eyes of the public is the most important tool that they have, and that we also support our officers — it’s a really hard and dangerous job.”Mr. Adams agreed. “We can’t have police misconduct, but we also know we must ensure that we support those officers that are doing the right thing and dealing with violence in our cities,” he said.The four mayors have highlighted their backgrounds to show that they understand the importance of addressing inequality. Mr. Adams was raised by a single mother who cleaned homes. Ms. Bass’s father was a postal service letter carrier. Ms. Lightfoot’s mother worked the night shift as a nurse’s aide. Mr. Turner was the son of a painter and a maid.Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, a prominent left-leaning group, said the mayors’ lived experience was all the more reason for them to “take a more expansive view of Black life that is expressed in their policies and in their budgeting,” and to prioritize schools, libraries, youth jobs and mental health care.“We want our communities invested in, in the way that other communities are invested in and the investment should not simply come through more police,” he said.In December, Ms. Bass became the first Black woman to be elected mayor of Los Angeles.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesThe four serve as only the second elected Black mayors of their respective cities. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago each went more than 30 years between electing their first Black mayor and the second; Houston went nearly two decades.The mayors have worked together through the U.S. Conference of Mayors as well as the African American Mayors Association, which was founded in 2014 and has more than 100 members — giving the four Black mayors an additional pipeline to coordinate with other cities’ leaders.“Because we’re still experiencing firsts in 2023, it’s our obligation that we’re successful,” said Frank Scott Jr., the first elected Black mayor of Little Rock, Ark., who leads the African American Mayors Association. “It’s our obligation that to the best of our ability we’re above reproach, to ensure that we’re not the last and to ensure that it doesn’t take another 20 to 30 years to see another Black mayor.”Of the four, Ms. Bass, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, is perhaps the most left-leaning, characterizing herself as a “pragmatic progressive” who said she saw similarities between Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and herself as a young activist.“That’s who I was — that’s who I still am,” Ms. Bass said. “It’s just that, after a while, you want to begin to make a very concrete difference in people’s lives, as opposed to your positions and educating.” On her first day as mayor, Ms. Bass won praise for declaring a state of emergency on homelessness that gives the city expanded powers to speed up the construction of affordable housing. She also supports legislation by the Los Angeles City Council, known as “just cause” eviction protections, that bars landlords from evicting renters in most cases.A similar law in New York has stalled in the State Legislature, though supporters are hoping to pass it this year and have called on Mr. Adams to do more to help them.All the cities share a homeless crisis, as well as potential solutions. Houston has become a national model during Mr. Turner’s tenure for a “housing first” program that moved 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses over the last decade.Now New York City is starting a pilot program based on Houston’s approach that will move 80 homeless people into permanent supportive housing without having to go through the shelter system.Mr. Turner, a lawyer who became mayor in 2016, said he called Mr. Adams after he won a close primary in New York in 2021 to offer his support. He defended Mr. Adams’s plan to involuntarily remove severely mentally ill people from the streets — a policy that has received pushback in New York.“I applaud him on that,” Mr. Turner said. “Is it controversial or some people will find controversy in it? Yes. But what is the alternative? To keep them where they are?”Mr. Turner, who is in his final year in office because of term limits, said he set out with a goal of making Houston more equitable. “I didn’t want to be the mayor of two cities in one,” he said.“I recognized the fact that there are many neighborhoods that have been overlooked and ignored for decades,” he later added. “I grew up in one of those communities and I still live in that same community.”Mr. Turner has claimed success for a “housing first” program that moved 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses over the last decade in Houston.Go Nakamura for The New York TimesAnxiety among voters about the future of their cities could make it difficult for the mayors to succeed. Ms. Lightfoot, who is seeking a second term, faces eight opponents when Chicago holds its mayoral election on Feb. 28, and her own campaign shows her polling at 25 percent — well below the 50 percent she would need to avoid a runoff.Mr. Adams, a former police officer who was elected on the strength of a public safety message, has seen his support fall to 37 percent as he enters his second year in office, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.Concerns about crime are affecting both mayors. Chicago had nearly 700 murders last year, a major increase from about 500 murders in 2019 before the pandemic. In New York City, there were 438 murders last year, compared with 319 in 2019.In March, Mr. Adams met with Ms. Lightfoot while visiting Chicago for a fund-raiser at the home of Desirée Rogers, the former White House social secretary for President Barack Obama. At a joint news conference with Ms. Lightfoot, Mr. Adams reiterated his position that the communities most affected by policing abuses also tend to need the most protection.“All of these cities are dealing with the same crises, but there’s something else — the victims are Black and brown,” Mr. Adams said.Of the four mayors, Mr. Adams, in particular, has sought to align his colleagues behind an “urban agenda,” and to call in unison for federal help with the migrant crisis.Mr. Adams has also argued that the mayors’ messaging should be a model for Democratic Party leadership to follow, rather than what he called the “woke” left wing that he has quarreled with in New York.“The Democratic message was never to defund police,” he said, adding: “We’re just seeing the real Democratic message emerge from this group of mayors.” More

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      For 2024 Democratic Convention, Finalist Cities Include Atlanta, Chicago and New York

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      Atlanta, Chicago and New York are finalists, and local Democrats are eager to bend President Biden’s ear to host what would be his formal nomination event.When Mayor Eric Adams of New York runs into White House officials, promoting his city to host the Democratic National Convention is often among his top three agenda items.When Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois rode with President Biden in his motorcade last spring, he pressed the case for Chicago’s convention bid. And days before Mr. Biden landed in Atlanta this month, Mayor Andre Dickens was likewise plotting his pitch to the president.The battle over where Democrats should host their presidential convention in 2024 has been unfolding for months in some of the country’s largest Democratic-run cities. It is at once an opaque insider’s game and a spirited debate over Democratic messaging and symbolism, shaped by regional rivalries, whispered disparagement of competitors and high-powered public jockeying.“There’s sort of a baseline of stuff that matters,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a former Democratic National Committee finance chair, pointing to issues like security and hotel capacity. “You then sort of step back and you ask yourself, ‘Does this city fit who we are as a party?’”Atlanta, Chicago and New York remain in contention and have advanced toward the endgame of the process, hashing out potential nuts-and-bolts terms with the D.N.C., according to two people with direct knowledge of the bidding process. Of those three cities, Atlanta and Chicago have often been seen as leading contenders, but in many ways, the final decision will be a matter of Mr. Biden’s preference. Atlanta is the only one of those cities to be located in a presidential battleground state.Houston, which also submitted a bid, is no longer being considered, a D.N.C. official confirmed. Mayor Sylvester Turner also said in an interview on Thursday that he had been informed that his city was out of the running.For the 2020 Democratic convention, the host city was announced in March 2019, and Democrats involved expect a similar spring time frame this year, but caution the process is unpredictable.Mr. Biden, 80, has said he intends to run again, but he has yet to officially announce a re-election campaign. If he is again his party’s standard-bearer, the convention would be his first real one as a presidential nominee. The 2020 event was a nearly entirely virtual affair, after the coronavirus outbreak forced the cancellation of major in-person appearances in Milwaukee.Eyeing the next convention, boosters for various cities are building alliances with governors, senators, mayors and business leaders from their regions as they press their cases to Democratic officials and to the public.“Midwestern Democrats know how to win big and get things done,” said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, endorsing the bid from nearby Illinois.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023’s Most Unusual Race: The election for a swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court carries bigger policy stakes than any other contest in America this year.Anti-Transgender Push: Republican state lawmakers are pushing more sweeping anti-transgender bills than ever before, including bans on transition care for young adults up to 26.G.O.P. Power Struggle: In rural Pennsylvania, a fight between three warring factions is a microcosm of the national struggle for control over the Republican Party.A Key Senate Contest: Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat, said that he would run for the Senate in 2024 in a potential face-off with Senator Kyrsten Sinema.“My heart’s with New York,” Mr. Murphy said. “It’s got all the infrastructure that the party needs. It’s historically a bastion of Democratic support.”“The Democratic Party’s future on a national level is tied to success in the South,” declared former Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, who is working to secure support for Atlanta from other Southern officials.A mural on Dekalb Avenue in Atlanta. Some opposed to Atlanta’s selection note its location in a state where abortion access is strictly limited.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesGeorgia undeniably holds political significance for Mr. Biden. The state, once reliably Republican, flipped for him in 2020, and then cemented the Democratic Senate majority.“As the cradle of the civil rights movement, Georgia’s place in history and our national story ideally suit the Peach State to host the convention,” said Jon Ossoff, one of Georgia’s two Democratic senators.Reflecting Mr. Biden’s preferences, a key committee at the D.N.C. has recommended that Georgia host an early presidential primary, although the state faces logistical hurdles in doing so. On a call last year with Nevada Democrats in which he discussed the primary calendar, Mr. Biden also mentioned Georgia, according to two people on the call.“He was talking about Georgia, we need to put some emphasis there,” said Representative Dina Titus, Democrat of Nevada.The White House declined to comment for this article.The primary calendar lineup is separate from the convention decision. The latter is shaped as much by factors like hotel availability, union friendliness, transportation options, fund-raising ability from the various host committees and security considerations as it is by political calculations..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Dickens, the Atlanta mayor, said he had solicited the help of a number of prominent Southern Democrats to make the case for bringing the convention to his city, including former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, now a White House senior adviser; Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a close Biden ally; and a number of mayors across the region.Mr. Dickens and Ms. Bottoms sat in the front pew at Ebenezer Baptist Church on the Sunday before Martin Luther King’s Birthday, when Mr. Biden visited the congregation.Mayor Andre Dickens of Atlanta, center, with Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Mr. Biden on the tarmac in Atlanta this month.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesHe was greeted by a wave of pro-Atlanta convention messaging: A full-page advertisement for the city to host the convention ran in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Several city leaders jostled for face time. Mr. Dickens said he aimed to include the convention “somewhere in the first three sentences” of his conversation with Mr. Biden when he greeted him.Some union leaders across the country have begun weighing in — for Chicago or New York but against Atlanta. They maintain that it would be insulting to hold the Democratic convention in a state that is hostile to unions and in a city with very few unionized hotels.“A lot of delegates to the D.N.C. don’t want to have to stay farther out or compromise their values” because a city has just a few union hotels, said Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, who has made his case to party leaders.Last week, eight prominent labor leaders, including Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, signed a letter to Mr. Biden encouraging him to host the convention in New York, a place to “demonstrate pro-worker principles.”The convention does not have to use unionized hotels and convention workers, though it is encouraged.Asked about criticisms of Georgia, Mr. Dickens replied, “Why wouldn’t you take the mantra of, ‘Let’s bring our brand of government and politics to the South?’ And you can then influence things.”Advocates for Chicago — which is currently in the midst of a tumultuous mayor’s race — and of New York argue that a Democratic convention should be held in a place that unambiguously embraces Democratic values.“We’re perhaps the most pro-choice state in the country, we have protected L.G.B.T.Q. rights, we have protected civil rights,” Mr. Pritzker said in an interview last year. In a follow-up statement this week, he pointed to other recent liberal achievements including “common-sense legislation to end gun violence.”Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker pressed the case for Chicago with President Joe Biden last spring.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesHe has noted that the city often hosts large-scale events, the state reflects the nation’s diversity — and that summertime in Chicago, along Lake Michigan, is “phenomenal,” an implicit contrast with the heat and humidity in Atlanta, and the pungent summer smells of New York City. He also highlighted the city’s Midwestern location, in a critical battleground region, though Illinois itself is strongly Democratic.Nearby mayors and governors, including Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, are supporting Chicago, as is Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. The Republican National Convention in 2024 is already scheduled for Milwaukee.“We do not win national elections without the Midwest, and so I think it’s important for us to show up here,” said Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway of Madison, Wis.But some Chicago-skeptical Democrats quietly point out that the city is closely associated with a different Democratic president — Barack Obama — and argue that the only splashy convention Mr. Biden would ever get should be in a place that could be made to feel distinctly his own.New York is not competitive in presidential elections, but advocates insist that no city can match the nation’s largest in easily absorbing thousands of convention-goers.In an interview, Mayor Adams emphasized New York’s event infrastructure and cast the racially diverse, liberal city as a place that showcases “all the values that we look for in the Democratic Party.” (Democrats in the state, however, had a deeply disappointing midterm election.)“When you do an examination of all the things that a good convention looks like, it says New York,” Mr. Adams proclaimed. “It reeks with New York.”He described the city as a walkable cultural capital, a place where spouses of attendees, too, would be entertained — “A happy family is a good experience for the convention.”Madison Square Garden hosted the 2004 Republican National Convention. Mayor Eric Adams has played up the city’s transportation system and experienced security apparatus.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNew York’s prominent political backers include the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader; and the Clintons. Other cities are home to major Democratic donors — including Mr. Pritzker himself — but New York is an especially significant fund-raising center.Then there was Houston, a 2020 convention finalist in an electoral vote-rich state Democrats dream of flipping. In an interview Thursday morning, Mr. Turner, the mayor, urged his party to be more “forward-thinking in terms of, how do you expand the map?”“At some point,” he said, “Democrats are going to have to invest in its future rather than just trying to lock in what it currently has.”Jonathan Weisman More

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      Crime Concerns Drove Asian Americans Away From New York Democrats

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      Worries about public safety, especially attacks against Asian Americans, caused some in the once-reliably Democratic bloc to vote Republican last year.Asian Americans have typically formed a crucial and reliable voting bloc for Democrats in recent years, helping the party maintain its political dominance in liberal states like New York.But Republicans shattered that presumption in November when they came within striking distance of winning the governor’s race in New York for the first time in 15 years, buoyed in part by a surge of support among Asian American voters in southern Brooklyn and eastern Queens.Now, Democrats are trying to determine how they can stem — and, if possible, reverse — the growing tide of Asian American voters drifting away from the party amid a feeling that their concerns are being overlooked.Interviews with more than 20 voters of Asian descent, many of them Chinese Americans who had historically voted for Democrats but did not in 2022, found that many went with the Republican candidate for governor, Lee Zeldin, even if begrudgingly, largely because of concerns about crime.One lifelong Democrat from Queens, Karen Wang, 48, who is Chinese American, said she had never felt as unsafe as she did these days. “Being Asian, I felt I had a bigger target on my back,” she said.“My vote,” she added, “was purely a message to Democrats: Don’t take my vote for granted.”Besides crime, Asian American voters expressed concern over a proposal by former Mayor Bill de Blasio to change the admissions process for the city’s specialized high schools.Democratic leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, have acknowledged their party’s failure to offer an effective message about public safety to counter Republicans’ tough-on-crime platform, which resonated not just with Asian Americans, but with a constellation of voters statewide.In Flushing, Queens, home to one of New York City’s most vibrant Chinatowns, homespun leaflets posted on walls in English and Chinese encouraged passers-by to “Vote for Republicans” before the November election, blaming Democrats for illegal immigration and a rise in crime.One flier portrayed Ms. Hochul as anti-police and sought to link her to the death of Christina Yuna Lee, who was fatally stabbed more than 40 times by a homeless man inside her apartment in Manhattan’s Chinatown last February.Over Zoom, a group of 13 Chinese American friends, most of them retired union workers, met regularly to discuss the election before casting their ballots. A mix of Republicans, Democrats and political independents, they all voted for Mr. Zeldin.Gov. Kathy Hochul and other leading New York Democrats have acknowledged their party’s failure to offer an effective message about public safety.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesAlthough Mr. Zeldin lost, his support among Asian American voters helped lift other Republican candidates to surprise victories in down-ballot legislative races.In one of the southern Brooklyn districts with a majority of Asian American voters, Peter J. Abbate Jr., a 36-year Democratic incumbent, lost to Lester Chang, the first Asian American Republican to enter the State Legislature.Mr. Chang’s entrance, however, was clouded by questions about his legal residency, prompting the ruling Assembly Democrats to consider trying to expel him. They ultimately decided not to seek his expulsion, with one lawmaker, Assemblyman Ron Kim, noting that such a move would have provoked a “strong backlash from the Asian community.”For Democrats, repairing ties with Asian American voters, who account for about 15 percent of New York City’s population and make up the state’s fastest-growing ethnic group, may be a difficult yet critical challenge given the significant role such voters are poised to play in future elections.State Senator John Liu, a Queens Democrat, said that Mr. Zeldin’s campaign message on the crime issue “simply resonated better,” and that Democrats had to improve the way they communicated with Asian Americans, particularly on education policy.“Democrats can begin by understanding the Asian American perspective more deeply,” said Mr. Liu, who was born in Taiwan. “The broader issue is that many of the social justice issues in this country are still viewed from a Black and white lens, and Asian Americans are simply undetected by that lens and therefore feel completely marginalized.”Republicans performed well in parts of New York City with the largest Asian American populations, drawing voters who said they were concerned primarily with public safety, especially amid a spate of high-profile hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.In Assembly District 49 in Brooklyn, for example, which includes portions of Sunset Park and Dyker Heights, and is majority Asian, Mr. Zeldin won 61 percent of the vote, even though it appears white voters turned out to vote in higher numbers. Mr. Zeldin won by similar margins in a nearby Assembly district that is heavily Chinese and includes Bensonhurst and Gravesend.In Queens, Mr. Zeldin managed to obtain 51 percent of the vote in Assembly District 40, which includes Flushing and is about 70 percent Asian: mostly Chinese and Korean immigrants.Support for Mr. Zeldin, who came within six percentage points of beating Ms. Hochul, was palpable across those neighborhoods before Election Day, with much of the pro-Republican enthusiasm appearing to grow organically. And posts in support of Mr. Zeldin spread broadly across WeChat, a Chinese social media and messaging app widely used by Chinese Americans.Interviews with Asian American voters revealed that their discontent with the Democratic Party was, in many cases, deep-rooted and based on frustrations built over years. Many of them described becoming disillusioned with a party that they said had overlooked their support and veered too far to the left. They listed Democratic priorities related to education, criminal justice and illegal immigration as favoring other minority groups over Asian Americans, and blamed Democratic policies for a rise in certain crimes and for supporting safe injection sites.Voters traced their sense of betrayal in part to a divisive 2018 proposal by Mayor de Blasio, a Democrat, to alter the admissions process for the city’s elite high schools, several of which are dominated by Asian American students, to increase enrollment among Black and Hispanic students.The plan would have effectively reduced the number of Asian American students offered spots at the elite schools, which made some Asian Americans feel that Democrats were targeting them.Mayor Eric Adams, Mr. de Blasio’s successor, moved away from his predecessor’s plan to diversify the city’s top schools, but the effort galvanized Asian Americans politically, prompting parents to become more engaged and laying the groundwork for Republicans to make inroads among aggrieved voters. Indeed, one vocal political club that emerged from the education debate, the Asian Wave Alliance, actively campaigned for Mr. Zeldin.“Why should I support Democrats who discriminate against me?” said Lailing Yu, 59, a mother from Hong Kong whose son graduated from a specialized high school in 2018. “We see Democrats are working for the interest of African Americans and Latino communities against Asian communities.”After years as a registered Democrat, Ms. Lu switched her party registration to Republican last year and voted for Mr. Zeldin. She ticked off a litany of recent instances of street violence — including one involving a stranger who spit at her while she was taking out her trash — that she said made her feel less safe now than when she arrived in the United States 50 years ago.“I think what upset me to see Asian Americans veer right is that they were swayed by fear and fear alone,” said Representative Grace Meng, a Queens Democrat of Taiwanese descent. “It’s important that we are working with the Asian American community, but also with our leaders up and down the ballot to make sure they’re listening and responsive to our concerns, which is not just substance, but outreach, especially during campaigns.”Sam Ni at his Sunset Park computer store. He said his shift to the Republican Party was prompted by a proposal to alter the admissions process for the city’s specialized high schools. Janice Chung for The New York TimesSam Ni, a father of two high school students, began shifting to the right after the debate over high school admissions. He described the city’s diversification effort as an attempt to “punish” Asian American students.Mr. Ni said fears over subway crime had disrupted his daily life and further estranged him from the Democratic Party. His wife, he said, recently began to drive the couple’s son to school from southern Brooklyn to Upper Manhattan, forcing her to spend hours in traffic instead of working at the computer store the family owns in Sunset Park.“If I told my son to go to the subway, we will worry about it,” said Mr. Ni, 45, who was a Democrat since immigrating to the United States from China in 2001 but who switched parties and voted for President Donald J. Trump in 2020.This year, Mr. Ni decided to play an active role in getting other Asian Americans to the polls: He helped organize an effort that raised about $12,000 to print get-out-the-vote banners, fliers and bags in English and Chinese.“If you don’t vote, don’t complain,” read the signs, a slogan that also spread on WeChat and other social media platforms. The message did not explicitly urge voters to back Mr. Zeldin, whom Mr. Ni voted for, but the materials were passed out primarily at rallies for Mr. Zeldin in the city’s Chinese neighborhoods.Mr. Ni helped organize an effort that raised money to print banners and other materials in Chinese and English encouraging people to vote. Janice Chung for The New York TimesThere were also larger forces at play.A week before the election, Asian American voters in New York City received mailings that appeared to be race-based. They accused the Biden administration and left-wing officials of embracing policies related to job qualifications and college admissions that “engaged in widespread racial discrimination against white and Asian Americans.”The mailings, part of a national Republican-aligned campaign targeting Asian American voters, were distributed by America First Legal, a group founded by Stephen Miller, a former top adviser to Mr. Trump who helped craft the president’s hard-line immigration policies.Democratic officials said they believed that many Asian Americans that voted Republican tended to be East Asian, particularly Chinese voters who may be more culturally conservative. Republicans may have also found success among first-generation immigrants who may not be as attuned to the history of racial inequity that has led Democrats to enact policies that Republicans have targeted, such as reforms to New York’s bail laws.Mr. Zeldin also made a point of meeting with, and raising money from, Asian American leaders and activists. The approach helped him win — and, in some cases, run up the vote — in many districts dominated by Asian American voters and enabled him to chip into Ms. Hochul’s overwhelming support in the rest of the city.Even so, some Asian American leaders noted that Mr. Zeldin’s near singular focus on crime — his campaign framed the election in existential terms: “Vote like your life depends on it, because it does” — allowed him to run up his numbers across many voting groups, including white and suburban voters, not just Asian Americans.Mr. Zeldin at a campaign rally shortly before Election Day. His near-singular focus on the issue of crime won over many Asian American voters. Dave Sanders for The New York TimesMany Democratic officials noted Ms. Hochul’s effort to rally Asian American voters in the campaign’s closing weeks, but characterized the push as too little, too late.After the election, the governor acknowledged that Democrats had fallen short in communicating their message about public safety to Asian American voters, saying that “more could have been done to make sure that people know that this was a high priority of ours.”“Obviously, that was not successful in certain communities who were hearing other voices and seeing other messaging and seeing other advertising with a contrary message about our priorities,” Ms. Hochul said in November after signing two bills aimed at curbing hate crimes. More

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      The Pocket Chinese Almanac Sees Some Hope for 2023

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      A little book bases its forecasts on a geomancer in Hong Kong, and says next year will be “nowhere near as bad” as 2022.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. It’s time to venture into predictions for 2023. We’ll also look at how progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans are clashing on what may be the most ideologically diverse City Council ever.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesThis time last year, I asked Joanna Lee about predictions for 2022. She said, “My heart sank.”She had her husband, Ken Smith, have compiled and annotated the “Pocket Chinese Almanac” annually since 2010. So — after a year with a war in Ukraine, stubborn inflation in this country and a chronic housing shortage in New York — what do they see ahead?“It’s nowhere near as bad,” Smith said.Financial businesses and the travel industry will have “particularly rocky periods coming up,” Lee said — and it is not clear what will do well in 2023.They base the forecasts in their little book on the calculations of a geomancer, a Hong Kong architect named Warwick Wong. He said 2023 would be dominated by “wood and fire,” a shift away from “metal,” which had been dominant in recent years.Smith said “fire” includes energy — oil, natural gas and electricity — as well as what he called “high-energy fields” like public relations, marketing and the law.“At every turn, you have people who are trying to grab and control the narrative in some way that will offer some kind of clarity” as the pandemic fades, Smith said. He said the arts provided an example: “The initial story was going to be people are going to flock back to entertainment and into theaters, that two years of isolation would be over,” he said. Lee finished the thought: “Now that is not the case, or it is in some areas and not others. People are going out, but they’re more judicious.”Lee said it was less clear how to translate “wood” to modern life. It could be taken to refer to construction, but when I asked if there would be a construction boom, she said not necessarily. “When one place builds a lot, another place sees a lot of destruction,” she said. “We just don’t know where there will be the boom.”“The Pocket Chinese Diary” is an ultra-Reader’s Digest version of predictions in larger Chinese almanacs. Each page in their 128-page book measures a mere 4⅛ inches by 2½ inches. It is faithful to the original Chinese and, in turn, to the agrarian society that China once was. So, for each day of the year, there is an entry with two headings: “good” and “bad.”Some days are good for rituals, weddings, breaking ground or other pursuits like “building stoves,” “raising pillars and beams,” “placing doors,” “digging ditches” or “the maiden voyage of a boat.” Some days are bad for those things. Next Tuesday — Jan. 3, the first workday of 2023 — will be good for such things as “cleaning house” and “pest control.”It is not the day to make wine or distill alcohol. It’s also a bad day for “breaking ground.”All of those terms are metaphors. Lee said that “cleaning house” was about “paring down to the essentials, or at least what is useful.” As for “pest control,” the almanac notes that “pests today are hardly limited to insects and rodents.”Lee also said Jan. 3 was not the day to look to. It’s still in the Year of the Tiger. The Lunar New Year, ushering in the Year of the Rabbit, does not begin until Jan. 23, a day that has an unusually long list of “good” pursuits, including some that do not sound metaphorical: meeting friends, moving, starting new jobs, starting a business and “renovating warehouses.”WeatherThe sun will be shining and temps will be in the low 40s. At night, it will be mostly clear with low temps around the high 30s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Sunday (New Year’s Day).The latest New York newsLaylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York TimesTeen shootings: Since Jan. 1, 149 people under 18 have been shot, according to Police Department data. Roughly one in every 10 New Yorkers struck by a bullet was a child.Blizzard deaths: The death toll from the storm in western New York continued to climb, with the mayor’s office in Buffalo reporting eight more fatalities.Santos comes clean: For a week, Representative-elect George Santos avoided answering questions from the media. Now, Santos is taking a new approach: creating the appearance of coming clean.On an ideologically diverse City Council, the G.O.P. gainsAhmed Gaber for The New York TimesAri Kagan used to be 1 of 46 on the New York City Council. Now, after doing the politically unthinkable, he is one of only six.Kagan was a Democrat, and Democrats have an overwhelming majority on the 51-person Council. But he switched parties, joining the Council’s five other Republicans.My colleague Jeffery C. Mays writes that the switch might help when Kagan runs for re-election next year, even if it means a loss of power and influence on the Council between now and Election Day. Kagan’s district in South Brooklyn is becoming more conservative. But Kagan said that was not the main reason he crossed the aisle. He said he believed that the Democratic Party, especially in New York, had drifted too far to the left.“It’s not me leaving the Democratic Party,” Kagan said. “The Democratic Party started to leave me.”There are other signs that Republicans are making inroads in New York City, where Democrats outnumber them seven to one. Every borough voted more Republican in last month’s elections than in the 2020 presidential year. Three Democrats in the State Assembly lost to Republicans in South Brooklyn.Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor, won Staten Island by 19 points more than Republicans won the borough by in the 2020 presidential election. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, defeated Zeldin by the smallest margin in a governor’s race in more than 30 years, in part because of how well Zeldin did in parts of New York City.Some on the far left have accused Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who is a former registered Republican, of serving as an unspoken ally to Republicans. Adams regularly criticizes left-leaning Democrats, including members of the Council, and has a working relationship with Joseph Borelli, a Republican who is the Council’s minority leader.On the Council, policy disagreements have underscored the gulf between liberals and the handful of Republicans.Tiffany Cabán, a Queens councilwoman who is on the progressive caucus and leads the Committee on Women and Gender Equity, received threatening emails and calls from the public, along with derogatory and vulgar comments about her Latina heritage and sexual orientation earlier this fall.The threats closely followed an appearance on Fox News by Joann Ariola, a Republican councilwoman, who called Cabán a “chaos inciter” for suggesting ways that small-business owners could deal with homeless or mentally ill people without calling the police.“What they’re doing is part and parcel of that far-right playbook,” Cabán said of Republicans on the Council. “You whip up fear and hatred of people of color, queer people, and you foment political violence. It’s what Tucker Carlson does every day. It’s what Marjorie Taylor Greene does.”METROPOLITAN diaryOwenEvery week since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has published stories by, and for, New Yorkers. Readers helped us pick the best Diary entry of the year, and Owen was a finalist in this year’s voting.Dear Diary:My mother died earlier this year. It was sudden and unexpected. In the weeks that followed, I was taking care of my father in addition to my children. I was so busy that I barely had a chance to cry.After about a month, I took a day off work to go to the Fotografiska Museum and then to meet my husband for lunch nearby.After viewing an exhibition of nude photography, I walked directly into one that was a chronicle of the life and death of the artist’s mother.The weight of the previous month and the unexpected connection to the artist hit me hard. I sat down in the mostly empty museum and sobbed.I tried to be quiet and inconspicuous there in the dark room, but before long a man approached me and asked if I was OK.I told him that my mother had died recently and that I just missed her so much.He sat down next to me, rubbed my back after politely seeking my consent and told me he would sit with me as long as I needed.I asked his name.Owen, he said.He asked mine.Suzie, I replied.And my mother’s?Stephanie.He said he would hold us in his heart and he asked if I needed a hug.I did. Even in heels, I stood on tiptoes to embrace a total stranger and sob into his shoulder. I thanked him with every fiber of my being.I skipped the final exhibition and ran to meet my husband. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t bear to see Owen’s face in the light.— Suzanna Publicker MetthamIllustrated 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.Morgan Malget 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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      G.O.P. Gains Strength on N.Y. City Council, as a Democrat Breaks Ranks

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      Progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans are clashing on what may be the most ideologically diverse City Council ever.As a first-term Democrat on the New York City Council, it might seem logical that Ari Kagan would want to curry favor with his party, which has an overwhelming majority within the 51-member body. Instead, he did the politically unthinkable this month: He switched parties to join the Council’s five other Republicans.For Mr. Kagan, who represents a district in South Brooklyn that is becoming more conservative, the move might be to his political advantage when he seeks re-election next year — even if it means a loss of power and influence on the Council. But Mr. Kagan said that he believed that the Democratic Party, especially in New York, had drifted too far to the left.“It’s not me leaving the Democratic Party,” Mr. Kagan said. “The Democratic Party started to leave me.”Across New York City, where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, there are signs of Republicans making inroads. In the most recent midterm elections, every county in the city voted more Republican than it did in the 2020 presidential election, and three Democratic members of the State Assembly lost to Republicans in South Brooklyn.Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor, won Staten Island by 19 points more than Republicans won the borough in the 2020 presidential election. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, won the governor’s race by the smallest margin in over 30 years — in part because of how well Mr. Zeldin did in parts of New York City. “Ten years ago, our party was somewhat on the decline. We were fractured, we were disjointed, we were losing voters,” Joseph Borelli, the Council’s Republican minority leader, said at the news conference announcing Mr. Kagan’s switch. “I think today is a sign that the opposite is happening.”Some on the far left have accused Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who is a former registered Republican, of serving as an unspoken ally to Republicans. Mr. Adams regularly criticizes left-leaning Democrats, including members of the Council, as damaging to the party’s electoral hopes.The mayor also has a working relationship with Mr. Borelli. That became evident when Mr. Borelli’s Republican appointees to a City Council districting commission joined with Mr. Adams’s appointees in an unsuccessful bid to push through Council maps that would have benefited Republicans by keeping all three G.O.P. districts on Staten Island contained within the borough, while hurting some progressive Democrats in Brooklyn.The Council maps that were ultimately created as part of the once-in-a-decade redistricting process still increased the chance that newly drawn districts might be won by Republicans in next year’s election, according to an analysis by the CUNY Mapping Service.Still badly outnumbered, the Republican contingent on the Council will be hard-pressed to pass partisan legislation, but it can still create, if not shape, debate. Its members oppose vaccine mandates, filed a lawsuit to invalidate noncitizen voting, used the word “groomer” in opposition to drag queen story hour in public schools and are vocal proponents of more stringent policing tactics.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      George Santos’s Early Life: Odd Jobs, Bad Debts and Lawsuits

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      Representative-elect George Santos, who is under scrutiny over potentially misrepresenting key parts of his campaign biography, had other undisclosed troubles in his early career.The polite young customer service agent at the Dish Network call center in Queens could speak English and Portuguese, so when Brazilian immigrants had trouble with their billing or their satellite dish, their calls would be routed his way.It was around 2012, and the man was George Santos, a son of Brazilian immigrants who, more than a decade later, would win a crucial election to Congress.But on the campaign trail, Mr. Santos told a different story about his life: that around the same time that Dish Network records show he was working there, he was rising through the ranks at Citigroup in the first step of an extensive and lucrative Wall Street career that also included a stint at Goldman Sachs.Neither Citigroup nor Goldman Sachs could locate any record of Mr. Santos’s employment, The New York Times reported on Monday. The Times’s findings — which include a criminal charge in Brazil and potential omissions or misrepresentations in his financial disclosure — raise questions about the life and dealings of the new Republican congressman.Mr. Santos has declined to directly address The Times’s reporting or provide a detailed résumé that could help verify his past jobs, calling the effort an attempt to “smear his good name.”On Thursday, with many Democrats and even some Republicans calling for answers, Mr. Santos said on Twitter, “I have my story to tell and it will be told next week.” He promised his constituents he would “address your questions.” (His lawyer later declined to answer a list of questions from The Times.)But interviews with former friends and co-workers, and additional records reviewed by The Times, offer a fuller picture of Mr. Santos’s life, with new details that were not disclosed on his campaign biography.Former friends recalled an ambitious young man with fine taste, whose lavish descriptions of real estate owned in Brazil, Nantucket and New York seemed vastly disconnected from the rented apartments in Queens he lived in, including one he shared with his sister and his mother, who was employed as a domestic worker.John Rijo, who said he had worked at the Dish Network center in College Point for roughly a decade, said that Mr. Santos had taken calls in English and Portuguese. Mr. Santos worked there from October 2011 to July 2012, doing “customer care work,” according to the company.The agents’ hourly pay, Mr. Rijo said, was at most, he thought, $15 an hour, with an extra dollar or two for foreign language expertise. Mr. Santos’s employment at Dish was also reported by the local news site Patch.What to Know About George SantosThe Republican congressman-elect from New York has been the subject of intense scrutiny since The Times raised questions about his background.A Résumé With Big Holes: George Santos says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But he seems to have misrepresented a number of his career highlights.Reactions: In the aftermath of the Times report, Democratic House leaders stopped short of calling for Mr. Santos to resign, while House Republicans and state party leaders were largely silent.Lies About His Jewish Heritage?: The Forward, a Jewish publication based in New York City, reported that Mr. Santos may have misled voters about having Jewish ancestry.At the same time, friends recall, Mr. Santos was living modestly in Queens, occasionally taking on extra roommates to make rent. Gregory Morey-Parker was one of those roommates, briefly. From early on, he said, there were incongruities between the way that Mr. Santos talked about himself and the life he led. Mr. Santos bragged about family wealth and business success — even a home on Nantucket — which Mr. Morey-Parker said had seemed at odds with the ordinary life the family led.“You’re sitting here bragging about all this money you’re making,” Mr. Morey-Parker said. “Then why is your mother a housekeeper?”Peter Hamilton met Mr. Santos near the start of 2014, he said. He recalled how Mr. Santos, who claimed to be an N.Y.U. graduate, had not recognized the name of the business school he said he had attended. Nonetheless, Mr. Hamilton found him charismatic and intelligent. “He seems to know what to say, and how to say it to people,” Mr. Hamilton recalled in an interview.He did not hesitate when Mr. Santos said that he needed to borrow several thousand dollars to move in with his boyfriend, and lent him the money in September 2014, court documents show. Not long afterward, Mr. Hamilton said, Mr. Santos stopped responding to his texts and calls.Mr. Hamilton filed a case in small claims court in Queens to seek repayment in 2015. In October of that year, Mr. Santos responded, saying that the money had been repaid and that it was not a loan but a favor. A judge agreed with Mr. Hamilton, however, and issued a judgment of $5,000 plus interest. In an interview, Mr. Hamilton said that while he would love to be repaid, he was past worrying over old debts. “I have regrets that I didn’t come forward before the actual election,” he said, adding later, “At this point, it’s like, he’s defrauding the public.”Mr. Santos built his political campaign in part on the notion that he wanted to parlay a successful career on Wall Street into public service. Jackie Molloy/BloombergCourt records show that Mr. Santos’s financial struggles extended beyond debts to friends. The same year that he was in court with Mr. Hamilton, a landlord in Queens filed an eviction case against him, saying he owed her $2,250 in rent.Less than two years later, he faced another eviction lawsuit in a different apartment, when a landlord in the Sunnyside neighborhood in Queens said Mr. Santos owed months of rent and a fee for a bounced check. He was ultimately ordered to pay more than $12,000.The next year, in December 2018, Discover Bank won a default judgment against Mr. Santos for $1,927.45 in credit card debt, court records show. His last payment had been made in February of that year, for just $34.In 2019, as Mr. Santos was preparing to start his first campaign for Congress, court records show that he was back in court in Queens for another matter: a divorce case.City clerk records obtained by the nonprofit group Reclaim the Records show that Mr. Santos was married in 2012 in Manhattan. His former wife filed for divorce in June 2019, which Mr. Santos did not contest.The circumstances of their marriage are unclear: Divorce cases are sealed, and attempts to reach Mr. Santos’s ex-wife in New Jersey were unsuccessful. But the divorce was concluded that fall, court records show. In November, Mr. Santos declared his candidacy in New York’s Third Congressional District in northeast Queens and northern Long Island.Early during that first campaign, Mr. Santos listed his address as an apartment in the Elmhurst section of Queens. That residence, which was outside the district he was running to represent, appeared on an official candidate list compiled by New York City’s Board of Elections in 2020 and on federal campaign finance documents.Mr. Santos later moved to a rowhouse in the Whitestone neighborhood where he is currently registered to vote, but no longer lives.The house’s owner, Nancy Pothos, said that Mr. Santos and his husband had moved there in July 2020. The couple rented the two-bedroom, two-floor apartment for $2,600 a month, she said, while Ms. Pothos lived below.Mr. Santos, right, campaigning in Glen Cove, N.Y., in November.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressThe apartment drew attention after Mr. Santos claimed it had been vandalized in January 2021, after he and his husband returned from a New Year’s Eve gala in Florida at former President Donald J. Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago. Instagram photos that Mr. Santos posted of himself at the event were linked to a Times article about guests’ forgoing masks despite coronavirus-related restrictions.Mr. Santos asserted on Twitter that stones and eggs had been thrown at his house and that he had spent four and a half hours filing reports with the police and insurance companies.Ms. Pothos, 72, said that she did not recall any such incident. The New York Police Department, when asked if it had reports of violence, vandalism or disputes at the Whitestone address for early that January, said it had a report of an incident there in October 2021. It did not respond when asked to clarify if that was the only reported incident at the address that year.Mr. Santos told Newsday in March 2022 that he had left the Whitestone home, purportedly because of the vandalism, though he refused to share a new address. But Ms. Pothos said that Mr. Santos had not moved out until August and asserted that she had to spend $17,000 to repair severe damage left behind.Where Mr. Santos currently lives remains unclear, in part because he has offered conflicting accounts. In October, he suggested on Twitter that he still lived in Ms. Pothos’s apartment, citing a robbery “two blocks away from my home in Whitestone.”Mr. Santos had also told Newsday that he would eventually move to Oyster Bay, N.Y. Instead, he appears to have settled in a house in Huntington, a town just outside his district’s boundaries. (Members of Congress are only required to live in the state they represent, not the district.)On Wednesday, three neighbors said that they had seen Mr. Santos or his husband at the house in Huntington, in a hilly neighborhood full of attractive, middle-class houses, some of which have been turned into rentals. One man who lived across the street said that Mr. Santos had moved in some time in August.Neither Mr. Santos nor his husband is listed on property records for the home, and the house’s owner did not respond to a phone call or social media messages seeking more information.Reporting was contributed by More

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      $142,000 a Year: State Legislators’ Expected New Salary

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      Lawmakers are headed to Albany today to vote themselves a raise that would make them the best-paid legislators in the nation.Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll find out why the State Senate and the Assembly will convene today in an unusual special session. We’ll also look at why some New Yorkers say race shapes the criticism of Mayor Eric Adams.Tristan Spinski for The New York TimesState lawmakers are gathering in Albany today to give themselves a raise. If only a salary bump were that easy for everyone. The bill before the lawmakers, who already get six-figure base salaries for a five-month scheduled session in Albany, would boost their pay to roughly twice the median family income in the United States and slightly more than five times what lawmakers in neighboring Connecticut make. I asked my colleague Jesse McKinley for details.How are lawmakers in New York paid in comparison with other state legislators?Pretty darn well. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, New York lawmakers rank No. 2 in the nation in base pay, thanks to a raise they received in 2018. California, which has a habit of besting New York in all kinds of categories (population, economic output, number of professional baseball teams) is No. 1 for the moment.Won’t this make lawmakers in New York the best-compensated in the nation?Yes, with Thursday’s anticipated pay hike, Albany’s 213 lawmakers will now have the highest base salary of any in the country: $142,000 a year, from the current $110,000 a year. State lawmakers in California will still be taking home $119,702 a year.What’s the catch?The concession made by lawmakers to get that $32,000 raise is that they will agree to a $35,000 cap on outside income, something that good government groups have long pushed for (though some would like an even lower threshold for such nongovernment earning).The concern is the potential for corruption and conflicts of interest that could arise from, say, working in a law firm. Legislative leaders say this is a big step toward wiping out Albany’s well-deserved reputation for money-driven malfeasance. But the $35,000 limit won’t take effect until 2025, unlike the raise, which will take effect on Jan. 1.Why did they go back to Albany for one day just to give themselves a raise?Albany loves leaving things till the last minute, including its budgets, which used to be chronically late and now are only periodically late.The more germane answer, however, is that the bill authorizing the raise has to be approved before the new session of the Legislature begins in January. Lawmakers cannot vote themselves a raise that takes effect during the same session as the vote. It says so in the state Constitution. Obviously time is running out between now and January — hence, a lot of people descending on the capital for a one-day-only session.Will Gov. Kathy Hochul sign the bill raising their compensation? What happens if she decides not to sign it?The governor hasn’t explicitly said she’ll sign the bill to hike the lawmakers’ pay, but she’s expressed support for such an increase in the past. Also, it seems unlikely to me that the legislators would go all the way back to Albany without an implicit understanding that Hochul — a Democrat, like the leaders that control both houses of the Legislature — is cool with higher salaries.If she decided not to sign the bill, my best guess is that she would get very few Christmas presents from legislative leaders this year.What has the reaction been?Giving yourself a raise is always a bad look for politicians, even if many outside groups agree that it’s not unjustified. Republicans have lambasted the raise — and its timing during a “special session” — and some watchdog groups have said it doesn’t go far enough to limit outside earning.But legislative leaders stand by it, including the speaker of the Assembly, Carl Heastie. “I don’t think there’s enough money in the world,” he said recently, “that could compensate you for being away from your families.”WeatherPrepare for wind gusts and rain persisting through the evening. Temps will be steady around the low to mid-50s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Dec. 26.The latest New York newsJohnny Milano for The New York TimesCrimeSuffolk cyberattack: The malicious cyberattack that forced the county government offline for weeks this fall began more than a year ago, officials revealed.Brooklyn subway shooting: The man accused in a shooting spree on an N train has told his lawyers he wants to admit to the April attack. He is expected to plead guilty to terrorism as well as a firearms charge.Councilman’s home invaded: Protesters descended on the home and the office of a gay member of the New York City Council, vandalizing the walls with homophobic graffiti and attacking one of his neighbors, over his support for Drag Story Hour events at libraries.More local newsA fall triathlon: The New York City Triathlon will move to the fall, with a race date of Oct. 1, following years of interruptions from extreme summer heat.Seasonal staples are back: After one holiday season lost to the pandemic and another curtailed by Omicron, “The Nutcracker” is being danced, “A Christmas Carol” is being performed and “Messiah” is being sung again.“Almost Famous” closing: “Almost Famous,” a stage adaptation of the acclaimed 2000 film, will close on Broadway on Jan. 8 after facing soft ticket sales in a competitive market.Race and criticism of the mayorDavid Dinkins in 1988.Joyce Dopkeen/The New York TimesThe end of the year is in sight — the end of Mayor Eric Adams’s first year in office. It has been a difficult 12 months in which he faced the challenges of moving the city past the pandemic, reinvigorating a weakened economy and tempering heightened fears of crime.Some New Yorkers have questioned whether he moved fast enough to address intractable problems like homelessness and a lack of affordable housing. Complaints have also focused on his hiring practices, his response to the crisis at the Rikers Island jail complex and how he handled the influx of migrants from Texas.But my colleagues Jeffery C. Mays and Emma G. Fitzsimmons write that several Black leaders are raising concerns that criticism of the mayor has been shaped by race. They suggest that implicit racism undermined Mayor David Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor, a generation ago, and could undercut Adams now.Adams himself said that he was accustomed to criticism, but that when some people “look at these two Black mayors, Dinkins and my role now, there are those that wish we fail.”“Look at all the mayors,” he said. “Dinkins and I are the only two mayors that people talk about how we went out at night. They used to say he had a tuxedo in his car all the time because he went out to different galas and balls and what have you. That’s the role of the mayor.”Adams’s allies may be hoping to discourage criticism at a time when his popularity appears to be waning: In a recent Siena College poll, 50 percent of voters in the city viewed him favorably and 35 percent unfavorably.Adams, a former police captain, has sought to have a better relationship with the police than Dinkins did: He brought back a controversial plainclothes police unit. He has also dispatched waves of officers to address crime on the subway and protected police funding in his budget while often standing by officers accused of misconduct.Adams said he had drawn two lessons from Dinkins’s loss to Rudolph Giuliani in 1993: Focus on making “real changes in office” and do not allow your political coalition to erode. He has made sure that his base feels heard after winning the mayoralty with a coalition of Black and Latino voters and moderates outside Manhattan.“My secret sauce is everyday working-class families,” he said, adding that he had met some of those families on a recent visit to the Rockaways in Queens. “They’re just not complicated. They just want a safe place to raise their children and families. Those are my folks.”METROPOLITAN diaryRock, rock, rockDear Diary:“Rock, rock, rock,” I heard a voice repeating. “Rock, rock, rock.”I was walking up a trail into the Ramble in Central Park when I came upon the voice’s owner: a tall, slender man with a twist of silver hair over one eye.I waited, not wanting to interrupt whatever it was that he was doing.“Rock, rock, rock,” he said again in a monotone. “Rock, rock, rock.”Two minutes later, a red cardinal flew down from a tree, landed on a large flat rock and did the hokey pokey, hopping tentatively toward the middle of the rock.That was when I noticed a single peanut in the shell sitting there. The cardinal grappled with how to lift the nut. After finally securing it, the bird flew off.The man turned to me.“The wife is much smarter,” he said in a serious tone. “I’ve known the family for years. I never have to wait when she’s around.”— Sharyn WolfIllustrated 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, Morgan Malget and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Scott Stringer Sues for Defamation Over Sexual Assault Claim

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      Mr. Stringer, the former New York City comptroller, said that a woman’s claims of sexual assault were lies and caused “irreparable harm” as he ran for mayor.Nearly 20 months after allegations of unwanted sexual advances derailed his campaign for New York City mayor, Scott M. Stringer sued one of his accusers for defamation on Monday, arguing that she smeared his reputation with falsehoods and misrepresentations.In a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Stringer said that the woman, Jean Kim, had done “irreparable harm to him and his political future” by portraying what he called an “on-and-off” consensual relationship as predatory. He demanded that Ms. Kim retract her accusations and pay damages.“These defamatory statements have caused Mr. Stringer emotional pain and suffering, as well as injury to his reputation, honor and dignity,” lawyers for Mr. Stinger, a longtime Democratic politician and former New York City comptroller, wrote in the 12-page complaint.The legal action appears to be a calculated risk for Mr. Stringer, 62. If successful, it could help clear up his public image as he contemplates a political comeback. But it also serves to resurface Ms. Kim’s decades-old claims of misconduct, while posing the risk of an embarrassing legal defeat and reopening scrutiny into an earlier chapter in his life.Defamation cases are notoriously hard to prove, especially for public figures. To even get his case heard in court, Mr. Stringer must get around New York’s statute of limitations for defamation, and his lawyers are relying on a relatively novel legal theory to do so.They wrote in the suit that the matter was reopened legally in August 2022, when they assert — with scant detail — that Ms. Kim caused Representative Carolyn Maloney to resurface her defamatory statement against Mr. Stringer.The factual and legal issues are particularly relevant at a moment when New York and the country are still grappling with balancing the claims of women propelled by the #MeToo movement against the right to due process, and appraising what should happen to public figures like Mr. Stringer who are accused of misconduct decades after the fact.Ms. Kim and a lawyer who had represented her during the mayoral campaign did not comment on Monday morning, after the suit was filed.In an interview on Friday, Mr. Stringer said that he decided to take legal action now, after a needed “cooling-off period” for his family, to salvage his reputation. He acknowledged that waiting so long after the initial statements may have constrained his options legally.“There are times you could just walk away,” Mr. Stringer said. “But it was a lie. It was just a total lie. And I can’t live with myself if I did not do everything in my power to expose it.”Ms. Kim came forward in April 2021, in the heat of the Democratic primary for mayor. At the time, Mr. Stringer, a liberal who had slowly risen through the ranks of city politics, was considered a top-tier candidate for the nomination, though he seldom led early public polls.In a news conference and media interviews, Ms. Kim said that Mr. Stringer sexually assaulted her in 2001 when she was working as an unpaid intern on his unsuccessful campaign for public advocate. She said Mr. Stringer, then a state assemblyman whom she viewed as an older mentor figure, repeatedly groped her without consent, put his hands down the back of her pants, pressured her to have sex — and then warned her not to tell anyone.“He constantly reminded me of his power by saying things like, ‘You want me to make a phone call for you to change your life,’ ‘You want me to make you the first Asian district leader,’” Ms. Kim later told The New York Times. Many prominent supporters quickly backed away from his campaign. Mr. Stringer stayed in the race, but ultimately finished fifth in a primary election won by Eric Adams, who went on to become mayor.Mr. Stringer disputed Ms. Kim’s account, saying they were peers and that their relationship had been consensual and public within the tight circles of Upper West Side Democratic politics. His campaign also presented documents that showed that Ms. Kim, who has worked as a political lobbyist, might have helped one of Mr. Stringer’s rivals, Andrew Yang, which she disputed.Monday’s lawsuit largely repeats the conflicting stories without new evidence, and seeks to highlight factual errors or inconsistencies in Ms. Kim’s claims.It remains unclear if Ms. Kim’s version of events can be independently corroborated; she has not provided any records, nor has she mentioned associates with whom she discussed the allegations at the time.Defamation, particularly cases involving public figures like Mr. Stringer, can be difficult to prove, and the contradictory claims by Ms. Kim and Mr. Stringer — involving shifting sexual and romantic mores, political power and few hard pieces of evidence — only add to that burden.Mr. Stringer appears to have even more pressing legal burdens, with Ms. Kim likely to argue for dismissal because her original statements fall outside New York’s statute of limitations.His argument that the timeline was restarted in August rests on photos on social media that apparently show Ms. Kim at a campaign event with Ms. Maloney, who was running in a primary contest against Representative Jerrold Nadler, a longtime mentor of Mr. Stringer’s.Two weeks later, the congresswoman attacked Mr. Nadler in The New York Post for supporting “a man accused of sexual assault.” The lawsuit argues that it should have been “reasonably foreseeable” for Ms. Kim that Ms. Maloney would “republish” her claims after their meeting.Some allies of Mr. Stringer, left, believe he should be considered a potential heir to his mentor, Representative Jerrold Nadler, right, if he decides to retire.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesLegal experts briefed on the issues raised by the case, though, said that the application of the theory known as “republication” would be ripe for challenge on multiple grounds. Though the suit insinuates that Ms. Kim somehow prompted Ms. Maloney’s statement, Mr. Stringer’s lawyers never actually state what, if anything, she told the congresswoman to encourage or direct her to reference Mr. Stringer. “If there’s no clear evidence that the defendant directed the third party to make the statement, it’s fairly likely the case would be dismissed,” said Lee Levine, a retired media lawyer with decades of experience litigating defamation cases, including some for The Times.Though The Times reviewed a draft of the complaint before it was filed, it agreed with Mr. Stringer not to share details of the case with Mr. Levine or anyone else ahead of time.Mr. Stringer and his lawyers were clearly aware of the statutory limits. The suit filed on Monday made no mention of a second woman, Teresa Logan, who followed Ms. Kim’s allegations by accusing Mr. Stringer of kissing and groping her at a bar he helped found in the 1990s. That instance, Mr. Stringer conceded, was clearly outside the statute of limitations.Mr. Stringer said in 2021 that he had “no memory” of the woman but added that if they had met, he was sorry to have made her uncomfortable.If the case proceeds, Mr. Stringer and his allies believe the discovery process will turn up new and relevant information related to Ms. Kim’s actions and whether she coordinated her public statements with any of his political rivals.Mr. Stringer is represented in the suit by Milton L. Williams Jr., a former federal prosecutor and white-collar criminal defense lawyer who currently serves as the chair of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board.After his loss, Mr. Stringer finished out his term as comptroller last December and began a consulting practice. But he almost immediately began discussing a political comeback.He went as far as to briefly campaign for a State Senate seat in Manhattan this spring, but he never actually entered the race. Allies still believe he should be considered a potential heir to Mr. Nadler should the congressman decide to retire.Still, the accusations of misconduct would almost certainly complicate any effort to return to public office.“Right now, I don’t have any plans to run for office. It’s something I’m not ruling out someday,” Mr. Stringer said. “This lawsuit is what’s in front of me at the moment.” More