in Elections
Trump Arrives in New York City for His Arraignment
Photo by Dave Sanders for The New York Times, Reuters and The Associated Press More
New York City
Subterms
More stories
- in Elections
Trump Will Be Indicted Today. Clinton Will Be Honored.
Hours after Donald Trump appears in court, his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, will be the honoree at a dinner 10 blocks from Trump Tower.Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll look at one of those coincidences in scheduling that can only happen in New York. We’ll also look at whether a court ruling might prompt prosecutors to abandon difficult cases.Mark Kauzlarich/The New York TimesToday New York will be focused on the arraignment of a former president, the first proceeding of its kind in American history.But other things are on the day’s agenda besides Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance for booking, fingerprinting and entering a plea in court. This evening a private club on East 66th Street will continue a tradition dating to the 1870s with a black-tie dinner.The honoree will be Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidency to Trump in 2016.The timing is a coincidence, said John Sussek III, the president of the Lotos Club. The date was chosen around the beginning of the year, long before the grand jury hearing the case against Trump voted on the indictment that brought Trump to Manhattan from Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Florida.“We have had princes and princesses, senators and congressmen,” Sussek said, noting that one recent honoree was Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leader in the federal response to the pandemic. Another past honoree was Robert Morgenthau, a predecessor of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, whose office brought the case against Trump.The criteria, Sussek said, “are essentially an individual who has made great contributions in whatever field or fields they’re in. It’s recognition of their accomplishments in society.”The club, which took its name from the lotos-leaf-eaters in a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, has held state dinners since the 1870s. Its early members included Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, who took a nap during the 12-course meal lauding him. Also on the club’s membership roll in its early years was John Hay, who held a job that Clinton later took; he was secretary of state under President William McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt.Democrats and Republicans have been cheered at state dinners, as the club calls gatherings like the one tonight. Former President Harry Truman, a Democrat, and former President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, were each hailed at state dinners after leaving the White House. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court was celebrated at one in 1996, a couple of years after President Bill Clinton nominated her to the court.Over the years, the club has invited people with no political connections, including the Yankees star Joe DiMaggio, the astronaut John Glenn and at least two musical theater teams: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (of “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific,” among others) and John Kander and Fred Ebb (of “Cabaret” and “Chicago”).Lotos gives state dinner honorees lifetime memberships ($4,800 a year for regular resident members). Clinton will also be presented with a small bust of Ginsburg by the sculptor Zenos Frudakis, a Lotos member who did the larger busts of Twain and Ulysses S. Grant at the club.“You may recall what Donald Trump said in 2016, that if we voted for Hillary Clinton we’d have a criminal president under constant investigation and who would soon be indicted,” Sussek said in the speech he planned to deliver tonight. “And you know what? Trump was right. I voted for Hillary Clinton and ended up with a criminal president under constant investigation and has now just been indicted.”WeatherIt’s a partly sunny day near the high 60s. Expect a chance of showers at night, with temps around the low 50s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Thursday (Passover).The latest New York newsJustin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockTrump indictmentTrump in New York: Donald Trump arrived in New York on Monday, kicking off a 24-hour visit that will culminate with a polarizing arraignment in the city where he grew up and rose to the fame that catapulted him to the presidency.Jan. 6: Trump’s arraignment differs from the Capitol riot, but law enforcement’s response is informed by lessons learned on Jan. 6, as well as the nationwide protests against police violence.CrimeA cold-case detective’s quest: Jasmine Porter’s 4-year-old son watched as a man killed her in their Bronx apartment in 1996. In 2020, a police investigator began trying to crack the case.Arrests made for murders and robberies: Three men were arrested and charged in connection with a series of killings and robberies at Manhattan gay bars.More local newsConstruction workers dead: Two workers were killed at Kennedy International Airport when they were buried under construction rubble inside a trench, officials said.Yeshiva University scrutiny on funding: A lawmaker asked a state inspector to look at millions given to Yeshiva University, which has argued it is a religious institution, not an educational one, to justify its ban on an L.G.B.T.Q. club.The suburbs and the housing debate: Gov. Kathy Hochul is promoting a housing plan that she says could create 800,000 new homes across the state over the next decade. Officials from Westchester County and Long Island are resisting the effort.Could a recent ruling give prosecutors a reason to abandon difficult cases?Christopher Lee for The New York TimesA recent decision by New York State’s highest court invalidated a rape conviction. Advocates for sexual assault survivors worry that the ruling could give prosecutors a reason not to bring sexual assault charges when the victim and the defendant know each other and there are no other witnesses.My colleague Maria Cramer writes that the 4-to-2 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals could also give defendants a reason to do everything they can to resist investigations and run out the clock.That is because the court threw out the first-degree rape conviction of Andrew Regan, noting that it took 31 months to obtain a warrant for a DNA sample. Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the majority opinion that prosecutors had violated Regan’s rights to speedy prosecution, as guaranteed by a state law intended to prevent prosecutors from slow-walking cases without good reason.The court acknowledged that vacating his conviction could create “a genuine risk that a guilty person will not be punished, or, as in this case, not finish out his full sentence.” Regan was in the ninth year of a 12-year sentence when the ruling was handed down last month.The case began in 2009, when two couples went drinking after attending a wedding. At the end of the night, one of the four, a 22-year-old woman, invited her boyfriend and the other couple to stay at her home in upstate Norwood, N.Y.The woman went to sleep alone but woke during the night to find the other man, Regan, crushing her beneath him, according to court documents. She woke her boyfriend and told him she had been sexually assaulted, and they called the police. Regan was interviewed and released. At a hospital, a nurse collected evidence with a rape kit.The investigation dragged on for four years, in part because prosecutors in St. Lawrence County said they did not know how to obtain a warrant to get a DNA sample from Regan, something he repeatedly refused to provide. The police had taken a DNA sample from the woman’s boyfriend after she reported the assault and found that it did not match the semen on her underwear. Regan told the police he had not had sex with her.The prosecutors struggled for at least a year over how to obtain his DNA, a straightforward procedure that involves submitting an affidavit to a judge. The woman said that in the years that followed the incident, she had called the district attorney’s office in St. Lawrence County or the police at least once a month to find out what was happening with the case. She said that new investigators were assigned to the case at least three times, but no one provided a clear explanation for the delays.Gary Pasqua, who became the St. Lawrence County district attorney in 2018, said he did not believe that the ruling would set a precedent — even though Judge Madeline Singas wrote in a dissenting opinion that the decision would “be weaponized against victims.”She said the court “fails to appreciate the practice implications of the precedent they are creating: If law enforcement negligently delays rape investigations, women’s voices will continue to be stifled, rapists held unaccountable and jury verdicts discarded.”METROPOLITAN diaryDirtDear Diary:At Prince StreetI suck a smalltart found in apocket nest oftobacco and lintfrom last winter.The train pulls in.A woman isfolding a mapmouthing the routeto herself,girls in dark lipsticksget on, talkingloudly of rats,drowning the chime.The doors shudderthen close, openand shut once more.I’m nodding offby 34thand top out atTimes Square, each spotlighted a show:saxophone playerin shorts blows outworkable riffscasting for earswith a brass pole.A conductresstelling stories.An old sailorconsiders fakeson black velvet.Further up agospel singerin beads and gown,a man rentinga telescope aimedat the moon.— William ClarkIllustrated 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 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
- in Elections
New York Already Knows a Lot About Donald Trump
If Donald J. Trump seems a little on edge lately, so does the city where he made his name.The former president, after largely eluding legal accountability of any kind for decades, has now been indicted by a grand jury in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.So far Mr. Trump has handled the investigation, which has looked into whether he broke laws while paying hush money to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election, exactly as one might imagine: with the minimum amount of class and the maximum use of racist slurs. Not only has he made sure everyone knows Mr. Bragg is Black, he has also suggested he is subhuman.“HE IS A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL,” the former president told his followers on Truth Social while waiting for the indictment, using anti-Black racism as well as antisemitism to describe Mr. Bragg. Mr. Trump also called for widespread protests before he was indicted and predicted “death and destruction,” forcing law enforcement agencies to prepare for possible violence in the streets on Tuesday, when he is expected to be arraigned.All of this has made New York City, his former hometown, a bit anxious, too. The wait for Mr. Trump’s arraignment and any backlash that may come from it has the city unnerved.Few Americans have seen Mr. Trump shimmy his way out of a jam more often than New Yorkers. We’ve seen him bounce back from bankruptcy six times, and he has never been truly held to account for his long history of excluding Black people from the rental properties that helped make him rich. We’ve seen his political fortunes soar despite credible claims of sexual assault and tax fraud. We’ve watched up close his gravity-defying, horrifying metamorphosis from a tacky real estate developer and tabloid fixture into a C-list celebrity and, finally, a one-term president with authoritarian aspirations.Given that history, the idea that Mr. Trump will soon be fingerprinted and booked in a New York courthouse has left many in disbelief. A kind of collective angst over the Trump prosecution has settled over New York City, where many deeply disdain him but seem unconvinced he will ever truly be held to account.During a recent stage performance of “Titanique,” the hit musical comedy and glitter-filled parody of the 1997 film about the doomed ship, Russell Daniels, the actor playing Rose’s mother, let out a kind of guttural scream. “It’s not fair that Trump hasn’t been arrested yet!” Mr. Daniels cried. Inside the Manhattan theater, the audience roared.In Harlem recently, the Rev. Al Sharpton held a prayer vigil for Mr. Bragg, who received threats after Mr. Trump used his social media platform to share a menacing photograph of himself with a baseball bat juxtaposed with a photo of the district attorney, in a clear hint of his violent mind-set.“We want God to cover him and protect him,” Mr. Sharpton said, referring to Mr. Bragg. “Whatever the decision may be, whether we like it or not, but he should not have to face this kind of threat, implied or explicit. Let us pray.”New Yorkers, weary and still recovering from the pandemic Mr. Trump badly mismanaged, are also now bracing themselves for the possibility of demonstrations by the former president’s supporters. In the hours after the indictment on March 29, N.Y.P.D. helicopters hovered over the courthouses of Lower Manhattan and officers set up barricades along largely empty streets. The Police Department ordered all roughly 36,000 uniformed members to report for duty amid bomb threats and the arrest of one Trump supporter with a knife.The inevitable spectacle began on Monday, when television helicopters tracked every inch of Mr. Trump’s motorcade from LaGuardia Airport to Manhattan, as if he were visiting royalty. The courthouse area downtown is expected be largely closed to traffic on Tuesday. All Supreme Court trials in the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building will be adjourned early. There are also police lines and TV trucks around Trump Tower, where the former president stayed on Monday night. Meanwhile, Republican groups and Trump supporters are planning or sponsoring rallies nearby, one of which will be addressed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will bring her destructive rhetoric up from Georgia.Of the four known criminal investigations Mr. Trump faces, the Manhattan case is seen by some legal experts as the least serious, in part because it may involve allegations of campaign finance violations before his presidency rather than attempts to abuse his office by overturning the results of an election or inciting supporters to effectively overthrow the United States government. Fair enough.Still, it’s a poetic irony that the former president will face his first criminal indictment in New York City, the town where he sought to burnish his “law and order” credentials. In 1989, Mr. Trump took out a notorious ad in several newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty when a group of Black and Latino teenagers were accused of the sexual assault of a jogger in Central Park. After serving prison sentences that varied from six to 13 years, the teens were exonerated.“What has happened to the respect for authority, the fear of retribution by the courts, society and the police for those who break the law, who wantonly trespass on the rights of others?” Mr. Trump wrote in the 1989 ad. “How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits?”Over many years, New York has learned a painful lesson. Mr. Trump and his many misdeeds are best taken seriously.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
- in Elections
Looking Back at Her World War II Secret
Ruth Mirsky, who turns 100 today, was a code breaker in the U.S. Navy. “It was very hush-hush,” she remembered.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll meet a World War II code breaker who turns 100 today. We’ll also look at a filing by Representative George Santos that suggests he is already considering running for another term in Congress.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesSomewhere in Rockaway Park, N.Y., is a World War II code breaker who is finally talking.Ruth Mirsky, who turns 100 today, did not say much about breaking codes. She gave almost nothing away, saying things like “it was top-secret work” and “I had a very small part in it.” And “we worked in shifts. We worked around the clock — daytime, nighttime.” Not a word about encryption machines or eureka moments deciphering enemy messages long ago.Mirsky’s birthday comes 80 years after she enlisted in the Navy and became a WAVE, the acronym for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services. She was promptly sent to Washington, where she became one of several thousand women scrambling to unscramble messages intercepted from the Japanese and German military.She worked in the library unit at what became known as the Naval Annex, typing incoming messages on file cards, categorizing them and noting repetitions — recurring letters or phrases that might have been potential clues to encryption. Others have said it was mind-numbing duty, an excruciating search for patterns and ciphers among monotonous columns of numbers and letters, but Mirsky still sounded fascinated.“It was a whole new thing,” she said. “For me it was, anyway.”Their diligence paid off. “Together, this group of Navy women broke and rebroke the fleet code” and “helped keep track of the movements of the Imperial Japanese Navy,” the author Liza Mundy wrote in her book “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II.The women were instructed not to talk about their secret wartime lives — “it was very hush-hush,” Mirsky told me. When she visited her former boss in New York, she recalled, “he asked me, ‘What are you doing there? The F.B.I. was asking all kinds of questions to find out what kind of a person you were.’”She added: “I couldn’t even tell my fiancé.”We’ll get to him in a moment. Mirsky worked in an installation in Washington that was just off Ward Circle, “which taxi drivers started calling WAVES Circle,” Mundy wrote.Around the time Mirsky arrived in 1943, that installation was a base of operations for 1,500 women, along with just over 900 male officers and enlisted men, according to Mundy, who wrote that by early the next year, there were almost twice as many women and far fewer men. But, in what the writer Meryl Gordon called a “pre-Betty Friedan moment in American life when institutional discrimination was the norm,” the Navy’s pay scale favored the men.Mirsky did not mention that last week. She talked about two brothers, David, whom she had been dating, and Harry, who had been stationed in South Dakota as a radar specialist. “Harry came to see his brother before David’s unit went overseas,” she said. Harry had been injured when he was thrown from a jeep; at one point he had been in a body cast. With David off to the front lines, “Harry asked me if he could write to me from South Dakota, so that’s how it started,” she said.About six months later, Harry’s unit was transferred to Fort Dix, in New Jersey. He remained stateside when the unit went overseas because of the accident. He managed to go to Washington regularly — once without a pass, for which he was punished when he returned to Fort Dix, she said.You can guess what happened. Harry became the fiancé, then the husband. They were married for 39 years, until his death in 1984.She is a regular at a JASA Older Adult Center not far from her apartment center. It organized a birthday party last week, a few days early. “You can’t put 100 candles on a cake,” Mirsky told me, but she blew out 10 or so on the strawberry shortcake that was served. Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato, who represents the area, brought a proclamation and tweeted photos.“I’ve had a happy life,” Mirsky told me. “I feel I’ve done what I wanted, actually.” She mentioned her two children, Stuart Mirsky and Debra Aluisio, who had joined her at the JASA center. She mentioned her five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. She double-checked those numbers with her son, counting as they named the names.She talked about playing Scrabble — on an iPad.“It’s a good thing for my mind, I guess,” she said.“Very similar to the codes,” said Aluisio.WeatherIt’s a cloudy, windy day near the mid-40s. The evening is breezy and mostly clear, with temps around the mid-30s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until April 6 (Passover).The latest Metro newsJefferson Siegel for The New York TimesJail supervisor convicted: A jail supervisor who walked away from an inmate after he had hanged himself was convicted of criminally negligent homicide, capping a trial that pointed to the brutal conditions inside New York City’s jails and the persistence of inmate suicides.A city councilman’s apartment hunt: Chi Ossé became the youngest member of the New York City Council when he was sworn in 14 months ago. Now, he faces a challenge: finding an apartment in his district. He called the search “tiring, treacherous, and competitive.”A police department’s troubled history: Najee Seabrooks was shot and killed by police officers in Paterson, N.J., after calling 911 to report that he was experiencing a mental health crisis. A coalition of groups requested a Justice Department inquiry into what it called “widespread unlawful and unconstitutional conduct” by the Paterson police.Santos signals he might run againJonathan Ernst/ReutersLittle more than two months after he assumed office, George Santos signaled that he might want a second term.Santos, the embattled Republican from Long Island who is under scrutiny for lies about his background and questions about his finances, submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission suggesting that he may run for re-election in 2024.My colleague Michael Gold writes that the filing does not necessarily mean that Santos will run, but it does allow him to continue to raise money and spend it on campaign-related expenses, including paying back roughly $700,000 that he lent to his campaign last year.He can also use money he raises for any potential legal fees involving some of the investigations he is facing. Federal prosecutors have been examining his campaign finances and personal business dealings, and last month the House Ethics Committee opened its own inquiry.After The New York Times reported that Santos had lied about graduating from college, working for prestigious Wall Street firms and managing an extensive real estate portfolio, Santos acknowledged that he fabricated parts of his résumé and his biography.But he has denied criminal wrongdoing and has resisted calls to resign, even as some Republicans questioned whether he could serve constituents. Republican officials in Nassau County have said they would avoid taking constituent problems to his office whenever they could. Ten House Republicans have called on Santos to resign, and a poll in January by Siena College found that 78 percent of the voters in his district wanted him to give up his seat, including 71 percent of the Republicans who were questioned.METROPOLITAN diaryClocking inDear Diary:When I was in my early 20s, I worked at a cafe in Park Slope. I used to walk to work in the darkness at 4:30 a.m., lacing up my black sneakers in my Clinton Hill apartment and schlepping past halal trucks on my way as they set up for the day.I always bought a grapefruit from the bodega across the street before starting my shift. The man at the counter would greet me with a wide smile, its warmth washing away the tired feelings left over from the morning trek.Clocking out? I’d ask.Yes, he would say. Clocking in?Yes, I’d say.And then each day, like a mantra, he would singsong to me: “You are beginning your day … and I am ending mine!”— Annabelle LewisIllustrated 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 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
- in Elections
Where Asian Neighborhoods Increased Support of New York’s Republicans
In last year’s governor’s election, voters in Asian neighborhoods across New York City sharply increased their support for Republicans. Though these areas remained blue overall, they shifted to the right by 23 percentage points, compared with 2018, after more than a decade of reliably backing Democrats. Governor’s margin of victory since 2006 Source: New York […] More
- in Elections
New York GOP Donors Await 2024 Presidential Candidates
Donald Trump’s support in the city’s wealthy political circles is waning, as 2024 rivals and potential candidates, including Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, make the rounds.New York City’s heavy-hitting Republican-leaning donors in recent years were frozen in place at the presidential level by a fellow New Yorker, Donald J. Trump. But that was before Mr. Trump’s decampment to Florida, his plethora of legal entanglements, and his fall from grace after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.Now, as the 2024 presidential field takes shape, uncommitted donors and prospective political supporters in one of the country’s wealthiest areas are again opening their doors to Republicans seen as prospective candidates — and the candidates are pouring in.Last week, Mike Pence, the former vice president who’s considering a presidential campaign, arrived to meet with a Jewish group and held meetings with donors. On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, who became the second Republican to declare a presidential candidacy, will hold a fund-raiser with financial industry executives. Wednesday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia is scheduled to meet with donors and other influential figures in the city.“Most of these people are coming in only because they are looking to raise money,” said Alfonse D’Amato, New York’s longtime Republican senator turned lobbyist. “Where is the money? The money is in New York.”Former Vice President Mike Pence held private meetings this month with New York’s top Republican donors.Winnie Au for The New York TimesMr. Pence held private meetings in New York City with an undisclosed number of potential donors, part of his efforts as he considers running for president. He has been in New York a number of times, making media appearances but also forging connections with Republican donors who liked aspects of the Trump-era policies but did not care for Mr. Trump’s behavior.This week, Mr. Youngkin will sit with a string of people. Among them will be John Catsimatidis, a grocery store magnate who has historically been a politically ambidextrous donor, but who had a long history with Mr. Trump.Who’s Running for President in 2024?Card 1 of 6The race begins. More
- in Elections
Black Mayors of 4 Biggest U.S. Cities Draw Strength From One Another
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
- in Elections
For 2024 Democratic Convention, Finalist Cities Include Atlanta, Chicago and New York
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
