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      A New Yorker’s Opposition to Abortion Clouds Her House Re-Election Bid

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      Representative Nicole Malliotakis, the city’s lone Republican House member, has tried to maintain some distance from the Supreme Court ruling on abortion.As the lone Republican in the New York City congressional delegation, Representative Nicole Malliotakis has adopted certain stances that would make her an understandable outlier in a deeply Democratic city.Just days after taking office in early 2021, she voted to discard the legitimate 2020 election results, voting for a debunked conspiracy theory that claimed President Donald J. Trump actually won the election. She followed up by voting against Mr. Trump’s second impeachment as a result of the deadly Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021.But as she seeks re-election in November, Ms. Malliotakis has tried to tread a finer line around guns and abortion, two polarizing social issues that have taken on added prominence in light of recent Supreme Court decisions. (In June, the court overturned the federal right to abortion, as well as a New York law governing concealed weapons.)On guns, for example, Ms. Malliotakis has voiced some support for new regulations, even voting for several Democratic gun control bills proffered in the wake of the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. She later, however, voted against the omnibus bill package, contending that it was “constitutionally suspect” and “represented a partisan overreach.”Ms. Malliotakis opposes abortion rights, favoring restrictions on using taxpayer funding for the procedure and on late-term abortions. But she has said that she believes that abortion should be allowed under certain circumstances, such as when the life of the mother is at risk.But Ms. Malliotakis has also tried to maintain some distance from the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, saying in a recent interview that she “didn’t weigh in on it.” Yet earlier this month, the congresswoman voted against a pair of bills that would have banned states from restricting abortions and prohibited them from blocking access to out-of-state abortion services.Republicans, who are expected to fare well in November’s midterm elections, have long fought to overturn Roe. Yet some of the party’s candidates have not rushed to embrace the Dobbs ruling, wary of alienating voters who, according to polls, may be swayed by social issues in ways that help Democrats.Ms. Malliotakis is a prime example. Her district encompasses Staten Island and a swath of southwest Brooklyn, some of the city’s most conservative areas. Yet New York remains an overwhelmingly Democratic city, and the recent Supreme Court rulings were profoundly unpopular here.So, like many of her Republican colleagues, Ms. Malliotakis, a first-term congresswoman, is instead trying to steer the conversation toward bottom-line issues like inflation and high gas prices.“People are struggling putting gas in their tanks, putting food on their tables, paying their bills,” Ms. Malliotakis said in a recent interview.New York’s 2022 ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.N.Y. Governor’s Race: This year, for the first time in over 75 years, the state ballot appears destined to offer only two choices: Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, and Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican. Here is why.10th Congressional District: Half a century after she became one of the youngest women ever to serve in Congress, Elizabeth Holtzman is running once again for a seat in the House of Representatives.12th Congressional District: As Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, two titans of New York politics, battle it out, Suraj Patel is trying to eke out his own path to victory.“For some people who are single-issue individuals, it could potentially have an impact,” she added, of her statements on guns and abortion. “But I know that crime and pocketbook issues are the most important issues to the people I represent.”Ms. Malliotakis is expected to easily win her Republican primary next month against John Matland, a badly underfunded rival, setting her up for a likely rematch against Max Rose, the former Democratic congressman whom she unseated in 2020.Mr. Rose, a combat veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan and awarded the Bronze Star, has sought to tie Ms. Malliotakis to the extreme elements of the Republican Party, including Mr. Trump, and to the Capitol riot by the president’s supporters, saying he is running to protect “the soul of America.”“Everything that our country was built upon wasn’t just spit at: They tried to destroy it,” he said during a campaign walkabout on July 11 in Bay Ridge. “And even after — even after — Nicole, and everyone else in Congress who were almost killed, they still voted to decertify.”He is also openly derisive of Ms. Malliotakis’s seeming duality on some hot-button issues, mocking her limited embrace of gun control, for example, as nothing more than “a few ceremonial votes.”“When it came time for the package to be voted on, as she always does, she played both sides,” he said, referring to the omnibus bill. “Voted for it before she voted against it. Who knows what’s going on here?”Max Rose, right, has tried to highlight Ms. Malliotakis’s position on abortion, portraying her as being on “the wrong side of history.”Amir Hamja for The New York TimesMr. Rose has also held a handful of public events after the Supreme Court ruling on abortion — including one at Ms. Malliotakis’s Brooklyn district office in Bay Ridge — to portray her as out of touch with her district, even on Staten Island, saying the congresswoman is “on the wrong side of history.”“I generally do believe that when it comes down to it, people are on the side of women having the opportunity to make those decisions for themselves,” he said. In recent weeks, Mr. Rose continued that line of attack, saying the congresswoman had “tweeted over 180 times and issued 13 press releases” since the Dobbs decision, but “has said nothing about millions of women losing control over their bodies.”When asked specifically about the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe, Ms. Malliotakis demurred.“My constituents, they know that nothing is going to change in New York,” she said. “The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution, so we have to accept the Supreme Court’s decision regardless.”Ms. Malliotakis’s comments have also given fodder to her opponents on the right, including Mr. Matland, a health care worker who lost his job for refusing to be vaccinated, and who is seeking to oust Ms. Malliotakis in the Aug. 23 primary with a low-budget, anti-establishment campaign.Mr. Matland, who is making his first run for public office, said that Ms. Malliotakis has “often alienated the Republican base,” and that she has only been voted into office because of her name recognition — she served five terms in the State Assembly and ran unsuccessfully in 2017 for mayor of New York City — and her district’s aversion to Democratic candidates.“People say ‘I only voted for her’ — and I’m guilty of this myself — ‘because I thought she was a much better option than Max Rose,’” Mr. Matland said, adding, “And that’s the exact reason we have primaries: so we can get a better option.”John Matland is challenging Ms. Malliotakis in the Republican primary on Aug. 23.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesConsidering the likelihood of a tough year for Democrats nationally, most observers think that Mr. Rose will have an uphill battle in November, assuming he wins his primary in August against two challengers: Brittany Ramos DeBarros, a progressive community activist, and Komi Agoda-Koussema, an educator.Mr. Rose’s campaign was also dealt a setback earlier this year when a state judge threw out new Democrat-drawn congressional lines that could have tilted the district heavily in his favor. The refashioned lines, drawn by a redistricting expert in May, left the district looking largely the same, though its section of Brooklyn — about half as populous as the Staten Island portion — did favor President Biden over Mr. Trump by about 12 points in the 2020 election.Ms. Malliotakis accused Mr. Rose of entering the race only “because he thought they were going to change the lines in his favor.” “The good news about reruns is we know how they end,” Ms. Malliotakis said of her rematch against Mr. Rose.Vito Fossella, the Republican who serves as the Staten Island borough president, echoed that sentiment, saying he didn’t “see how the dynamics” of the race have changed much since 2020, and suggesting that abortion and guns would not be major issues for Staten Island voters.“On balance, what people care about is ‘Are we safe? Are we comfortable economically? Do we have a brighter future?’” said Mr. Fossella, who is a supporter of Ms. Malliotakis.A path to re-election for Ms. Malliotakis, 41, will likely include a big win on the island’s South Shore, a Republican stronghold, to offset the more liberal neighborhoods in the north. And for South Shore residents like Edward Carey, a retired banking executive who winters in Florida but has a house in the Eltingville neighborhood, Ms. Malliotakis is already a sure thing. He noted the backing of Mr. Fossella, as well as other factors.“She’s a Republican, she’s a woman, she’s young,” said Mr. Carey, 83, a registered Republican who said the last Democrat he voted for was John F. Kennedy. “That’s good enough for me.”Ms. Malliotakis may be headed for a November rematch with Mr. Rose, whom she unseated in 2020.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesStill, State Senator Diane J. Savino, a moderate Democrat who has represented the north part of Staten Island for nearly two decades, said “you cannot pinpoint Staten Island voters.”“It’s not that they’re Republican or Democrat, left-leaning or right-leaning: It’s whether or not that candidate speaks to what touches Staten Islanders,” she said, noting the island’s recent history of vacillating between parties. “Anybody who thinks that they can put their finger on the pulse of Staten Island voters doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”She also criticized Ms. Malliotakis for being wishy-washy on critical issues, but noted that voters don’t seem to care.“Up until now, Nicole has skirted on this,” Ms. Savino said, referring to Ms. Malliotakis’s anti-abortion votes in Washington and Albany. “No one ever holds her accountable. So I don’t think that’s going to drive voters here. What’s going to drive voters is whether or not they think they’re going to have someone who is going to fight for them in Washington.”Vin DeRosa, a patron at Jody’s Club Forest, a popular bar near the North Shore where Mr. Rose has been known to drink, is a registered Democrat but said he considers himself an independent who “votes for the person” rather than the party line.Mr. DeRosa, a retired telecommunications professional, said that he had voted for Mr. Rose in 2020, and that he likely would again, if only because of Ms. Malliotakis’s association with Mr. Trump.“I’m not sure I want a congressperson who has to call Mar-a-Lago,” Mr. DeRosa said, “to find out what to do.” More

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      Small Business Owners Are Still Struggling in New York

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      “I feel like it’s 50-50,” said the owner of a Brooklyn coffee shop who is finding it hard to rebound from the pandemic.Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at how small businesses are holding up as the city tries to move out of the pandemic. We’ll go kayaking with a congressional hopeful who is one of more than a dozen Democrats running in the Aug. 23 primary in just one district. And, speaking of the primary, today is the last day to register to vote in it.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesKymme Williams-Davis opened a coffee shop in Brooklyn called Bushwick Grind in 2015. She spent $200,000 renovating the space she rented and added a kitchen. She specialized in coffee brewed from locally roasted fair-trade beans.Bushwick Grind did well until the pandemic hit and the shop had to close for nine months.But as my colleague Lydia DePillis wrote, running a small business hasn’t gotten any easier since Bushwick Grind reopened. Foot traffic has yet to rebound. Williams-Davis’s expenses for coffee and other ingredients have skyrocketed, in part because farmers from upstate New York she used to depend on are saving on gas by driving to the city less often.And enough employees have quit to add another complication to the demands of trying to operate at full strength.All that has left her uncertain about the future and Bushwick Grind’s chances for survival. “I feel like it’s 50-50,” she said, “because if I don’t find a way to reduce my liability and retain capital, I won’t be able to make it too much longer.”Williams-Davis’s concerns are widespread. The nonprofit Small Business Majority, in a survey this month, found that nearly one in three small businesses could not survive without additional capital or a change in business conditions. That finding was echoed in a survey by Alignable, a social network for small-business owners, which found that 43 percent of small businesses in New York were in jeopardy of closing in the fall, 12 percentage points more than a year ago.Chuck Casto of Alignable blamed patchy return-to-work policies that have left many Manhattan offices empty and nearby small businesses hurting. Some 41 percent of small businesses in New York could not pay their rent in full or on time in July, according to Alignable. That was up seven percentage points from last month. Only Massachusetts had a higher delinquency rate, and by only one percentage point.During the shutdown, Williams-Davis covered the rent by subletting the space, and she landed a contract to deliver 400 meals a day to city vaccination sites when she reopened. The contract gave her the cash flow to qualify for a loan so she could buy her own space.But she hasn’t come close to closing on a deal. She has been outbid more than once by investors with deeper pockets.New York’s 2022 ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.N.Y. Governor’s Race: Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the issue of abortion rights has the potential to be a potent one in the battle between Gov. Kathy Hochul and Representative Lee Zeldin.10th Congressional District: Half a century after she became one of the youngest women ever to serve in Congress, Elizabeth Holtzman is running once again for a seat in the House of Representatives.12th Congressional District: As Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, two titans of New York politics, battle it out, Suraj Patel is trying to eke out his own path to victory.This week the city announced a $1.5 million commitment to continue a public and private small-business outreach network that was created during the pandemic. The idea was to offer legal and technical assistance, among other things.“The hardest thing is this transition to a digital economy,” said Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group that started the network, “because these are mostly brick-and-mortar businesses that did not have as sophisticated presence online or marketing capacity.”Kat Lloyd had much the same idea when she and a partner started a small business to do digital marketing for small businesses. Now, she said, “everybody else is struggling, so we’re struggling.”“I can’t hire more people to do the work I need — I need to focus on the bottom line,” said Lloyd, who like Williams-Davis is in Bushwick. “Every day for a few months, I woke up with this ball in my throat and a pit in my stomach about how I’m going to pay my landlord while I make sure my clients are taken care of.”WeatherExpect a partly sunny day with temps in the high 80s, with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. The showers may continue into the evening, with temps dropping to the low 70s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).The latest New York newsGov. Kathy Hochul, left, and Representative Lee Zeldin will be the only candidates on the New York ballot for governor.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times, Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThe two-party system: Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo championed changes in New York law that made it far more difficult for third parties to get on the ballot. For the first time in more than 75 years, only two candidates for governor are likely to appear on the ballot.The Supreme Court and guns: Public defenders say that the recent Supreme Court ruling last month expanding gun rights has left prosecutors without a case against their clients.Monkeypox: For gay and bisexual men in New York, the monkeypox crisis has echoes of the mistakes and discrimination of the early years of the AIDS crisis.‘Let’s go kayaking,’ said the candidateMary Inhea Kang for The New York TimesElizabeth Holtzman shattered glass ceilings and voted to impeach Richard Nixon when she was a congresswoman in the 1970s. Now she is running again, in a crowded primary field in the 10th Congressional District in Brooklyn and Manhattan. My colleague Nicholas Fandos not only interviewed her; he went kayaking with her. Here’s how he says that came about:Years ago, someone Elizabeth Holtzman did not know died and left modest bequests to her and two other pioneering congresswomen from New York, Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm.Holtzman, who was once the youngest woman elected to Congress, spent the money on a kayak, a dark green Walden that she uses in the summer to paddle around the Peconic River on eastern Long Island, where she often spends weekends.So when I first asked Holtzman this spring about her unusual decision to come out of a long political retirement and run for Congress at age 80, she suggested that perhaps we hit the water. As a political reporter, I’ve walked with candidates as they greeted voters outside supermarkets, in restaurants and at parades. I polished off plates of Mississippi ribs with a former cabinet secretary running in the Deep South. I even spent an afternoon in northern Montana with Senator Jon Tester as he tried to fix a grain auger, a large piece of farm equipment used to move his crops. But never before had a politician asked me to kayak.I am no kayaking expert, but of course I said yes to Holtzman.We agreed to meet at Pier 2 in Brooklyn Bridge Park on a sizzling summer evening earlier this month. We rented kayaks, snapped on life vests and headed out to a stretch of protected water off the Brooklyn waterfront. The Brooklyn Bridge floated above us. The skyline of the financial district towered across the East River, and there was a magical moment when the Statue of Liberty appeared across the harbor.Back on dry land a little later, she talked about deciding to get into the race because she was enraged by the leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. “I said to myself, you know, I don’t have to sit on the sidelines,” she told me.If she wins, half a century after she set her first record, Holtzman would probably be the oldest non-incumbent ever elected to Congress. She is no stranger to long shots and record-breaking campaigns: Her victory in 1972 came against Emanuel Celler, a 50-year incumbent backed by the Brooklyn Democratic machine. Later, she was the first (and still only) woman elected district attorney in Brooklyn and New York City comptroller. (She was nearly New York’s first female senator, but lost to Alfonse D’Amato in 1980 in a close race.)Before we paddled back to Pier 2, we also talked about her family, Jewish immigrants who fled Russia and arrived at Ellis Island; about her work for Mayor John Lindsay; about the improving conditions in the East River; and about good kayaking spots around New York.Ms. Holtzman is keenly aware that, in a summer when Democrats are fretting about the age of President Biden and other Democratic leaders in Washington, there are concerns about her age. In the interview, she insisted she was every bit as vigorous as she once was. I asked if she was at all tired — a term she used to describe Celler in her first campaign.“You answer that question,” she said with a laugh, eventually adding, “I’m not tired. I’m not tired at all.”METROPOLITAN diaryA sidewalk suggestionDear Diary:A friend and I were walking along East 86th Street on a lovely spring afternoon. She was describing two outfits and asking my opinion about which one to wear to a fancy corporate dinner that evening.I was considering her choices when we heard a voice: “Wear the velvet jacket and silk pants.”Looking to our right, we saw a young woman pushing a baby carriage. Since we couldn’t decide which option was best, my friend took her advice.— Marilyn HillmanIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Walker Clermont More

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      Liz Holtzman Wants Another Crack at Congress, 50 Years Later

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      She shattered glass ceilings, voted to impeach Nixon and helped chase out Nazis. But can Ms. Holtzman overcome one more political hurdle: her age?Elizabeth Holtzman has heard the doubters, the skeptics and the New Yorkers who were mildly surprised that she is still alive, let alone up to the challenge of running for Congress at age 80, half a century after she became one of the youngest women ever to serve there.“The 1980s wants its candidate back,” quipped Chris Coffey, a Democratic political strategist, recalling his first reaction when he heard that the pathbreaking former congresswoman, feminist and New York City official had launched a comeback bid.To all of that, Ms. Holtzman, a Democrat, says that she is not only happily among the living, but ready to prove that she is every bit as pugnacious as when she left electoral politics some three decades ago.So on a recent July evening, she stepped into a green kayak and paddled laps somewhere between Brooklyn and Manhattan, pointing a reporter toward the Statue of Liberty, the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and a lifetime of fights that she regrets are urgently new again.“I was really angry,” Ms. Holtzman, an avid kayaker, said back on dry land, explaining how the leak predicting the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had driven her out of a long political retirement and into an improbable campaign for New York’s newly reconfigured 10th District.“I was angry at the result, but the so-called reasoning was even scarier because it made women second-class citizens, bound by the thinking of people who were misogynist in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries,” she said. “So, I decided to run.”The Aug. 23 Democratic primary for a rare open seat in the heart of liberal New York City has attracted no shortage of head-turning candidates, including a sitting congressman from Westchester County; an architect of Donald J. Trump’s impeachment; a Tiananmen Square protester; and rising stars in their 30s, and until recently, a former mayor of New York City.But the race’s most surprising twist may be the re-emergence of Ms. Holtzman, who, in a summer of intense Democratic anxiety, is asking voters to set aside pressing concerns about aging leadership in Washington and return a storied fighter to the arena who first made her name during the Nixon era.Ms. Holtzman during an unsuccessful bid in the Democratic Senate primary in 1993.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesIf she pulls off an upset, the candidate who was once the youngest woman elected to Congress could set another record — as the oldest known nonincumbent in the House of Representatives’ long history (surpassing James B. Bowler of Illinois, 78, and Will Neal of West Virginia, 81) after she turns 81 next month.That possibility has left longtime admirers, former foes and a whole generation of voters who have scarcely heard of her at least a little baffled, particularly in a summer when questions about President Biden’s age (79) are front-page news and Senator Dianne Feinstein has shown the perils of taxpayer-funded senescence.Her opponents make a broader argument: For all her experience and evident mental acuity, Ms. Holtzman is simply out of step with the challenges facing New Yorkers trying to make it today in an increasingly unaffordable city. And if she won, they grumble, she would block an important steppingstone for a new generation of New York leaders.“The problems that need to be solved in this country would benefit from voices that have lived and experienced them,” said Carlina Rivera, 38, a City Council member from Manhattan who is considered a leading contender in the race.“For many people in their 40s or younger, they’ve only ever experienced more transience than a sense of security in their jobs, their benefits, their housing and their education,” she added. “I fit into that category.”Ms. Holtzman uses the same logic, only in reverse.It is her own experiences — working in the Civil Rights-era South, fighting for abortion rights in the 1970s and challenging a Republican president undermining democratic norms (Richard M. Nixon) — along with a sense of national backsliding that she says persuaded her to re-enter electoral politics. Otherwise, she would most likely be spending summer weekends kayaking her beloved Peconic River on Long Island instead of zipping around the city to crowded candidate forums and paddling with reporters.“I’m not a person who sits on the sidelines,” she said in an interview at a cafe near her Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, home after the boating outing. “I’ve taken on the right wing, I’ve taken on presidents, and I can stand up to them.”Ms. Holtzman knows that her campaign is a long shot, but she has been here before. At the age of 31, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 1972, decades before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed the title, by defeating a 50-year Brooklyn incumbent, Emanuel Celler and the Democratic Party machine. She was the first (and only) woman to serve as district attorney in Brooklyn and as New York City comptroller.A legal mind with a prodigious work ethic, Ms. Holtzman was hardly an average backbencher. As a House freshman, she battled Nixon to the Supreme Court over war powers and later used her perch to help track down and deport Nazi war criminals from the United States and fight for the Equal Rights Amendment. Then as district attorney, she pushed the courts to curb the use of peremptory challenges to keep African Americans off juries because of their skin color.There were also bitter disappointments. She came within a percentage point of being New York’s first female senator in 1980, badly lost a Senate primary in 1992 and then, a year later, was ousted after a single term as comptroller amid a banking-related scandal that undercut her ethical record.Elizabeth Holtzman, on a recent kayaking jaunt off the Brooklyn shore, said she knows she needs to overcome “preconceptions about people my age.”Mary Inhea Kang for The New York TimesIn the interview, Ms. Holtzman likened questions about her age to arguments that a woman was not fit to serve as district attorney and drew a distinction between herself and Celler, whom, decades earlier, she had portrayed as tired and out of touch.“There are obviously some preconceptions about people my age. Can they do the job?” she said. “I feel I have something unique to offer. And I’m not tired. That’s the whole point.”Unsurprisingly, many of Ms. Holtzman’s defenders are older. But some of them are unexpected.“Biden’s decline has made it more difficult for those who are older,” said Alfonse M. D’Amato, 84, the former Republican senator who defeated Ms. Holtzman in 1980. “But that doesn’t mean that every person who is older can’t do the job. Maybe the experience that life has given them makes them as capable or more so.”Ms. Holtzman’s allies argue that her boundary-pushing style, which helped win a generation of admirers (many of whom still vote), has the potential to offset concerns about her advanced age among younger, progressive voters hungry for authenticity.It also makes Ms. Holtzman something of an appealing safe harbor for some older voters who say now is not the time to take a chance on a promising but less seasoned politician, like Ms. Rivera or Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, 39.“She is kind of a dream candidate for me,” said Eileen Clancy, an activist in Manhattan who recalled as a child watching Ms. Holtzman participate in the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate hearings.“I’m probably much more aligned with Yuh-Line’s policies,” Ms. Clancy said. “But I have to say, considering the country is in an uproar now and the questions at hand, I think Holtzman is uniquely capable. She could add a gravitas to Congress, and she has the backbone and nothing to lose.”With a dozen candidates in the race and a highly abbreviated campaign timeline, any winning candidate probably only needs a small slice of the vote. A pair of recent polls of likely primary voters by progressive groups showed Ms. Holtzman in the middle of the pack, neck and neck with Representative Mondaire Jones and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon.But the challenge for Ms. Holtzman may be reaching and turning out potential supporters who do not realize she is running.Though she has stayed active in private legal practice and on federal commissions and has written books, her political network thinned long ago: Gloria Steinem, a feminist contemporary, is her only recognizable endorser. As of Friday, her campaign Instagram account (run by hired consultants) has only 25 followers — a dozen more than her Facebook page.And when other candidates showed up with colorful signs and volunteers to march in Brooklyn’s Pride parade in June, Ms. Holtzman walked alone with little indicating she was running for anything.Her fund-raising operation? “It’s rusty,” Ms. Holtzman said just before her campaign reported raising $122,000, about one-tenth of the amount raised by Daniel Goldman, another Democrat in the race. “Getting it geared up and functioning like a lubricated machine, it’s not happening yet.”So far, Ms. Holtzman has sent out a single glossy mailer that touts her record and her “guts” — but could also serve to surface questions about her age. “Sometimes a picture’s worth 1,000 words,” she said, describing a photograph it features of her with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal Supreme Court justice who died at age 87.Bill Knapp, a veteran political ad maker who got his start working for Ms. Holtzman in 1980 and is working on this year’s race, conceded the race was “no layup,” but argued that Ms. Holtzman had a lane, particularly in the shadow of the abortion decision.“There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical,” he said. “But when you take a measure of the person and the times, this is possible.” More

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      Carolyn Maloney Uses Personal Fortune in Primary Against Jerrold Nadler

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

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      Eric Adams Raises $850,000 for Re-election in 2025

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      Mayor Eric Adams has traveled across the country to court donors, receiving contributions from casino and sports betting executives.When Mayor Eric Adams was confronted last month with troubling poll numbers, he gave an optimistic interpretation: He said he had earned a C grade from many New Yorkers.In terms of combating the city’s crime problem, the mayor was less certain, giving himself a grade of incomplete.But when it comes to fund-raising, Mr. Adams would more than likely give himself an A, for effort and for results.The mayor raised more than $850,000 for his 2025 re-election campaign barely six months after taking office, according to filings with the city’s Campaign Finance Board released on Friday night.The campaign haul is a result of Mr. Adams’s traveling across the country to raise money for a second term, even as he is confronting major issues at home, from crime to soaring rents. He has held fund-raisers in Chicago and Beverly Hills and has courted wealthy donors in the Hamptons during the honeymoon stage of his first term when his popularity is still relatively high.Here’s a look at some quick takeaways from the campaign filings:The mayor’s national reachNearly half of Mr. Adams’s campaign donations — more than $400,000 — came from outside New York City, from donors in places including Palm Beach, Fla., and Santa Barbara, Calif.His trips to other cities have helped establish a national profile for Mr. Adams, who has called himself the “future of the Democratic Party” and is rumored to be interested in running for president someday, like a handful of New York City mayors before him.In March, Mr. Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, held an event in Chicago at the home of Desirée Rogers, the former White House social secretary for President Barack Obama. Ms. Rogers donated $2,500 to Mr. Adams’s campaign.The mayor had 28 total donations from Chicago, from donors including Brett Hart, the president of United Airlines; La Shawn Ford, an Illinois lawmaker; and Toi Salter, a wealth manager. Mr. Adams’s West Coast donors included Breck Eisner, the director of the 2005 film “Sahara.”“This filing shows strong support for Mayor Adams and his plans for the city,” his campaign lawyer, Vito Pitta, a prominent lobbyist, said in a statement.Attention from real estate and casino executivesNew Yorkers did not exactly open their wallets for Mr. Adams: Only $83,000 of the donations is believed to qualify for the city’s generous matching-funds program, which is designed to reward candidates who receive small-dollar donations from local residents.But given that his re-election is still more than three years away, the slow pace of small local donations is understandable.Still, some donors — specifically, leaders from real estate, casino and sports betting businesses — seemed to have more immediate reason to give to the mayor’s campaign.They included Stephen Green, a founder of SL Green Realty, one of the city’s biggest landlords, and Darcy Stacom, the head of New York City capital markets for CRBE, a major commercial real estate firm.As New York City prepares to welcome three new casinos, executives from a Hard Rock hotel and casino in Florida donated to the mayor. Sean Caffery, a casino development executive at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood, and Jeff Hook, another executive there, each gave $2,000. Two other Hard Rock executives, Jon Lucas and Edward Tracy, also donated.And with sports betting having recently been legalized in New York, Jason Robins, the chief executive of DraftKings, the sports betting company, and Stanton Dodge, the company’s chief legal officer, gave $2,000 to the campaign. Matt King, chief executive at Fanatics Betting and Gaming, was another donor.Fund-raisers at Osteria La Baia and Casa CiprianiMr. Adams’s campaign has spent about $100,000 so far, leaving him with $746,000 on hand.The campaign’s largest single payment was $30,000 to Suggs Solutions, a company run by his fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Ms. Suggs has also raised money for the Democratic Party in Brooklyn and worked for Mr. Adams when he was Brooklyn borough president.The campaign has been paying $7,500 a month to Pitta L.P., the law firm where Mr. Pitta, the campaign lawyer, is a managing partner, since February.Other payments went to fund-raisers at some of the mayor’s favorite restaurants, including $1,000 in March to Osteria La Baia, an Italian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, and $1,600 in March to Casa Cipriani, a members’ club in Lower Manhattan.The campaign also paid for flights on JetBlue and United Airlines and for hotels, including $1,280 to the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.The City Council is also getting an early startMr. Adams may have more than a passing interest in the future of the City Council, knowing that next year’s election, in which every Council seat will be on the ballot, could affect Mr. Adams’s agenda. A majority of the Council — 41 of its 51 members — sent Mr. Adams a letter this week calling on him to restore funding for schools that have faced vexing budget cuts.Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, led the Council in recent fund-raising, reporting about $127,000 in contributions from powerful donors that included the New York State Laborers and the Building and Construction Trades Council. Ms. Adams, a Democrat, also received $250 from John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire, and $1,600 from his wife, Margo.Other Council members have raised significant amounts, including Linda Lee, a member from eastern Queens, who raised $51,000; Sandra Ung, a member who represents Flushing, Queens, and raised $33,000; and Crystal Hudson and Justin Brannan, two members from Brooklyn who each raised $25,000.A PAC tied to the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group, donated to at least three Council members: Ms. Adams, Ms. Hudson and Mr. Brannan. More

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

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

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      Hochul and Zeldin Will Face Off in the Fall

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul cruised to victory in the Democratic race but could face a tough fight in November.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’re following two stories — the results in the New York primaries for governor, and Ghislaine Maxwell’s 20-year prison sentence for serving as Jeffrey Epstein’s enabler.Hiram Durán for The New York TimesGov. Kathy Hochul cruised to victory in the Democratic primary. The race was called by The Associated Press 25 minutes after the polls closed, cementing Hochul’s place as the state’s top Democrat after less than a year in the state’s top job.She withstood challenges from Democratic opponents on her left and her right — Representative Thomas Suozzi, who made crime and public safety his main issues, and Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, who said she had not addressed problems like soaring housing prices.As my colleague Nicholas Fandos writes, Hochul’s victory set the stage for a potentially bruising fall campaign against Representative Lee Zeldin, a conservative congressional ally of former President Donald Trump who defeated three other Republicans in their primary. With warning lights flashing for Democrats nationally, Zeldin and his supporters hope they can build on discontent about inflation and crime and win a statewide race in New York for the first time in 20 years.The Democratic contest for lieutenant governor also went Hochul’s way: Her handpicked running mate, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, survived a challenge from Ana María Archila, a progressive activist who was aligned with Williams and had been endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Diana Reyna, Suozzi’s running made, was on track to finish in third place.For Hochul, who took office less than a year ago after the resignation of Andrew Cuomo amid a sexual harassment scandal, victory in the primary was a crucial step toward winning a full term in November. She has plenty of money at her disposal, having amassed roughly $34 million in donations as of late last week.She spent the final days of the campaign presenting herself as a protector of liberal values in the wake of landmark Supreme Court rulings on abortion rights and gun regulations. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, stood, symbolically, under a glass ceiling at a victory party in Manhattan. “To the women of New York,” she declared, “this one’s for you.”“We cannot and will not let right-wing extremists set us backwards on all the decades of progress we’ve made right here,” she added, “whether it’s a Trump cheerleader running for the governor of the state of New York or Trump-appointed justices on the Supreme Court.”Zeldin defeated Andrew Giuliani, who had captured far-right support based on his connections to former President Trump, his former boss, and his lineage as the son of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Zeldin also beat Rob Astorino, the party’s nominee for governor in 2014, and Harry Wilson, a corporate turnaround specialist who spent more than more than $10 million of his own money on the race.WeatherExpect a sunny day with a high near the mid-80s. In the evening, it will be mostly clear with temperatures around the high 60s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Monday (Independence Day).The latest New York newsJacquelyn Martin/Associated PressPoliticsRoe v. Wade fallout: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for an investigation into whether two Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade should be impeached for “lying under oath” at their confirmation hearings.Gun laws: New York lawmakers will consider creating weapon-free zones and making handgun bans the default condition in businesses, and New Jersey might require those who carry to be insured.More local newsSchool budget cuts: New York City public school funding is tied to student enrollment, and students have been leaving city schools in droves for years. Now, the city is saying schools must make cuts.R. Kelly trial: The former R&B singer R. Kelly will be sentenced in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday for commanding a vast scheme to recruit women, as well as underage girls and boys, for sex.Rudolph Giuliani: Mayor Eric Adams said the Staten Island district attorney should investigate former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for falsely reporting a crime after video footage undermined Giuliani’s allegations that he had been physically assaulted by a supermarket worker.Arts & CultureGlobal jazz: Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 35th season will present 22 programs from late September through next June, and feature performers from five continents.The Met’s chief executive steps down: Daniel Weiss will step down in June 2023 as president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Food crawl? Try swimming: A dedicated band of swimmers (and eaters) explores New York restaurants by water, with lunch as the reward.Maxwell sentenced to 20 yearsGhislaine Maxwell, right, and the financier Jeffrey Epstein.U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York/AFP, via Getty ImagesGhislaine Maxwell is the well-traveled former socialite who once hobnobbed with presidents, princes, moguls and magnates — and who was convicted last year of sex trafficking for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to exploit and abuse underage girls. On Tuesday, saying that “the damage done to these young girls was incalculable,” Judge Alison Nathan sentenced Maxwell to 20 years in prison.Nathan also imposed a $750,000 fine, noting that Epstein had left Maxwell a $10 million bequest, money one of Maxwell’s lawyers said she has not received. The disgraced financier was awaiting his own trial on sex trafficking charges when he hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, leaving his culpability unresolved forever.Bobbi Sternheim, one of Maxwell’s lawyers, said Maxwell would appeal, adding that Maxwell had been “vilified” and “pilloried” and “tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.” She suggested that jurors had treated Maxwell as a stand-in for Epstein, who Sternheim said had escaped accountability: “Clever and cunning to the end, Jeffery Epstein left Ghislaine Maxwell holding the whole bag.”The sentencing served as a bookend to a lurid case that spotlighted a world where the halo of glamour concealed the routine infliction of intimate, life-changing cruelty. The case against Maxwell showed how she and Epstein used wealth and status to exploit women and girls as young as 14 years old. Prosecutors said she recruited them for him.The judge said Maxwell was “not being punished in place of Epstein or as a proxy for Epstein,” calling what Maxwell did “heinous and predatory.”Maxwell’s British-accented voice was heard for the first time since her arrest nearly two years ago. Standing at the lectern in blue prison scrubs, her ankles shackled, she acknowledged “the pain and the anguish” of the women who had addressed the court at the sentencing hearing.But she stopped short of apologizing or taking responsibility for the crimes for which she was convicted.Understand the Ghislaine Maxwell CaseCard 1 of 5An Epstein confidant. More

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      Court Ruling on Guns: The Legislature’s Options

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