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      Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Return to Center Stage. Their Own.

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      After going dark during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Clinton Global Initiative is back.After a six-year hiatus, the Clinton Global Initiative returned to New York City this week, bringing together leaders from the worlds of nonprofit, government and business, with a few celebrities sprinkled in for good measure. It has been an eventful few years since they last gathered in 2016.“The challenges we face are steep, but they pretty much have been steep for a long time now,” former President Bill Clinton said in his opening remarks at the Hilton in Midtown Manhattan on Monday. “And CGI is always and has always been about what we can do and not what we can’t do.”The Clinton Global Initiative began in 2005 and quickly became something akin to a Davos-on-the-Hudson event, but one with a greater focus on philanthropy, nonprofits and corporate do-gooding. The way it differed from most conferences is that it required participants to make commitments, sometimes in dollars, other times in targets — such as for creating jobs or delivering clean water.Up to the hiatus in 2016, attendees announced more than 3,700 commitments, which by the organization’s own tally had helped more than 435 million people in over 180 countries.In many ways the early days were the high-water mark of the philanthrocapitalism era, when trust in the wealthy and celebrities to save the world ran high. In turn, many significant organizations modeled themselves after the Clintons’ endeavor.Then in 2016, in the heat of the general election campaign fight between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump, with reporters asking a lot of questions about the foundation and its donors, Mr. Clinton announced that the 2016 meeting would be the final version of the initiative.Now, as world leaders gathered in New York for the first fully in-person United Nations General Assembly in three years, the goal is to recapture that old Clinton magic, and to see if there is still room in a field of thought-leading, pledge-making symposia crowding the city this week.Advisers to Mr. Clinton said that in the years since, he had longed to restart the event. “He would tell me regularly when we were just talking before a board meeting, ‘I was just out last night and someone was saying when are you going to start CGI again?’” said Robert Harrison, former chief executive of the Clinton Global Initiative, from 2007 to 2016, and a board member of the Clinton Foundation.“A year ago, 10 months ago, we looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s try,’” Mr. Harrison recalled.The Clintons’ return to the world stage was heralded in March with a letter from Mr. Clinton that doubled as a call to arms. With the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the challenges to democracy at home and abroad, the world needed CGI back, according to Mr. Clinton.Judging from the names at the event, many old friends and allies answered the call, including the philanthropists Laurene Powell Jobs and Melinda French Gates, Secretary Xavier Becerra of the Department of Health and Human Services, state governors, corporate chief executives, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the director-general of the World Health Organization.This year the initiative tallied 144 commitments, which will result in more than 1.6 million jobs and the reduction of 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.Commitments ranged from a program to build soccer fields in underserved communities to one making bricks out of volcanic ash. Nine members committed to providing humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Mr. Clinton interviewed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine via videoconference on Tuesday, with Mr. Zelensky in his trademark form-fitting T-shirt.From left, the CNN host Fareed Zakaria with Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados; the philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs; and the chef José Andrés at the Clinton Global Initiative event on Monday.Julia Nikhinson/Associated PressMilling in the halls at the event, Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor and longtime denizen of Clinton world, brushed past, smartphone pressed to his face. Petra Nemcova, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model who survived the deadly 2004 tsunami in Thailand and now works in philanthropy, chatted with a Ukrainian official by the coffee urns, where the milk was all plant-based — soy, oat, almond — in a nod to Mr. Clinton’s veganism as well as the climate impact of cows. The meals were all plant-based, too.The mood between sessions was like that at a college reunion, with people embracing after years apart and speaking warmly and with nostalgia — convivial but not, perhaps, the most forward looking.“Why did they leave in the first place?” said Paloma Raggo, a philanthropy expert and professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University in Ottawa. “It wasn’t the right political climate for them to be at the forefront of things.”The Clintons shut down the initiative because of scrutiny during the campaign. And they kept it on ice for six years for a variety of reasons. First there was the recovery from Mrs. Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election. Then the #MeToo movement brought a harsh spotlight on past Clinton ties to Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein. Later, people close to Bill and Hillary say, Covid protocols kept them away from large crowds.Still, to critical observers, the timing does not seem clear. “Is it because now there are issues that make it necessary, them coming here, or is it because at this point the political consequences or bad juju has dissolved a bit and they reappeared?” Ms. Raggo asked.Some former advisers say the Clinton Global Initiative’s moment has passed and the event should not be revived. Memberships, which cost $15,000 and $20,000 in past years, were just $5,000 for this year’s event, according to Mr. Harrison, the former chief executive. In addition to Mr. Clinton’s desire to return to the spotlight, some see the former first daughter as a motivating force.Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Clinton this month debuted a documentary series on AppleTV+ called “Gutsy,” in which mother and daughter talk to famous women and activists. Mrs. Clinton, who has also written or co-written four books, two with Chelsea, since the 2016 election, took the stage Monday afternoon to a standing ovation.“I don’t know about you, but when people ask me how I am these days, I often say: ‘Well, personally I’m great. I’m just worried about everything,’” Mrs. Clinton told the crowd.Shortly thereafter, on the same stage, Ms. French Gates announced a $50 million donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund scholarships at a health sciences university in Rwanda in the name of Dr. Paul Farmer, who died unexpectedly in February.“Someone else has stepped up who also appreciates, respects and understands the value of this work,” Mrs. Clinton then said. “One of Paul’s friend’s here in our CGI community has just told us about making a gift of $10 million more dollars.”The foundation started in 1997 as the charitable vehicle to pay for the design and construction of Mr. Clinton’s presidential library. It had its share of controversy pretty quickly, with the Marc Rich pardon and donations an issue as he left the White House. In 2002, the Clintons started the Clinton H.I.V./AIDS Initiative, with the goal of saving the lives of millions of people around the world living with the disease. Today it continues as the Clinton Health Access Initiative, though it spun off from the foundation in 2010.When the Clinton Global Initiative debuted in 2005, George W. Bush was president. Hillary Clinton was a New York senator and a likely presidential contender herself. Bill Clinton was a recent two-term president. Chelsea seemed poised to follow in her parents’ footsteps.Chelsea Clinton with her parents at the conference.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe first version of the Clinton Global Initiative, in 2005, was timed to the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. The currency of the initiative was the “commitment.” Attendees were encouraged to make commitments that were then tallied at $2.5 billion in pledges from 300 people, to a variety of causes including global poverty, conflict resolution and climate change.The September traffic jam of motorcades zipping between events during the United Nations General Assembly were the moment to extract these pledges.“I think CGI was the rocket fuel on all of this,” said John Prendergast, co-founder of the Sentry, who has appeared on several panels with heads of state there over the years. “He has this real nose for pulling these various communities together,” he said of Mr. Clinton.Now there are numerous other events competing for attention and attendance, including the Concordia Summit and the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event.Donna Shalala, the former health and human services secretary and former president of the Clinton Foundation, said in an interview that they had ended the Clinton Global Initiative to avoid any potential conflict of interest with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.“It was painful,” she said. “Let me assure you the president loves CGI and the rest of us did. And the foundation was defined by CGI, it’s what everyone knew us for.”When the election ended and Mrs. Clinton lost, it was not a simple matter of cranking up the annual meeting again.“This is not just hitting pause on a song; it’s like shutting down a nuclear reactor, you don’t just keep flipping the switch on and off,” said Philippe Reines, a longtime adviser to Mrs. Clinton. “Once you turn it off, there’s an energy and a ramp-up that’s involved and time consuming.”Even after a dormant period for the initiative, the foundation’s signature event, tax filings show that the foundation had net assets of over $300 million as of the 2020 tax year, the most recent available.For nonprofits, CGI can be a powerful place to raise funds and make connections.Gary White, the chief executive and a co-founder of Water.org, said he had met some of his most important donors at CGI, including the PepsiCo Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation and the Ikea Foundation.“Where the rubber meets the road is at CGI, where they are there to make commitments not just as a side show,” Mr. White said.He also met the actor Matt Damon at CGI, in 2008, when his organization was called Water Partners. Mr. Damon had his own group, known as H2O Africa. The next year they announced that they had merged their groups. This year, they made a commitment to deliver clean water and sanitation to 100 million people in need, a goal the group says it is nearly halfway to meeting.Mr. Clinton’s opening remarks at the conference came out a little quiet, a hint raspier than usual, a tiny bit slow.He made a reference to “someone who had no dog in the hunt,” and then quipped, “You must forgive me if I sometimes slip off into my colloquial past.” The audience laughed, relief palpable, as the old charm emerged.Toward the end of his first panel, Mr. Clinton told the participants, “I wish I could keep you here the rest of the day.”After that panel, Mr. Clinton leaned down from the stage to grasp hands, smile, pose for photographs and talk to the crowd. He beamed, campaign-trail muscle memory seeming to kick in. As the Secret Service tried to move him along, one had the distinct impression that the former president never wanted to leave the stage. More

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      Rob Stein, Who Changed How Politics Is Funded, Dies at 78

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      In the wake of Republican electoral victories in 2004, he convened major liberal donors to finance a network of political groups aligned with Democrats.Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist who helped reshape American politics by pioneering new ways for wealthy liberals to influence policy debates and elections, died on Monday at a hospice facility in Washington. He was 78.His son Gideon said the cause was metastatic prostate cancer.After a varied career in which he worked as a public interest lawyer and a top adviser to the Democratic Party and the Clinton administration and created nonprofit groups and a venture capital fund, Mr. Stein found his calling in the wake of the 2002 elections.The president’s party usually fares poorly in midterm elections, but Republicans captured the Senate, giving them control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency, as well as the majority of governorships and state legislative seats. This left Mr. Stein concerned that Republicans could be headed for long-term dominance if Democrats failed to understand and counter their rivals’ superior tactics and political machinery.He spent months obsessing over the advocacy groups and think tanks that collectively constituted the conservative movement. He routinely stayed awake past midnight studying tax filings to map the flow of cash to these groups.Mr. Stein crystallized his research into a PowerPoint presentation called “The Conservative Message Machine’s Money Matrix,” which was intended as a sort of Rosetta stone for understanding the conservative movement and its funding. He began showing it to Democratic political operatives and major donors around the country, developing a following among some of the most influential figures on the left.After President George W. Bush was re-elected and Republicans increased their majorities in Congress in 2004, Mr. Stein launched a coalition of major liberal donors, the Democracy Alliance, to offset the Republican advantages detailed in his presentation. Each member had to commit to donating at least $200,000 a year to groups recommended by the alliance — including outfits supporting progressive causes, like fighting climate change and protecting abortion rights, that generally aligned with the Democratic Party.Its founding members included some of the biggest donors on the left, among them the financier George Soros.The alliance’s donors have combined to give more than $2 billion to recommended groups, the organization said. Their donations have helped seed some of the most important institutions on the left, including America Votes, Media Matters and the Center for American Progress.It wasn’t long before Republicans were trying to organize donor coalitions of their own to mimic some of the strategy behind the Democracy Alliance.“It just changed the way people thought about their philanthropy,” said David Brock, the former conservative journalist who became a leading Democratic operative and who founded Media Matters.In the 2022 election cycle, Media Matters and a network of affiliated groups subsequently created by Mr. Brock are on pace to spend $100 million, Mr. Brock said. He added that none of that would have been possible without Mr. Stein and the Democracy Alliance.“It was revolutionary for our side, and over the last 20 years it was the sole reason why sustainable Democratic infrastructure got built,” he said.Mr. Stein, center, with Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, a Democrat, and Kerry Healey, a former Republican lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, in 2018. Mr. Stein worked on building coalitions of donors and operatives across party lines.Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia SummitRobert Jay Stein was born on Oct. 26, 1943, in Wheeling, W.Va. His father, Charles, owned a chain of lumberyards, and his mother, Janis (Harrison) Stein, was involved in local arts, social service and religious organizations.He graduated from the Linsly Military Institute (now the Linsly School) in Wheeling before attending Antioch College in Ohio, a hotbed of progressive politics and activism.The abrupt transition shaped Mr. Stein’s politics.“It opened my brain to both conservative values and liberal values, and I became respectful of both, even though over time I became more in the liberal camp,” Mr. Stein said in an interview last month.He went on to the George Washington University Law School in Washington, where he would make his home for the rest of his life.He worked as a public interest lawyer for 10 years, then helped create or run a series of nonprofit organizations focused on issues including nutrition, refugees, organizational management and voter participation.Ahead of the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Mr. Stein was recruited to develop a presentation about mobilizing voters. That led to positions as an adviser to the Democratic National Committee under Chairman Ronald H. Brown, and then as chief of staff to Mr. Brown when President Bill Clinton named him commerce secretary in 1993.Mr. Stein left the Commerce Department shortly before Mr. Brown’s death in a plane crash in 1996 to help start a venture capital fund focused on women-owned businesses. When he formed the Democracy Alliance, he infused it with principles typically associated with venture investing.In addition to his son Gideon, from his marriage to Mary Ann (Efroymson) Stein, which ended in divorce, Mr. Stein is survived by his wife, Ellen Miley Perry; their daughter, Kat Stein; two other children from his first marriage, Dorothy and Noah Stein; and five grandchildren.After the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision prompted a surge in political spending, much of it funded by undisclosed sources, Mr. Stein grew increasingly concerned that big money was deepening polarization and distrust in government.While he urged Democrats not to “unilaterally disarm,” he also began talking about ways to bridge partisan divides and reform politics. That became a larger part of Mr. Stein’s focus after Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016.He advised several groups on building coalitions of donors and operatives across the political spectrum to fight what he saw as a slide into authoritarianism exacerbated by Mr. Trump.Mr. Stein applied thinking and strategy from the Democracy Alliance to encourage “a new cross-partisan pro-democracy infrastructure,” said Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican operative who has worked to loosen Mr. Trump’s grip on the party.“He was especially attentive to those of us on the right who had never had common cause with Democrats,” said Ms. Longwell, who helped create and run two organizations that oppose Mr. Trump and his allies: the Bulwark website and the political group Defending Democracy Together.She said Mr. Stein, whom she considers a mentor, was “a relentless cheerleader for the project of democracy.” More

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      Mark Zuckerberg Ends Election Grants

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      Mark Zuckerberg, who donated nearly half a billion dollars to election offices across the nation in 2020 and drew criticism from conservatives suspicious of his influence on the presidential election, won’t be making additional grants this year, a spokesman for the Facebook founder confirmed on Tuesday.The spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said the donations by Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were never intended to be a stream of funding for the administration of elections.The couple gave $419 million to two nonprofit organizations that disbursed grants in 2020 to more than 2,500 election departments, which were grappling with a shortfall of government funding as they adopted new procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.The infusion of private donations helped to pay for new ballot-counting equipment, efforts to expand mail-in voting, personal protective equipment and the training of poll workers.It also sowed seeds of mistrust among supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. Critics referred to the grants as “Zuckerbucks” and some frequently claimed, without evidence, that the money was used to help secure Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Several states controlled by Republicans banned private donations to election offices in response.“As Mark and Priscilla made clear previously, their election infrastructure donation to help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic was a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis,” Mr. LaBolt said in an email on Tuesday. “They have no plans to repeat that donation.”The Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit group with liberal ties that became a vessel for $350 million of the contributions from Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan in 2020, announced on Monday that it was shifting to a different model for supporting the work of local election administrators.During an appearance on Monday at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver, Tiana Epps-Johnson, the center’s executive director, said that the organization would begin a five-year, $80 million program to help meet the needs of election departments across the country.Called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the program will draw funding through the Audacious Project, a philanthropic collective housed at the TED organization, the center said. Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan are not involved in the new initiative, Mr. LaBolt said.At the event on Monday, Ms. Epps-Johnson said the grants distributed by the center in 2020 helped fill a substantial void of resources for those overseeing elections in the United States. One town in New England, she said without specifying, was able to replace voting equipment from the early 1900s that was held together with duct tape.“The United States election infrastructure is crumbling,” Ms. Epps-Johnson said.In addition to the Center for Technology and Civic Life, Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan gave $69.6 million to the Center for Election Innovation & Research in 2020. At the time, that nonprofit group said that the top election officials in 23 states had applied for grants.Republicans have been unrelenting in their criticism of the social media mogul and his donations.While campaigning for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday in Perrysburg, Ohio, J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who has undergone a conversion to Trumpism, continued to accuse Mr. Zuckerberg of tipping the election in 2020 to Mr. Biden.Mr. Vance, a venture capitalist, hasn’t exactly sworn off help from big tech. He counts Peter Thiel, a departing board member of Mr. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, and a major donor to Mr. Trump, as a top fund-raiser. Mr. Thiel has also supported Blake Masters, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona.In an opinion piece for The New York Post last October, Mr. Vance and Mr. Masters called for Facebook’s influence to be curbed, writing that Mr. Zuckerberg had spent half a billion dollars to “buy the presidency for Joe Biden.”In Colorado, Tina Peters, the top vote-getter for secretary of state at the state Republican Party’s assembly last weekend, has been a fierce critic of Mr. Zuckerberg, even after her arrest this year on charges stemming from an election security breach. Ms. Peters, the Mesa County clerk, is facing several felonies amid accusations that she allowed an unauthorized person to copy voting machine hard drive information. More

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      Richard Blum, Political Donor and Husband of Senator Feinstein, Dies at 86

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      As a financier, he amassed a fortune that he spent on Democrats, helping to propel his wife from San Francisco mayor to a long career in the Senate.Richard C. Blum, a financier and major donor to Democrats — above all his wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California — died on Sunday at the family home in San Francisco. He was 86.The cause was cancer, according to a statement by Ms. Feinstein’s office.Ms. Feinstein missed votes in recent weeks as Mr. Blum’s health declined, imperiling the Democrats’ precarious Senate majority, which relies on a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.Mr. Blum exerted influence generally as a political patron and an adviser. It was only during his final months that he sought government office, informing President Biden early last year that he hoped to be made an ambassador.That move could have caused Ms. Feinstein to leave the Senate and travel overseas with Mr. Blum, and some Democrats saw it as a potential way for her to make a graceful exit from Congress at age 87. Members of her own Democratic caucus had been grumbling that her mental acuity had diminished and that she had become too accommodating to Republicans.Mr. Blum became Ms. Feinstein’s companion between the death of her second husband, Bertram Feinstein, in 1978, and her victory in a race for mayor of San Francisco in 1979 after two unsuccessful attempts. They married in 1980. In 1983, Mr. Blum helped Ms. Feinstein raise $400,000 to beat back a recall attempt.He remained her closest confidant and most reliable fund-raiser through her mayoralty, which ended in 1988. The couple then poured about $3 million of their own money into the 1990 California governor’s race, which Ms. Feinstein lost to Pete Wilson, a Republican. But, again with Mr. Blum’s financial help, she won election to the Senate in 1992.Ms. Feinstein is now the fifth-longest-serving United States senator, and if she stays in office for just under a year longer she will surpass Barbara A. Mikulski as the longest-tenured female senator in American history.Mr. Blum ran his own investment firm, Blum Capital Partners, and during his career as an investment banker and financial manager his clients included large institutions like Bank of America.With deep pockets, he became a major figure in Democratic politics, counting Jimmy Carter as a jogging partner and Mr. Biden as one of many beneficiaries of his largess. His net worth was estimated to exceed $1 billion.He also held nonprofit positions; at one point he was chairman of the University of California Board of Regents.With the Dalai Lama among his influential friends, Mr. Blum developed an interest in South Asia as the home of Buddhist philosophy, as a recipient of philanthropy and as a place for adventure: He once led an expedition up part of Mount Everest.In a statement of condolence, Mr. Biden called Mr. Blum “a successful businessman and proud son of California who dedicated much of his public life to fighting poverty around the globe” through the establishment of the American Himalayan Foundation, a nonprofit group that builds schools and hospitals in Tibet, and the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley, which focuses on innovative solutions to global poverty.Richard Charles Blum was born on July 31, 1935, in San Francisco to Louise Hirsch and Herbert Blum, a seller of robes and raincoats who died during Richard’s boyhood. Richard graduated from Berkeley with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration.He joined Sutro & Company, a San Francisco brokerage firm, at 23 and became a partner before he turned 30, by which time he was already a millionaire.In addition to Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Blum is survived by a brother, Robert; his daughters, Annette, Heidi and Eileen; his stepdaughter, Katherine; and seven grandchildren.During Ms. Feinstein’s 1990 race to be California’s governor, Mr. Blum described to The New York Times what he called “the triathlon of politics.”“No. 1,” he said, “we get to see on a regular basis everything she’s ever done and I’ve ever done distorted in the newspapers. No. 2, we get to share 17 years of our tax returns on an intimate basis with 30 million people. And three, I get to pay to watch all this happen.”Shawn Hubler More

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      Una despedida esperanzada para los lectores

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      Mi vida se transformó cuando tenía 25 años y entré nervioso a una entrevista de trabajo en la imponente oficina de Abe Rosenthal, el editor legendario y volátil de The New York Times. En un momento, no estuve de acuerdo con él, así que esperé a que se enojara y llamara a seguridad. En cambio, me tendió la mano y me ofreció un trabajo.La euforia me desbordó: ¡era muy joven y había encontrado a mi empleador para el resto de la vida! Estaba seguro de que la única manera en que dejaría el Times sería muerto.Sin embargo, esta es mi última columna para el diario. Estoy dejando un trabajo que amo para postularme como gobernador de Oregón.Es sensato cuestionar mi decisión. Cuando le preguntaron a mi colega William Safire si dejaría su columna en el Times para ser secretario de Estado, contestó: “¿Y por qué bajar un escalón en mi carrera?”.Así que, ¿por qué estoy haciéndolo?Voy a llegar a eso, pero primero quiero compartir unas cuantas lecciones de mis 37 años como reportero, editor y columnista del Times.En especial, quiero dejar claro que, aunque pasé mi carrera en la primera línea del sufrimiento y la depravación humana, cubriendo genocidio, guerra, pobreza e injusticia, salí de ahí con la firme creencia de que podemos lograr un progreso real si logramos convocar la suficiente voluntad política. Somos una especie magnífica, y podemos hacer las cosas mejor.Lección 1: A un lado de lo peor de la humanidad, encontrarás también lo mejor.El genocidio en Darfur me marcó y horrorizó. Para cubrir la matanza, crucé fronteras sin ser visto, escapé de puestos de control, y me congracié con asesinos en masa.Fue difícil no llorar mientras entrevistaba a niños traumatizados que habían recibido balazos, habían sido violados o quedado huérfanos. Era imposible reportear en Darfur y no oler la maldad en el aire. Pero, junto con los monstruos, invariablemente encontré a héroes.Había adolescentes que se ofrecieron para usar sus arcos y flechas para proteger a sus aldeas de los milicianos que llevaban armas automáticas. Había trabajadores humanitarios, en su mayoría locales, que arriesgaron sus vidas para dar asistencia. Y sudaneses de a pie, como Suad Ahmed, una mujer de 25 años de Darfur que conocí en un campo de refugiados.Suad y su hermana Halima, de 10 años, estaban recogiendo leña cuando vieron que los yanyauid, una milicia genocida, se dirigían hacia ellas a caballo.“¡Corre!”, le dijo Suad a su hermana. “Debes correr y escapar”.Suad creó una distracción para que el yanyauid la persiguiera a ella en lugar de a Halima. Atraparon a Suad, la golpearon brutalmente y la violaron en grupo; la dejaron demasiado herida para caminar.Suad restó importancia a su heroísmo, y me dijo que si hubiera corrido, la habrían capturado de todos modos. Dijo que el hecho de que su hermana escapara hizo que el sacrificio valiera la pena.Incluso en un panorama de maldad, las personas más memorables no son los Himmler ni los Eichmann sino las Anne Franks y Raoul Wallenberg, y las Suad Ahmeds, quienes son capaces de una bondad inspiradora frente al repugnante mal. Ellas son la razón por la que no dejé el frente de batalla deprimido sino inspirado.Lección 2: En general, sabemos cómo mejorar el bienestar en el país y fuera de él. Lo que falta es voluntad política.Hay cosas buenas que suceden a nuestro alrededor sin que nos demos cuenta de ellas, y son el resultado de una comprensión más profunda de lo que funciona para hacer la diferencia. Eso puede parecer sorprendente viniendo de un columnista apesadumbrado, que ha cubierto el hambre, las atrocidades y la devastación climática. Pero el hecho de que los periodistas solo cubran las noticias de los aviones que se estrellan, y no los que aterrizan con éxito, no significa que todos los vuelos terminen en tragedia.Considera esto: históricamente, casi la mitad de los humanos murieron en la infancia; ahora solo muere el 4 por ciento. En los últimos años, hasta la pandemia de la COVID-19, 170.000 personas en todo el mundo salían de la pobreza extrema todos los días. Otras 325.000 personas obtienen electricidad cada día. Unas 200.000 personas lograron tener acceso a agua potable. La pandemia ha sido un gran revés para el mundo en desarrollo, pero la tendencia más general de logros históricos permanecerá; esto es, si aplicamos las lecciones aprendidas y redoblamos los esfuerzos al encarar las políticas climáticas..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Aquí, en Estados Unidos, hemos logrado aumentar las tasas de graduación de la secundaria, reducir a la mitad el número de personas sin hogar entre los veteranos y disminuir el embarazo adolescente en más del 60 por ciento desde su momento más alto en 1991. Estos éxitos deberían inspirarnos a hacer más: si sabemos qué hacer para reducir la carencia de vivienda de los veteranos, podemos aplicar las mismas lecciones para reducirla en los niños.Lección 3: El talento es universal, aunque las oportunidades no lo sean.El mayor recurso del mundo sin explotar es el enorme potencial de las personas que no han sido completamente impulsadas o educadas. Se trata de un recordatorio de lo mucho que podemos ganar si tan solo hacemos mejores inversiones en el capital humano.La médica más excepcional que he conocido no estudió en la Escuela de Medicina de Harvard. De hecho, ella nunca ha ido a una escuela de medicina o a escuela alguna. Mamitu Gashe, una mujer etíope que no sabía leer, padeció una fístula obstétrica y fue sometida a tratamientos prolongados en un hospital. Mientras estaba allí, comenzó a ayudar.Los médicos estaban desbordados y se dieron cuenta de que era muy inteligente y capaz, y empezaron a darle más responsabilidades. Con el tiempo, ella misma comenzó a realizar cirugías de fístulas y, después, se convirtió en una de las cirujanas de fístulas más distinguidas del mundo. Cuando profesores de obstetricia de Estados Unidos iban a su hospital para aprender a corregir fístulas, su maestra a menudo era Mamitu.Pero, por supuesto, hay muchos otros casos, personas igual de extraordinarias y hábiles que Mamitu, que nunca tienen una oportunidad.Hace unos años, me enteré de un niño sin hogar que nació en Nigeria, asistía al tercer grado y acababa de ganar el campeonato de ajedrez del estado de Nueva York para su grupo de edad. Visité al niño, Tanitoluwa “Tani” Adewumi, y a su familia en un refugio para personas sin hogar y escribí sobre ellos. Eso derivó en donaciones de más de 250.000 de dólares para los Adewumi, un coche, becas completas para asistir a escuelas privadas, ofertas de trabajo para los padres, ayuda legal pro bono y vivienda gratuita.Lo que vino después fue quizás aún más conmovedor. Los Adewumi aceptaron el hospedaje pero pusieron el dinero en una fundación para ayudar a otros inmigrantes sin hogar. Mantuvieron a Tani en su escuela pública como forma de agradecimiento a los trabajadores que les condonaron las cuotas del club de ajedrez cuando era el niño recién comenzaba.Tani ha seguido creciendo en el mundo del ajedrez. Ahora, a sus 11 años, ganó el campeonato de ajedrez de Norteamérica para su grupo de edad y es un maestro con una calificación de la Federación de Ajedrez de Estados Unidos de 2262.Pero ganar campeonatos estatales de ajedrez no es un método escalable para resolver la falta de vivienda.La generosidad deslumbrante en respuesta al éxito de Tani es conmovedora, pero debe ir acompañada de políticas públicas generosas. Los niños deberían tener vivienda incluso si no son prodigios del ajedrez.No construimos el Sistema de Autopistas Interestatales con voluntarios ni vendiendo pasteles. Para dar soluciones sistémicas al fracaso educativo y la pobreza se necesita, como pasó con la construcción de autopistas, de una inversión pública rigurosa, sustentada tanto en datos como en la empatía.En Estados Unidos, a menudo somos cínicos ante la política, a veces nos parece ridícula la idea de que los líderes elegidos democráticamente marcan una gran diferencia. Pero durante décadas he escrito sobre manifestantes a favor de la democracia en Polonia, Ucrania, China, Corea del Sur, Mongolia y otros lugares, y ellos me han contagiado parte de su idealismo.Un amigo chino, un contador llamado Ren Wanding, pasó años en prisión por su activismo, e incluso escribió un tratado de dos volúmenes sobre la democracia y los derechos humanos con los únicos materiales que tenía a su disposición: papel higiénico y la punta de un bolígrafo desechado.En 1989, en la plaza de Tiananmén, vi a soldados del gobierno chino abrir fuego contra los manifestantes que pedían democracia. Y luego, en una demostración extraordinaria de valentía, conductores de rickshaws pedalearon con sus carritos hacía ellos para recoger los cuerpos de los jóvenes que habían muerto o habían resultado heridos. Un conductor corpulento, con lágrimas en los ojos, se desvió y pasó a mi lado pedaleando lento para que yo pudiera ser testigo de lo sucedido, y me pidió que le contara al mundo lo que veía.Esos conductores de rickshaws no eran cínicos ante la democracia: estaban arriesgando sus vidas por ella. Después de ver esa valentía en el mundo me entristece aún más advertir que hay personas en este país que están socavando nuestras instituciones democráticas. Pero los manifestantes como Ren me inspiraron a preguntarme si debería participar de manera más plena en la vida democrática de Estados Unidos.Es por esta razón que estoy dejando el trabajo que amo.He escrito con regularidad sobre las tribulaciones de mi amada ciudad natal, Yamhill, Oregón, que ha lidiado con la pérdida de buenos trabajos para la clase trabajadora y la llegada de la metanfetamina. Todos los días llegaba a la escuela primaria de Yamhill, y luego a la secundaria Yamhill-Carlton, a bordo del autobús número 6. Pero hoy, más de una cuarta parte de mis amigos del antiguo autobús han muerto por las drogas, el alcohol o el suicidio. Son muertes por desesperación.El sistema político les falló. El sistema educativo les falló. El sistema de salud les falló. Y yo les fallé. Era el niño en el autobús que ganó becas, recibió una gran educación y luego me fui a cubrir genocidios al otro lado del mundo.Aunque estoy orgulloso de la atención que le di a las atrocidades en el mundo, me puso mal regresar de las crisis humanitarias en el extranjero y encontrar una en casa. Cada dos semanas, perdemos a más estadounidenses por las drogas, el alcohol y el suicidio que en 20 años de guerra en Irak y Afganistán. Y esa es una pandemia que ni los medios de comunicación han cubierto de la mejor manera ni nuestros líderes han abordado adecuadamente.Mientras procesaba esto, la pandemia de covid empeoró la situación. Una amiga que había dejado de consumir drogas recayó al inicio de la pandemia, se quedó sin hogar y durante el año siguiente tuvo 17 sobredosis. Temo por ella y por su hijo.Amo el periodismo, pero también amo a mi estado natal. Sigo pensando en el dicho de Theodore Roosevelt: “El que cuenta no es el crítico, ni el hombre que señala el modo en el que el fuerte tropieza”, dijo. “El mérito pertenece al hombre que está ahí, en el ruedo”.Estoy resistiendo el impulso periodístico de mantenerme al margen porque me lastima ver lo que han soportado mis compañeros de escuela y siento que es el momento adecuado para pasar de cubrir los problemas a tratar de solucionarlos.Espero convencer a algunos de ustedes de que el servicio público en el gobierno puede ser un camino para ejercer responsabilidad por las comunidades que queremos, por un país que puede hacer las cosas mejor. Incluso si eso significa renunciar a un trabajo que amo.¡Adiós, lectores!Nicholas Kristof fue columnista del Times durante 20 años. Ha sido galardonado con dos premios Pulitzer por su cobertura de China y del genocidio de Darfur. Puedes seguirlo en Instagram. Su libro más reciente es Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. @NickKristof | Facebook More

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      in Elections

      A Farewell to Readers, With Hope

      by

      My life was transformed when I was 25 years old and nervously walked into a job interview in the grand office of Abe Rosenthal, the legendary and tempestuous editor of The New York Times. At one point, I disagreed with him, so I waited for him to explode and call security. Instead, he stuck out his hand and offered me a job.Exhilaration washed over me: I was a kid and had found my employer for the rest of my life! I was sure that I would leave The Times only feet first.Yet this is my last column for The Times. I am giving up a job I love to run for governor of Oregon.It’s fair to question my judgment. When my colleague William Safire was asked if he would give up his Times column to be secretary of state, he replied, “Why take a step down?”So why am I doing this?I’m getting to that, but first a few lessons from my 37 years as a Times reporter, editor and columnist.In particular, I want to make clear that while I’ve spent my career on the front lines of human suffering and depravity, covering genocide, war, poverty and injustice, I’ve emerged firmly believing that we can make real progress by summoning the political will. We are an amazing species, and we can do better.Lesson No. 1: Side by side with the worst of humanity, you find the best.The genocide in Darfur seared me and terrified me. To cover the slaughter there, I sneaked across borders, slipped through checkpoints, ingratiated myself with mass murderers.In Darfur, it was hard to keep from weeping as I interviewed shellshocked children who had been shot, raped or orphaned. No one could report in Darfur and not smell the evil in the air. Yet alongside the monsters, I invariably found heroes.There were teenagers who volunteered to use their bows and arrows to protect their villages from militiamen with automatic weapons. There were aid workers, mostly local, who risked their lives to deliver assistance. And there were ordinary Sudanese like Suad Ahmed, a then-25-year-old Darfuri woman I met in one dusty refugee camp.Suad had been out collecting firewood with her 10-year-old sister, Halima, when they saw the janjaweed, a genocidal militia, approaching on horseback.“Run!” Suad told her sister. “You must run and escape.”Then Suad created a diversion so the janjaweed chased her rather than Halima. They caught Suad, brutally beat her and gang-raped her, leaving her too injured to walk.Suad played down her heroism, telling me that even if she had fled, she might have been caught anyway. She said that her sister’s escape made the sacrifice worth it.Even in a landscape of evil, the most memorable people aren’t the Himmlers and Eichmanns but the Anne Franks and Raoul Wallenbergs — and Suad Ahmeds — capable of exhilarating goodness in the face of nauseating evil. They are why I left the front lines not depressed but inspired.Lesson No. 2: We largely know how to improve well-being at home and abroad. What we lack is the political will.Good things are happening that we often don’t acknowledge, and they’re a result of a deeper understanding of what works to make a difference. That may seem surprising coming from the Gloom Columnist, who has covered starvation, atrocities and climate devastation. But just because journalists cover planes that crash, not those that land, doesn’t mean that all flights are crashing.Consider this: Historically, almost half of humans died in childhood; now only 4 percent do. Every day in recent years, until the Covid-19 pandemic, another 170,000 people worldwide emerged from extreme poverty. Another 325,000 obtained electricity each day. Some 200,000 gained access to clean drinking water. The pandemic has been a major setback for the developing world, but the larger pattern of historic gains remains — if we apply lessons learned and redouble efforts while tackling climate policy.Here in the United States, we have managed to raise high school graduation rates, slash veteran homelessness by half and cut teen pregnancy by more than 60 percent since the modern peak in 1991. These successes should inspire us to do more: If we know how to reduce veteran homelessness, then surely we can apply the same lessons to reduce child homelessness.Lesson No. 3: Talent is universal, even if opportunity is not.The world’s greatest untapped resource is the vast potential of people who are not fully nurtured or educated — a reminder of how much we stand to gain if we only make better investments in human capital.The most remarkable doctor I ever met was not a Harvard Medical School graduate. Indeed, she had never been to medical school or any school. But Mamitu Gashe, an illiterate Ethiopian woman, suffered an obstetric fistula and underwent long treatments at a hospital. While there, she began to help out.Overworked doctors realized she was immensely smart and capable, and they began to give her more responsibilities. Eventually she began to perform fistula repairs herself, and over time she became one of the world’s most distinguished fistula surgeons. When American professors of obstetrics went to the hospital to learn how to repair fistulas, their teacher was often Mamitu.But, of course, there are so many other Mamitus, equally extraordinary and capable, who never get the chance.A few years ago, I learned that a homeless third grader from Nigeria had just won the New York State chess championship for his age group. I visited the boy, Tanitoluwa “Tani” Adewumi, and his family in their homeless shelter and wrote about them — and the result was more than $250,000 in donations for the Adewumis, along with a vehicle, full scholarships to private schools, job offers for the parents, pro bono legal help and free housing.What came next was perhaps still more moving. The Adewumis accepted the housing but put the money in a foundation to help other homeless immigrants. They kept Tani in his public school out of gratitude to officials who waived chess club fees when he was a novice.Tani has continued to rise in the chess world. Now 11, he won the North American chess championship for his age group and is a master with a U.S. Chess Federation rating of 2262.But winning a state chess championship is not a scalable way to solve homelessness.The dazzling generosity in response to Tani’s success is heartwarming, but it needs to be matched by a generous public policy. Kids should get housing even if they’re not chess prodigies.We didn’t build the Interstate System of highways with bake sales and volunteers. Rigorous public investment — based on data as well as empathy — is needed to provide systemic solutions to educational failure and poverty, just as it was to create freeways.In this country we’re often cynical about politics, sometimes rolling our eyes at the idea that democratic leaders make much of a difference. Yet for decades I’ve covered pro-democracy demonstrators in Poland, Ukraine, China, South Korea, Mongolia and elsewhere, and some of their idealism has rubbed off on me.One Chinese friend, an accountant named Ren Wanding, spent years in prison for his activism, even writing a two-volume treatise on democracy and human rights with the only materials he had: toilet paper and the nib of a discarded pen.At Tiananmen Square in 1989, I watched Chinese government troops open fire with automatic weapons on pro-democracy demonstrators. And then in an extraordinary display of courage, rickshaw drivers pedaled their wagons out toward the gunfire to pick up the bodies of the young people who had been killed or injured. One burly rickshaw driver, tears streaming down his cheeks, swerved to drive by me slowly so I could bear witness — and he begged me to tell the world.Those rickshaw drivers weren’t cynical about democracy: They were risking their lives for it. Such courage abroad makes me all the sadder to see people in this country undermining our democratic institutions. But protesters like Ren inspired me to ask if I should engage more fully in America’s democratic life.That’s why I am leaving a job I love.I’ve written regularly about the travails of my beloved hometown, Yamhill, Ore., which has struggled with the loss of good working-class jobs and the arrival of meth. Every day I rode to Yamhill Grade School and then Yamhill-Carlton High School on the No. 6 bus. Yet today more than one-quarter of my pals on my old bus are dead from drugs, alcohol and suicide — deaths of despair.The political system failed them. The educational system failed them. The health system failed them. And I failed them. I was the kid on the bus who won scholarships, got the great education — and then went off to cover genocides half a world away.While I’m proud of the attention I gave to global atrocities, it sickened me to return from humanitarian crises abroad and find one at home. Every two weeks, we lose more Americans from drugs, alcohol and suicide than in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan — and that’s a pandemic that the media hasn’t adequately covered and our leaders haven’t adequately addressed.As I was chewing on all this, the Covid pandemic made suffering worse. One friend who had been off drugs relapsed early in the pandemic, became homeless and overdosed 17 times over the next year. I’m terrified for her and for her child.I love journalism, but I also love my home state. I keep thinking of Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,” he said. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”I’m bucking the journalistic impulse to stay on the sidelines because my heart aches at what classmates have endured and it feels like the right moment to move from covering problems to trying to fix them.I hope to convince some of you that public service in government can be a path to show responsibility for communities we love, for a country that can do better. Even if that means leaving a job I love.Farewell, readers!The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Mountain of Money Fuels Newsom’s Surge to Recall Election Finish Line

      by

      The California governor has taken full advantage of the state’s loose financing rules for recall elections, overpowering Republican challengers for whom the cavalry never arrived.Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid to fend off a recall in California has been bolstered by an infusion of tens of millions of dollars from big donors in recent months that delivered him an enormous financial advantage over his Republican rivals in the race’s final stretch.There had been moments over the summer when Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, had appeared vulnerable in public polls, as California’s unique recall rules seemed to provide an opening to conservatives in one of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation. But Mr. Newsom raised more than $70 million this year into an account to battle the recall, much of it in July and August, allowing him and his allies to dominate the television airwaves and out-advertise his opponents online.California has no limits on donations to recall committees, and Mr. Newsom has taken full advantage of those loose rules. His contributions have included an early $3 million from Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix; $500,000 from the liberal philanthropist George Soros; and $500,000 from the Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. Dr. Priscilla Chan, a philanthropist and the wife of the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, contributed $750,000, and the real estate magnate George Marcus gave $1 million.Millions of dollars more have come from interest groups with business before the state, including labor unions representing service workers, teachers and prison guards, the real estate industry and Native American tribes that operate casinos.On the Republican side, the financial cavalry never arrived.Mr. Newsom’s aggressive efforts to keep any other prominent Democrat from running consolidated the party’s financial might toward protecting his post. In a California recall, voters consider two questions: first, whether to recall the governor and second, whom the replacement should be. During the last recall election, in 2003, Democrats struggled to sell the famously unwieldy slogan “no on recall; yes on Bustamante” as Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, swept into the governorship.This year, Democrats and Republicans in the state seem to agree on one thing ahead of the election on Tuesday: The money mattered. All told, Mr. Newsom has spent more battling the recall than he did on his 2018 election.“If Gavin didn’t raise the money, given the amount of apathy and angst, he could have lost,” said Kerman Maddox, a Democratic strategist in California who has also worked as a party fund-raiser. “I’m just going to be real.”Dave Gilliard, a Republican strategist involved in the recall efforts, said of the cash gulf: “It’s definitely made a difference.”Despite the large sums involved in the recall, the race’s total cost is actually less than that of a single ballot measure last year, when Uber and Lyft teamed up to successfully press for rules allowing app-based companies to continue to classify drivers and other workers as independent contractors. That ballot measure drew roughly $225 million in spending because of the state’s many large and costly media markets, including Los Angeles.Mr. Newsom used his financial edge to swamp his Republican rivals and proponents of the recall on television by a nearly four-to-one ratio in July and August, spending $20.4 million to the recall supporters’ $5.6 million, according to data provided by the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Some of those ads framed the race in the starkest of terms, with one spot saying the recall’s outcome was “a matter of life and death” because of the coronavirus. On YouTube and Google, the financial disparity was even more stark. Mr. Newsom has spent nearly $4.1 million, according to Google disclosure records, while his leading Republican opponent, the radio talk show host Larry Elder, has spent a little more than $600,000.Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, gave $3 million to Mr. Newsom’s campaign.Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesDr. Priscilla Chan gave $750,000. California has no limits on donations to recall committees.Steve Jennings/Getty ImagesThe sudden emergence of Mr. Elder as the Republican front-runner — he entered the contest in July and had raised more than $13 million by the end of August — provided Mr. Newsom with a ready-made Republican foil. An unabashed conservative, Mr. Elder had left a trail of radio clips in which he outlined positions unpopular with Democrats on issues like the environment, abortion and the minimum wage.“Lo and behold, he got a gift from the gods in the name of Larry Elder, the conservative African American version of Donald Trump,” Mr. Maddox said, adding that the specter of an Elder governorship had motivated big and small donors alike.It had not always been clear that Mr. Newsom would have such a decisive cash advantage. Some party contributors were slow to engage. Ron Conway, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist who organized early anti-recall efforts and fund-raising in the spring in the tech community, said he had been dismissed early on. “At the time, many people thought I was being alarmist,” he wrote in an email. “They don’t think that anymore!”State records show that nearly two-thirds of donations of $10,000 or more to Mr. Newsom’s main anti-recall account came after July 1. And overall, more than 80 percent of the donations over $10,000 to that account came from inside California.“Democrats would rather not have to fund an off-year race in California,” said Dan Newman, an adviser to Mr. Newsom. “But they didn’t hesitate once it was clear what’s at stake.”Mr. Newsom’s campaign said it expected to pass 600,000 donations by the election after running a robust online donation program. Still, much of the money came from giant contributions, with $48.2 million in his main anti-recall account from donations of $100,000 or more.In late August, at a donor retreat in Aspen, Colo., for contributors to the Democratic Governors Association, attendees said there was some grumbling and irritation at the need to divert any resources to a state as blue as California — especially given how many tough governors’ races are set to unfold in 2022.The governors association has sent $5.5 million to the Newsom operation opposing the recall so far.“It doesn’t bode well for Democrats in 2022 if they have to burn millions of dollars on a recall in the most liberal state in America,” said Jesse Hunt, the communications director for the Republican Governors Association.From the start, Mr. Newsom’s campaign framed the recall as a Republican power grab, which made it particularly unappealing for some bigger G.O.P. contributors to inject themselves into the race, according to both national and California Republicans. The state’s unusual requirement that the names of top donors appear in advertisements was also a turnoff, along with general disbelief that California could ever truly be flipped.“You have a lot of people who are for us but who never believe it could be done,” said Anne Hyde Dunsmore, the campaign manager of Rescue California, one of the pro-recall efforts. “No, the money didn’t come in, and no, it wasn’t for a lack of asking.”Larry Elder, who has emerged as Mr. Newsom’s leading challenger, raised $13 million in his first two months in the race.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesSome significant checks did come. Mr. Elder received $1 million from Geoffrey Palmer, a real estate developer and top Republican donor. Saul Fox, a private equity executive, made a $100,000 donation. And Mr. Elder quickly lapped the rest of the Republican field in fund-raising with big and small donations.John Cox, the Republican who lost to Mr. Newsom in a 2018 landslide, has spent millions of his own dollars running again. Among his costly moves was campaigning with a 1,000-pound Kodiak bear named Tag, who also appeared in Mr. Cox’s ads.Kevin Faulconer, a Republican former mayor of San Diego, raised more than $4 million for his candidacy, and Kevin Kiley, a Republican state assemblyman, raised more than $1 million.Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender activist and former Olympian, received a wave of publicity upon her entrance to the race. But her bid, and her fund-raising, have mostly fallen flat. As of late August, Ms. Jenner had raised less than $1 million and had less than $28,000 in cash on hand — with more than that in unpaid bills.Gale Kaufman, a Sacramento-based Democratic strategist, said the fractured and financially weak Republican field “kept them from ever being able to create a ‘yes’ campaign” — for the recall — “that resonated.”“They’re not speaking with one voice and they’re not saying the same thing,” she said.Mike Netter, a Republican who was one of the recall’s early grass-roots organizers, was frustrated by Democratic attacks that the push was a Republican effort to seize power. He said that little conservative support had materialized after the recall proponents put the measure on the ballot.“If we’re supposedly so Republican-driven, where’s our money? Where’s the air cover from our supposed right-wing secret organizations?” Mr. Netter said, citing the lack of big donations from the party and leading in-state Republicans like Representative Devin Nunes. “No one has believed in us this whole way. And it’s not like we have that kind of money. It’s not like the Koch brothers are my cousins or something. I went to San Diego State.”Shawn Hubler More

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      How Deceptive Campaign Fund-Raising Ensnares Older People

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      Older Americans, a critical source of political donations, often fall victim to aggressive and misleading digital practices. A broad Times analysis points to the scope of the problem.William W. Vaughan Jr. was a senior atmospheric scientist at NASA during the space race and later an accomplished academic, but as with so many aging Americans, time and technology had sapped him of some of his savvy, especially online.Computers made him feel “like a duck out of water,” his son Steve Vaughan said. So when Steve was sorting through the elder Mr. Vaughan’s papers after his death at 90 in December, he was unsettled by what he found on his father’s final credit card bill.The first item was familiar: $11.82 at the local Chick-fil-A in Huntsville, Ala. But every other charge on the first page, and there were dozens of them, was to the firm that processes online Republican campaign contributions, WinRed. Over four months last year, Mr. Vaughan had made 400 donations totaling nearly $11,500 — to Donald J. Trump, Mitch McConnell, Tim Scott, Steve Scalise and many others.The sum was far beyond the realm of his financial ability, his son said, and sure enough, he soon discovered handwritten notes outlining what appeared to be his father’s call disputing the charges with his credit card company. He is still seething at the avalanche of charges and “what they did to a 90-year-old” just before his death.“If it happened to him,” he said, “I have to figure it happened to other people.”It has.Mr. Vaughan died in December at age 90.The dirty little secret of online political fund-raising is that the most aggressive and pernicious practices that campaigns use to raise money are especially likely to ensnare unsuspecting older people, according to interviews with digital strategists and an examination of federal donation and refund data.Older Americans are critical campaign contributors, both online and offline. More than half of all the online contributions processed by WinRed in the last cycle, 56 percent, came from people who listed their occupation as “retired,” federal records show.Digital operatives in both parties deploy an array of manipulative tactics that can deceive donors of all age groups: faux bill notices and official-looking correspondence; bogus offers to match donations and hidden links to unsubscribe; and prechecked boxes that automatically repeat donations, which are widely seen as the most egregious scheme.But some groups appear to specifically target older internet users, blasting out messages with subject lines like “Social Security” that have particular resonance for older people, and spending disproportionately on ads for an older audience. In many cases, the most unscrupulous tactics of direct mail have simply been rebooted for the digital age — with ruthless new precision.“Everybody knows what they’re doing: They’re scamming seniors to line their own pockets and to raise money for campaigns,” said Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital strategist who is critical of deceptive practices.“You are targeting people who are less savvy online, who are more likely to believe what’s put in front of them,” Mr. Nellis said, lamenting tactics that “erase people’s humanity.”It is impossible to tell just how many older Americans are deceived by such methods, because age is not reported on federal filings. One useful measuring stick, digital experts say, is the number of donations that are refunded — which often occurs when contributors feel unsatisfied or duped.The New York Times analyzed refund data from 2020, working with the political information firm Political Data Inc., which matched refunded donors to the voter rolls. The results provide a rare window into just how disproportionately old the universe of donors who receive refunds is.Donation refunds skewed heavily to older peopleRepublican campaigns issued refunds at far higher rates (7.4 percent of WinRed contributions) than Democratic ones (2.3 percent on ActBlue) in the 2020 election. But the age distribution for both parties among California refunds was very similar.

      Note: Donations without an age listed were excluded.Source: Federal Election Commission and Political Data, Inc.Taylor JohnstonThe findings, which looked at refunds in one large and diverse state, California, showed that the average age of donors who received refunds was almost 66 on WinRed and nearly 65 on ActBlue, the equivalent Democratic processing site.Even more revealing: More than four times as much money was refunded to donors who are 70 and older than to adults under the age of 50 — for both Republicans and Democrats.More than 65,000 unique donors, who were refunded a roughly $25 million combined last election, were matched by name and ZIP code in California. The ages of donors being refunded in both parties were very similar, even as Republican campaigns issued online refunds at more than triple the overall rate of Democrats, records show.A Times investigation earlier this year revealed how the Trump operation had made donations automatically recur weekly, and had obscured that fact with extraneous text, causing a multimillion-dollar cascade of refunds and a surge of fraud complaints.Multiple banking officials said the flood of complaints against Mr. Trump’s operation came heavily from older donors. One fraud investigator recalled the case of an 88-year-old who worried that her family would presume she was developing dementia because the repeat charges had blown past her credit card limit.Exploiting the diminishing capacity of older people for cash extends far beyond politics. There is an entire initiative at the Justice Department devoted to elder abuse, and the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported nearly $1 billion in losses for those 60 and older in 2020.Most political tactics are legal, though the Justice Department recently called out nonexistent promises to match donations as an example of “material misrepresentations.”“You leverage data, technology, emotion and digital tactics to take advantage of a population,” said Cyrus Krohn, who oversaw digital strategy at the Republican National Committee more than a decade ago and now regrets some of his earlier work. “It’s like a kid in a candy store.”A rally for former President Donald J. Trump at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida, in October.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWhy older people are ‘the perfect target’Daniel Marson, a clinical neuropsychologist who has studied financial decision-making among aging Americans, said older people face a double whammy online when combining their generational lack of familiarity with technology and age-related cognitive declines.The brain itself starts to shift with age, Dr. Marson and other neurological experts said. Processing typically begins to slow. Keeping track of multiple things is harder. Evaluating trustworthiness becomes more of a struggle.“They just don’t have the same digital literacy or capacity to engage in an internet world,” said Dr. Marson, the former director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.Certainly, millions of aging Americans are still adroit with technology and some don’t decline cognitively until a very advanced age.But even the kinds of silly deceptions that millennials and digital natives might roll their eyes at — like stress-inducing donation countdown clocks — can more easily distract or confuse many retirees who adopted computers later in life.Some campaigns use subject lines like “Final Notice #33716980” — which the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently deployed — that can make it appear as if actual bills are at risk of defaulting. Some use breathless exaggerations, like a recent text from the House Republican campaign arm, which warned it would “lose the House for good!” if everyone did not contribute $9 by midnight.A fund-raising email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Personal information has been redacted.Many older people interpret personalized messages literally.Tatenda Musapatike, a Democratic digital strategist, recalled having to explain to some older family members that Joe Biden was not in fact the person sending them an email asking for money.“It’s not naïve or foolish,” she said. “It’s from people being less online.”The daughter of one 69-year-old donor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to safeguard her father’s wishes to remain private, described a call from her mother last year asking her to intervene in his excessive online contributions. “Mom came to me and said, ‘Dad donated $25,000,’” the woman said. Records show he made hundreds of donations via WinRed to a variety of Republican campaigns.“He’s taking what they say as truth,” she said, adding that he has begun exhibiting early symptoms of mental decline and insists he has not donated as much as he actually has.While she has unsubscribed him from as many email and text lists as she can, she remains worried. “I can’t watch him 24 hours a day,” she said.Text messages sent from the National Republican Congressional Committee urged people to donate with false deadlines and promises of matching contributions.David Laibson, a behavioral economics professor at Harvard who has studied the impact of aging on financial decision-making, said studies showed that half of people in their 80s or older have either some cognitive impairment short of dementia or actual dementia.“Who’s the perfect target?” he said. “They’re in their early 80s, they have a very substantial likelihood of cognitive impairment, and they probably still haven’t depleted their retirement nest egg.”In fact, the records show that more money was refunded to donors who were 80 and older than to adults under 50, on both ActBlue and WinRed, according to the examination of California refund data.ActBlue and WinRed both said they work with customers to solve any problems they encounter, but declined to comment further.Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the chairwoman of the Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections administration, noted that many older Americans were particularly isolated during the coronavirus pandemic, and were simultaneously forced to be online more to connect with family and friends. “They had no choice,” she said, “so it is really easy to target them.”Ms. Klobuchar, a Democrat, recently introduced legislation to ban prechecked boxes that repeat donations after the Federal Election Commission unanimously recommended outlawing the practice in the wake of the Times investigation.“Politicians are always courting the votes of seniors,” she said. “Then, behind their backs, they’re scamming them for money. It’s pretty bad.”Some younger donors who are less internet-savvy also donated more than they intended.Daisy DeSimone, left, and her mother, Marian, at their home in New Jersey.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMarian DeSimone, the mother of Daisy DeSimone, who has a developmental disability, said her 30-year-old daughter was entrapped in a Republican recurring donation vortex last year that involved hundreds of small contributions totaling $2,700, about 85 percent of which went to two Trump committees.In a joint interview with her mother, Daisy said she contributed more than she intended, “by a lot,” and felt “frustrated” by her experience. She was most impassioned about the overwhelming volume of solicitations: “They would keep coming back to me, they would keep emailing me and texting me.”When her mother logged into her account to try to delete her from various lists, she discovered that the “unsubscribe” link from the Republican National Committee was in plain text. Unlike every other link, it was neither bold nor blue nor underlined. You had to hover above to see that it was a link at all.“Shameful!” she thought. At first, she had blamed her daughter for the deluge of donations. Now she sees her as a victim.Mothership Strategies, a Washington-based digital consulting firm, is known for its aggressive tactics in Democratic politics.Matt McClain/The Washington Post, via Getty Images‘A systemic campaign finance abuse issue’Overall, Republican campaigns issued refunds at far higher rates (7.4 percent of WinRed contributions) than Democratic ones (2.3 percent on ActBlue) in the 2020 election, a gap driven chiefly by Mr. Trump’s prechecked boxes scheme.But some Democratic donors did feel victimized.Susan Kraus is an 81-year-old New Yorker who, federal records show, made around 175 separate donations last year via ActBlue, totaling about $4,500.“That’s impossible,” Ms. Kraus said in an interview. “Never. I don’t know how that happened. But it wasn’t me doing it.” Both she and her son, Brett Graham, said she experiences short-term memory loss.“It’s almost like they were duplicating it,” she said. “Like there were tricks.” She recalls making donations with her phone but nothing at that scale, nor to the range of groups that records show she contributed to.“There isn’t a nice way to spin it,” said Mr. Graham, who helps manage his mother’s financial affairs. “This is a systemic campaign finance abuse issue.” He added that the overlapping pattern of giving was “not what a human being would do.” He was able to receive refunds for roughly $2,500 from two credit cards.The largest share of Ms. Kraus’s donations went to two interconnected groups, Stop Republicans and the Progressive Turnout Project, that she said she had never heard of. Both organizations share a Washington-based digital consulting firm, Mothership Strategies, that Democratic critics have singled out for its aggressive tactics.Of the top 10 Democratic groups with the oldest average age for refunded donors in California during the last election that refunded at least $75,000, all were Mothership clients.Those groups had an average age range of 74 to 78, the analysis of refund data shows. (WinRed does not itemize which campaigns provide refunds to particular donors, so an equivalent examination is not possible.)More than 40 percent of Facebook ads from Stop Republicans and the Progressive Turnout Project reached users over 65, according to a public database compiled by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic digital consultancy. In comparison, the Biden campaign devoted 18.5 percent of its Facebook ads to that demographic.Mothership said that it does not target people by age. Instead, it said, it screens based on interests and likelihood to donate — and that older people are simply more reliable donors.“We’re proud to raise the funds that allow our clients to outcompete Republican super PACs and elect progressive and diverse Democrats across the country,” Maya Garcia, a principal at Mothership, said in a statement. She added that the leaders of the firm “never want anyone to make an accidental contribution,” that it displays its organizations’ names prominently and that it works “to ensure all refund requests are handled quickly.”The company declined to say if it receives a commission on money it raises online. The Washington Post reported in 2019 that its commission was as high as 15 percent.A debate among Democrats on tacticsToday, most leading Republican groups deploy prechecked recurring boxes and other aggressive tactics, but in Democratic circles a debate is raging about the ethics of online solicitations. There are two clear camps: those who rose through the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s House fund-raising arm, and its highly aggressive program, including Mothership Strategies, and those more aligned with the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders.The D.C.C.C.’s operation is one of the few Democratic groups that continue to use the prechecked boxes. It has also experimented with another processing platform while ActBlue moves to block the practice entirely. In June, one fund-raising pitch came from a sender listed as “SOCIAL SECURITY UPDATE (via DCCC)” — though on platforms like Gmail, the D.C.C.C. part was cut off unless people clicked through.Murshed Zaheed, a veteran Democratic digital consultant, is among those pushing for what he calls “ethical email,” which he defined as not deceiving supporters.“I cannot tell you how much I hate the words ‘email list,’” he said. He said the phrase “dehumanizes” people and treats them “as A.T.M. machines.”For Mr. Vaughan, the former NASA scientist, his final credit card bill was a maze of repeating charges to the same campaigns, sometimes on the same day.The note his son discovered had the words “WinRed charges to be refunded” written clearly. It was dated Nov. 25 — the same day that federal records show $1,144 was refunded.It was only about 10 percent of his total giving. His son has been unable to recoup the rest.Rachel Shorey contributed research. More