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      What’s the Next Mayor of New York’s One Big Idea?

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      We asked 10 candidates what they viewed as their central proposals. They named plans to offer cash relief to poor New Yorkers, child care grants and more.When Bill de Blasio ran for mayor of New York City in 2013, he was able to successfully distill his campaign into one big idea: creating universal prekindergarten. It reflected his larger theme of reducing inequality, and it was a promise he was able to deliver on not long after taking office.The large field of candidates running for mayor this year have plenty of ideas, from cash relief to property tax reform. But there is not, as of yet, one bold proposal that stands out in a similar way.“You’ve seen a stunning lack of original, big thinking from the candidates,” said Eric Phillips, a former press secretary for Mr. de Blasio.The mayor’s race is widely viewed as the most critical New York City election in a generation as voters choose a leader to guide the pandemic recovery. But weakened tax revenues could make it difficult to start ambitious new programs.Ahead of the June 22 primary, The New York Times asked eight leading Democrats and two Republicans to describe their one big idea for the city.Andrew Yang wants to offer some poor New Yorkers $2,000 per yearAndrew Yang, the former presidential hopeful, has perhaps the most memorable proposal: A pared-down version of the universal basic income plan that he championed during the 2020 presidential campaign.But instead of offering every American $1,000 a month, he proposes giving less than one-tenth of New Yorkers $2,000 on average per year.Still, Mr. Yang says his plan would be the “largest local cash relief effort in the country,” though he is still trying to figure out how exactly to pay for it.“We need to get cash in the hands of New Yorkers who need it most if we want our city to come back stronger than ever,” he said.The program would cost $1 billion per year, and Mr. Yang suggested that the city could offset some of that by closing tax loopholes for large institutions like Madison Square Garden and Columbia University.Eric Adams wants to create the ‘People’s Plan’Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is proposing a “People’s Plan” with three components: tax credits for poor New Yorkers, free and low-cost child care for children under 3, and an app called MyCity to apply for benefits like food stamps.Under Mr. Adams’ tax credit plan, which he is calling NYC AID, poor families would receive about $3,000 per year.He also wants to give child care providers space in buildings owned by the city and offer developers incentives for charging them low rents.“Nothing holds back a woman’s opportunity to move up in business or to be employed than the lack of child care in this city,” Mr. Adams said. “That is devastating families.”The tax credit plan would cost about $1 billion a year. He said he would pay for it by cutting 3 to 5 percent of costs across city agencies, reducing the city work force, and increasing taxes on “ultramillionaires.”Scott Stringer wants to expand affordable housingScott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, has a plan to offer what he’s calling “universal affordable housing.”He wants to require new apartment buildings with more than 10 units to make 25 percent of them affordable to low- and middle-income families. And he wants to convert nearly 3,000 vacant lots owned by the city into affordable housing run by nonprofit groups.“The big real estate developers hate this plan — and for me, that’s a badge of honor,” Mr. Stringer said.His housing plan would cost about $1.6 billion per year. He would pay for it with a so-called pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes and by reducing the need for homeless services, among other measures.Multiple candidates cited plans to strengthen child care and make it more affordable.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesMaya Wiley wants to make child and elder care more affordableMaya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, has a universal community care plan to offer 100,000 families a $5,000 annual grant to care for children and older people.The plan includes building “Community Care Centers” that would provide free child care, job training and activities for seniors, with a goal of reaching 300,000 New Yorkers in the first year.“As mayor, I will help us create a caring economy, where we invest in families through child care grants, so families can take care of themselves,” she said.Ms. Wiley wants to pay for the program, which would cost about $500 million, through local and federal funding, including by freezing the hiring of police and correction officers for two years.Dianne Morales wants to create a ‘community first responders department’Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, has excited left-leaning voters with her plan to defund the police.Ms. Morales wants to cut the $6 billion annual police budget in half and spend some of that money to create a “Community First Responders Department” to address homelessness and mental health crises.Ms. Morales said that the police could not continue to “profile, criminalize, and kill Black people with abandon.”“We need to keep the police out of interactions where their presence is likely to do more harm than good,” she said.Kathryn Garcia wants to cut down on bureaucracyKathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, says her overarching priority is to “make government work.”.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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}She wants to cut homelessness in half and make repairs to public housing, and she would reform the city’s permitting system for small businesses.Ms. Garcia said she thought some candidates were promising programs the city could not afford, and that others knew very little about procurement.“The truth is, the radical big idea that New Yorkers desperately want is simple: Cut the bureaucratic nonsense and actually make city government work equally for everyone,” she said.Ray McGuire wants to use a ‘comeback plan’ to create jobsRaymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, has proposed a “comeback plan” that includes subsidies, tax relief and a jobs program.His “job accelerator” would cover half the salary for workers for one year at small businesses that suffered during the pandemic. He also wants to work with state leaders to let small businesses keep a portion of the sales tax they collect for one year.“We have one shot to get this right,” Mr. McGuire said. “If we don’t succeed in putting New Yorkers back to work then no amount of subsidy or spending on social programs is going to make a dent on the catastrophic consequences of mass unemployment.”His plan would cost about $1.8 billion over two years. He would pay for it through federal stimulus funds and by possibly reversing some of Mr. de Blasio’s budget commitments and making other budget cuts.Shaun Donovan wants to create ‘15-minute neighborhoods’Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary, has offered so many plans — roughly 200 pages of them — that he jokes that choosing a favorite is like choosing between his sons.His top priorities are “equity bonds” — giving $1,000 to every child, and up to $2,000 per year, to help close the wealth gap for poor families — and “15-minute neighborhoods,” where every New Yorker would have access to good schools, transit and parks within 15 minutes of their home.“Not all New York City neighborhoods are created equal, and many New Yorkers lack adequate access to basic necessities like fresh food, quality health care, and reliable transportation,” Mr. Donovan said.Mr. Donovan said the neighborhood plan would require zoning changes and tax incentives to support private investment. Transit upgrades would be paid for by so-called value capture on real estate development and a tax on marijuana sales. Curtis Sliwa wants to reform property taxesCurtis Sliwa, a founder of the Guardian Angels who is running as a Republican, wants to reform property taxes and use the money to hire more than 3,000 additional police officers.Like Mr. Yang, he wants to make institutions like Madison Square Garden pay more taxes. He also wants to cap property tax rates and assess properties at their actual fair market value, among other measures.The city’s method of calculating property taxes has long allowed owners of multimillion-dollar brownstones in Brooklyn and high-rise co-ops by Central Park to pay less in taxes than working-class homeowners in the South Bronx, relative to the value of their properties.“My comprehensive property tax reform plan will finally deliver a fair, transparent property tax system to New York City and will generate enough new revenue to fully re-fund our police,” he said.Fernando Mateo wants to achieve ‘universal teen employment’Fernando Mateo, a restaurant operator who is also running as a Republican, said his big idea was a voluntary year-round jobs program for teenagers, ages 14 to 18, called “Alpha Track.”Mr. Mateo said he dropped out of school at 14, and that he wanted to improve the drop-out rate and prevent teenagers from getting into trouble.“This is about getting them out of their community and exposing them to what New York is all about — exposing them to corporate America, city agencies and small businesses,” he said. 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      N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Keep Focus on Crime After a Feisty Debate

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      Back on the campaign trail, the leading Democrats traded barbs over their competing visions for public safety.On the day after the leading Democratic candidates for mayor faced off in the first major debate of the election season, Andrew Yang attended a conference on the future of the waterfront. Scott M. Stringer went to a vacant lot in Brooklyn to talk about affordable housing. Maya Wiley toured a Puerto Rican cultural center on the Lower East Side. Eric Adams attended fund-raisers, and Raymond J. McGuire greeted business owners on Staten Island.But whatever the candidates’ ostensible agendas, public safety — which spurred some of the hottest exchanges during the debate — remained the topic of the day, after yet another rash of attacks in the subway kept the city’s focus on its shaken sense of order.And so there was Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, reminding New Yorkers in a statement Friday morning that he stood with transit workers in their demands for more officers in the subway. There was Mr. Yang on “Good Morning New York,” opining that the police “are going to drive our ability to improve what’s going on our streets, in the subway.”There, on the other side of the divide, was Ms. Wiley, at the Clemente Cultural and Educational Center in Manhattan, urging that more social service workers for people with mental illness, not more police officers, be sent underground.And there was Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller, sounding a similar note in front of the vacant lot in Brownsville, saying that without a comprehensive prescription that included social services and supportive housing, “We will be cycling people from the subways to Rikers,” the city’s jail complex, “back and forth and at a tremendous financial cost.”With less than six weeks left before the June 22 primary and a crowded field of contenders struggling to define themselves to a distracted electorate, crime, and how to stop it, has emerged as both a dominant public concern and a way for the candidates to score points against each other.Each day seems to bring a fresh cause for alarm. On Friday, a group of men slashed or punched commuters aboard a moving subway train. The attacks came at the end of a one-week stretch that included the shooting of three bystanders in Times Square, a police officer being shot three times while responding to another shooting and at least a half-dozen other seemingly random subway attacks.The candidates have clearly felt pressure to address the violence. After the Times Square shooting last Saturday, Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuire held news conferences there, even as the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, stayed away.At the debate, Mr. Adams took Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, to task for holding a news conference “blocks from your home” in Times Square but not responding to recent shootings in neighborhoods with large Black populations, like Brownsville. Two other candidates, Shaun Donovan and Kathryn Garcia, responded to the Times Square shooting with plans to get guns off the streets.In many ways, the campaigning on Friday was a continuation of the previous night’s debate, where the candidates leaned into their sharply different approaches to law enforcement and to the question of whether the city can police its way out of a spike in gun violence.Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio and civil-rights lawyer, said at the debate that she would take $1 billion from the Police Department and use the money “to create trauma-informed care in our schools, because when we do that violence goes down and graduation rates go up.”Another candidate, Dianne Morales, who has called for cutting the $6 billion police budget in half, said that “safety is not synonymous with police.” Mr. Stringer and Mr. Donovan have also called for shifting at least $1 billion from the police budget to social services.Ms. Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, staked out a middle ground on Thursday, saying, “We do need to respond when the M.T.A. says we need more cops in the subway. That does not mean we’re not sending mental health professionals into the subway as well.”Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang have opposed “defunding” the police, and on Thursday night Mr. Adams repeated his call for a reinstituted unit of plainclothes police officers to target gang activity in the city.“​We have to deal with intervention,” he said, “and stop the flow of guns into the city,” adding, “We have to deal with this real, pervasive handgun problem.”In one of the debate’s fiercer exchanges, Ms. Wiley called Mr. Adams an apologist for stop-and-frisk policing. That prompted him to counter that he was actually a “leading voice against the abuse of stop-and-frisk” and that Ms. Wiley had showed a “failure of understanding law enforcement.”Ms. Wiley retorted that as the former head of the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, “I certainly understand misconduct.” Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, hit back, saying that under her, the board was “a failure.”.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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Ms. Wiley picked up the thread on Friday, reminding a reporter at her tour outside the Clemente Center that Mr. Adams had called stop-and-frisk a “great tool” just last year. (She called the policy “lazy,” “ineffective” and “traumatizing.”)Mr. Adams also took flak from Mr. Donovan at the debate for having said that as mayor he would carry a gun.“As a New Yorker but also as a parent, I’m deeply concerned about the idea of a mayor who carries a gun at a time where gun violence is spiking,” Mr. Donovan, a former city and federal housing official, said.Mr. Adams replied that he would do so only if the police’s threat assessment unit found that he was the target of “a credible threat.”On Friday, Ms. Wiley spoke about there being a “false choice between either being safe from crime and being safe from police violence” and promised, “We can have both.”In an ad released on Friday by a political action committee that supports Mr. Adams, Strong Leadership NYC, Mr. Adams used similar words.“We can have justice and public safety at the same time,” he says in the ad, adding that after being assaulted by the police as a young man, he became an officer with the goal of reforming the department from within. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Adams called not only for more officers in the subway but for “serious mental health resources.”Still, there was no question where his emphasis lay: He also called for better monitoring of security cameras and closer coordination between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway, and the police.“Progress cannot be derailed by crime,” Mr. Adams wrote. “If New Yorkers themselves cannot rely on our public transportation to keep them safe, then tourists will not return and not the businesses that depend on them.” More

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      N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Divided on Calls to 'Defund the Police'

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      The idea of “defunding” the police, which a year ago became a rallying cry after the murder of George Floyd, proved to be a contentious proposition during the debate, dividing the candidates along ideological lines, particularly as New York City reels from an uptick in crime.“The police are going to be a core way for us to address the public safety concerns that so many New Yorkers have and let me be clear defund the police is the wrong approach for new city,” Andrew Yang, considered a more moderate candidate, said.But Maya Wiley, who is viewed as a more progressive candidate, argued in favor of shifting resources away from the police.“I’m going to take a billion dollars from the New York City Police Department and shift that money to create trauma-informed care in our schools, because when we do that violence goes down and graduation rates go up” she said.Dianne Morales, also considered one of the more progressive candidates, said that “safety is not synonymous with police.”“We actually need to recognize that police respond to crime they don’t prevent crime,” she said. More

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      Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

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      Rising concerns over crime have led candidates to issue strong appeals for public safety, less than a year after the city was under pressure to defund the police.A shooting in Times Square, a spike in gun violence and a spate of high-profile attacks on subway riders have pushed concerns over crime and public safety to the forefront of the New York City mayor’s race, altering the trajectory of the contest as the June 22 primary approaches.A year after the rise of the “defund the police” movement amid an outcry over racial injustice, the primary will offer one of the first tests of where Democratic voters stand as the country emerges from the pandemic but confronts a rise in gun violence in major cities like New York.The shooting on Saturday in Times Square, the heart of tourism and transit in New York City, injured three bystanders, including a 4-year-old girl, a woman from New Jersey and a Rhode Island tourist who had been hoping to visit the Statue of Liberty.Two of the leading mayoral candidates rushed to the scene.Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, held a Sunday morning news conference where he declared that “nothing works in our city without public safety, and for public safety, we need the police.” Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, went to Times Square twice: on Saturday, hours after the shooting, and again the following afternoon.On Monday, Raymond J. McGuire appeared there as well, walking a careful line between calling for stronger policing and discussing how, “as a 6-foot-4, 200-pound Black man in America,” he understands how the police can violate civil rights.The rising concerns over crime have given those candidates a fresh opening to make forceful cases for public safety and the role it plays in New York’s recovery from the pandemic.The moment is also testing whether the most left-wing candidates in the race, whose far-reaching proposals to rein in the power of the New York Police Department reflected widespread protests over racial injustice last year, will resonate in the same way when the city may be at a different kind of inflection point.As of May 2, 132 people have been killed compared with 113 this same time last year, a 17 percent increase, according to Police Department statistics. There have been 416 shooting incidents compared with 227 this time last year, an 83 percent increase.In one sign of just how central matters of public safety are becoming in the race, at least three different candidates plan to discuss the issue on Tuesday. Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, is slated to unveil her policing plan; the former federal housing secretary, Shaun Donovan, is expected in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, which has been hit especially hard by gun violence over the last year, to discuss “his plans to eliminate the out-of-state gun pipeline”; and Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, intends to roll out a gun violence prevention proposal.“We’re in a very precarious position,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader. “People are afraid of the cops and the robbers. We have both of them that we’ve got to deal with. And anyone that cannot come up with a comprehensive plan that threads the needle of both should not be running for mayor.”Mr. Sharpton said he intends to press mayoral candidates on issues of both overpolicing and gun violence at a forum in coming weeks.More than any other candidate in the race, Mr. Adams offers the clearest test of the potency of a message centered on public safety, which he describes as the “prerequisite” to prosperity. Mr. Adams, a former police officer who has pushed for reforms within the system and says he has been a victim of police brutality himself, has been vocal for weeks about the rise in gun violence. On Monday, he was talking about those issues again, standing outside a Manhattan subway station where a woman was recently assaulted.“This city is out of control,” Mr. Adams said. “That’s what has changed in this mayoral race: People are finally hearing me. We don’t have to live like this.”He and other Democratic candidates contend that there is no conflict between urging a robust police response to crime, and insisting on changes to regulate police misconduct and violence.Even before the Times Square shooting, there were mounting signs that public safety was intensifying as a concern in New York: a Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll released late last month found that “crime or violence” was a major concern for New York Democrats, second only to the coronavirus.Jade Lundy, a child-care worker who lives in the Bronx, said she has begun taking more precautions because there seems to be an uptick in crime, which she blamed on economic hardship caused by the pandemic.“I don’t take out my phone anymore,” she said Monday afternoon as she headed for the subway to the Bronx, from Times Square. Ms. Lundy, who recently turned 18, said she plans to vote in the mayoral election and has just begun learning about the candidates.“I want someone who can make us feel safer,” Ms. Lundy said. “Especially for the women. We have it harder out here.”A spate of crimes targeting Asian-Americans have also alarmed New Yorkers across the city, some candidates say..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“That makes them very worried about the city, and particularly for people who have lived here a long time,” said Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner. For those New Yorkers, she said, some wonder, “Are we back in the ‘70s and ‘80s?”The incidents of violent crime are nowhere near the sky-high numbers of earlier eras in New York, and while shootings and homicides are up, other crimes have been down this spring. Nonetheless, other elected officials also reached for comparisons to the city’s so-called bad old days even as they stressed that they do not believe the current moment is equivalent.“Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, people that lived here, including myself, you know, we witnessed some pretty nasty stuff,” said Representative Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat. “We don’t want to slip back to that. So I think that that’s going to be a major issue with this year’s mayoral race.” Mr. Espaillat is currently neutral after pulling his endorsement from the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, following an allegation of sexual misconduct, which Mr. Stringer denies.Diana Ayala, a councilwoman representing East Harlem and the Bronx who also rescinded her support of Mr. Stringer, said the response from the mayoral candidates to addressing crime will determine if she endorses anyone else for mayor.“Citywide, people are alarmed at the numbers of shootings but quite frankly, those numbers have been pretty consistent in my district for the last three and a half years,” Ms. Ayala said. “Every summer, even as we speak, we are planning for what’s to come.”Ms. Wiley, who held a news conference on Sunday to decry gun violence, has already released a plan to combat that issue. Her policing plan, according to her campaign, will include proposals like a civilian police commissioner, and ensuring that “final disciplinary authority for police misconduct” will “be in the hands of a new all-civilian neutral body.”She also supports “cutting at least $1 billion from the N.Y.P.D. budget to fund investments in alternatives to policing,” her campaign says. Mr. Stringer has said he supports reallocating $1.1 billion in police funds over four years — while often saying that he does not want a return to the chaos of the 1970s. Mr. Donovan has pledged to cut $3 billion from the police and corrections budget by the end of his first term and direct the money to underserved neighborhoods; Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, wants to cut $3 billion and reallocate those funds as well.Ms. Morales, the most left-wing candidate in the race, was not available for an interview on Monday, but a spokeswoman, Lauren Liles, said Ms. Morales “stands by her emphasis that we need to move away from the false equivalency between policing and public safety.”Many Democrats have also pointed out that Times Square already has a significant police presence, noting that was not enough to prevent a shooting.Mr. McGuire called for a re-examination of bail reform laws in a way that doesn’t violate people’s civil rights.“There’s a difference between someone being thrown into jail for stealing a bag of potato chips and someone who has repeat arrests for gun possession,” Mr. McGuire said. “People arrested in possession of a loaded, illegal firearm cannot be detained by breakfast and walk out of the courthouse and be home by dinner.” More

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      After Times Square Shooting, Adams and Yang Stress Support for N.Y.P.D.

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      Eric Adams and Andrew Yang, among the front-runners in the New York City mayor’s race, said the shooting underlined the importance of public safety.Within hours of a shooting in Times Square that left three bystanders, including a child, wounded, two news conferences were held near the crime scene: one by the Police Department, one by an elected official.That official was not Mayor Bill de Blasio; the mayor, who is in his last year in office, does not typically appear at shootings where no one has died, a City Hall aide said. The official was Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who is running to succeed Mr. de Blasio.The symbolism of the moment, and its political upsides, were not lost on Mr. Adams and a leading rival, Andrew Yang, both political moderates. Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate, held a news conference in Times Square on Sunday morning. Not to be outdone, or even matched, Mr. Adams book-ended Mr. Yang’s appearance with a second Times Square visit on Sunday afternoon.Both men are running as Democrats in a primary that is likely to determine the next mayor of New York City and is just six weeks away. Though many New Yorkers have yet to pay attention to the race, recent polling suggests Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams are vying for first place.The shooting near Seventh Avenue and West 45th Street wounded a 4-year-old girl from Brooklyn in the leg. She was shopping for toys with her family. A 23-year-old Rhode Island tourist who had been hoping to visit the Statue of Liberty was also shot in the leg, and a 43-year-old woman from New Jersey was shot in the foot. The victims did not know each other, the police said.A police official identified the suspect in the shooting as Farrakhan Muhammad, 32, a seller of CDs, and said he had been shooting at his brother, who was not hit. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Muhammad had prior arrests in incidents in Midtown involving making threats in 2018 and grabbing a man by the neck and throwing him into a garbage can in 2020. It was not immediately clear how the cases were resolved.The shooting was frightening. But from a political perspective, it also seemed tailor-made for moderate mayoral candidates like Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang, who are eager to highlight their rejection of defunding the police, a principle that continues to animate the party’s left. In both candidates’ remarks, they also stressed their belief that New York City’s economy could not recover without public safety.“We’re not going to recover as a city if we turn back time and see an increase in violence, particularly gun violence,” said Mr. Adams, in a blue windbreaker with his name on it.Mr. Yang, who lives nearby, spoke on Mother’s Day, with his wife, Evelyn, in tow.At a Times Square news conference on Sunday, Andrew Yang said that “New York City cannot afford to defund the police.”Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“My fellow New Yorkers, if there’s one thing I want to say to you it is this: Nothing works in our city without public safety, and for public safety, we need the police,” Mr. Yang said. “My message to the N.Y.P.D. is this: New York needs you. Your city needs you.”“The truth is that New York City cannot afford to defund the police,” he added.Times Square represents the commercial and tourist heart of Manhattan, itself the financial capital of New York City and the nation. The shooting comes as the city is revving up its marketing engine, with the goal of reviving New York City’s tourist trade.In the year before the pandemic, 66.6 million tourists came to town, giving rise to 400,000 tourism-related jobs and an estimated economic impact of $70 billion. Last year, only 22 million tourists came to New York City, and officials estimate it will take years for the industry to recover.The police say more than 460 people have been shot this year in New York City as of May 2, compared with 259 last year and 239 in 2019 at the same point. Mr. de Blasio routinely attributes the rise in shootings to the societal upheaval wrought by the pandemic, which has created mass unemployment, and also blames a slowdown in the court system. Dermot F. Shea, Mr. de Blasio’s police commissioner, tends to blame recent statewide criminal justice reforms, which he says have made it harder to keep those charged with criminal offenses in jail..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Both Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang took the opportunity to highlight their policing agendas, which include reimagining plainclothes anti-violence units. Mr. de Blasio disbanded his plainclothes anti-crime unit, which had been involved in many police shootings, last year. Both also touted their commitment to criminal justice reform.Mr. Yang said he would ensure his plainclothes unit was populated by better-trained officers with clean records. Mr. Adams has said he would hire officers for the unit with the skills and temperament for the job.Other moderate candidates, like the former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia and the former Citigroup executive Raymond J. McGuire, chimed in with similar themes — that public safety and strong policing need not come at the expense of criminal justice reform.Candidates further to the left talked about the importance of finding alternatives to traditional policing.At a press availability outside a church in Brooklyn, Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio who has embraced some of the defund movement’s goals, said she would invest in “trauma-informed” mental health care and summer youth employment programs.Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive who wants to more than halve the Police Department’s operating budget, said on Twitter that “we need bigger solutions than the police.”The incident prompted Bernard B. Kerik, the former police commissioner under Rudolph W. Giuliani, to suggest that an electoral triumph by either Ms. Wiley, who is Black, or Ms. Morales, who is Afro-Latina, would mean a “catastrophic implosion” for New York City.Ms. Wiley did not take kindly to the remark.“Giuliani’s ex-police commissioner — a convicted fraudster — isn’t even being subtle with a racist trope that Black women would unleash a crime wave if elected,” Ms. Wiley responded. “Don’t get it twisted — as mayor, I’ll move our city forward with an economy that works for all and safe & just streets.”Ashley Southall More

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      Atlanta Mayor Faces Criticism Over 'Covid Crime Wave'

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      Keisha Lance Bottoms, who announced she would not run for re-election, faced criticism for her city’s sharp increase in violence.Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta rattled off a list of grinding municipal crises on Friday, saying there was not a specific reason she decided not to seek re-election.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockATLANTA — At a news conference in which she fought to hold back tears, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta said on Friday that there was no single reason for her abrupt and dramatic decision not to run for a second term.She did, however, rattle off a list of grinding municipal crises she has faced since taking office in 2018: a crippling cyberattack at City Hall, a federal corruption investigation that started under her predecessor, the coronavirus pandemic, social justice protests, and the challenge of governing under former President Donald J. Trump, whom she referred to as “a madman in the White House.”But the most serious political threat that emerged for Ms. Bottoms in recent months was a phenomenon she had previously described as the “Covid crime wave.” Like many other American cities, Atlanta is struggling with a spike in violent crime, including a 58 percent increase in homicides last year — the likely result, researchers say, of the pandemic’s strain on at-risk populations, as well as institutions like courts and police departments.The mayor’s inability to get a handle on crime has become the central theme for two challengers — Felicia Moore, the City Council president, and Sharon Gay, a lawyer — who thought they were going to take her on in the November election. “Atlanta has a mayor that is more interested in things that happen outside Atlanta,” Ms. Moore said in a recent statement, referring to Ms. Bottoms’s emerging national stature, including talk that she was rumored to be a possible vice-presidential candidate. “We need a mayor who knows the No. 1 job of any mayor is to keep our city safe.”Ms. Bottoms on Friday pushed back against the idea that she was worried about re-election, saying that she was popular enough to have won without a runoff. But others were not so sure. And Ms. Bottoms’s predicament could become common for city leaders around the United States as crime concerns take a political toll.Law enforcement on patrol in Atlanta in January. More than 400 officer vacancies have gone unfilled in the Police Department.Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York TimesThe dynamic is already rippling through other cities. In Philadelphia, a city suffering from a spike in homicides and gun crime, Larry Krasner, the progressive district attorney, is facing a serious challenge from a candidate, Carlos Vega, who says Mr. Krasner “has not delivered on safety.”In San Francisco, where burglaries were up 46 percent in 2020 and car thefts up 22 percent, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, a similarly progressive prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, is facing a recall effort from critics focused on crime.In St. Louis, where homicides were up 35 percent last year, former Mayor Lyda Krewson decided not to run for a second term after the wearying trials of 2020. The city’s new mayor, Tishaura Jones, is, like Ms. Bottoms, an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform who now faces the challenge of radically reimagining policing and incarceration while bringing her city’s crime numbers down.In Atlanta, crime has continued raging into 2021. In the first 18 weeks of the year, police statistics show homicides up 57 percent, rapes up 55 percent, aggravated assaults up 36 percent and auto thefts up 31 percent compared with the same period last year.The state’s speaker of the House, David Ralston, a Republican, plans to hold hearings this summer to consider putting state troopers on Atlanta’s streets. Weapons detectors were installed at the entrance of the Lenox Square mall in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood, making shopping feel like a trip to a courthouse. Some Buckhead residents are so fed up they have formed a group to explore whether to secede from the city — a move that would devastate Atlanta’s tax base.A report released in February by the Council on Criminal Justice gave a snapshot of the crime that afflicted American cities in 2020, with many of them suffering a sharp rise in homicides, aggravated assault and gun assaults.But the researchers also noted that the numbers were “well below historical highs” before crime began plummeting nationwide in the 1990s. And for now, the fear of crime does not appear to have the same political juice that it had in previous decades, when scare campaigns could help decide presidential contests and get-tough rhetoric was a winning tactic in big-city elections.Indeed, the widespread demand for criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning cities like Atlanta appears to have tempered the language and platforms of candidates promising to solve the crime problem.Protesters erected a “Defund the Police” sign in Atlanta after a police officer fatally shot Rayshard Brooks last year.Elijah Nouvelage/ReutersBoth Ms. Gay and Ms. Moore, for example, argue that the next mayor of Atlanta needs to be smarter about crime, not necessarily tougher. Instead of criticizing Ms. Bottoms for embracing criminal justice reform, Ms. Moore — who, like Ms. Bottoms, is African-American — essentially agrees that reform and safety are not either-or propositions.“I believe wholeheartedly we can do both,” she said.However, the political problem Ms. Bottoms would have faced demonstrates the enduring peril of being perceived as unable to meet the challenge of rising crime. Critics have blasted her for allowing more than 400 officer vacancies to go unfilled in the Atlanta Police Department, which is supposed to be 2,046 officers strong.Ms. Moore has criticized her for failing to hold a national search for a replacement for former Chief Erika Shields, who stepped down in June in the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks. (This week, Ms. Bottoms gave the interim chief, Rodney Bryant, the permanent role.)Others have lashed into the Bottoms administration for botching the firing of Garrett Rolfe, the white officer who killed Mr. Brooks, a Black man. The administration fired Officer Rolfe the day after the shooting, but this week, the city’s Civil Service Board reinstated him on the grounds that his due process rights had been violated.Such missteps went a long way to explaining why Ms. Bottoms had made herself politically vulnerable, said Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University.“It’s not because she’s too progressive,” Mr. Cunningham said. “It’s because she’s too incompetent.”Over the years, a number of people who worked with Ms. Bottoms in City Hall said she did not always seem fully engaged in the day-to-day chore of governance. At her Friday news conference, Ms. Bottoms said she had been thinking about not running for re-election as early as her first year in office. “I can’t describe it,” she said of that feeling, “but I wasn’t sure that I would run again.”Opponents of Ms. Bottoms have criticized her for failing to hold a national search for a replacement for Erika Shields, the former police chief.Audra Melton for The New York TimesAt the same time, Ms. Bottoms has displayed a passion for enacting criminal justice reform, a topic she couches in personal terms. On Friday, she made reference, as she often has, to the painful story of her father, the R&B singer Major Lance, who was convicted of selling cocaine when she was a child.The experience inspired her to limit the public disclosure of small-scale marijuana arrest records and eliminate cash bond requirements at the city jail. She hopes to transform the jail itself into a social services hub she calls a “center for equity.”Her Police Department, meanwhile, is engaged in a review of training and policy, with the goal of making the department more community-oriented.Though revamping the department may pay off in the long run, Dean Dabney, a professor of criminology at Georgia State University, said it could increase crime in the short run.“If you switch from tactical policing to community policing, it’s going to take time to reallocate those resources and get those resources doing things the new way,” he said. “During that adjustment period the criminals are going to have the upper hand.”In the weeks before she declared that she would not run again, Ms. Bottoms seemed aware of the way that crime had taken center stage. She has promised to hire 250 police officers in the near future, crack down on nuisance properties, increase enforcement against gangs, and expand the city security camera network.In her news conference, Ms. Bottoms said she would focus, in her remaining months in office, on keeping the city safe. “I’m doing that not because I’m a mayor, but because I’m a mother in this city,” she said. “I want this city to be safe for my family, in the same way that I want it to be safe for everybody else who’s standing in this room.” More

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      Republicans Attack Democrats as Liberal Extremists to Regain Power

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      As Democrats prepare to run on an ambitious economic agenda, Republicans are working to caricature them as liberal extremists out of touch with voters’ values.WASHINGTON — Minutes after a group of congressional Democrats unveiled a bill recently to add seats to the Supreme Court, the Iowa Republican Party slammed Representative Cindy Axne, a Democrat and potential Senate candidate, over the issue.“Will Axne Pack the Court?” was the headline on a statement the party rushed out, saying the move to expand the court “puts our democracy at risk.”The attack vividly illustrated the emerging Republican strategy for an intensive drive to try to take back the House and the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans are mostly steering clear of Democrats’ economic initiatives that have proved popular, such as an infrastructure package and a stimulus law that coupled pandemic relief with major expansions of safety-net programs, and are focusing instead on polarizing issues that stoke conservative outrage.In doing so, they are seizing on measures like the court-expansion bill and calls to defund the police — which many Democrats oppose — as well as efforts to provide legal status to undocumented immigrants and grant statehood to the District of Columbia to caricature the party as extreme and out of touch with mainstream America.Republicans are also hammering at issues of race and sexual orientation, seeking to use Democrats’ push to confront systemic racism and safeguard transgender rights as attack lines.The approach comes as President Biden and Democrats, eager to capitalize on their unified control of Congress and the White House, have become increasingly bold about speaking about such issues and promoting a wide array of party priorities that languished during years of Republican rule. It has given Republicans ample fodder for attacks that have proved potent in the past.“They are putting the ball on the tee, handing me the club and putting the wind at my back,” said Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party.Democrats argue that Republicans are focusing on side issues and twisting their positions because the G.O.P. has nothing else to campaign on, as Democrats line up accomplishments to show to voters, including the pandemic aid bill that passed without a single Republican vote.“That was very popular, and I can understand why Republicans don’t want to talk about it,” said Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the new chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “But we’re going to keep reminding folks who was there when they needed them.”The contrast is likely to define the 2022 races. Democrats will sell the ambitious agenda they are pursuing with Mr. Biden, take credit for what they hope will continue to be a surging economy and portray Republicans as an increasingly extreme party pushing Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election. Republicans, who have embraced the false claims of election fraud and plan to use them to energize their conservative base, will complain of “radical” Democratic overreach and try to amplify culture-war issues they think will propel more voters into their party’s arms.A release from the National Republican Senatorial Committee highlighted what it called the “three pillars” of the Democratic agenda: “The Green New Deal, court packing and defund the police,” even though the first two are far from the front-burner issues for Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders and the third is a nonstarter with the bulk of the party’s rank and file.President Biden and Democrats have promoted a wide array of party priorities that languished during years of Republican rule.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesLast week Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, sought to thrust a new issue into the mix, leading Republicans in protest of a proposed Biden administration rule promoting education programs that address systemic racism and the nation’s legacy of slavery. He has taken particular aim at the 1619 Project, a journalism initiative by The New York Times that identifies the year when slaves were first brought to America as a key moment in history.“There are a lot of exotic notions about what are the most important points in American history,” Mr. McConnell said on Monday during an appearance in Louisville. “I simply disagree with the notion that The New York Times laid out there that year 1619 was one of those years.”Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm, has been explicit about his strategy.“Now what I talk about every day is do we want open borders? No. Do we want to shut down our schools? No. Do we want men playing in women’s sports? No,” Mr. Scott said during a recent radio interview with the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.“Do we want to shut down the Keystone pipeline? No. Do we want voter ID? Yes,” he continued. “And the Democrats are on the opposite side of all those issues, and I’m going to make sure every American knows about it.”Democrats who have fallen victim to the Republican cultural assault concede that it can take a toll and that their party needs to be ready.“It was all these different attacks that were spread all over mainstream media, Spanish-language media, Facebook, WhatsApp,” said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic House member from South Florida who was defeated last year after Republicans portrayed her as a socialist who was anti-police. “A lot of it was misinformation, false attacks.”She said Democrats must begin taking steps now to combat Republican misdirection, warning that their legislative victories might not be enough to appeal to voters.“We can have a great policy record,” she said, “but we need to be present in our communities right now, reaching out to all of our constituencies to tell them we are working for them, that their health and their jobs are our priorities.”On the Supreme Court issue, progressive groups began pushing the idea of an expansion after Mr. Trump was able to appoint three justices, including one to a vacancy that Republicans blocked Barack Obama from filling in the last year of his presidency and another who was fast-tracked right before last year’s election.Hoping to neutralize the issue, some Senate Democrats who will be on the ballot next year have made it clear that they would oppose expanding the court, and the bill seems to be going nowhere at the moment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not bring any court bill to the floor until at least after a commission named by Mr. Biden to study the matter issued its report, which is due in six months. The president has been cool to the expansion idea as well.The office of Ms. Axne, the only Democrat in Congress from Iowa, did not respond to requests for reaction to the Republican attacks on her over the court plan. In an interview with MSNBC, Ms. Axne said that she, like Ms. Pelosi, would await the findings of the commission.But Republicans are not waiting to try to score political points. They say more moderate Republican voters and independents who broke with the party during the Trump years have been alienated by the call to enlarge the court and other initiatives being pushed by progressives.One key for Republicans next year will be winning back suburban voters while running campaigns that also energize the significant segment of their supporters who are fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump and want the party to represent his values. That may be a difficult balance to achieve, as evidenced this week when Republican leaders moved to strip Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming of the party’s No. 3 leadership post for calling out the former president’s false election claims.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said it would matter less what Republicans said about Democrats than what his party was able to accomplish.“The one thing that will win people over, no matter what they do, is whether we can deliver,” he said. “They are doing what appeals to their base, but the voters in the middle, including a good chunk of Republican voters, actually care about getting things done.”Instead of focusing on Democrats’ economic initiatives that have proved popular, Republicans are seizing on measures like a bill to expand the Supreme Court.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. Peters said Democrats would be better positioned to rebut attacks such as those that falsely portray them as pressing to defund the police after voters had experienced two years of the party holding power.“President Biden and the caucus have been very clear that we are not about defunding the police, we are about making sure police have the resources they need to do their jobs,” he said. “Ultimately, it is about how it is impacting people’s lives.”Mr. Kaufmann, the Republican leader in Iowa, begged to differ. He said he believed the hot-button issues Republicans were homing in on would drive voters more than “the nuance of tax policy and who gets credit for the vaccine.” He is eager to get started.“Some of this stuff is really controversial,” he said. “These are all very bold and clearly delineated issues. I can use this to expand the base and get crossover voters.” More