Politics and Government

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      ‘From the Hood to the Holler’ Review: A Race to Galvanize the Poor

      by

      A new documentary revisits the former Kentucky state representative Charles Booker’s 2020 campaign to unseat Mitch McConnell in the Senate.At a hearing in 2019 for a vote on a bill that would restrict abortion access in Kentucky, Charles Booker, a state representative at the time, gave an impassioned speech about abortion rights, criticizing politicians who had compared the medical procedure to lynching. When the speaker of the Assembly tried to silence him, Booker yelled, “My life matters, too, speaker,” as an older white man screamed at him to “sit down.”“I can only imagine that in this white person’s mind, he thought he had the right to tell this Black person to sit down,” Attica Scott, another state representative from Kentucky, says later.The exchange plays out in the new documentary “From the Hood to the Holler,” directed by Pat McGee. It follows Booker’s subsequent run for Senate in 2020, including a campaign defined by his willingness to walk across that racial divide, traveling to “hollers,” or poor, mostly white communities in Appalachia, to unite impoverished voters. Booker lost narrowly in a Democratic primary against Amy McGrath; some weeks before the election, the documentary notes, he had raised around $300,000 compared to her $29.8 million. (In May, Booker won the primary by a landslide, and he’ll face off against the Republican senator Rand Paul in November.)The documentary succeeds at presenting Booker as a candidate who can unite voters, and its best scenes show him meeting the moment. In one scene, he mediates between the police and protesters after the death of Breonna Taylor, whom he knew, convincing the officers to drop their batons in a show of solidarity. In another, he strategizes with his team about safety procedures for traveling through places that may have once been considered sundown towns, showing how racism persists in modern-day Kentucky and the nation.But though Booker’s story and success are inspiring, the documentary falls flat, feeling more like a political tool than a commentary on the state of politics in Kentucky. It would have benefited from less focus on Booker and more on the many Kentuckians he spoke to who are ready for a change.From the Hood to the HollerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      In Arizona Governor’s Race, a Democrat Runs on Abortion

      by

      PHOENIX — Here was a debate that Katie Hobbs wanted to have.For weeks, critics heckled Ms. Hobbs as a “coward” and “chicken” for refusing to share a debate stage with her combative, election-denying Republican rival in the race to become Arizona’s next governor. Some fellow Democrats fretted it was a dodge that risked alienating undecided voters who could tip the razor-thin race.Then last Friday, a judge upended the campaign by resurrecting an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions across Arizona, a ruling made possible by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And Ms. Hobbs, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, seized what Democrats in this battleground state hoped would become a galvanizing moment.She scrapped a campaign event and scrambled to arrange a news conference outside the office of the Republican state attorney general who had argued to reimpose the Old West-era abortion law. She vowed to repeal the ban and taunted Republicans for their muted responses to the abrupt halt of all abortions across Arizona.She also spoke in starkly personal terms about how she had once had a miscarriage, and had needed a surgical procedure now being denied to women in states that have outlawed abortion. Ms. Hobbs says any abortion decisions should “rest solely between a woman and her doctor, not the government.”“It’s difficult,” Ms. Hobbs said later about sharing her own story. “But there’s too much at stake in this election not to talk about that.”The race for an open governor’s seat in Arizona has swelled into a bruising struggle over the evolving political identity of a traditionally conservative state that sends Democrats to Washington, while keeping Republicans in power at home.Abortion rights supporters protest in Phoenix, after the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.Joel Angel Juarez/USA Today Network/Via ReutersThe question now is whether Arizona will move left with Ms. Hobbs, a soft-spoken social worker and state politician, or veer deeper into MAGA territory by electing Kari Lake, a former local news anchor running on militarizing the nation’s southwestern border and amplifying falsehoods about the 2020 election.“I really think this is a battle between two competing narratives,” said Kirk Adams, a Republican former speaker of the Arizona House and former chief of staff for the outgoing Republican governor, Doug Ducey. “Abortion rights and saving democracy on one hand and inflation and border security and a stolen election on the other.”As secretary of state during the 2020 presidential election, Ms. Hobbs became a hero to Democrats for defending Arizona’s voting system from an onslaught of false accusations of fraud. She vaulted to the front of the Democratic primary for governor while also becoming a target of death threats and protests.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.Her supporters cast the race against Ms. Lake as “sanity versus chaos,” and said Ms. Hobbs would take a bipartisan approach to tackling Arizona’s water shortages, meager school funding and spiraling housing costs. But even some supporters doubt whether her mild manner can stand up to Lake’s bolder one.“I don’t think she has done as well as she should have,” said Claudia Underwood, a retired lawyer and Democrat in a corner of Phoenix with enviable views of Camelback Mountain, the city’s most famous peak. “She is not coming across as strong as I think she should.”Ms. Lake has spent the race lobbing verbal grenades at Ms. Hobbs with a delivery honed during years anchoring local Fox newscasts. She has called for Ms. Hobbs to be jailed and needles her as “Katie.” Ms. Hobbs uses Ms. Lake’s full name or formally calls her “my opponent.”While Ms. Lake has given speeches in front of roaring crowds at Trump rallies, Ms. Hobbs has run a campaign centered on smaller events with local and tribal leaders and student organizers, and house parties with supporters.Supporters say she is genuine and caring, but even on the most comfortable terrain, she sometimes sticks to the script. At a recent roundtable with abortion-rights supporters, she hewed largely to prepared statements.“She’s not going to get up at a rally like Ms. Lake does and get the crowd all stirred up,” said State Senator Lela Alston, a Democrat who once ran with Ms. Hobbs and U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema for their state legislative seats. “She’s much more thoughtful and available to people all over the state. I’m hoping the message gets out.”Arizona Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake greets supporters at a rally in Tucson.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesA handful of Democrats running for state legislative races said they had yet to get an invitation to campaign with her or appear together at an event. By contrast, Ms. Lake had two Republican state legislative candidates introduce themselves before she appeared at a friendly question-and-answer session with supporters.“We have a candidate who isn’t out campaigning, so it’s hard to break through and keep those issues relevant if there’s nobody out there talking about them,” said Marco Lopez, Ms. Hobbs’s Democratic primary opponent.Billy Grant, a consultant for Ms. Lake, has said that her campaign has focused on showing the clear contrasts between the two candidates and that she considered the border to be the top issue for voters in Arizona.“Katie Hobbs was convinced she could win with the Joe Biden strategy of just running TV ads and hiding out from the public,” he said. “That is just not going to happen.”Other Democrats argued Ms. Hobbs was right in running her own campaign and declining to debate an opponent who wrongly insists the 2020 election was stolen. The Republican nominees for Arizona’s most powerful statewide office this November have all made repeated false claims that the 2020 vote was fraudulent and rightfully won by Mr. Trump.Racism and discrimination have also come up in uncomfortable ways for Ms. Hobbs. In November, a jury awarded $2.75 million to a Black staff member who worked under Ms. Hobbs in the State Senate, and who was fired in 2015 after complaining about her unequal pay.The former staffer, Talonya Adams, has become a vocal critic of Ms. Hobbs, and Ms. Lake has used the lawsuit to call Ms. Hobbs a “convicted racist.” Ms. Hobbs released a statement apologizing to Ms. Adams.Now, about two weeks before ballots are mailed out, interviews with voters across Arizona suggest that people’s priorities are splintered. While many Democrats cite abortion and democracy as top concerns, others who are just now tuning into the race say they are most worried about soaring food and rent costs and an increase in migrants attempting to cross Arizona’s southern border.Jon Hernandez, 22, who says he is undecided but leaning toward voting for Ms. Lake, has spent the summer living at home with his parents and doing the “soul draining” work of a failed job hunt. He said he supported the Clinton-era pitch that abortion should be legal, safe and rare. But he said abortion was a lesser concern.“It’s nowhere near as important,” he said. “If we don’t get control of rampant inflation and gas prices, that spells disaster for much more of the population. It’s like tiers of priorities.”In an interview, Ms. Hobbs made a point of criticizing Ms. Lake’s anti-abortion stance as “extreme and out of touch.” Ms. Lake has called the 1864 ban “a great law” and has said she would support further anti-abortion measures as governor.Kari Lake supporters gather in Tucson.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesNew polls of the governor’s race — a virtual dead heat — suggest that those laws are out of step with an electorate that is getting younger, increasingly Latino and pulling a traditionally conservative state closer to the political center.On her website, Ms. Lake pledges to support all forms of birth control, as well as state government programs to help pregnant mothers seek alternatives to abortion, such as adoption, and provide resources for parental support and guidance. She also says fathers must be “held accountable.”Some 90 percent of Arizona voters said abortion should always be legal, or should be legal in some circumstances, according to a survey conducted in early September by the Phoenix-based firm OH Predictive Insights. And 45 percent said that a candidate’s stance on abortion had a strong impact on their vote.“It’s just scary,” said Andrea Luna Cervantes, a reproductive-rights activist in Phoenix. “Because you’re a woman, because you’re a person who can give birth, your rights can be just stripped.”Ms. Cervantes said she got involved in abortion-rights activism after seeing people she knew face pregnancies with few resources or options other than carrying them to term. She said she planned to vote for Ms. Hobbs, but some family members back in Yuma were unconvinced.The ban struck a chord with some Indigenous voters, who make up 5 percent of the state’s population. Anjeanette Laban, a member of the Hopi Tribe, said reproductive health care was already dangerously scarce and distant. She saw the end of abortion access in Arizona as another colonial oppression. She said that she knew little about the candidates running, but that the abortion issue would determine her vote.“They’re still trying to dictate what we can do, how they can limit us,” she said.In recent weeks, Ms. Hobbs has been leaning into the issue of abortion in email blasts to supporters, and the Arizona Democratic Party has released a new television ad slamming Ms. Lake for saying she did not believe abortion should be legal.“Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Arizona has reverted back to a 100-year-old law that criminalizes abortion, and Kari Lake — she supports that,” Chris Nanos, the Pima County sheriff, says in the ad.After the abortion ban ruling, Ms. Lake called Ms. Hobbs “radical” on the issue during an interview on Fox News. On Monday, she emailed supporters keeping up her critique of Ms. Hobbs on immigration. The subject line was “Open Borders Katie.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      The Run-Up: American Evangelicalism and the Midterm Elections

      by

      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicOn today’s episode: Why we can’t understand this moment in politics without first understanding the transformation of American evangelicalism.Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty ImagesOn today’s episodeRuth Graham, a Dallas-based national correspondent, who covers religion, faith and values for The New York Times.Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.About ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is back. The host, Astead Herndon, will grapple with the big ideas animating the 2022 midterm election cycle — and explore how we got to this fraught moment in American politics.Elections are about more than who wins and who loses. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

    • 50 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Ron DeSantis’s Race Problem

      by

      In July, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appointed Jeffery Moore, a former tax law specialist with the Florida Department of Revenue, to be a county commissioner in Gadsden, the blackest county in the state.On Friday, Moore resigned after a picture emerged that appeared to show him dressed in Ku Klux Klan regalia.Neither Moore nor DeSantis have confirmed that Moore is in fact the man in the picture. When Politico reached out to Desantis’s office for comment, his communication director responded, “We are in the middle of hurricane prep, I’m not aware of the photo you sent but Jeff did submit his resignation last week.” This is not the first, shall I say, “awkward” racial issue DeSantis had encountered. But throughout, he has had much the same response: Instead of addressing the issue directly, he — or his office — claims to be oblivious. That’s the DeSantis M.O.In a 2018 gubernatorial debate, the moderator asked DeSantis why he had spoken at several conferences hosted by David Horowitz, a conservative writer who the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a “driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-Black movements.” Horowitz once said that President Barack Obama was an “evil man” who “will send emissaries to Ferguson for a street thug who got himself killed attempting to disarm a police officer, resisting arrest.”There, too, DeSantis claimed obliviousness, responding, “How the hell am I supposed to know every single statement someone makes?”It was in that debate that his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum said, “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”The problem, of course, is that DeSantis’s unfortunate associations keep stacking up.In 2018, he appointed Michael Ertel, then a county elections supervisor, to be his secretary of state. The following year, Ertel resigned after a picture emerged of him in blackface wearing a T-shirt that read “Katrina Victim.” He appeared to be mocking Black women in particular, because he wore fake breasts, a scarf wrapped around his head and large gold earrings.Hurricane Katrina killed more than a thousand people, a slight majority of whom were Black.DeSantis responded to the controversy by saying: “It’s unfortunate. I think he’s done a lot of good work.” He continued, “I don’t want to get mired into kind of side controversies, and so I felt it was best to just accept the resignation and move on.” Not a word of condemnation for the act or sympathy for the victims of the storm. Also, not a word of his own personal regret for appointing him.Now, maybe the pool of possible Republican appointees in Florida is hopelessly polluted with white men who like to dress in racist costumes. That’s damning, if true. Maybe DeSantis is simply doomed by appalling options. That could well be the harvest of the Republican Party sowing hatred. Or maybe DeSantis is just too dense to do his homework. That may well be true, although I have no sympathy for it.This is a man who championed and signed Florida’s ridiculous “Stop WOKE Act,” restricting how race can be discussed in the state’s schools and workplaces. You can’t live in the dark on race and then try to drag your whole state into the darkness with you.I have always thought of DeSantis as reading the rules of villainy from a coloring book and acting them out. Nothing about him says clever and tactical. He seems to me the kind of man who must conjure confidence, who is fragile and feisty because of it, a beta male trying desperately to convince the world that he’s an alpha.But there is a way in which race policy reaches far beyond being merely racist-adjacent. DeSantis, for instance, has actually tried to strip Black Floridians of their power and voice.In 2010, Florida voters, by a strong majority, approved a constitutional amendment rejecting gerrymandering. The amendment made clear that “districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”Yet Florida’s Republican-led Legislature produced a gerrymandered map anyway. In 2015, the state Supreme Court struck down much of the Legislature’s proposed map, and demanded that eight House districts be redrawn. Among them was the Fifth District, which at the time snaked up the state from Orlando to Jacksonville. The redrawn map allowed Black voters to elect four Black representatives.In the decade between 2010 and 2020, there was a 14.6 percent increase in the population of the state, nearly twice the rate of growth of the country — and enough to earn Florida a 28th congressional district.But when the Legislature drew its map this cycle, it didn’t increase the number of minority districts, even though minorities had driven 90 percent of the population growth in the state — growth that had earned Florida its new district. (Most of that growth was among Hispanics.)As the staff director of the Florida Senate’s Committee on Reapportionment told The Tampa Bay Times, state legislators initially set out to keep the number of Black- and Hispanic-majority districts the same as they had been for the past few years.That wouldn’t have been fair, but at least the number of minority seats wouldn’t be cut. That wasn’t enough for DeSantis. He submitted his own redistricting map that cut the number of Black-controlled districts in half, taking them from four to two. The legislature went along and approved DeSantis’s map.DeSantis may pretend to be oblivious to the racial acts and statements of the people he associates with and appoints, but eliminating Black power and representation was a conscious act.Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying this: He has targeted Black people, Black power and Black history.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Why the British Pound Continues to Sink

      by

      Britain’s pound coin — rimmed in nickel and brass with an embossed image of Queen Elizabeth II at the center — could always be counted on to be significantly more valuable than the dollar.Such boasting rights effectively came to an end this week when the value of the pound sank to its lowest recorded level: £1 = $1.03 after falling more than 20 percent this year.The nearly one-to-one parity between the currencies sounded the close of a chapter in Britain’s history nearly as much as the metronomic footfalls of the procession that carried the queen’s funeral bier up the pavement to Windsor Castle.“The queen’s death for many people brought to an end a long era of which the soft power in the United Kingdom” was paramount, said Ian Goldin, professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford. “The pound’s demise to its lowest level is sort of indicative of this broader decline in multiple dimensions.”The immediate cause of the pound’s alarming fall on Monday was the announcement of a spending and tax plan by Britain’s new Conservative government, which promised steep tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthiest individuals along with expensive measures to help blunt the painful rise in energy prices on consumers and businesses.The sense of crisis ramped up Wednesday when the Bank of England intervened, in a rare move, and warned of “material risk to U.K. financial stability” from the government’s plan. The central bank said it would start buying British government bonds “on whatever scale is necessary” to stem a sell-off in British debt.The Bank of England’s emergency action seemed at odds with its efforts that began months ago to try to slow the nearly 10 percent annual inflation rate, which has lifted the price of essentials like petrol and food to painful levels.Rising Inflation in BritainInflation Slows Slightly: Consumer prices are still rising at about the fastest pace in 40 years, despite a small drop to 9.9 percent in August.Interest Rates: On Sept. 22, the Bank of England raised its key rate by another half a percentage point, to 2.25 percent, as it tries to keep high inflation from becoming embedded in the nation’s economy.Energy Bills to Soar: Gas and electric charges for most British households are set to rise 80 percent this fall, further squeezing consumers and stoking inflation.Investor Worries: The financial markets have been grumbling with unease about Britain’s economic outlook. The government plan to freeze energy bills and cut taxes is not easing concerns.The swooning pound this week has carried an unmistakable political message, amounting to a no-confidence vote by the world’s financial community in the economic strategy proposed by Prime Minister Liz Truss and her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng.To Mr. Goldin, the pound’s journey indicates a decline in economic and political influence that accelerated when Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016. In many respects, Britain already has the worst performing economy, aside from Russia, of the 38-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.“It’s just a question of time before it falls out of the top 10 economies in the world,” Mr. Goldin said. Britain ranks sixth, having been surpassed by India.Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, said this latest plunge had delivered a bracing blow to Britain’s standing. A series of “self-inflicted wounds,” including Brexit and the government’s latest spending plan, have accelerated the pound’s slide and further endangered London’s status as a global financial center.Dozens of currencies, including the euro, the Japanese yen and the Chinese renminbi, have slumped in recent weeks. Rising interest rates and a relatively bright economic outlook in the United States combined with turmoil in the global economy have made investments in dollars particularly appealing.But the revival by the Truss government of an extreme version of Thatcher and Reagan-era “trickle-down” economic policies elicited a brutal response.“The problem isn’t that the U.K. budget was inflationary,” wrote Dario Perkins, a managing director at TS Lombard, a research firm, on Twitter. “It’s that it was moronic.”To some, the pound’s journey indicates a decline in Britain’s economic and political influence.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesDuring the more than 1,000 years in which the pound sterling has reigned as Britain’s national currency, it has suffered its share of ups and downs. Its value in the modern era could never match the value of an actual pound of silver, which in the 10th century could buy 15 cows.Over the centuries, British leaders have often gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the pound’s value, viewing its strength as a sign of the country’s economic power and influence. King Henry I issued a decree in 1125 ordering that those who produced substandard currency “lose their right hand and be castrated.”In the 1960s, the Labour government under Harold Wilson so resisted devaluing the pound — then set at a fixed rate of $2.80, high enough to be holding back the British economy — that he ordered cabinet papers discussing the idea to be burned. In 1967, the government finally cut its value by 14 percent to $2.40.Other economic crises thrashed the pound. In the 1970s, when oil prices skyrocketed and Britain’s inflation rate topped 25 percent, the government was compelled to ask the International Monetary Fund for a $3.9 billion loan. In the mid-1980s, when high U.S. interest rates and a Reagan administration spending spree jacked up the dollar’s value, the pound fell to a then record low.The pound’s dominance has been waning since the end of World War II. Today, the global economy is experiencing a particularly tumultuous time as it recovers from the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an energy shortage and soaring inflation.As Richard Portes, an economics professor at London Business School, said, currency exchanges have enormous swings over time. The euro was worth 82 cents in its early days, he recalled, and people referred to it as a “toilet paper” currency. But by 2008, its value had doubled to $1.60.What might cause the pound to revive is not clear.The Truss government’s economic program has forcefully accelerated the pound’s slide — the latest in a series of what many economists consider egregious economic missteps that peaked with Brexit.Much depends on the Truss government.“The plunge in the pound is the result of policy choices, not some historical inevitability” said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “Whether this is a new, grim era or just an unfortunate interlude depends on whether they reverse course or are kicked out at the next election.”As it happens, the Bank of England is preparing to issue new pound bank notes and coins featuring King Charles III, at the very moment that the pound has dropped to record lows.“The death of the queen and the fall of the pound do seem jointly to signify decisively the end of an era,” Mr. Prasad of Cornell said. “These two events could be considered markers in a long historical procession in the British economy and the pound sterling becoming far less important than they once were.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Gov. Hochul Solidifies Lead Over Lee Zeldin in Latest Poll

      by

      Gov. Kathy Hochul has expanded her commanding lead over Representative Lee Zeldin, her Republican challenger in the New York race for governor, according to a Siena College poll released on Wednesday that showed her leading by 17 percentage points.The poll suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo vying for her first full term, has improved her standing among voters since a Siena College survey in August that had her up by 14 points.With six weeks until Election Day, Ms. Hochul has held a comfortable lead in most public polls, buoyed by a seemingly insurmountable fund-raising edge that has allowed her to spend freely on television ads attacking Mr. Zeldin over the past few weeks.The poll was but the latest indication of the uphill battle that Mr. Zeldin faces to capture the governor’s office in New York, where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans two to one. The state hasn’t elected a Republican governor since George E. Pataki, who left office in 2006.Notably, Ms. Hochul made significant gains in the New York City suburbs: She was beating Mr. Zeldin by five percentage points in the poll, which was conducted last week, compared with the August poll, which had her trailing Mr. Zeldin by three points in the suburbs.Ms. Hochul also modestly improved her favorability rating among Republicans, while Mr. Zeldin lost some support among his party’s voters, with 77 percent of Republicans saying they would vote for him, down from 84 percent in August. Even so, Mr. Zeldin continued to hold a slim lead among independent voters and is virtually tied with Ms. Hochul in upstate New York, according to the poll, which surveyed 655 likely voters.The poll found Ms. Hochul holds a commanding lead in vote-rich New York City, with Mr. Zeldin well short of the 30 percent of votes he has said he will need to win.Mr. Zeldin, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump who has represented Suffolk County in Congress since 2015, would have to make significant inroads among independent and suburban voters in the final weeks of the campaign to overcome Ms. Hochul’s strong support in New York City and among women, Latino and Black voters.Ms. Hochul began spending heavily on television and digital advertisements in early September, many of them trying to define Mr. Zeldin as “extreme and dangerous” based on his view on abortion and his votes on Jan. 6 to overturn election results in key states. By the end of the week, her campaign will have spent roughly $7 million on the ads, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Mr. Zeldin, who has struggled to replenish his campaign reserves after a costly primary, had spent just under $1 million during the same period, the firm has found. Ronald S. Lauder, the conservative cosmetics heir, has funneled more than $3 million into a pair of pro-Zeldin super PACs to try to narrow the gap, but the bulk of the groups’ ad buys attacking the governor as being soft on crime only began airing in recent days.While Mr. Zeldin has sought to amplify a handful of Republican-friendly polls showing the race as far tighter, the high-dollar donors who could reverse his financial fortunes could conclude that victory is simply slipping out of reach and put away their checkbooks, leaving him unable to defend himself from Ms. Hochul’s onslaught.The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points, found that other top Democrats running statewide — Senator Chuck Schumer; Thomas DiNapoli, the state comptroller; and Letitia James, the state attorney general — were also dominating their Republican opponents in their races. More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Activists Flood Election Offices With Challenges

      by

      Activists driven by false theories about election fraud are working to toss out tens of thousands of voter registrations and ballots in battleground states, part of a loosely coordinated campaign that is sowing distrust and threatening further turmoil as election officials prepare for the November midterms.Groups in Georgia have challenged at least 65,000 voter registrations across eight counties, claiming to have evidence that voters’ addresses were incorrect. In Michigan, an activist group tried to challenge 22,000 ballots from voters who had requested absentee ballots for the state’s August primary. And in Texas, residents sent in 116 affidavits challenging the eligibility of more than 6,000 voters in Harris County, which is home to Houston and is the state’s largest county.The recent wave of challenges have been filed by right-wing activists who believe conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 presidential election. They claim to be using state laws that allow people to question whether a voter is eligible. But so far, the vast majority of the complaints have been rejected, in many cases because election officials found the challenges were filed incorrectly, rife with bad information or based on flawed data analysis.Republican-aligned groups have long pushed to aggressively cull the voter rolls, claiming that inaccurate registrations can lead to voter fraud — although examples of such fraud are exceptionally rare. Voting rights groups say the greater concern is inadvertently purging an eligible voter from the rolls.The new tactic of flooding offices with challenges escalates that debate — and weaponizes the process. Sorting through the piles of petitions is costly and time-consuming, increasing the chances that overburdened election officials could make mistakes that could disenfranchise voters. And while election officials say they’re confident in their procedures, they worry about the toll on trust in elections. The challenge process, as used by election deniers, has become another platform for spreading doubt about the security of elections.“It’s a tactic to distract and undermine the electoral process,” said Dele Lowman Smith, chairwoman of the DeKalb County Board of Elections in Georgia. Her county is among several in Georgia that have had to hold special meetings just to address the challenges. The state’s new Republican-backed election law requires that each challenge receive a hearing, and the process was taking up too much time in regular board meetings.The activists say they are exercising their right to ensure that voter rolls are accurate.“If a citizen is giving you information, wouldn’t you want to check it and make sure it’s right?” said Sandy Kiesel, the executive director of Election Integrity Fund and Force, a group involved in challenges in Michigan.But in private strategy and training calls, participants from some groups have talked openly about more political aims, saying they believe their work will help Republican candidates. Some groups largely target voters in Democratic, urban areas.It is not unusual for voter rolls to contain errors — often because voters have died or moved without updating their registrations. But states typically rely on systematic processes outlined in state and federal law — not on lists provided by outside groups — to clean up the information.Still, groups have submitted challenges before. True the Vote, a Texas group behind the misinformation-laden film “2,000 Mules,” challenged more than 360,000 voters in Georgia before Senate runoff elections in 2021.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.The new tactics and types of challenges have spread wildly since, as a broad movement has mobilized around former President Donald J. Trump’s lies that the election was stolen. An influential think tank with close Trump ties, the Conservative Partnership Institute, has distributed a playbook that instructs local groups on how to vet voter rolls. Another national group, the America Project, backed by Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, influential members in the election denial movement, have helped fund a Georgia outfit that has challenged ballots across the state. America Project’s support was first reported by Bloomberg News.In mid-September, another Georgia group, Greater Georgia, co-sponsored a Zoom training session about how to file challenges with roughly a dozen activists. The group, which was founded by former Senator Kelly Loeffler, said the goal was protecting “election integrity.”The areas it focused on — counties in the metro Atlanta area — have the highest concentration of Democratic voters in the state. The leader of the training, Catherine McDonald, who works for the Voter Integrity Project, told participants she believed Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, won their Senate races in 2021 in part because judges refused to hear cases challenging what she considered illegal voting.“There were more than enough illegal votes,” Ms. McDonald said at the outset of the training, according to a transcript of the event obtained by The New York Times. “None of the judges in Fulton or DeKalb would take the case.”Greater Georgia declined to comment on the training.Thousands of voters have been challenged in Georgia’s Gwinnett County.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesOf the challenges brought in Gwinnett County in Georgia, 15,000 to 20,000 were rejected, while a further 16,000 or so remained undecided. In many cases, the methodology was found to be flawed or misguided. In Forsyth County, Ga., 6 percent of the 17,000 voters challenged were removed from the rolls, according to county records, after election officials determined that the submissions either did not meet necessary requirements or were factually incorrect.In Michigan, the secretary of state’s office said an attempt to challenge 22,027 ballots at once was invalid — state law says challenges must be submitted one at a time rather than in bulk, Jonathan Brater, director of the state’s Bureau of Elections, wrote in a letter to local officials..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Brater highlighted other issues with the group’s work. The activists used the U.S. Postal Service’s change of address system as evidence indicating a voter’s registration isn’t valid. But many people in that system, including students and members of the military, are still eligible to vote at their previous address, he wrote. Other challenges were based on a glitch that listed Jan. 1, 1900, as a place-holder registration date for people registered before new software was introduced.In interviews with The Times, leaders with the group behind the effort, Election Integrity Fund and Force, said they did not have clear evidence that the voters listed were ineligible. They were simply prompting elections officials to make a closer examination of some potential errors, they said.They weren’t aware of any voters removed from the rolls as a result, they said.Election Integrity Fund and Force has been working in Michigan since the 2020 election, promoting skepticism about the election’s legitimacy. This month, it sued the governor and secretary of state in an attempt to decertify President Biden’s win in the state. It has also sent volunteers knocking on doors to survey residents about the registered voters in their homes. They presented their results to election officials as evidence of problems with the voter rolls.But officials who reviewed the group’s findings said they were riddled with errors and leaps in logic. “They don’t have a grasp of how things actually work,” said Lisa Brown, the county clerk for Oakland County in the Detroit suburbs.Ms. Brown said a colleague found a friend on the group’s list of problematic registrations because the friend forwards her mail. “She’s a snowbird. So, yeah, she forwards her mail to Florida when she’s down there, but she still lives here,” Ms. Brown said.Ms. Kiesel, the group’s executive director, said her group planned to send lists of names to Michigan election officials before the November election. The lists will also go to poll workers, she said.If voters are challenged at polling places, their ballots would be immediately counted. But the ballots would also be marked and could be reviewed later if a candidate or group sued, officials said.Ms. Kiesel has shared her group’s plans with various coalitions of election activists in Michigan, including one with ties to the Conservative Partnership Institute, according to audio of conference calls obtained by The Times. A lawyer who aided Mr. Trump in his effort to overturn the 2020 results, Cleta Mitchell, is leading the institute’s effort to organize activists.“We learned a lot by the challenges,” Ms. Kiesel said on one call with the coalition in August. “We need people to help us to do the same thing in the November election.”Election workers checking voter registrations in Lansing, Mich., on Election Day in 2020.John Moore/Getty ImagesChris Thomas, a former elections director for Michigan now working as a consultant for Detroit, said he did not expect the challenges to succeed. But one concern is that activists will use rejections to sow doubt about the legitimacy of elections if they don’t like the results.“They can’t get over the fact they lost,” Mr. Thomas said. “They are just going to beat the system into the ground.”Another canvassing operation fanned out across Harris County, Texas, over the summer. Volunteers with the Texas Election Network, a group with ties to the state Republican Party, went door to door, clipboards in hand, to ask residents if they were the voters registered at those addresses. The canvassing effort was first reported by The Houston Chronicle.Soon after, 116 affidavits challenging the registration of thousands of voters were filed with the Harris County Election Office, according to data obtained through an open records request by The New York Times. Each affidavit, sent by individual citizens, was written exactly the same.“I have personal knowledge that the voters named in this affidavit do not reside at the addresses listed on their voter registration records,” the affidavits said. “I have personally visited the listed addresses. I have personally interviewed persons actually residing at these addresses.”Each affidavit failed to meet the state’s standards, and after a quick investigation, all were rejected by the election administrator of Harris County. More