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      Latinos Shape California. Why Are So Many Sitting Out the Recall?

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      LOS ANGELES — The political power of Latinos has never been stronger in California.They are the largest ethnic group in the state and make up roughly 30 percent of registered voters. They have propelled Democratic victories in California for decades, helping the party win supermajorities in both houses of the State Legislature, where Latino senators and Assembly members hold powerful positions and pass some of the most immigrant-friendly legislation in the country.But as Gov. Gavin Newsom tries to prevail in a recall election in a matter of days, the very Latino voters he is relying on appear to be disengaged and ambivalent about the prospect of his being ousted from office.In 2018, exit polls showed Mr. Newsom with support from roughly two-thirds of all Latinos. Now, polling suggests Latinos are almost evenly split on the recall. And so far, just 15 percent of all registered Latino voters have mailed in their ballots, compared with 29 percent of white voters, according to Political Data Inc., a Sacramento-based research group.For many Latino voters, the mixed feelings stem from a continued struggle with the pandemic, as they face higher infection and death rates, as well as unemployment. For others, there is a deep disconnect with the Democratic Party and Mr. Newsom himself, a multimillionaire Napa Valley winery owner whom they view as aloof and distant.Interviews with Latino voters, strategists and advocates throughout the state reveal a frustration among Hispanics that Mr. Newsom has never tapped into. The pandemic has further entrenched inequality statewide and deepened the anger over the pervasive class divide Mr. Newsom’s wealth only highlights.Karla Ramirez, 43, a Democrat who lives in Downey, a heavily Latino suburb southeast of Los Angeles, said she believed that Mr. Newsom had generally handled the pandemic well. But Ms. Ramirez, who owns a commercial cleaning business with her husband, said she planned to sit out the race and did not have the wherewithal to pay attention to state politics with the virus still raging. Her 9-year-old daughter and her husband both tested positive for Covid-19 and have been recovering from mild symptoms.All registered voters received ballots by mail and have the option of either mailing them in, dropping them off at ballot boxes or voting in person from now until Election Day on Sept. 14. Voting by mail is no longer an option for Ms. Ramirez.“I got my ballot, and I tossed it in the trash. I don’t feel I’d be fair,” Ms. Ramirez said. “I’m busy making sure my kids get back to school and get vaccinated.”Karla Ramirez, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, said she did not plan to vote in the recall election. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesWith just one week to go before ballot boxes close, public polling suggests that Mr. Newsom will remain in office. But many see his struggle with Hispanic voters as a troubling warning sign for Democrats both in the state and nationally, a glimpse of the consequences for failing to deeply engage with a vital political force whose allegiance is up for grabs. Democrats fretted after the 2020 presidential election, when many Hispanic voters in Florida, Texas and other parts of the country swung toward President Donald J. Trump. But the problem is potentially even more consequential in a state where Latinos make up nearly a third of the electorate.“The real issue is that Governor Newsom has not engendered enthusiasm among Latino voters,” said Thomas A. Saenz, the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who has been involved in California politics for decades. “That is part of why he is threatened. They have not been motivated by his policies and his practices, and he has utterly failed to address the Latino community as a Latino community and acknowledge its importance in the state.”.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-uf1ume{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;}.css-wxi1cx{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-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Newsom’s campaign aides deny that they have failed to engage or listen to Latino voters. Aides point to his expansion of Medi-Cal to residents above the age of 50, including undocumented immigrants, and a lengthy moratorium on evictions during the pandemic as two key policies they say have helped thousands of Latinos in California. His campaign has repeatedly boasted of appointing Alex Padilla to the U.S. Senate, making him the first Latino from the state to serve in that body.Nathan Click, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom’s campaign, said the governor’s strategy in reaching out to Latino voters had been essentially unchanged. All along, Mr. Click said, the campaign viewed Latinos — and young Latinos in particular — as difficult but essential to reach.“We’ve known since Day 1 that voters who vote in presidential years but don’t vote in midterm elections and really don’t vote in special elections are the No. 1 target for all of our efforts,” he said.A generation ago, Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that would have barred undocumented immigrants from receiving most public services, gained widespread support among California Republicans, including Gov. Pete Wilson. The anti-immigrant measure largely drove Latino voters away from the Republican Party and into the embrace of Democrats, who have publicly credited the ballot measure as central to their rise to power.But many Latino voters are too young to remember the battle over Proposition 187 in the early 1990s and do not feel any particular loyalty to Democrats. For all the talk of Latino political potential in California, no governor in recent memory has effectively rallied Latinos to become staunch supporters.Mr. Newsom spoke to former farmworkers at a clinic in Fresno last month. Eric Paul Zamora/The Fresno Bee, via Associated Press“We haven’t adequately made the case for a long enough period of time that things are different and better, especially for young Latinos,” said Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents a heavily Latino and working-class area of San Diego in the State Assembly. “It’s as if doing no harm to Latinos has become enough for a lot of Democratic politicians.”The recall is also coming as many are still reeling from the impact of the pandemic. Latinos in California were far more likely to contract and die from the virus than were white residents. The unemployment rate among Latinos remains above 10 percent, and many Latino small-business owners have lost significant income in the last year and a half.Frank Oropeza, 27, a barber in Montebello, just east of Los Angeles, said he had voted for President Biden last year and considered himself a Democrat. But he said he had given little thought to how to vote in the recall. He said he had been torn, reading posts on social media from fellow barbers and hair stylists who were in favor of recalling Mr. Newsom, who twice shut down their businesses, and from others who viewed things differently.“I’m so easily swayed,” he said with a laugh. “It’s like, ‘Close your eyes and throw a dart.’”Mr. Oropeza said that he understood the need for some pandemic restrictions. But he was frustrated that barbers and hair stylists had been required to stop working for a second time, even after they had implemented precautions such as universal masking.The criticism is one Mr. Newsom’s opponents have jumped on, using the argument to try to persuade more Latinos to vote in favor of the recall.“Many of those small businesses that closed forever are owned by Black and brown people,” Larry Elder, the conservative talk radio host who has become the Republican front-runner in a crowded field of recall candidates, told reporters last week.At the virtual news conference, Mr. Elder appeared alongside Gloria Romero, a Democrat and former state lawmaker who is now a vocal advocate for charter schools. She was featured prominently in a recent Spanish advertisement the Elder campaign sent to Latino voters via text.“This is about sending a message about how the Democratic Party has largely abandoned Latinos,” Ms. Romero said. “We’ve been taken for granted.”Latino voters are a force in every part of the state and represent a wide spectrum of political views. While college-educated liberals in urban centers are part of the Democratic core base, working-class moderates in the suburbs of the Inland Empire and Silicon Valley are essential to winning statewide. And in Orange County, the Central Valley and the far northern reaches of the state, religious voters and libertarians have helped elect Republicans in key congressional districts.And there are signs that Republicans are having some success courting support from Hispanic voters, including first-time voters.“I am tired of the way things are,” said Ruben Sanchez, 43, a construction worker who lives in Simi Valley, a conservative stronghold north of Los Angeles. Mr. Sanchez, who attends an Evangelical church, said that he had cast his first ballot in 2020 and voted for Mr. Trump largely because of his religious beliefs and that he planned to vote for Mr. Elder in the recall. “This governor and this state are not for working people, for people who care about this country.”Officials with Mr. Newsom’s campaign have promised a blitz targeting Latino voters in the final days before the election. Last week, the Newsom campaign released an advertisement featuring Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the former presidential candidate who became so popular among many young Latinos in California that some refer to him as Tío Bernie, meaning Uncle Bernie.During the Democratic presidential primary, the Sanders campaign focused much of its outreach on Latino voters from the beginning, opening campaign offices in heavily Latino neighborhoods and releasing videos meant to be passed around on social media. The efforts were widely credited as a kind of playbook for effectively reaching Latino voters, and some Democrats have criticized the Newsom campaign for not doing more to replicate them.Beyond outreach, Mr. Sanders appealed to many young Latino voters in large part because of his ideology, calling for Medicare for all, forgiving of student loans and sweeping bills to combat climate change.“Latinos still have some core frustrations that Bernie was speaking to that have not been resolved,” said Rafael Navar, who was the California state director for the Sanders campaign. “We’ve had high death rates, high unemployment and massive inequality.”Despite the skepticism over Mr. Newsom, many Hispanic voters say they are fearful of what would happen if a Republican were to take office. Yet even as they are repelled by the Republican brand of politics, some liberal voters do not call themselves enthusiastic Democrats. Party loyalty, they said, is not as important to them as supporting a candidate who will address their concerns more directly.Ernesto Ruvalcaba, 27, a mapping specialist who lives in Los Angeles, said that while he had cast his ballot against the recall because Mr. Newsom was “getting the job done,” he remained dissatisfied.“Things he did, he could’ve done better,” Mr. Ruvalcaba said. “The parties are just really old — both of them. They just need to break up.” More

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      German Election: Who Is the Green Party's Annalena Baerbock?

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      Annalena Baerbock, the 40-year-old candidate for the Green Party, is likely to have a say in Germany’s next government, no matter who wins this month’s election.BOCHUM, Germany — The woman who wants to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel strode onto the stage in sneakers and a leather jacket, behind her the steel skeleton of a disused coal mining tower, before her a sea of expectant faces. The warm-up act, a guy with an Elvis quiff draped in a rainbow flag, sang “Imagine.”Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party candidate for chancellor, is asking Germans to do just that. To imagine a country powered entirely by renewable energy. To imagine a relatively unknown and untested 40-year-old as their next chancellor. To imagine her party, which has never before run Germany, leading the government after next month’s election.“This election is not just about what happens in the next four years, it’s about our future,” Ms. Baerbock told the crowd, taking her case to a traditional coal region that closed its last mine three years ago.“We need change to preserve what we love and cherish,” she said in this not necessarily hostile, but skeptical, territory. “Change requires courage, and change is on the ballot on Sept. 26.”Just how much change Germans really want after 16 years of Ms. Merkel remains to be seen. The chancellor made herself indispensable by navigating innumerable crises — financial, migrant, populist and pandemic — and solidifying Germany’s leadership on the continent. Other candidates are competing to see who can be most like her.Ms. Baerbock, by contrast, aims to shake up the status quo. She is challenging Germans to deal with the crises that Ms. Merkel has left largely unattended: decarbonizing the powerful automobile sector; weaning the country off coal; rethinking trade relationships with strategic competitors like China and Russia.It is not always an easy sell. In an unusually close race, there is still an outside chance that the Greens will catch up with Germany’s two incumbent parties. But even if they do not, there is almost no combination of parties imaginable in the next coalition government that does not include them. That makes Ms. Baerbock, her ideas and her party of central importance to Germany’s future. But Germans are still getting to know her.“This election is not just about what happens in the next four years, it’s about our future,” Ms. Baerbock said during her election tour.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesA crowd gathered to listen to Ms. Baerbock in Duisburg, in western Germany.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesA competitive trampolinist in her youth who became a lawmaker at 32 and has two young daughters, Ms. Baerbock bolted onto Germany’s national political scene only three years ago when she was elected one of the Greens’ two leaders. “Annalena Who?” one newspaper asked at the time.After being nominated in April as the Greens’ first-ever chancellor candidate, Ms. Baerbock briefly surged past her rivals in Germany’s long-dominant parties: Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democrats, and Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats, who now leads the race.But she fell behind after stumbling repeatedly. Rivals accused Ms. Baerbock of plagiarism after revelations that she had failed to attribute certain passages in a recently published book. Imprecise labeling of some of her memberships led to headlines about her padding her résumé.More recently, she and her party failed to seize on the deadly floods that killed more than 180 people in western Germany to energize her campaign, even as the catastrophe catapulted climate change — the Greens’ flagship issue — to the top of the political agenda.Hoping to reset her campaign, Ms. Baerbock, traveling in a bright green double-decker bus covered in solar panels, is taking her pitch to German voters in 45 cities and towns across the country.Ms. Baerbock in the campaign bus with her social media and logistics team.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesIt was no coincidence that her first stop was the industrial heartland of Germany, in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, which was badly hit by floods this summer and is run by Mr. Laschet, who has been criticized for mismanaging the disaster.“Climate change isn’t something that’s happening far away in other countries, climate change is with us here and now,” Ms. Baerbock told a crowd of a few hundred students, workers and young parents with their children in Bochum.“Rich people will always be able to buy their way out, but most people can’t,” she said. “That’s why climate change and social justice are two sides of the same coin for me.”Leaving the stage with her microphone, Ms. Baerbock then mingled with the audience and took questions on any range of topics — managing schools during the pandemic, cybersecurity — and apologized for her early missteps.“Yes, we’ve made mistakes, and I’m annoyed at myself,” she said. “But I know where I want to go.”Germany’s two traditional mainstream parties have seen their support shrink in recent years, while the Green Party has more than doubled its own.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesIf there is one thing that sets Ms. Baerbock apart from her rivals, it is this relative openness and youthful confidence combined with a bold vision. She is the next generation of a Green Party that has come a long way since its founding as a radical “anti-party party” four decades ago.In those early days, opposition, not governing, was the aim.For Ms. Baerbock, “governing is radical.”Her party’s evolution from a fringe protest movement to a serious contender to power in many ways reflects her own biography.Born in 1980, she is as old as her party. When she was a toddler, her parents took her to anti-NATO protests. By the time she joined the Greens as a student in 2005, the party had completed its first stint in government as the junior partner of the Social Democrats. By now, many voters have come to see the Greens as a party that has matured while remaining true to its principles. It is pro-environment, pro-Europe and unapologetically pro-immigration. Ms. Baerbock joined the Greens as a student in 2005.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesMs. Baerbock proposes spending 50 billion euros, about $59 billion, in green investments each year for a decade to bankroll Germany’s transformation to a carbon-neutral economy — and paying for it by scrapping the country’s strict balanced budget rule.She would raise taxes on top earners and put tariffs on imports that are not carbon neutral. She envisions solar panels on every rooftop, a world-class electric car industry, a higher minimum wage and climate subsidies for those with low incomes. She wants to team up with the United States to get tough on China and Russia.She is also committed to Germany’s growing diversity — the only candidate who has spoken of the country’s moral responsibility to take in some Afghan refugees, beyond those who helped Western troops. Ms. Baerbock’s ambitions to break taboos at home and abroad — and her rise as a serious challenger of the status quo — is catching voters’ attention as the election nears.It has also made her a target of online disinformation campaigns from the far right and others. A fake nude picture of her has circulated with the caption, “I needed the money.” Fake quotes have her saying she wants to ban all pets to minimize carbon emissions.Ms. Baerbock’s enemies in the mainstream conservative media have not held back either, exploiting every stumble she has made.Many of those who heard her speak in Bochum recently said they were impressed by her confident delivery (she spoke without notes) and willingness to engage with voters in front of rolling cameras.A supporter surprised Ms. Baerbock by offering her a heart-shaped balloon in Hildesheim, in northern Germany.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times“She focused on issues and not emotions,” said Katharina Münch, a retired teacher. “She seems really solid.” Others were concerned about her young age and lack of experience.“What has she done to run for chancellor?” said Frank Neuer, 29, a sales clerk who had stopped by on his way to work. “I mean, it’s like me running for chancellor.”Political observers say the attacks against Ms. Baerbock have been disproportionate and revealing of a deeper phenomenon. Despite having a female chancellor for almost two decades, women still face tougher scrutiny and sometimes outright sexism in German politics.“My candidacy polarizes in a way that wasn’t imaginable for many women of my age,” Ms. Baerbock said, sitting in a bright wood-paneled cabin on the top level of her campaign bus between stops.“In some ways, what I’ve experienced is similar to what happened in the U.S. when Hillary Clinton ran,” she added. “I stand for renewal, the others stand for the status quo, and of course, those who have an interest in the status quo see my candidacy as a declaration of war.”Bochum was among the stops on Ms. Baerbock’s campaign swing.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesWhen Ms. Merkel first ran for office in 2005, at 51, she was routinely described as Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s “girl” and received not just endless commentary on her haircut, but relentless questions about her competence and readiness for office. Even allies in her own party dismissed her as an interim leader at the time.Ms. Baerbock’s answer to such challenges is not to hide her youth or motherhood, but rather to lean into them.“It’s up to me as a mother, up to us as a society, up to us adults to be prepared for the questions of our children: Did you act?” she said. “Did we do everything to secure the climate and with it the freedom of our children?”Ms. Baerbock talking with a group of young women at the end of a campaign day in Duisburg.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesChristopher F. Schuetze More

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      The French Left Is in Disarray, but Here Comes Anne Hidalgo

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      The charismatic and divisive socialist mayor of Paris is eyeing an office that has been occupied by eight male presidents over six decades.BLOIS, France — French Socialists gathered recently in the Loire Valley for a weekend of debate that turned into the virtual anointment of Anne Hidalgo, the charismatic and divisive mayor of Paris, as their candidate for next year’s presidential election.Speaker after speaker, gathered in the courtyard of the Chateau de Blois, turned to Ms. Hidalgo to say they dreamed of a “Madame la Présidente,” stressing the last “e”-accentuated syllable denoting the feminine form. Up to now, the Fifth Republic has produced eight male “présidents” over six decades.That is not the only statistic stacked against Ms. Hidalgo, 62, who was coy about her intentions while leaving little doubt she is preparing to run. Most polls give the left, divided between Socialists, ecologists and far-left parties, less than 30 percent of the vote in a France drifting rightward. The once-proud “gauche” is in tatters.I asked Ms. Hidalgo when she would announce her candidacy. “I believe in solid foundations, and I am working on that,” she said. “If the foundation is solid, the house stands up.” Her latest book, “A French Woman,” will be published Sept. 15. It appears likely the announcement will come around that time.Whether a Hidalgo candidacy can galvanize the left and throw open an election in which Emmanuel Macron, the centrist president, and Marine Le Pen, the rightist candidate, remain favorites is unclear.“I believe in solid foundations, and I am working on that,” Ms. Hidalgo said when she was asked when she would announce her candidacy.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe daughter of poor Spanish immigrants, a product of the French model of integration now widely questioned, and an environmentalist mayor whose bike-friendly and car-hostile policies have earned her adulation and loathing in equal measure, Ms. Hidalgo has clout and international recognition. Michael Bloomberg is a friend.In the provinces, however, she is relatively unknown. A feel for “la France profonde,” or the rural soul of the country, is an important credential for any would-be president. Jacques Chirac, first Paris mayor and then president, made much of his links to the southwestern Corrèze region.Carole Delga, the popular Socialist president of the southwestern Occitanie region, called Ms. Hidalgo, who has been mayor of Paris since 2014, “a solid captain” for the left. Olivier Faure, the leader of the Socialist Party, tasked with rebuilding it after a humiliating defeat in the 2017 presidential election, hailed Ms. Hidalgo as his choice. He urged the crowd in Blois to recall the “fervor of 1981” that swept François Mitterrand and the left to power for the first time in the Fifth Republic.Just eight months before the April 2022 election, the left will need a very sudden advent of fervor and unity if it is to have any chance of winning.Uncertain how to address a French preoccupation with security and immigration, and facing a generational fracture over identity politics, the left’s disarray has allowed Mr. Macron to tilt rightward for votes.Journalists followed Ms. Hidalgo as she entered a movie theater that was the site of a debate in Blois.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“Division is loss,” said Benoît Hamon, who won just 6.36 percent of the vote as the Socialist Party candidate in 2017. “We will not be in the second round of the presidential election if there is not a single candidate of the left.”Others have different ideas. They include Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left France Unbowed; Green leaders including Yannick Jadot and Eric Piolle; and Socialists angered by what they see as efforts to install Ms. Hidalgo ahead of a party primary starting Sept. 18.For now, nobody has shown much inclination to step aside. The Greens were incensed when Mr. Faure, the Socialist leader, suggested they had an electoral “ceiling” that would make any environmentalist presidential candidate unelectable.As François Hollande, the former Socialist president, observed recently, “It’s not unity that creates power, it’s power that creates unity” — and for now the left seems bereft of the momentum or conviction that delivers force. Hence, it seems, the Socialist push to get behind Ms. Hidalgo quickly and change the conversation.“We are all part of the same family,” said Mr. Piolle, the mayor of Grenoble and a potential presidential candidate. “But the climate crisis and issues of identity politics have jostled us.”Ms. Hidalgo with Yannick Jadot, a Green lawmaker for France in the European Parliament, in Blois. Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAll year, the left has fought over whether France’s universalist, supposedly colorblind model — the one that welcomed Ms. Hidalgo and propelled her upward — still functions, or whether it serves as camouflage for racism and hypocrisy.The battle has come to a head over various issues, including a French student union’s decision to hold “non-mixed” meetings so that particular groups — Blacks or Muslims, for example — could air their views and any grievances among themselves.Mr. Mélenchon, the far-left leader, saw no problem. Julien Bayou, the national secretary of the main Green party, called the meetings “useful and necessary.” But Manuel Valls, a former Socialist prime minister, told Europe 1 radio that “When you organize racialized meetings, you legitimize the concept of race, and this is unacceptable.”This view echoed much of the Socialist mainstream, not to mention all the outraged right.Danièle Obono, a Black lawmaker from France Unbowed, told me that Mr. Valls was “an absolute traitor” to the left. “French laïcité is something that must be debated,” she said, alluding to the French secular model that wants to see only undifferentiated citizens.These are the kinds of divisions that Ms. Hidalgo will have to overcome. The Paris mayor is clearly a universalist, a passionate believer in the capacity for good of the French model that benefited millions of immigrants, before a large North African Muslim influx presented challenges that often proved overwhelming.In Blois, Ms. Hidalgo took up what will clearly be core themes of her eventual campaign: the urgency of a job-creating transformation to tackle climate change and the fight against a degree of “inequality that leads people to lose faith in the institutions of the Republic.”“A child today would not have the same chances I had,” she said.Ms. Hidalgo, standing fourth from left, with other Socialist officials in the courtyard of the Chateau de Blois on Friday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesHélène le Roux, a state employee, had mixed feelings about Ms. Hidalgo. “I like the idea of the left being carried forward by a woman in a country that is still very paternalistic and macho,” she said. “But I am not sure she has the political presence across the country — and her image is very center left.”If the left’s challenges appear daunting, they are perhaps not yet insuperable. Eight months before the 2017 election, Mr. Macron’s chances appeared remote. Ms. Hidalgo, allying herself with the Greens, defeated a candidate from Mr. Macron’s party to be re-elected Paris mayor in 2020. She has a streak of tactical ruthlessness.The long pandemic and accompanying economic problems appear to have created a greater appetite for a strong state both in Europe and the United States. Support for social solidarity over unfettered global capitalism is rising. Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic candidate, is a leading contender in the German elections this month. In French regional elections in June, the Socialists performed well.Still, as Philippe Labro, an author and political observer, remarked, “France today is squarely on the right.” Terrorism, insecurity, fear and perceptions of unrestrained immigration pushed the country there. The left has had no clear answer, not Ms. Hidalgo, not anyone.The Chateau de Blois is notable in French history because in 1429 Joan of Arc stopped there for a blessing before defeating the English at Orléans. Her name came up, of course, as French Socialists appear ready to put their faith in a woman facing a tough campaign and unlikely odds. More

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      The California Recall Isn't Just Gavin Newsom Vs. Larry Elder

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      The prospect of Gov. Larry Elder has jolted California’s Democrats out of their apathy. Polling on the recall has swung from a dead heat in early August to an 8.4 margin for Gavin Newsom in FiveThirtyEight’s tracker. But I want to make an affirmative argument for continuing the Newsom experiment: Something exciting is taking shape in California. The torrent of policy that Newsom and the Democratic Legislature are passing amounts to nothing less than a Green New Deal for the Golden State.To understand Newsom, both his successes and his failures, you need to see the paradox that defines his career. The knock on him is that he’s all style, no substance — a guy who got where he is by looking like a politician rather than acting like a leader. The truth is just the opposite. Newsom’s style is his problem; his substance is his redemption.[Get more from Ezra Klein by listening to his Opinion podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show.”]When Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco, his nickname was “Mayor McHottie,” and he came complete with a tabloid-ready personal life and funding from the unimaginably wealthy Getty family. His worst mistakes as governor — like attending a birthday dinner for a lobbyist friend at the luxe French Laundry, unmasked, during the depths of the pandemic — deepen those suspicions. The “Beauty,” one of his recall opponents, who fancies himself “the Beast,” called him in a $5 million ad blitz.The attacks wound Newsom because what appear to be his strengths are actually his weaknesses. Newsom is handsome in a way that comes off as just a little too coifed, like the actor you’d cast to play a politician in a movie. His personal life and social misjudgments have dogged him for decades. He doesn’t have a knack for memorable sound bites or quick connection. (A sample line from our interview: “It was not without consideration that last year we passed a number of bills to site homeless shelters and supportive housing and Homekey and Roomkey projects with CEQA waivers and as-of-right zoning.”) He’s an eager nerd who presents as a slick jock, and he’s never found a way out of that dissonance.He’s also been governing amid the worst pandemic in modern history. California has outperformed most states in health outcomes and, particularly, in economic outcomes. “We dominate all Western democracies in the last five years in G.D.P.,” Newsom said. “The G.O.P. loves G.D.P.! Twenty-one percent G.D.P. growth in the last five years. Texas was 12 percent. And our taxes are lower for the middle class in California than they are in Texas.” Basically every economic indicator you can look at in California is booming, from household income growth to the $80 billion-plus budget surplus. But it’s still been a grueling 18 months of masks, lockdowns, deaths and discord. There’s been little attention to policymaking in Sacramento.As a result, people don’t realize how much Newsom and the Democratic State Legislature have done. But in the two and a half years since Newsom became governor, they’ve more than doubled the size of California’s earned-income tax credit and Young Child Tax Credit, and added a stimulus just for Californians (though some of the neediest were left out). They expanded paid family leave from six to eight weeks and unpaid leave to 12 weeks. They added 200,000 child care slots and $250 million to retrofit child care centers. They passed legislation giving all public school students two free meals each day, funding summer school and after-school programs for two million children and creating a full year of transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds by 2025.Newsom is “three years ahead of Joe Biden in terms of pro-family policy,” Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, told me. “Any parents or grandparents who back the recall are voting against their own financial interest, I’d say.”Housing has been harder, in part because you need to do more than just spend money. Ben Metcalf, who led California’s Department of Housing and Community Development for three years under Gov. Jerry Brown and one year under Newsom, recalls that “when Newsom first arrived, I was excited by his vision, but then dismayed by his inability to effectively deliver and get the Legislature to do what he wanted. Brown knew how to wield power. He knew the points of inflection. He had a team of people he could rely on.”You hear unflattering comparisons with Brown often when you ask around about Newsom. Brown was a more disciplined and experienced leader. He chose his priorities carefully, and he did what he promised. The surplus Newsom is spending is a gift bequeathed by Brown, who persuaded California’s voters to sharply raise taxes on the wealthiest residents. But Brown did little to address the state’s housing affordability crisis and neither did the Legislature.Nancy Skinner, a state senator who’s been a leader on housing, told me that “our shortage has been decades in the making.” The mantra, she said, was to just leave it to the cities. “For years, the Legislature just urged city governments to be more responsive. We tried to create some incentives. And only in the last five years did we realize this is a statewide crisis and we can’t just leave it to local governments to get it fixed. It took the Legislature a long time to get to the place of realizing the urging and carrots didn’t do it. We have to do the mandates.”Newsom, to his credit, prioritized housing from the beginning. Early in his term, in 2019, he sued the city of Huntington Beach for allegedly falling short on its housing commitments and threatened to sue dozens more. He made housing the primary focus of his 2020 State of the State speech. But the initial consensus was that he overpromised and underdelivered. There were widespread frustrations that he wasn’t tough enough with the Legislature and his interventions were often ineffective. He remains far behind his goal of building 3.5 million new housing units by 2025.“I said the 3.5 million houses was a stretch goal,” he protested to me. “I said in trying to achieve it, we’d find what we were capable of!”To be fair, Newsom couldn’t have predicted that the pandemic, which descended on California just weeks after his big housing speech, was coming. Still, in February, I was furious watching California’s political class, including Newsom, fail and fail again to pass major housing legislation. But when the facts change, so must your mind. The Legislature just passed, and Newsom will sign, a series of housing bills that achieve something I never expected to see in California: the end of single-family zoning. S.B.9 allows homeowners to divide their properties into two lots and to build two homes on each of those lots. It won’t solve the housing crisis, but it’s a start.Newsom and other Democrats are also finally appreciating the depth of the anger even liberals feel about homelessness. “People can’t take the tents and open-air drug use,” Newsom said to me. “They can’t. Nor can I. They want the streets cleaned up. They want more housing. They don’t care about task forces or bills. I think that sense of urgency coming out of Covid sharpens our edges. The five- to 10-year plans, no one is interested in that anymore. What’s the five- to 10-month plan?”In Newsom’s case, it’s using the state’s budget surpluses to drive a $12 billion investment over two years in permanent residences and mental health care for the homeless. How well it works remains to be seen, but no other state is investing in housing at anything like this scale or speed.What’s most encouraging to me is a broader change you can sense in the politics of this issue. At every level of power in California, the state’s political actors have realized they need to find ways to build. Inaction is no longer a viable option. Even the politicians who oppose development have to pretend to favor it. There’s no illusion that the tent cities can continue, nor that they can be cleared without offering housing to their residents. Politics isn’t just about policy. It’s also about will, coalitions and a sense of consequences. That’s what feels different in California right now. And Newsom deserves some credit for that.“The reason we began suing cities was to provide air cover,” Newsom told me. “I can’t tell you how many mayors privately thanked me even as they publicly criticized me for those lawsuits. We’re trying to drive a different expectation: We will cover you. You want to scapegoat someone, scapegoat the state. We haven’t had that policy in the past. Localism has been determinative. And that’s part of what’s changing.”This is why I disagree with those, like the economist Tyler Cowen, who argue that a Republican victory in the recall would be a healthy wake-up call for California Democrats, with little downside because Elder would be checked by the Legislature. The political system has already woken up. But the politics of housing are miserable, and there’s much more yet to do. To wreck the governing coalition that is finally making progress would be madness.“If Gavin were recalled, that’d be disastrous for housing policy in this state,” Brian Hanlon, the president of California YIMBY, a pro-housing group, told me. “The Legislature, I believe, could override Larry Elder’s vetoes on key bills. But all of these hard-fought housing bills that we are not passing with a supermajority cannot survive an Elder veto. All that would die.”“I also think that if the recall succeeds, in part due to housing, the overall situation in Sacramento would just be chaotic,” Hanlon added later. “It’ll be a lost year as Democrats and the Legislature work to retake the governor’s office in 2022.”Metcalf, the former head of the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, has moved from dismayed to impressed by Newsom’s record on housing. “We’re beginning to see Newsom find the levers to pull,” he said. “We’re seeing him figure out how to get the Legislature to do what he wants. We’re just getting there with Newsom, which would make it very painful to lose him now.”Every California politician brags that if California were a country, it would be the world’s fifth-largest economy. On climate, though, that’s a point of leverage, a way California can try to use its economic might to push the world to decarbonize faster. “There is no peer on California’s climate leadership,” Newsom told me. “We move markets. We move policy globally, not just nationally.”The first part of Newsom’s climate agenda is a series of executive orders setting aggressive decarbonization targets and standards. They include orders mandating that all new passenger cars sold in the state are zero-emission vehicles by 2035, a pledge to conserve 30 percent of the state’s land and waters by 2030, and directives to the California Air Resources Board to map out a pathway to carbon neutrality by 2035 and an end to oil extraction by 2045.California has, in the past, used access to its markets to transform the products that are sold globally — our tight fuel economy standards became the de facto national standard, and our subsidies for electric vehicles laid a foundation for that market to boom. Newsom wants to do that again, but for far more than just cars.I am, to be honest, skeptical of far-reaching targets and ever more aggressive decarbonization goals. It’s always easier to promise sweeping change in the future. But you can’t build a different future without planning for it now. What matters is whether these orders really do shape public and private decisions in California over the next decade. If Newsom or a like-minded successor remains governor, they have force. But they are instantly vulnerable if he loses office to Elder or anyone else.The second part of Newsom’s climate agenda is, well, money. The California Comeback Plan that Newsom signed this year put nearly $8 billion toward electric vehicles and climate resilience. Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who tracks state climate policies, said that “spending in the billions on climate is basically unheard of at the state level. No other state is doing anything remotely close to this scale.”I could keep going, and Newsom certainly did. He’s got a whole health care agenda meant to integrate physical and mental care called CalAIM that he gets extremely animated talking about (“If you could see me, I’m smiling, I’m so excited by this!”). He also has a plan to let the state bargain for prescription drugs on behalf of not just its public insurance programs but also any private insurers that want to join. He’s trying to convert the Valley State Prison into a rehabilitation center modeled on the Norwegian prisons that progressives admire. He’d love to tell you about his immigration ideas.It’s really a blizzard of plans. Newsom sees what he’s doing as “raising the bar of expectations.” He told me a quote, often attributed to Michelangelo, that he repeats to his staff: “The biggest risk is not that we aim too high and miss it. It’s that we aim too low and reach it.” He admitted they roll their eyes at this. But it is, for him, a strategy. “We’ve stretched the mind and I don’t think it goes back to its original form.”Perhaps. I’ve spoken to Newsom allies who worry that he’s attempting too much and that it could end with him achieving too little. Every one of these ideas will face serious implementation challenges. Transitional kindergarten, for instance, will require the state to produce 12,000 credentialed pre-K teachers and 20,000 more teacher’s aides in the next four years, according to Fuller. It’s going to require a decade of patient political work on housing to reverse California’s affordability crisis. Newsom’s health care agenda alone would preoccupy a traditional term, but his administration hasn’t done much to communicate its vision. When I asked a leading doctor at the University of California at San Francisco about it, he had no idea what it was.So there are challenges still to come — many of them. But I’d like to see Newsom and the Democratic Legislature get the chance to face them. If they succeed, they will make California the progressive beacon it’s long claimed to be.Additional reporting by Roge Karma.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Want to Know Who Might Run for Governor? Check the N.Y. State Fair.

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      Amid cows and crowds, the State Fair became a destination for potential challengers to Gov. Kathy Hochul, including Letitia James, the state attorney general.As Gov. Kathy Hochul sampled a sandwich at the New York State Fair on Sunday, touring the Syracuse-area spectacle like other governors before her, she overtly embraced her role as the state’s new leader — and implicitly set down a marker for 2022, when she intends to seek election to a full term as governor.Two days later, the New York City public advocate, Jumaane D. Williams, was in town, observing the cows and swinging by a butterfly garden. On Wednesday, it was Attorney General Letitia James’s turn.Ms. James greeted attendees, admired a butter sculpture and, like Mr. Williams, stoked fresh speculation about future political ambitions — and whether those ambitions included a run for governor.All three New York Democratic officials have visited the fair before. But the pilgrimages this week — not unlike a presidential hopeful’s early visits to Iowa — took on fresh resonance, offering a very public reminder of a nascent political contest that has been brewing behind the scenes.After more than a decade of governors’ races that were dominated and defined by the now-disgraced former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s political class is quietly beginning to plan for a different — and possibly, fiercely contested — primary campaign next year.While Ms. Hochul, New York’s first female governor, has been in office for just over a week, the primary machinery is already whirring to life, with hiring, polling and political gamesmanship picking up speed. One poll had extensive questions about Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has not ruled out running for governor.The most concrete activity among Democrats surrounds Ms. Hochul. She has already brought on strategists with national and New York experience; Tucker Green, a major Democratic fund-raiser, has also recently joined her campaign team as Ms. Hochul works to cement fund-raising strength, often an advantage for a sitting governor. The governor is making other decisions about her campaign infrastructure and will have more personnel announcements after Labor Day, an adviser to Ms. Hochul said.Many New York Democrats expect Ms. Hochul to be a powerful contender, boosted by the advantages of incumbency, the statewide network she has already assembled and an outpouring of good will for a new governor who has moved urgently to restore some of the norms and relationships that crumbled under the previous chief executive.But the field will also be shaped by Ms. Hochul’s track record as she navigates a series of staggering challenges facing the state.“We don’t know who is going to be in it,” said Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a New York Democrat. “Who is going to be in it will be defined by Kathy Hochul’s leadership.”On Wednesday, Ms. Hochul announced that Kathryn Garcia — a former mayoral candidate who had been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor herself — had been appointed director of state operations.Perhaps the biggest uncertainty in the race is whether Ms. James will run. Some of her advisers, including some at the Hamilton Campaign Network, which was heavily involved in Ms. James’s previous runs, are beginning to have conversations about who could join a potential James bid for governor, according to people familiar with the discussions — part of an effort among Ms. James’s allies to keep her options open.“We do not comment about our clients,” the company said in a statement.“Tish would be an excellent governor,” said John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union, who lauded her “courageousness” in spearheading the investigation that led to Mr. Cuomo’s resignation. “She has a demonstrated record of steadfast support for working people.”A critical report by Letitia James, the state attorney general, led to the resignation of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last month.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesPeople who have spoken with Ms. James in recent weeks have not gotten the impression that she has made a decision, but one of those people said Ms. James indicated she would like to make a call sometime this fall, ahead of the Democratic State Convention slated for early next year. Others have the broad sense that she would be inclined to see how Ms. Hochul’s early months as governor proceed.Asked about those discussions, a representative for Ms. James said that the attorney general is “fully focused on her work protecting and defending the rights of New Yorkers and plans to continue taking on the big fights that matter.”There has been a flurry of activity in other potential candidates’ camps, too.Recently, Anna Greenberg, Mayor de Blasio’s longtime pollster, conducted a survey testing the mayor’s appeal outside of New York City and the potency of particular messages about him.One Westchester resident, who took notes as he was polled on Tuesday, said that questions tested the appeal of several potential candidates for governor, including Ms. Hochul, Mr. Williams, Ms. James and Mr. de Blasio.Then, several specific messages about Mr. de Blasio — questions that were not raised about the other potential candidates — were tested.Among other things, the questioner discussed Mr. de Blasio’s record of battling Mr. Cuomo over his response to the pandemic, his efforts to provide legal services to New Yorkers facing evictions and his work on police reform and universal prekindergarten. Then the pollster asked if those facts made the respondent more or less inclined to support him.A spokesman for Mr. de Blasio declined to comment.On Long Island, Steven Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, has hired J.J. Balaban and Brandon L. Davis, veteran Democratic political strategists and ad makers, and brought on the national firm GPS Impact as he contemplates a run for governor.Representative Thomas Suozzi, a Long Island Democrat, is also thought to be seriously considering a run. But he intends to assess how Ms. Hochul performs and wants to accomplish his goals in negotiations in Congress over the federal deduction for state and local taxes, according to one Long Island Democrat with knowledge of Mr. Suozzi’s intentions, granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.In recent weeks, Mr. Williams has said publicly that he is exploring a bid for governor, and privately he has told at least one person that he has already decided to run — withholding his plans because he does not want to announce it so close to Ms. Hochul’s swearing-in.In a brief interview, Mr. Williams said he thinks it is important to give the sitting governor time “to get her bearings,” and for the state to “take a moment to recognize the historic nature of the first woman governor.”“There’s definitely time to have those conversations in the near future,” Mr. Williams said. “And I have said I am considering, but it is important that we allow that time period before we dive deep into those questions.”Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, is exploring a run for governor.Chery Dieu-Nalio for The New York TimesJay S. Jacobs, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, suggested that there could be risks for candidates announcing any intentions so soon after Ms. Hochul assumed the governorship.“Right now it would be premature and probably unseemly,” he said. “You have to have a reason, and I think that means you have to give the current governor a little bit of time. Then you can distinguish yourself from her, if you choose to run.” More

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      It’s Election Season in Germany. No Charisma, Please!

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      The race to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years in office is the tightest in years. But the two leading candidates are anything but exciting, and that’s how Germans like it.BERLIN — The most popular politician who would like to be chancellor isn’t on the ballot. The leading candidate is so boring people compare him to a machine. Instead of “Yes, We Can!” voters are being fired up with promises of “Stability.”Germany is having its most important election in a generation but you would never know it. The newspaper Die Welt recently asked in a headline: “Is this the most boring election ever?”Yes and no.The campaign to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years of her dominating German and European politics is the tightest in Germany since 2005, and it just got tighter. The Social Democrats, written off as recently as a month ago, have overtaken Ms. Merkel’s conservatives for the first time in years.But the campaign has also revealed a charisma vacuum that is at once typical of postwar German politics and exceptional for just how bland Ms. Merkel’s two most likely successors are. No party is polling more than 25 percent, and for much of the race the candidate the public has preferred was none of the above.Whoever wins, however, will have the job of shepherding the continent’s largest economy, making that person one of Europe’s most important leaders, which has left some observers wondering if the charisma deficit will extend to a leadership deficit as well.While the election outcome may be exciting, the two leading candidates are anything but.A campaign billboard in Berlin featuring Mr. Scholz — sometimes known as the “Scholz-o-mat.”John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLess than a month before the vote, the field is being led by two male suit-wearing career politicians — one balding, one bespectacled, both over 60 — who represent the parties that have governed the country jointly for the better part of two decades.There is Armin Laschet, the governor of the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, who is running for Ms. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats. And then there is Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat who is Ms. Merkel’s finance minister and vice chancellor.The candidate of change, Annalena Baerbock, the 40-year-old co-leader of the Greens, has a bold reform agenda and plenty of verve — and has been lagging in the polls after a brief surge in the polls before the summer.It’s a nail-biter, German-style: Who can most effectively channel stability and continuity? Or put another way: Who can channel Ms. Merkel?For now it seems to be Mr. Scholz — a man Germans have long known as the “Scholz-o-mat” or the “Scholz machine” — a technocrat and veteran politician who can seem almost robotically on message. Where others have slipped up in the campaign, he has avoided mistakes, mostly by saying very little.“Most citizens know who I am,” was Mr. Scholz’s pitch to his party before being anointed chancellor candidate, conspicuously echoing Ms. Merkel’s iconic 2013 line to voters: “You know me.”More recently one of his campaign ads showed his reassuring smile with a caption using the female form of the word chancellor, telling voters that he has what it takes to lead the country even though he is a man. “Angela the second,” was the title of a Scholz profile in the magazine Der Spiegel this week.Mr. Scholz has tried so hard to perfect the art of embodying the chancellor’s aura of stability and calm that he has even been photographed holding his hands before him in the chancellor’s signature diamond shape — making what is known as the Merkel rhombus.Mr. Scholz at a campaign rally last week in Berlin. Opponents say he’s trying to sound like Chancellor Merkel.Florian Gaertner/Photothek, via Getty Images“Scholz is trying to be Merkel’s clone all the way down to the rhombus,” said John Kornblum, a former American ambassador to Germany who has been living in Berlin on and off since the 1960s. “The guy everyone likes best is the most boring guy in the election — maybe in the country. He makes watching water boil seem exciting.”But Germans, political observers point out, love boring.“There are few countries where such a premium is put on being dull,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European history at the University of Oxford who has written about the country.It’s not that Germans are resistant to charisma. When Barack Obama was running for president and delivered a rousing speech at the victory column in Berlin in 2008, 100,000 Germans cheered him on.But they don’t want it in their own politicians. That’s because the last time Germany had a rousing leader it didn’t end well, noted Jan Böhmermann, a popular TV-host and comedian.The haunting memory of Hitler’s Nazi party winning office in free elections has shaped Germany’s postwar democracy in various ways, Mr. Böhmermann said, “and one of them is that charisma is banned from politics.”Andrea Römmele, dean of the Berlin-based Hertie School, put it this way: “A Trump character could never become chancellor here.”Paradoxically, that’s at least in part thanks to an electoral system bequeathed to Germany by America and its Allies after World War II. Unlike in the American presidential system, German voters don’t get to elect their chancellor directly. They vote for parties; the parties’ share of the vote determines their share of the seats in Parliament; and then Parliament elects the chancellor.And because it just about always takes more than one party to form a government — and this time probably three — you can’t be too rude about the people you might rely on to be your coalition partners.“Your rival today might be your finance minister tomorrow,” Ms. Römmele said.Mr. Laschet, center, campaigning door to door last week in Berlin. He has promised to “secure stability.”Michael Kappeler/Picture Alliance, via Getty ImagesAs for the chancellor candidates, they are not chosen in primaries but by party officials who tend to pick people like themselves: career politicians who have given years of service to the party machine.Being good on television and connecting with voters doesn’t cut it, said Jürgen Falter, an electoral expert at the University of Mainz. “It’s a strict oligarchic system,” he said. “If we had primaries, Markus Söder would have been the candidate.”Mr. Söder, Bavaria’s ambitious governor, has heaps of beer-tent charisma and is the most popular politician in the country after Ms. Merkel herself. He was eager to run for chancellor, but the conservatives picked Mr. Laschet, a longstanding Merkel ally, not least, Ms. Römmele said, because at the time he looked most like “the continuity candidate.”But Mr. Scholz has beaten him at his game. During a televised debate between the chancellor candidates last Sunday, an exasperated Mr. Laschet accused Mr. Scholz of trying to “sound like Ms. Merkel.”“I find I sound like Olaf Scholz,” Mr. Scholz replied deadpan.“These days you’re doing the rhombus,” Mr. Laschet hit back — before himself invoking the chancellor in his closing statement.“Stability and reliability in difficult times,” he said. “That’s what marked us from Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl to Angela Merkel. The team C.D.U. wants to secure stability.”Recent polls give Mr. Scholz’ Social Democrats the edge with between 23 and 25 percent, followed by 20 to 22 percent for Mr. Laschet’s Christian Democrats, or C.D.U., and around 17 percent for the Greens.From second left: Mr. Laschet, Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party, and Mr. Scholz during a televised debate on Sunday.Pool photo by Michael KappelerTo his fans, Mr. Scholz is a voice of calm and confidence, a pragmatist from Germany’s taciturn north who represents the elusive silent majority. “Liberal, but not stupid,” is how he once described himself.But critics note that while crises have come crashing down on the election campaign — epic floods, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the pandemic — a sense of urgency is missing from the campaigns of the two leading candidates.Much like Mr. Laschet, Mr. Scholz talks about tackling climate change but above all promises stable pensions, safe jobs, a balanced budget and not getting out of coal too soon.“The big story is that we have a world in crisis and there isn’t any sense of real crisis in Germany,” said Mr. Garton Ash of Oxford University.A bold vision for change has never been a vote winner in Germany. Konrad Adenauer, the first postwar chancellor, won an absolute majority for the Christian Democrats by promising “No Experiments.” Helmut Schmidt, a Social Democrat, once famously said, “If you have visions you should go to the doctor.”As for Ms. Merkel, she has come to embody Germany’s distinctive political tradition of change through consensus perhaps more than any of her predecessors by co-governing with her traditional opponents for three out of her four terms.Mr. Böhmermann, the comedian, calls this a “democratic state of emergency” for Germany. “You could say we were well-managed over the last 16 years — or you could say we were anesthetized for 16 years.”“We need vision,” he lamented. “No one dares to articulate a clear political vision, especially the main candidates.”Chancellor Merkel last week at the Parliament in Berlin.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockChristopher F. Schuetze More

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      Colombia’s Troubles Put a President’s Legacy on the Line

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      SEOUL — Iván Duque swept into Colombia’s presidency in 2018 as a young, little-known technocrat riding a surging right-wing movement. He tapped public anger against a peace deal that he said had treated the country’s deadly insurgents too softly. And he warned that the proposals of his left-wing opponent could stifle steady growth.Three years and a global pandemic later, it is Mr. Duque who is presiding over high unemployment and an angry electorate — and who is on the defensive about the steps he has taken to tame persistent violence by militants.Mr. Duque contends his policies have opened opportunities for the middle- and low-income classes, encouraged entrepreneurship and paved the way for Colombia to return to its prepandemic growth. He also touted social policies that could address issues of police conduct and social inequality that led to violent clashes this year, killing dozens.Mr. Duque after he won office in 2018, riding a surging right-wing movement. Three years into his term, he is presiding over high unemployment and an angry electorate.Andres Stapff/Reuters“The three pillars of our overall plan of government, which were legality, entrepreneurship and equality, have been producing results,” Mr. Duque said last week in an interview in South Korea with The New York Times. “Obviously, they were affected by the pandemic. But I think we have demonstrated our resilient spirit.”Mr. Duque’s legacy — and that of his patron, the firebrand former President Álvaro Uribe, who still dominates Colombian politics — is on the line. Colombian voters go to the polls in May, when Gustavo Petro, a former presidential candidate, previous mayor of Bogotá and a onetime guerrilla member, could become the country’s furthest-left leader in its history at a time when leftists are again claiming victories across South America.Mr. Duque can’t run again because of term limits, and his party’s candidate hasn’t been determined. Still, his government faces some of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency. Colombia’s economy, trade and investment from abroad were hit hard by the coronavirus, which exacerbated long-running social tensions over stark wealth inequality and police conduct.Colombia’s economy, trade and investment from abroad were hit hard by the coronavirus, which exacerbated long-running social tensions.Federico Rios for The New York TimesHe has also come under increased pressure to tame Colombia’s armed insurgencies and hasten the fulfillment of the government’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC, despite his criticism of the terms of the deal on the 2018 campaign trail.In South Korea, Mr. Duque was seeking trade and investment opportunities, such as expansions by Korean manufacturers and increased sales of Colombian coffee, avocados and bananas. He even cited the filming of a South Korean movie — Mr. Duque has long championed creative investments in areas like the arts and research — in Bogotá.The president is trying “to get South Korean investors interested in playing big ball,” said Sergio Guzmán, of the Bogotá-based consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis.The challenge for Mr. Duque, Mr. Guzmán added, is that a victory by Mr. Petro could undo what he and his predecessors had accomplished.“He’s a weak president,” said Mr. Guzmán. “He’s a lame-duck president. He’s a president whose most important legacy will be for his successor not to be able to undo his own policies.”FARC rebels in the mountains of Colombia in 2018. Mr. Duque has come under increased pressure to tame Colombia’s armed insurgencies.Federico Rios for The New York TimesMr. Duque disputed that, saying that his efforts — including wage subsidies and a proposal to widen university access — could help put the economy back on track. Though a protégé of Mr. Uribe, the charismatic leader who revved up the government’s offensive against FARC nearly two decades ago, Mr. Duque never fully fit the populist mold. Born into a politically prominent family, the 45-year-old president worked for years in development banking. He speaks in clipped, think-tank English: “I will give you very concise numbers,” he said at one point before doing exactly that.He was elected after campaigning on increasing economic growth and changing the terms of the peace accord with FARC, but he quickly ran into challenges. In 2019, frustration over the lack of opportunities and possible pension changes sparked mass protests. So did a tax proposal this year meant to close a fiscal hole exacerbated by the pandemic.Mr. Duque’s tax proposal had merit, said Luis Fernando Mejía, director of the Colombian research institute Fedesarrollo, but he seemed unable to sell it to the public.The firebrand former President Álvaro Uribe, who still dominates Colombian politics.Federico Rios for The New York Times“It was a very, very good reform,” he said, “but he was not able to consolidate political capital and to create an adequate strategy to push through a reform that I think had been very important.”Mr. Duque is also trying to thread the policy needle in a polarized time, making it increasing difficult to please both his party’s base and unhappy voters.The tax protests became part of broader unrest over inequality and police violence. Some police used brutal and deadly force on demonstrators.In the interview, Mr. Duque cited his efforts to increase scrutiny on the police and to equip them with body cameras. But he said some of the demonstrators had been spurred by “people producing fake news” and other instigators to elevate the violence.His trickiest balancing act may be enacting the peace accord with FARC. In 2019, his effort to alter the terms, including tougher sentencing for war crimes, failed on legal grounds. Internationally, he is under intense pressure to carry out the accord, but domestically, his party and other conservatives continue to criticize it.Students protesting against changes to the tax code in Bogotá, the capital, in 2019.Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJust weeks ahead of the deal’s five-year anniversary, more than half of its measures have not been applied or have barely begun, according to the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame, an independent entity charged with oversight of the deal. Opposition groups and some of the electorate say Mr. Duque missed a critical window to push it forward.Mr. Duque and his supporters point to the accord’s time frame, which calls for its tenets to be enacted over 15 years. In the interview, he said that he had done more than his predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, to put in place the peace deal’s landownership overhauls and development plans that would give poor farmers and former rebels jobs and opportunities.“We have been not only implementing, but the issues that we have been implementing are going to be decisive for the evolution of the accords,” he said, adding, “We have made a good progress.”Mr. Duque must balance competing interests overseas, as well. Tensions have risen between the United States — Colombia’s longtime ally — and China, a growing source of business for the country. China, Colombia’s second-largest trading partner after the United States, has invested in mines in the country and successfully bid on engineering contracts.A temporary hospital set up in April to house Covid patients in Bogotá.Federico Rios for The New York TimesMr. Duque said that the Chinese companies had won the work in open bids and that relations with the United States remained warm. “We try to build our relationship with our partners based on investment and trade and common opportunities. But usually I have to highlight that in the case of the United States, our alliance has been existing for almost 200 years, and we will continue to see the United States as No. 1.”With the United States, relations hit an awkward moment last year when members of Mr. Duque’s party endorsed Donald J. Trump and Republicans in the election, provoking a rare rebuke from the U.S. ambassador.“I think that was unwise,” Mr. Duque said. “I think that should have not been done.”These examples of polarization, he said, have complicated efforts to fix deep-rooted problems. The world is polarized, he said, as people “connect demagoguery and populism with violent sentiments and algorithms and people producing fake news and manipulating the truth.”He added, “That’s why we have concentrated in our administration not to promote polarization, but to move the country to the right direction.”Gustavo Petro, center, during a protest against tax changes in 2019. A former presidential candidate, he could become the country’s furthest-left leader in its history.Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCarlos Tejada More

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      Kathy Hochul Wants to Make One Thing Clear: She Is Not Cuomo

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      In her first acts as New York’s new governor, Ms. Hochul has sought to distance herself from her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned under pressure.ALBANY, N.Y. — In her first days as governor of New York, Kathy C. Hochul has gone to great lengths to demonstrate that whatever kind of leadership style she might adopt, it will be far from that of her disgraced predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo.She immediately began providing a more complete coronavirus death toll in New York, releasing figures used by the C.D.C. that put the total at roughly 55,400, which is 12,000 more than the state figures that the Cuomo administration had regularly cited.She introduced a new ethics training requirement for all state employees, and pointedly said the state’s sexual harassment training would have to be done in person — a subtle jab at Mr. Cuomo following allegations that he never completed the state-mandated training.She replaced most of Mr. Cuomo’s inner circle with top staffers of her own. She made a point of meeting with elected officials who warred with Mr. Cuomo, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, even posting a picture on Twitter showing her laughing with the mayor over pastries.In her first week in office, Ms. Hochul has moved intently to disassociate herself from Mr. Cuomo, pursuing policies and a style of governing that cast her as the revitalizing antithesis of her predecessor.She has even gone so far as to avoid his name in her 11-minute public address on Tuesday, and, in the subsequent media blitz, has made mention of Mr. Cuomo by name only three times since taking office.Ms. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, seems focused on carving out her own space as she fills out the remainder of Mr. Cuomo’s term, which expires at the end of 2022. But Ms. Hochul may also be driven by political reasons: Future opponents, including Republicans and Democratic primary challengers, are likely to portray her as an entrenched member of the Cuomo machinery and argue that voters deserve a clean break from him.But Ms. Hochul clearly intends to portray herself as the clean-break candidate.“It’s no secret that the governor and I were not close,” Ms. Hochul told NY1 on Thursday, an assertion she has made several times this week. “He had his own tight inner circle. I created my own space.”Ms. Hochul, a Democrat and former congresswoman from Buffalo who served as Mr. Cuomo’s lieutenant governor since 2015, succeeded Mr. Cuomo when he resigned following a state attorney general investigation that concluded that he sexually harassed several women.Almost immediately, Ms. Hochul promised to open a new chapter of transparency and collaboration in state government. That broad proclamation was seen as an inherent rebuke of Mr. Cuomo, who ruled Albany with a heavy hand, using the power and influence he had amassed over more than a decade.How exactly she intends to do that remains to be seen.Ms. Hochul has so far been cautious in setting expectations for the first few months of her administration. She has singled out a handful of immediate problems she can be seen as taking decisive action on during a time of crisis — such as instituting a mask mandate in schools, or helping to expedite getting stalled relief money to struggling renters, landlords and undocumented immigrants.“She’s been smart about thematically separating herself from Cuomo without having to take any big lifts,” said John Kaehny, the executive director at Reinvent Albany, a government watchdog. “They’re picking simple things that the public can understand that are pretty unassailable from the policy perspective, like the mask mandate and releasing the C.D.C. data, and that is going to get her applause.”Ms. Hochul said that she consulted with teachers, school boards, superintendents and parent-teacher associations before issuing a mask mandate for students.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesIndeed, Ms. Hochul did not unveil a grand vision of government or sweeping policy agenda in her first address on Tuesday. Instead, she outlined a narrow, yet urgent, set of priorities she would tackle: responding to the coronavirus and its fallout, and bringing more accountability to Albany. The actions she took this week on those fronts were seen as swift, but also as not-so-subtle admonishments of Mr. Cuomo.Richard N. Gottfried, the longest-serving member of the Assembly and the chairman of its health committee, called the expanded disclosure of Covid deaths “a very refreshing change.” Mr. Gottfried said he received a call from Ms. Hochul’s office to brief him on what the governor would announce in her first address, something he said was unimaginable under Mr. Cuomo.“Maybe it was only symbolic, but symbols at this point are what we go on,” said Mr. Gottfried, a Democrat who has served under nine governors. “Getting a call like that was an unusual and welcome experience.”Despite the early symbolic and stylistic changes, Ms. Hochul still faces hurdles in ridding the State Capitol of the last vestiges of the Cuomo era.One of the main rallying cries among Republicans, and even some Democrats, has been for Ms. Hochul to dismiss Mr. Cuomo’s top health official, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, for his potential involvement in obscuring the nursing home death toll and stonewalling health data from the Legislature last year.Ms. Hochul has not said whether she would retain Dr. Zucker, saying only that she would take up to 45 days to interview Mr. Cuomo’s cabinet officials before making a determination. The decision is complicated by the thorny optics of removing a health commissioner during a pandemic and the practical concerns of finding a replacement since so many health officials have left the state Health Department in recent months.For his part, Dr. Zucker said this week that he was “thrilled” to have Ms. Hochul as governor, suggesting that he was constrained under Mr. Cuomo from publicly disclosing certain death data.“Her leadership allowing me and all of D.O.H. to get the data out is refreshing,” Dr. Zucker said on Thursday. “Her commitment, as she has said, to transparency is revitalizing.”Another holdout from the Cuomo administration is his budget director, Robert Mujica, a close ally of Mr. Cuomo’s who has helmed the state’s finances with an iron grip since 2016 and would play a crucial role as Ms. Hochul prepares to assemble her first state budget.Mr. Mujica is lauded by supporters for his experience and competence, but derided by critics for the opaque manner in which they say he has managed the state’s coffers. His influence in state government is far-reaching: He sits on more than 30 state boards, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.It remains unclear whether Mr. Mujica will remain in the Hochul administration, but he has worked closely with some of Ms. Hochul’s recently recruited staffers, including her transition director, Marissa Shorenstein, and her counsel, Elizabeth Fine.State Senator Jessica Ramos, a Democrat from Queens, who has met with Ms. Hochul three times since Mr. Cuomo announced his resignation, including at a private meeting Ms. Hochul held with Latino legislators on Thursday, said Ms. Hochul had a “completely different and distinct approach to government.”The outreach by Ms. Hochul, who represented a Republican-leaning district in Congress and is regarded as a Democratic centrist, was noteworthy.“That goes to show, because, ideologically, I would argue I’m actually much more closely aligned with Cuomo than Hochul,” said Ms. Ramos, a member of the party’s left wing. “Unfortunately, her predecessor had chosen to isolate himself and hardly interacted with New Yorkers, whereas Kathy Hochul clearly likes people, and wants to talk to people and walks our streets to do so.”Before Ms. Hochul ordered a universal mask mandate in schools statewide — a divisive issue that Mr. Cuomo was seen as wanting to avoid and had left up to school districts — she held an hourlong Zoom meeting to hear from teachers, school boards, superintendents and parent-teacher associations statewide.Andrew Pallotta, president of the New York State United Teachers union, who was on the call, said Ms. Hochul had “opened up lines of communication,” describing her approach as “a breath of fresh air.”“You can’t ask for more,” Mr. Pallotta said. “It wasn’t, ‘Let me get somebody to be on this call, and then they’ll get back to me and we’ll put 12 committees together.’ It wasn’t that way at all. It was, ‘Here’s the person leading the state actually listening and responding.’”That sentiment was echoed by some county executives, who often learned about Mr. Cuomo’s coronavirus directives through his televised briefings rather than directly from his office.Anthony J. Picente Jr., the executive of Oneida County, who crossed party lines to endorse Mr. Cuomo in 2014, said the consensus among his colleagues was that there would be a “better relationship, at least in terms of communication and openness.”“We carry out what the state Health Department requires and yet were never consulted, never talked to, never a part of the overall discussions and left to pick up the pieces,” he said. “I really believe that’s not going to be the case with Governor Hochul.”Taken together, Ms. Hochul’s first moves as governor could notch her short-term policy wins, earn her good will among stakeholders and differentiate her from Mr. Cuomo to voters still getting to know her, especially as she prepares to run for governor next year.But while union leaders and legislative leaders have welcomed Ms. Hochul’s self-described collaborative approach, some government watchdogs have been more skeptical, expressing cautious optimism while waiting to see just how far Ms. Hochul will go to root out graft in Albany.“It’s a good start,” Mr. Kaehny, the government watchdog director, said. “But everything she’s doing is building up for the June 2022 primary and we’re seeing things through that prism.”Republicans, including one of their leading candidates for governor, Representative Lee Zeldin, have been less forgiving. They have sought to directly link Ms. Hochul to Mr. Cuomo’s cloud of scandals, arguing that it was disingenuous of her to distance herself from him after promoting and supporting his agenda as his second in command.“Ms. Hochul needs to look as though she’s ushering in a new era in Albany, but there will be reminders all along the way that she was, at least ostensibly, Andrew Cuomo’s partner in government for going on seven years,” said William F. B. O’Reilly, a Republican political consultant in New York. “His musk won’t dissipate quickly.”The business community appears encouraged by the team Ms. Hochul has so far assembled. Karen Persichilli Keogh, her top aide, who most recently worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Ms. Fine, who advised President Bill Clinton, are both seasoned political hands with experience in New York and Washington.“She has hit the ground running, acting like a governor, not a politician, which is what we need right now,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business lobbying group. “Yes, a clean break from Cuomo, but continuity where it is necessary for government to meet the health and economic challenges.” More