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      Europe’s Social Democrats Show Signs of Life, but France Poses a Roadblock

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      Center-left parties have won a string of victories, capped by Olaf Scholz’s win in Germany. Yet, France’s struggling Socialists threaten hopes for a broader social democratic revival. PARIS — For France’s venerable Socialist Party, languishing at 4 percent support ahead of next year’s presidential elections, news of a surprise win last Sunday by its center-left counterpart in Germany offered a glimmer of hope.The slim victory by Olaf Scholz and Germany’s Social Democratic Party, along with the expected return to power of Norway’s Labor Party following a recent win, have underscored the recent success of Europe’s long-embattled social democrats. If Mr. Scholz succeeds in forming a government, social democrats in Europe’s most powerful nation will join center-left governments in Spain, Portugal and the Nordic nations of Sweden, Denmark and Finland, as well as Norway.Attention will then turn to France, where presidential elections are scheduled for next April. But in France, experts say, the social democrats’ hopes of a continent-wide revival are likely to dim.Socialist Party officials were nevertheless quick to seize on the German results as a sign that Europe’s political tides may be turning.“Never assume the battle’s already lost,’’ the Socialists’ leader, Olivier Faure, said in a Twitter post. The party’s presidential candidate, Anne Hidalgo, noted that Mr. Scholz “had beaten the odds’’ thanks to policies common to both social democratic parties.But it will take more than that to reverse the fortunes of a party that not so long ago utterly dominated French politics.After months of hinting that she would run for president, Ms. Hidalgo, 62, the second-term mayor of Paris, finally announced her candidacy in mid-September. But instead of getting an expected bounce in the polls, her approval ratings have drifted lower.Her polling is now far below not only the two favorites to meet in a showdown — President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, of the far-right National Rally — but also well below candidates from the center-right and Éric Zemmour, a writer and TV star known for his far-right views, who is not yet an official candidate.Ms. Hidalgo and President Emmanuel Macron of France in Paris this month. Mr. Macron has tried to draw voters from the left, weakening the Socialists’ position. Pool photo by Ludovic MarinOn the other side of the political spectrum, she trails the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon and is neck and neck with the newly designated presidential candidate of the Greens, Yannick Jadot, polls show.The Socialists’ collapse is even more noteworthy because, less than a decade ago under the Socialist President François Hollande, the party controlled the Élysée Palace, both chambers of Parliament, a majority of big cities and nearly all the regions.“Nine years ago, this party held all the cards,’’ said Pascal Delwit, a political scientist specializing in social democracy at the Free University of Brussels. “Nine years later, it has none.’’In what became a symbol of its fall, the Socialist Party had to abandon its longtime headquarters, in one of the toniest neighborhoods of Paris, for cheaper real estate in a suburb, or banlieue, that many members never bothered visiting.Alain Bergounioux, a historian who is an expert on the Socialist Party, said that beyond crumbling at the ballot box, Socialists seem to have lost the ability to push forward their ideas and themes in a fast-moving political landscape.“They really don’t influence the national debate any longer, as public opinion has shifted to the right,’’ Mr. Bergounioux said.He added, “If it was premature to say that social democracy was dead, it would be overstating it to say that there is a renaissance.’’Seven months before the presidential elections, issues dear to the right — like immigration, crime and national identity — are dominating the political discourse. While Mr. Macron ran as a centrist in 2017, he has tacked right in a bid for the biggest slice of the electorate.The focus on these themes has only increased in recent weeks, with the intense news media attention on a possible candidacy by Mr. Zemmour. Styling himself as a Trump-like populist outsider, he has been visiting different regions on a book tour that has doubled as a campaign. A poll released this week showed that his support among potential voters in the first round of the elections has kept climbing, to 13 percent, or just three percentage points below Ms. Le Pen.Marine Le Pen at a National Rally event in Frejus in September.Daniel Cole/Associated PressFrance is an extreme, though revealing, example of the problems afflicting social democratic parties across Europe, experts say.While social democratic parties have lost support nearly everywhere amid the political fragmentation on the continent, France’s Socialist Party was also decimated by Mr. Macron’s successful creation of his centrist La République en Marche party. Some Socialist leaders abandoned their old party to join Mr. Macron, who had served as Mr. Hollande’s economy minister. In forming his government, Mr. Macron also poached from the center-right, which was less weakened than the center-left and remains a force in French politics.For decades, social democratic parties appealed to a core base of unionized, industrial workers and urban professionals with a vision of social justice and an equitable economy.But many longtime French supporters felt betrayed by Mr. Hollande’s business-friendly policies as French Socialists, like their counterparts elsewhere, were unable to protect their traditional base from globalization.While French Socialists hark back to their traditional values and now emphasize their commitment to the environment, their vision for society lacks a “strong spine,’’ Mr. Bergounioux said. In France, like elsewhere, the constituencies supporting social democratic parties tend to be made up of “aging, loyal voters who have voted for them their entire lives,’’ Mr. Delwit said.In Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the recent success of social democratic parties rested on successful jockeying — and not on the attraction of a fresh social democratic vision, experts said.Ernst Stetter, a member of the Social Democratic Party in Germany and former secretary general of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, an umbrella group of social democratic think tanks across the continent, said the party’s victory last Sunday was “first and foremost a strategic victory” by Mr. Scholz.As vice chancellor and finance minister in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Scholz offered “change in continuity by offering a little bit more social programs, a little bit more on the environment and continuity in European and international affairs,’’ said Mr. Stetter, who is also an analyst at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès research institute in Paris.Narrow as it was, Mr. Scholz’s victory represented “the center of the Social Democratic Party, not the left,’’ said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a French-German politician and former Green member of the European Parliament.Olaf Scholz and Ms. Hidalgo at a campaign event for Germany’s Social Democratic Party in  Cologne, Germany, this month. The French Socialists have been reassured by Mr. Scholz’s victory in last month’s election, but their chances of matching his victory appear slim.Uta Wagner/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSocialists in Spain, Portugal and the Nordic nations also owed their success to responding to local needs, not a common vision of social democracy, Mr. Cohn-Bendit said.“On immigration policy, social democrats in Denmark are to the right of many centrist parties,’’ Mr. Cohn-Bendit said, referring to a series of hard-line immigration measures adopted by Denmark’s Social Democrats.Following years of a rise in right-wing parties, social democrats now lead governments in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and are poised to do so in Norway. But their hold on power is far more tenuous than in the past.In Norway, the Labor Party, led by Jonas Gahr Stoere, came in first in last month’s parliamentary election, but won only a little over a quarter of the total seats, one of the party’s lowest scores on record. After talks to form a broad center-left coalition failed in recent days, Mr. Stoere is now expected to become prime minister of a minority government.“There isn’t a new definition yet of what social democracy could be in today’s world,’’ Mr. Cohn-Bendit said.Mr. Stetter said he, too, was skeptical of a broad revival of social democracy. Over the past decade, social democrats had worked unsuccessfully for a revival under the banner of the “Next Left,’’ he said.Still, Mr. Stetter said he hoped that last Sunday’s election results in Germany could presage positive developments for social democrats in Europe.“If Scholz succeeds in forming a government as a social democratic chancellor, there would be a dynamic force at the heart of Europe, and that could give energy to the French Socialist Party in the campaign period before the presidential elections in April,’’ Mr. Stetter. “We have to remain optimistic.’’Members of Jeunes Socialistes, the youth organisation of the Socialist Party, at an event in August. European socialist parties tend to rely heavily on aging voters, putting them on the wrong side of the demographic tide.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times More

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      Ex-President Sarkozy Convicted for Campaign Spending Violations

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      Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of illegally financing his 2012 presidential bid by exceeding France’s strict electoral rules and sentenced to a year of house arrest. He said he would appeal.PARIS — A French court on Thursday sentenced Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, to a year of house arrest for illegally financing his failed 2012 re-election campaign by wildly exceeding France’s strict electoral spending limits.Mr. Sarkozy, 66, was president from 2007 to 2012. Though he is no longer active in politics and continues to be dogged by multiple legal entanglements, he is still an influential voice on the French right. Shortly after the verdict, his lawyer announced that Mr. Sarkozy would appeal the conviction, which puts the sentence on hold and leaves him free.“President Sarkozy never asked to be treated better than anyone else, but there is no reason he should be treated any worse,” the lawyer, Thierry Herzog, told reporters outside the courtroom in Paris.It was the second of several legal cases pending for Mr. Sarkozy to end with a conviction in recent months, and the first time he was convicted for actions that he undertook while in office, further threatening to tarnish his legacy.In March, he became the first former president in France’s recent history to be sentenced to actual jail time after he was convicted on charges of corruption and influence peddling for trying to illegally obtain information from a judge on a legal case against him.Mr. Sarkozy has appealed that conviction as well, and he is unlikely to spend time behind bars in the near future. Appeals could take years to go through the courts, and even if Thursday’s sentence is upheld, the court that convicted Mr. Sarkozy said he would be able to serve it at home with an electronic monitoring bracelet.Still, Mr. Sarkozy is now only the second former president in France’s modern history to be convicted of a crime — Jacques Chirac was found guilty in 2011 of embezzling and misusing public funds when he was mayor of Paris.The verdict against Mr. Sarkozy on Thursday came after a yearslong investigation and a trial in May and June, both of which focused on his 2012 re-election campaign and on France’s stringent electoral rules.Under French law, spending on electoral campaigns is capped to ensure candidates compete on a level playing field. In 2012, the limit for presidential campaigns, per candidate, was about €16.8 million, or about $19.7 million, in the first round of the elections, and about €5.7 million, or about $6.7 million, on top of that in the second round for the two top vote-getters, who included Mr. Sarkozy.But suspicions that his campaign had exceeded those limits arose after the election. Prosecutors began an investigation in 2014, causing turmoil within Mr. Sarkozy’s political party.Ultimately, prosecutors determined that the campaign had spent at least €42 million, or about $50 million — almost twice the legal limit.The case became known as the Bygmalion affair, named for the public relations and event planning company suspected of issuing false invoices to Mr. Sarkozy’s political party for rallies that were actually for Mr. Sarkozy’s presidential campaign. Prosecutors argued that the goal of the fraud was to hide the overspending from the electoral authorities.The former head of the Bygmalion subsidiary Event & Cie, Franck Attal, at the Paris courthouse on Thursday.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Sarkozy has denied being aware of any false billing, and he was not charged with wrongdoing in that regard. Instead, the charges of illegal campaign financing relate only to the overspending, for which he has already paid a fine.During the trial, Mr. Sarkozy rejected the prosecution’s portrayal of a lavish campaign, suggesting that the false invoices had been used instead to enrich Bygmalion — led at the time by close friends of Jean-François Copé, the president of Mr. Sarkozy’s party and one of the former leader’s political rivals.Mr. Sarkozy also claimed that in 2012 he had been extremely busy with his presidential duties and had barely been involved with the campaign’s budgeting and logistics.“I was president, head of the Group of 20, and in the campaign, I was directing political strategy,” Mr. Sarkozy told the court in June. “Organizing rallies, the sound systems, the lighting — I had better things to do.”But prosecutors asserted — and the court agreed — that Mr. Sarkozy had neglected warnings from his aides, especially over a profusion of campaign events, some of them expensive, large-scale rallies. As a veteran politician with years of experience, they argued, he could not have ignored signs that spending was out of control.“This was not his first electoral campaign,” the court noted in its ruling.Jerome Lavrilleux, the deputy director of Mr. Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign, on Thursday at the courthouse in Paris.Stephane Mahe/ReutersThirteen other people were also accused of involvement in the fraud, including former campaign staff members, party officials, aides close to Mr. Sarkozy and former executives at Bygmalion.All were convicted on Thursday and handed prison sentences ranging from two years to three and a half years — some of that time suspended and some of it under house arrest. Several of the accused also received fines.But prosecutors concluded that there was not enough evidence to determine who had masterminded the false billing scheme in the first place.Mr. Sarkozy has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the web of legal cases that has plagued him since he left office. Some of them have been dropped, including one in which he was accused of manipulating the heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics fortune into financing his 2007 presidential run.But Mr. Sarkozy is still dogged by accusations that his campaign received illegal financing from the government of the Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who died in 2011. The investigation into those accusations, the most serious one against him to date, is still continuing.Despite a failed comeback attempt in 2016, Mr. Sarkozy is still popular with the base of his conservative party, Les Républicains, which has yet to settle on a candidate for the 2022 presidential elections. Mr. Sarkozy’s endorsement is coveted by many of those jockeying for the position.Christian Jacob, the head of Les Républicains, called the conviction “shocking” and said Mr. Sarkozy had his party’s full support.“I want to express, in my name and in the name of Les Républicains, our affection, our support for Nicolas Sarkozy and our immense pride of having had him as President of the Republic,” Mr. Jacob said on Twitter.Constant Méheut More

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      Kathy Hochul Aims to Raise $25 Million as Likely Rivals Eye Challenges

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      Governor Hochul hopes to raise the sum for her primary campaign next year, but her recent — and unexpected — ascension has left her little time to hit that goal.Even for the governor of one of the nation’s largest states, it was a whirlwind few days. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York greeted President Biden, bumped fists with the prime minister of Ireland, shook hands with Jay-Z and escorted British royalty though the World Trade Center site.But perhaps the highest-stakes meeting for the governor’s political future last week took place not at the United Nations General Assembly or the State Capitol, but inside an imposing limestone mansion near Central Park after business hours last Wednesday.Assembled inside were nearly two dozen of New York’s best-connected real estate developers, businessmen and lobbyists — the kind of deep-pocketed donors whose support has been crucial to winning statewide campaigns.There was John Catsimatidis, the Republican grocery store and oil refining magnate; Scott Rechler, whose company owns iconic New York skyscrapers; Alfonse M. D’Amato, a former Republican senator turned lobbyist; and Dennis Mehiel, a cardboard baron who played host for the evening.Mr. Catsimatidis described the fund-raising dinner, where Ms. Hochul raised some $200,000, as a “high-end business get-together to discuss not losing any more people from New York.”But for the new governor and the attendees paying between $10,000 and $25,000 to dine on chicken and salmon with her, the evening also represented something else: the beginning of a delicate courtship that could have huge consequences in next year’s race for governor.Barely a month after she unexpectedly ascended to the governor’s office after Andrew M. Cuomo’s resignation, Ms. Hochul is quietly revving up an aggressive fund-raising apparatus, seeking to build a formidable financial advantage — at least $10 million in donations by year’s end and as much as $25 million by next summer, donors and advisers say — to discourage or defeat potential rivals in what may be a fierce Democratic primary next year.The governor’s political ramp-up, which has involved hiring a campaign manager and other senior aides, has not gone unnoticed. Several of her potential opponents have begun more assertively positioning themselves in recent days, with their allies acknowledging that the longer they wait, the stronger Ms. Hochul may be.John Catsimatidis was among nearly two dozen wealthy donors who recently attended a fund-raising dinner for Governor Hochul.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJumaane D. Williams, the left-wing New York City public advocate, made the first public move on Tuesday, launching an exploratory committee. Mayor Bill de Blasio has had conversations with allies about the race; his longtime pollster recently conducted a survey aiming to assess his appeal beyond New York City, and on Tuesday, he told reporters, “I intend to stay in public service” after his second term concludes at the end of the year. Representative Thomas Suozzi, who represents parts of Long Island and Queens, has maintained an active fund-raising schedule, and his team has begun to think through who could staff a potential campaign should he decide to run.But for donors, political consultants and some of the possible candidates, the biggest open question is whether Attorney General Letitia James will enter the contest.Ms. James, who has deep ties across New York City and the potential to forge a diverse coalition, has sounded out party donors and elected officials about the race in recent weeks, leaving the impression that she is gauging possible support for a bid. Some of her allies have begun to sound increasingly confident about the likelihood of a run.And in New York City on Wednesday, Ms. James addressed a room of powerful civic, business and political leaders. She vigorously defended her investigation into Mr. Cuomo, which led to his resignation; she described her career trajectory and her own vision for the state, and, to laughter and applause, dodged a question about her political future.Ms. James has not historically had a reputation as a prolific fund-raiser. But people close to her argue that the nature of her potential candidacy — she could become America’s first Black female governor — would generate national interest, as Stacey Abrams’s run for governor of Georgia did in 2018.“It would be the first time in the history of the United States that we would have an African American woman as a governor — that I think would be very valuable in this country,” said Alan Rubin, a lobbyist in New York City who knows Ms. James and would back her if she ran. “The people who like her would support her a great deal in that effort. So I don’t think there would be difficulty in raising money.”Ms. James is raising money for her re-election as attorney general, including from wealthy donors, but she could transfer that money to another statewide account. She reported having $1.6 million in cash on hand in her most recent campaign filing in July; Ms. Hochul reported having $1.75 million in early August.Some allies of the state attorney general, Letitia James, have been bullish about her potential candidacy for governor.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe uncertainty of Ms. James’s status has many of the state’s most prolific donors sitting on the sidelines, or hedging bets with smaller checks while they wait to get a better sense of the field and Ms. Hochul herself. Though she was widely respected as lieutenant governor, Ms. Hochul — a ubiquitous presence at groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings for almost a decade — has only now begun to wield decision-making power in Albany, where she has won praise for taking decisive steps to implement vaccine mandates announced by her predecessor and extend the state’s eviction moratorium.“We are absolutely waiting and seeing,” said John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, which gave close to half a million dollars to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns, according to public election records, before a bitter falling out. “When we talk about Tish, we are talking about someone who has a solid record of supporting the trade workers unions and the labor movement,” he said. “Kathy Hochul has made promises that she is a true blue supporter of workers, but we will see if that’s true.”Carlo A. Scissura, the head of the New York Building Congress, said after a recent Zoom meeting with Ms. Hochul that many of the large construction and development firms his organization represents would be inclined to support her if she maintained her predecessor’s focus on large capital projects, like the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan and Kennedy Airport in Queens.“If the commitment to all of these things continues, then I think she’s got an opportunity to be a great governor,” he said. “If she chooses to remove projects or change projects, then people will start questioning where the priorities are.”Ms. Hochul is trying to force their hands, planning a fund-raising blitz in the weeks ahead, part of an intense schedule that has also been packed with public events.Invitations have gone out for an October event hosted by the state and city chapters of the building and construction trades councils, with a minimum donation of $5,000 from a “supporter” and $25,000 from a “friend.”Mercury Public Affairs, a lobbying and public relations firm that has a large political practice, is planning another fund-raiser for Ms. Hochul in October. Tickets start at $15,000, and organizers are hopeful it will net a total in the six figures, according to people familiar with the planning. Other fund-raisers are in the works.Earlier stops in August took Ms. Hochul to the Hamptons and Buffalo, where she lives and where there was so much interest in the run-up to her swearing-in that organizers had to turn one fund-raiser into two: an invitation-only cocktail hour honoring her birthday that cost $2,500 to attend and a larger party at a picnic ground that drew hundreds paying $50 and up.The strategy certainly carries risk. Many of her donors have pressing business before the state as she nears her first budget cycle as governor, including union contract negotiations, the fate of large capital projects initiated by Mr. Cuomo and the looming expiration of a common subsidy for housing developers.Ms. Hochul, who took office pledging to prioritize “changing the culture of Albany,” could quickly expose herself to the kind of unseemly alliances and potential conflicts that alienate many voters and some leaders of her own party.“For her to maximize her revenue as quickly as possible means she will be dealing with and talking with all kinds of people who want something from her,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of the good governance group Reinvent Albany. “That is a very slippery slope and the time pressure makes it much harder for her to manage that kind of relationship.”Meredith Kelly, a campaign adviser to Ms. Hochul, said that the governor had spent most of her first month in office focused on policy and governance related to Covid-19 and the destruction caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.“Of course, Governor Hochul is also setting up a strong, well-funded campaign to win in 2022, and she is grateful for the outpouring of support she has received thus far,” Ms. Kelly said.Ms. Hochul greeted Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, at One World Observatory last week.Roy Rochlin/Getty ImagesMr. Cuomo set an extraordinary fund-raising standard for candidates running for governor, raising more than $135 million — most of it from large donors — in three campaigns. Even now, he is sitting on an $18 million war chest, according to the most recent filings, that he could deploy to meddle in the race or try to exact revenge on Ms. James for investigating his harassment and mistreatment of women, including some who worked for him.So far, Ms. Hochul appears to be emulating Mr. Cuomo’s fund-raising approach — though certainly not his domineering style — by primarily relying on donors with large checkbooks rather than the kind of grass-roots contributors who chip in $5 or $25. But her campaign has recently hired Authentic Campaigns, a consulting firm specializing in small-donor online donations that has worked for Mr. Biden and other prominent Democrats, to try to change that.“People gave Andrew money, but nobody liked him,” said Jeffrey Gural, chairman of a large real estate company who gave Mr. Cuomo more than $150,000 over the years before an acrimonious split. “You gave him money because you were afraid of him, as simple as that.”Ms. Hochul, Mr. Gural said, was much more accessible, professional and productive.He is not the only one of Mr. Cuomo’s major backers Ms. Hochul is courting. Among the guests Wednesday night at the 10,000-square-foot home of Mr. Mehiel, himself a former Cuomo donor, were a handful of the former governor’s biggest supporters, including Mr. Rechler and Lester Petracca, another real estate developer.The governor spoke in detail about reducing crime, increasing vaccination rates and restarting the city’s economy after 18 months of being rattled by the coronavirus, attendees said.She also made clear that she intended to work closely with Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee for New York City mayor who is virtually certain to win November’s general election, in what would be a major shift after years of an extraordinarily toxic relationship between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio.Some in the crowd appeared ready for a reset.“Let’s see her actions — she deserves a break to do the right job for all New Yorkers,” said Mr. Catsimatidis, before adding a dose of Empire State realpolitik: “You know why people do fund-raisers? When they call, they want their phone calls returned.”Dana Rubinstein More

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      Japan Faces Big Problems. Its Next Leader Offers Few Bold Solutions.

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      The country’s governing party, with a stranglehold on power, bucked the wishes of the public to select a moderate mainstay.TOKYO — With the world’s oldest population, rapidly declining births, gargantuan public debt and increasingly damaging natural disasters fueled by climate change, Japan faces deep-rooted challenges that the longstanding governing party has failed to tackle.Yet in choosing a new prime minister on Wednesday, the Liberal Democratic Party elected the candidate least likely to offer bold solutions.The party’s elite power brokers chose Fumio Kishida, 64, a stalwart moderate, in a runoff election for the leadership, seeming to disregard the public’s preference for a maverick challenger. In doing so, they anointed a politician with little to distinguish him from the unpopular departing leader, Yoshihide Suga, or his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.Elders in the party, which has had a near monopoly on power in the decades since World War II, made their choice confident that, with a weak political opposition and low voter turnout, they would face little chance of losing a general election later this year. So, largely insulated from voter pressure, they opted for a predictable former foreign minister who has learned to control any impulse to stray from the mainstream party platform.“In a sense, you are ignoring the voice of the rank and file in order to get somebody the party bosses are more comfortable with,” said Jeff Kingston, the director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo.The final results of the leadership runoff election between Mr. Kishida and Taro Kono on Wednesday.Pool photo by Carl CourtBut choosing a leader who lacks popular support carries the risk of a backlash that leaves the party weaker after the election and makes Mr. Kishida’s job harder as the country slowly emerges from six months of pandemic restrictions that have battered the economy.Mr. Kishida will need to win the public’s trust to show that he is not just a party insider, said Kristi Govella, the deputy director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.“If challenges start to arise,” she said, “we could see his approval ratings decrease very quickly because he is starting from a point of relatively modest support.”Mr. Kishida was one of four candidates who vied for the leadership post in an unusually close race that went to a runoff between him and Taro Kono, an outspoken nonconformist whose common touch has made him popular with the public and with rank-and-file party members. Mr. Kishida prevailed in the second round of voting, in which ballots cast by members of Parliament held greater weight.He will become prime minister when Parliament holds a special session next week, and will then lead the party into the general election, which must be held by November.In his victory speech on Wednesday, Mr. Kishida acknowledged the challenges he faces. “We have mountains of important issues that lie ahead in Japan’s future,” he said.They loom both at home and abroad. Mr. Kishida faces mounting tensions in the region as China has grown increasingly aggressive and North Korea has started testing ballistic missiles again. Taiwan is seeking membership in a multilateral trade pact that Japan helped negotiate, and Mr. Kishida may have to help finesse a decision on how to accept the self-governed island into the group without angering China.As a former foreign minister, Mr. Kishida may have an easier time managing his international portfolio. Most analysts expect that he will maintain a strong relationship with the United States and continue to build on alliances with Australia and India to create a bulwark against China.“We have mountains of important issues that lie ahead in Japan’s future,” Mr. Kishida said after his election on Wednesday.Pool photo by Du XiaoyiBut on the domestic front, he is mostly offering a continuation of Mr. Abe’s economic policies, which have failed to cure the country’s stagnation. Income inequality is rising as fewer workers benefit from Japan’s vaunted system of lifetime employment — a reality reflected in Mr. Kishida’s campaign promise of a “new capitalism” that encourages companies to share more profits with middle-class workers.“Japan’s accumulated debt is growing, and the gap between rich and poor is growing,” said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo. “I don’t think even a genius can tackle this.”On the pandemic, Mr. Kishida may initially escape some of the pressures that felled Mr. Suga, as the vaccine rollout has gathered momentum and close to 60 percent of the public is now inoculated. But Mr. Kishida has offered few concrete policies to address other issues like aging, population decline or climate change.In a magazine questionnaire, he said that he needed “scientific verification” that human activities were causing global warming, saying, “I think that’s the case to some extent.”Given the enduring power of the right flank of the Liberal Democratic Party, despite its minority standing in the party, Mr. Kishida closed what daylight he had with these power brokers during the campaign.He had previously gained a reputation as being more dovish than the influential right wing led by Mr. Abe, but during the leadership race, he expressed a hawkish stance toward China. As a parliamentary representative from Hiroshima, Mr. Kishida has opposed nuclear weapons, but he has made clear his support for restarting Japan’s nuclear power plants, which have been idled since the triple meltdown in Fukushima 10 years ago.And he toned down his support for overhauling a law requiring married couples to share a surname for legal purposes and declared that he would not endorse same-sex marriage, going against public sentiment but hewing to the views of the party’s conservative elite.“I think Kishida knows how he won, and it was not by appealing to the general public, it was not by running as a liberal, but courting support to his right,” said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “So what that’s going to mean for the composition of his cabinet and his priorities, and what his party’s platform ends up looking like, means he could end up being pulled in a few different directions.”Fumio Kishida, second from the right in the back row, in 1965 at the elementary school he attended in Queens.The Office of Fumio Kishida.In many respects, Wednesday’s election represented a referendum on the lasting clout of Mr. Abe, who resigned last fall because of ill health. He had led the party for eight consecutive years, a remarkable stint given Japan’s history of revolving-door prime ministers. When he stepped down, the party chose Mr. Suga, who had served as Mr. Abe’s chief cabinet secretary, to extend his boss’s legacy.But over the past year, the public grew increasingly disillusioned with Mr. Suga, who lacked charisma and failed to connect with average voters. Although Mr. Abe backed Sanae Takaichi — a hard-line conservative who was seeking to become Japan’s first female prime minister — to revitalize his base in the party’s far right, analysts and other lawmakers said he helped steer support to Mr. Kishida in the runoff.As a result, Mr. Kishida may end up beholden to his predecessor.“Kishida cannot go against what Abe wants,” said Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister who challenged Mr. Abe for the party leadership twice and withdrew from running in the leadership election this month to support Mr. Kono.“I am not sure I would use the word ‘puppet,’ but maybe he is a puppet?” Mr. Ishiba added. “What is clear is he depends on Abe’s influence.”The Japan News printed an extra edition on Wednesday after the election of Mr. Kishida.Philip Fong/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDuring the campaign for the party leadership, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge some dissatisfaction with the Abe era with his talk of a “new capitalism.” In doing so, he followed a familiar template within the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been adept at adopting policies first introduced by the opposition in order to keep voters assuaged.“That’s one of the reasons why they have maintained such longevity as a party,” said Saori N. Katada, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. “Kishida is definitely taking that card and running with it.”Makiko Inoue More

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      What You Missed: Virginia Governor’s Debate

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      What You Missed: Virginia Governor’s DebateJonathan Martin📍Reporting from WashingtonAt one point, Youngkin said, “The only person invoking Trump is you.” But the Republican tried to defuse McAuliffe’s attack by distancing himself from Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, saying that “there wasn’t material fraud” and that the vote had been “certifiably fair.”Youngkin also criticized McAuliffe’s record as governor on the economy and crime, and joked about how often the Democrat would cite Trump. More

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      Do Germany’s Election Results Signal a Left Turn for Europe?

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      It is too early to tell, but the results certainly illustrate a fragmentation in politics and the growing influence of personalities.Sunday’s election in Germany ended in victory for the country’s Social Democratic Party and its candidate, Olaf Scholz. It was a remarkable comeback for a center-left party, which like many of its counterparts across Europe has been bleeding support at the ballot box for the past decade or more.So the question immediately arises whether Mr. Scholz’s victory in Germany may be a harbinger of revival more broadly for the center-left parties that were once mainstays of the continent’s politics.Inside Germany, Mr. Scholz is preparing for negotiations to form a left-leaning coalition government with the Greens and the libertarian Free Democrats. After his centrist campaign, just how left-leaning remains an open question. And nothing is guaranteed: His conservative rival, who lost by just 1.6 percentage points, has not conceded and also wants to try to form a coalition.Though the results have thrown Mr. Scholz’s conservative opponents into disarray, the landscape for the center left also remains challenging. Elsewhere in Europe, many center-left parties have watched their share of votes erode as their traditional base among unionized, industrial workers disappears and as political blocs splinter into an array of smaller parties.But after a surge among right-wing populists in recent years, there are some signs that the political pendulum may be poised to swing back. Here is a look at the factors that will influence whether a center-left revival is possible.Big-tent parties on both sides have shrunk.The German elections have cast in sharp relief the continuation of a trend that was already visible across the continent: fragmentation and volatility in political support.Only three decades ago, Germany’s two leading parties garnered over 80 percent of the vote in a national election. On Sunday, the Social Democrats received just 25.7 percent, while the Christian Democrats, together with their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, received 24.1 percent — calling into question their legitimacy as “Volkspartei” or big-tent parties that represent all elements of society.Inside a polling station, a gym at a secondary school in Berlin Neukölln, on Sunday.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesThe votes being lost by the once-dominant parties are going to parties with more narrowly defined positions — whether the Greens, animated by environmental issues, or the libertarian Free Democratic Party. If the German vote were broken down by traditional notions of “right” and “left,” it would be nearly evenly divided, with some 45 percent on each side.On the eve of the coronavirus pandemic, a survey of 14 European Union countries in 2019 by the Pew Research Center found that few voters expressed positive views of political parties. Only six out of nearly 60 were seen favorably by more than 50 percent of the populations in their countries. Populist parties across Europe also received largely poor reviews.The left has a lot of recovering to do.It remains to be seen whether the Social Democrats in Germany will be able to lead a governing coalition. But if they do, they will join a relatively small club.Of the 27 member states in the European Union, only Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Malta have distinctly center-left governments.The old voting coalitions that empowered the center-left across the continent after 1945 included industrial workers, public sector employees and urban professionals. But those groups, driven primarily by class and economic needs, have fragmented.Two decades ago, Tony Blair’s Labour Party cruised to re-election in Britain, promoting center-left policies similar to those of President Bill Clinton. Now, Labour has been out of power for more than a decade, and in recent elections it has suffered stinging losses in working-class parts of England where its support once ran deep.In France, the center-left Socialist Party has never recovered from the unpopular presidency of François Hollande and its disastrous performance in the subsequent elections. Since then, France has moved increasingly to the right, with support for the Socialists and other left-leaning parties shrinking.With an eye toward presidential elections next April, President Emmanuel Macron, who ran as a centrist in 2017, has been courting voters on the right. Polls show that he and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, are the two favorites to make it out of the first round and meet in a runoff.President Emmanuel Macron of France speaking at a police academy in Roubaix this month.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnne Hidalgo, the Paris mayor and Socialist presidential hopeful, has been losing support since declaring her candidacy early this month. According to a poll released last Thursday, only 4 percent of potential voters said they would support her in the first round next April.And ‘left’ is not what it used to be.In the aftermath of World War II, as money flooded into Europe through the Marshall Plan and industry boomed, those who opposed Communism but were worried that capitalism could stoke instability and inequality came together under a broad umbrella of center-left parties.They favored strong trade unions and welfare states with generous education and health care systems.In Germany, as in other countries, the lines between the center left and the center right began to fade some time ago.But if there is one animating issue for many voters on the left and the right, it is the role that the European Union should play in the governance of nations.Many far-right parties have won support by casting Brussels as a regulatory overlord stripping sovereignty from the union’s member states. Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, by contrast, are very pro-European Union — yet have been wary of deepening some fiscal ties inside the bloc. Many Social Democrats argue, however, that the European Union must be strengthened through deeper integration.Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the top E.U. official Ursula von der Leyen and Mr. Macron during economic rescue discussions in Brussels in 2020.Pool photo by Francisco SecoEurope’s bonds were tested in the pandemic, and that process may have ultimately helped the Social Democrats as Germany set aside its traditional abhorrence of shared E.U. debt to unleash emergency spending.It was a plan that Mr. Scholz, who is Germany’s finance minister, drew up with his French counterpart. Ms. Merkel, who approved the deal, has since repeatedly pointed out was a one-off.Mr. Scholz’s central role in crafting the deal put him squarely on the side of Germans in favor of ever-tighter connections with their European neighbors.Personality counts for more than ever.Another common denominator in the fragmented European political landscape is that personalities seem to be far more important to voters than traditional parties and the issues they represent.There have always been outsized personalities on the European political stage. But whether it was Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl or Willy Brandt, they were more often than not guided by a set of ideological principles.The failure of the leading political parties to address the problems confronting voters has led to a new generation of leaders who position themselves as iconoclasts. Mr. Macron in France and Boris Johnson in Britain could hardly be more different. But both are opportunistic, flout convention and have crafted larger-than-life personas to command public attention. So far, voters have rewarded them.Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week.Pool photo by Eduardo MunozAngela Merkel was their polar opposite, a study in staid reticence who transcended ideological differences by exuding stability. Her party’s candidate, Armin Laschet, couldn’t convince voters that he was her natural heir, which opened the door to Mr. Scholz, who managed to cast himself as the most Merkel-like candidate — despite being in another party.Norimitsu Onishi More

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      German Election Leaves Merkel’s Conservatives in Disarray

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      Sunday’s defeat has revealed a gasping conservative party. But what that means for Germany’s future is not clear as traditional left-right politics are scrambled.BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel was standing two paces behind Armin Laschet, her party’s candidate to succeed her, stony-faced and with her hands clenched. The first election results had just come in. The conservative camp had collapsed by 9 percentage points, the Social Democrats were winning — and Mr. Laschet was vowing to do “everything” to form the next government.To watch the scene on Sunday night at conservative party headquarters was to watch power melt away in real time.Germany’s once-mighty Christian Democratic Union is not used to losing. Five of eight postwar chancellors were conservatives and the current one is leaving office after 16 years as the most popular politician in the country.But Sunday’s defeat, the worst since the party was founded after World War II, has revealed almost overnight a conservative movement not just in crisis and increasingly open revolt, but one fretting about its long-term survival.“It has raised a question about our very identity,” Norbert Röttgen, a senior member of the Christian Democratic Union told public television ARD on Monday. “The last, the only big people’s party in Germany. And if this continues, then we will no longer be that.”Nearly 2 million voters shifted their support away from the Christian Democrats to the Social Democrats on Sunday, a departure coinciding with the end of Ms. Merkel’s tenure as chancellor.Pool photo by Fabian SommerYet beyond the conservatives’ disarray, what Germany’s messy vote says about the future of the country — and of Europe — is still hard to divine. It was an election filled with paradoxes — and perhaps one in which Germans themselves where unsure what they wanted.The last government included both traditional parties on the center-right and center-left, making it harder to gauge whether Sunday’s vote was in fact a vote for change. Olaf Scholz, the chancellor candidate of the Social Democrats, campaigned against Ms. Merkel’s party — but he has served as Ms. Merkel’s finance minister and vice chancellor for the past four years and in many ways ran as an incumbent. Some of the “change vote” went to him, but much of it was split between the progressive Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats whose economic agendas could not be further apart. Overall, 45.4 percent of votes went to parties on the left — the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party — and 45.9 to those on the right, including the C.D.U., the Free Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany party. But even if not a dramatic shift to the left, the devastation the returns have wrought on Ms. Merkel’s party are plain. With Ms. Merkel leaving, millions of conservative voters are leaving, too. Nearly 2 million voters shifted their support away from the Christian Democrats to the Social Democrats on Sunday, and more than 1 million defected to each of the Free Democrats and the Greens.It was a splintered result that revealed a more fragmented society, one that increasingly defies traditional political labeling. And it appeared to spell a definitive end to the long era of Germany’s traditional “Volks”-parties, catchall “people’s” parties. In their heyday both Social Democrats and Christian Democrats routinely got over 40 percent of the vote. A working-class organized in powerful labor unions voted Social Democrat, while a conservative churchgoing electorate voted Christian Democrat. The Social Democrats lost that status a while ago. With union membership declining and parts of the traditional working-class constituency abandoning the party, its share of the vote roughly halved since late 1990s. The crisis of social democracy has been a familiar theme over the past decade. Olaf Scholz, the candidate for chancellor of the German Social Democrats after initial results in the federal parliamentary elections on Sunday in Berlin.Steffi Loos/Getty ImagesMs. Merkel’s conservatives were insulated from these tectonic shifts for longer. As long as she was in office, her own popularity and appeal reached well beyond a traditional conservative electorate and disguised many of the party’s creeping troubles.Ms. Merkel understood that in a rapidly changing world, where church membership was declining and values evolving, she needed to appeal to voters outside the Christian Democrats’ traditional base to keep winning elections. Since taking office in 2005, she gradually took her party from the conservative right to the center of the political spectrum, not least by co-governing with the Social Democrats for three out of her four terms. It worked, at least for a while. Ms. Merkel kept the party together, analysts say, but in the process she stripped it of its identity. “The C.D.U. is hollowed out: it has no leadership and no program,” said Herfried Münkler, a prominent political scientist and author on German politics. “The essential ingredient has gone — and that is Merkel.”There are many reasons the conservatives performed badly. One was the fact that after 16 years of a conservative-led government, a certain stasis had set in and, particularly among younger voters, a desire for new leadership.Another was the deep unpopularity and poorly run campaign of Mr. Laschet, who staked his political future on winning the chancellery but is losing support by the day even within his own party. Since the election, a simmering civil war inside Germany’s conservative camp between those eager to cling on to power at any price and those ready to concede defeat and regroup in opposition was increasingly coming into focus.While Mr. Laschet is still insisting that he will hold talks with the Greens and the Free Democrats to form a majority coalition, many in his own camp have conceded defeat.Workers took down a campaign poster showing Mr. Laschet in Bad Segeberg near Hamburg, Germany.Fabian Bimmer/ReutersOn Tuesday one of his main internal rivals, Markus Söder, the swaggering and popular governor of Bavaria who narrowly missed landing the nomination himself in April, went so far as to congratulate Mr. Scholz on the election result.“Olaf Scholz has the best chance right now of becoming chancellor,” Mr. Söder told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday. The regional conservative leader in the northern state of Lower Saxony, Bernd Althusmann, told public broadcaster ARD that voters wanted change. “We should now humbly and respectfully accept the will of the voters,” he said.The pressure on Mr. Laschet to concede the race only increased after he failed to win the support of voters even in his own constituency. But some said that Ms. Merkel herself shared some blame for her party’s abysmal result. In all her years in power, she failed to successfully groom a successor. She tried once; but her attempt to position Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, now the defense minister, proved deeply divisive and ended in Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s resignation as party leader after barely a year.Mr. Laschet, who followed her at the helm of the party, has also failed to bridge the divisions within the party between those who embraced the social changes Ms. Merkel had overseen from parental leave policies and same-sex marriage to welcoming over a million refugees in 2015 and 2016 — and those nostalgic for the party’s conservatism of old.But the days of uniting both camps under the umbrella of a single party may simply be over, analysts said.“Conservatism no longer has convincing answers — or at least not convincing enough to get 40 percent of the voters,” Mr. Münkler said.That raises existential questions for the Christian Democrats.In several neighboring European countries, including France and Italy, traditional center-right parties have already shrunk into irrelevance, struggling to find a message that appeals to voters and ripped apart by internal power struggles.Most now expect that the Christian Democrats will end up outside of government.“They might be in opposition for a while,” said Mr. Münkler, the political scientist, “and then the question is: Will they survive it?” Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting. More

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      Jumaane Williams Is Exploring a Run for New York Governor

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      Mr. Williams, the New York City public advocate, would offer Democratic voters a clear left-leaning alternative to Ms. Hochul, a centrist from western New York.Jumaane D. Williams, the left-wing New York City public advocate, announced an exploratory committee for governor on Tuesday, the most substantive sign yet that next year’s primary may become a vigorous battle over the direction of New York’s Democratic Party.Mr. Williams pledged to press an ambitious progressive agenda if he runs, and, in a nearly 40-minute interview, attempted to draw overt and implicit contrasts with Gov. Kathy Hochul — suggesting that she did not do enough to push back on Andrew M. Cuomo before his sudden resignation in August.His announcement amounts to an unofficial kickoff to the 2022 Democratic primary for governor, a race poised to be defined by both matters of competence and issues of identity, geography and ideology.Mr. Williams said he intended to make a firm decision in the next month, in consultation with an advisory committee that includes two prominent New York City progressive leaders: Brad Lander, likely the city’s next comptroller, and Antonio Reynoso, who is on track to become Brooklyn borough president.With the field of Democratic candidates still largely unsettled, Mr. Williams’s allies hope his move gives him an edge over other prominent New York Democrats looking at the race. Letitia James, the attorney general, is privately discussing the contest with party donors and officials, with her allies sounding increasingly bullish on the likelihood of a campaign to be America’s first Black female governor.Mayor Bill de Blasio is also thought to be interested, and other Democrats from across the state are in various stages of examining the race as well. Ms. Hochul, who has said she will run for a full term next year, has participated in a flurry of fund-raisers and recently expanded her senior campaign staff.Some Democrats have questioned whether Mr. Williams will ultimately pursue a bid should Ms. James, his fellow Brooklynite, jump in the race, given overlapping — but certainly not identical — bases of support. But Mr. Williams, for his part, electrified many progressive voters during his 2018 run for lieutenant governor, losing to Ms. Hochul by 6.6 percentage points. And in a rematch, Mr. Williams would benefit from better name identification than he had before and experience running statewide.But Mr. Williams, a self-identified “activist elected official” who says he is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, would also face significant skepticism from the many moderate voters who remain a force in New York Democratic politics, both in the state and, as this summer’s mayoral primary showed, in the city.And Ms. Hochul, New York’s first female governor, is now in a far more powerful position, having taken over as chief executive after Mr. Cuomo resigned in disgrace.She is poised to enjoy significant advantages of incumbency as she unveils projects across the state, seeks to build an overwhelming fund-raising advantage and experiences, for now, a sense of good will from many lawmakers who appreciate her efforts to break with the governing style — and with some of the personnel — that defined the Cuomo administration.Gov. Kathy Hochul recently named Brian Benjamin, a state senator from Harlem, as her lieutenant governor.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesMs. Hochul, plainly aware of the need to build her profile downstate, is constantly in New York City for public events and fund-raisers alike, and she recently tapped Brian A. Benjamin, formerly a progressive state senator from Harlem, as her lieutenant governor. She has pleased left-wing lawmakers with several recent policies, including extending the eviction moratorium and releasing nearly 200 detainees from Rikers Island amid a crisis there.But Mr. Williams signaled that if he were to run, he would make the case for electing an Albany outsider who represents a total break with the capital’s culture.“We have consistently, vocally pushed back on the atmosphere that was there, and I think that’s the type of leadership we need,” Mr. Williams said.“It’s hard to renew and recover,” he said at another point, “if you have the same old systems and structure that allowed the toxicity, allowed the scandals, allowed egos and personality to get in the way of progress.”Asked if he disagreed with any of Ms. Hochul’s actions as governor, he said she should have visited Rikers Island but acknowledged “some of the low-hanging fruit that has happened, which is positive.”Still, he suggested that as Mr. Cuomo’s lieutenant governor, she could have spoken out against him more forcefully. “I just imagine if there was a lieutenant governor that pushed back a little bit harder, we may have not been in the situation we’re in,” he said, though Mr. Cuomo iced Ms. Hochul out of his inner circle. “There’s more that a lot of people could have done, but I ran very intentionally and specifically in 2018 on that message.”In 2018, Ms. Hochul, a centrist Democrat from western New York, declined to name any areas of disagreement with Mr. Cuomo during a debate with Mr. Williams, and spent her time in office traveling the state, promoting the administration’s policies.But she also backed the independent investigation into Mr. Cuomo, accurately noted that she was not close to him or part of his decision-making processes, and has promised that “no one will ever describe my administration as a toxic work environment.”“It’s a little early, given that the governor has only been in office four weeks,” Jay Jacobs, the moderate chairman of the New York Democrats, said of Mr. Williams’s move. “You have to be running for reasons that transcend ambition. There has to be a rationale that makes you believe that you would be better than this governor. So we’ll see what he has to say.”A representative for Ms. Hochul declined to comment.Mr. Williams indicated he was committed to an exploratory committee regardless of who else decides to run, and said that his efforts would include building out infrastructure for a potential campaign. But pressed on whether he would run for governor if Ms. James did so, he did not answer directly.Mr. Williams, center, has an activist background that may draw skepticism from the many moderate voters who remain a force in New York Democratic politics.Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times“The attorney general is doing an awesome, awesome job,” Mr. Williams said. “To my knowledge, she hasn’t publicly expressed interest in running. What I will say is, this exploratory committee and public service in general, I’m not doing this to run against anybody. I’m doing this to run for something.”Mr. Reynoso, a city councilman, said he spoke with Ms. James over the weekend about the governor’s race, and expressed admiration for both her and Mr. Williams.“Everybody that loves Tish loves Jumaane, and I think they’re going to have to figure out what they have to figure out,” Mr. Reynoso said, adding that Ms. James told him she intended to speak with Mr. Williams. “I care deeply about both Jumaane and Tish, but my history with Jumaane specifically in the Council has made it so that I will be with him should he run.”A representative for Ms. James declined to comment.Mr. Williams has governed as a left-wing official who is closely attuned to combating gun violence, arguing that investments in the social safety net are a vital component of public safety and central to promoting an equitable recovery from the pandemic. Mr. Williams would be competing against at least one history-making female candidate. He acknowledged that “identity is very important” and pointed to his own, as a first-generation American; as a person with Tourette Syndrome, and as someone with the potential to be the first Black New Yorker elected to the governorship. (The former Gov. David A. Paterson, the first Black governor of New York, assumed the position after former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation.)“It’s important for people to see themselves,” he said. It is also vital, he said, to ensure that “the right person is there to fight for all of the identities when the politics get hard. And we’ve seen, too often, that not happen.” More