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      Inside Stephen Ross' Plan to Influence New York’s Mayoral Race

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?5 TakeawaysCandidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the RaceAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyInside a Billionaire’s Plan to Influence New York’s Mayoral RaceStephen Ross, the head of the Related Companies, is organizing a meeting of business leaders to “help us get this mayoral election right.”Stephen Ross said he hopes to boost voter turnout among “moderate thinking, pro-growth, and pro-jobs Democrats who typically do not vote in primaries.”Credit…Peter Foley/EPA, via ShutterstockMarch 9, 2021Updated 8:37 p.m. ETThe billionaire developer Stephen M. Ross is rallying fellow business leaders to commit tens of millions of dollars in an effort to push moderate Democrats to vote in the June mayoral primary in New York and “change the future course of the city.”Mr. Ross has scheduled a meeting for Monday to detail his plans to launch the super PAC to “help us get this mayoral election right,” according to an email he sent to colleagues that was reviewed by The New York Times.The campaign would not initially support a specific candidate, but Mr. Ross, the chairman and founder of Related Companies, stressed that the “winner of the Democratic primary for mayor in June will decide if NYC will rebound or languish.”The effort is the starkest example of business leaders using their money and influence to elect a pro-business mayor who would steer New York’s recovery from the pandemic, and to hurt the chances of progressive-leaning candidates whose positions — like slashing the Police Department budget and raising taxes on the rich — alarm many business leaders.“This is truly the most important election of our lifetime and in NYC’s history,” Mr. Ross wrote in the email. “Fortunately, we can do something to change the future course of the city we love.”Candidates considered more palatable to the business sector include Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate; Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner; Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive; and Shaun Donovan, a former Obama administration cabinet member.Mr. Yang is the early front-runner, followed by Mr. Adams, according to a recent poll by Emerson College. Mr. McGuire, thought to be a favorite of some in the business community, was in eighth place in the poll.Via a spokesman, Mr. Ross did not rule out backing a particular candidate, when the time comes.But when asked who that candidate might be, Mr. Ross was circumspect.“The one who is best and can help all New Yorkers,” he said. More

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      New York Mayoral Candidates Weigh How Hard to Hit Cuomo

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the Race5 TakeawaysAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNew York Mayoral Candidates Weigh How Hard to Hit CuomoThe feud between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has hurt New York City, but Mr. Cuomo’s recent troubles may alter the dynamic for the next mayor.Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing inquiries into sexual harassment claims and how his administration handled virus-related deaths in nursing homes.Credit…Hans Pennink/Associated PressMarch 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETGov. Andrew M. Cuomo was having one of the worst weeks of his administration, and he tried to divert attention to the New York City mayor’s race.In one of his famed slide show presentations, Mr. Cuomo listed the many challenges facing the city — a rising murder rate, a homelessness crisis, people deciding to move away — and questioned if the candidates were up to the task.“What have you managed before? What have you accomplished before?” Mr. Cuomo said in late February. “This is not about rhetoric. This is not about slogans.”Mr. Cuomo failed to mention another top challenge for the next mayor: Figuring out how to get along with him.Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat in his third term, has been significantly weakened by a growing crisis over allegations of sexual harassment and his handling of coronavirus-related nursing home deaths. But if Mr. Cuomo remains in office, the next mayor will have to work with him to help the city recover from the pandemic.Now the candidates must decide how strongly to criticize Mr. Cuomo; several candidates are calling for Mr. Cuomo to face impeachment proceedings or to resign if the harassment allegations are confirmed.But the governor is unlikely to forget those who attacked him, and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure has shown how a troubled relationship with Mr. Cuomo can thwart a mayor’s agenda. Mr. de Blasio never mastered how to work with the governor, even during the darkest days of the pandemic when the leaders fought over shutting down the city.Over the last seven years, the feud between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio has had real implications for the city when they failed to work together on the vaccine rollout, reopening schools, a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak, and fixing the subway and public housing.The candidates running to succeed Mr. de Blasio had been talking about how they would have a better relationship with Mr. Cuomo, but the tone drastically changed in recent days, after three women detailed accusations of sexual harassment against the governor.On Monday, after a woman told The New York Times that Mr. Cuomo tried to kiss her at a wedding in 2019, Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, said she had heard enough and Mr. Cuomo “should do the right thing and step aside.”Andrew Yang, the former presidential hopeful, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, have called for an independent investigation. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, criticized Mr. Cuomo for disappearing from public appearances while the state was still facing a health crisis.“No one should throw around words like impeachment or resignation lightly,” she said. “But as a state, we must see immediate action to address the disgusting behavior” described by two female accusers of Mr. Cuomo.Maya Wiley called for “immediate action” to address Mr. Cuomo’s alleged behavior, but cautioned against using “words like impeachment or resignation lightly.”Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesScott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, said on Saturday that he believed in a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment.“I continue to support a thorough and truly independent investigation of the governor’s conduct, and if it supports these serious and credible allegations, Governor Cuomo must resign,” Mr. Stringer said.Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, and Carlos Menchaca, a City Council member in Brooklyn, have called for impeachment proceedings to begin.The condemnations are unlikely to affect Mr. Cuomo’s involvement in the June 22 Democratic primary for mayor, which is likely to determine the winner in the general election. The governor seems unlikely to endorse a candidate; even in the presidential race, he waited until very late to endorse his friend Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Cuomo knows two leading candidates well: Mr. Stringer, a former state assemblyman, and Mr. Adams, a former state senator. Mr. Stringer has found ways to work with the governor, leading Carl Heastie, the State Assembly speaker, to call Mr. Stringer a “rubber stamp” for Mr. Cuomo in 2018 during a battle over pay raises for state lawmakers.But Mr. Adams has openly criticized Mr. Cuomo, over his management of the subway and his feud with the mayor. In April, when Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio fought over closing the city’s schools, Mr. Adams told them to “cut the crap.” This past week, after the sexual harassment claims were lodged, he said that when powerful men prey on women, “swift action must be taken against them.”Mr. Yang and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, have said they had an in with the governor — pointing to their relationship with his brother, Chris Cuomo, the CNN host. Mr. Yang, however, voted in 2018 for Cynthia Nixon, the actress and a fierce critic of Mr. Cuomo in the Democratic primary that year — a choice that he publicized on Twitter.Another guilt-by-association relationship could stem from one of Mr. Yang’s first endorsers: Ron Kim, the state assemblyman who has gone to war with Mr. Cuomo over virus-related deaths in nursing homes. In the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, Andrew Yang, left, voted for Cynthia Nixon, the actress who ran and lost against Mr. Cuomo in a bitterly fought contest.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesHaving a relationship with Mr. Cuomo is not necessarily predictive of how the next mayor might get along with the governor. Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio had known each other well: Mr. Cuomo, as the secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, hired Mr. de Blasio to oversee the New York region during the Clinton administration.When Michael R. Bloomberg was mayor, he seemingly got along better with Mr. Cuomo. But behind the scenes, the leaders also had a tense relationship, jockeying for credit on issues like the state’s passage of a same-sex marriage law in 2011.The stakes have never been higher. Besides dealing with the coronavirus recovery, plenty of other key issues will be decided in Albany: raising taxes on the wealthy, schools funding, fixing the subway and desegregating specialized high schools.Democrats who have wrangled with Mr. Cuomo in the past believe that direct confrontation is the best approach. Monica Klein, a political consultant who worked for Mr. de Blasio and has organized protests outside the governor’s office, said Mr. Cuomo only responds to sustained political pressure and bad headlines.“You can’t cede ground to a bully,” she said.Some political consultants contend that Mr. Cuomo might prefer a candidate who has little experience in city government.“Even a weakened Governor Cuomo would run circles around Andrew Yang,” said Eric Phillips, a former press secretary for Mr. de Blasio.Mr. Stringer may have had an edge — at least before he brought up Mr. Cuomo’s resignation. In December, Mr. Stringer joined more than two dozen of Mr. Cuomo’s top allies in Albany, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. No other mayoral candidate was there for the historic moment: to cast the state’s official elector ballots to elect Mr. Biden as president.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller and a former state lawmaker, has found ways to work with the governor.Credit…Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesMr. de Blasio was not invited, even though the mayors of smaller cities like Buffalo and Rochester attended. Mr. de Blasio was left off the list because he ran in the Democratic primary against Mr. Biden, organizers said.The friendly gesture did not stop Mr. Cuomo from attacking Mr. Stringer a short time later.“The comptroller is an incumbent — where have you been?” Mr. Cuomo said to reporters in February, criticizing Mr. Stringer on police reform after huge protests in the city last summer. “What have you done? Where were you when Rome was burning?”Mr. Stringer may also face a difficult tightrope, trying to work with the governor while answering to progressive allies who are at odds with Mr. Cuomo, including State Senators Jessica Ramos and Alessandra Biaggi — both of whom endorsed Mr. Stringer.Mr. Stringer has made clear that he would try to be a stronger voice for the city than Mr. de Blasio.“I’m not going to have my lunch money stolen from Albany,” he said. “You can be sure of that.”Mr. Cuomo likely would have preferred Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, or Christine Quinn, the former City Council speaker, two allies who decided against running for mayor. At a recent news conference, Mr. Cuomo said he had been asked about an endorsement and wanted to know more about candidates’ plans.“You need a real manager with a real vision who can really get things done,” Mr. Cuomo said.Jay Jacobs, an ally of Mr. Cuomo’s and chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, said he had given no thought to picking a favorite in the mayoral field.Still, he added: “It doesn’t help anybody’s chances to get something from the governor, or anyone for that matter, if they’ve been spending several years banging him over the head — that’s just common sense.”Katie Glueck and Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why These 2 N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Are on a Collision Course

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the Race5 TakeawaysAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy These 2 N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Are on a Collision CourseEric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Ray McGuire, a former Citi executive, have become fast rivals in the New York City mayoral race.Ever since Ray McGuire, right, entered New York’s mayoral race, he has vied with Eric Adams, left, to capture Black political influencers and voters.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesMarch 2, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETJust a few days after Raymond J. McGuire officially joined the New York City mayor’s race in December, a courtesy call came in from one of his Democratic rivals, Eric Adams.Mr. Adams, who, like Mr. McGuire, is Black, offered some provocative words of wisdom.“Being in politics is just like being in a prison yard,” Mr. Adams said, according to several people familiar with the video call. “You need to put a wall around your family because you might get shanked.”Mr. Adams’s campaign described the sentiment as “friendly advice.” Several people in Mr. McGuire’s campaign saw it differently, characterizing it as a “veiled threat” from a front-runner trying to intimidate a new challenger.For two years, Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, had been regarded as one of the favorites in the 2021 mayor’s race.He was a former police officer who had nuanced views of how social justice demands could coexist with policing needs. He had broad support in Brooklyn, and had raised more than $8 million to fuel his campaign — more than anyone else in the field.In a field of progressive rivals, he had appeared to be the leading Black moderate, representing a key city constituency. But now his stature in the race is suddenly being challenged.Mr. McGuire, a former global head of corporate and investment banking at Citi, quickly began making inroads among political power brokers in the Black community. He hired Basil Smikle, a former executive director of the State Democratic Party, to be his campaign manager; other Black political operatives who have strong connections to Representative Gregory W. Meeks, chairman of the Queens Democratic Party, and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, also signed on.The filmmaker Spike Lee, whose brand is the borough of Brooklyn, narrated Mr. McGuire’s campaign announcement. Mr. McGuire raised $5 million in just three months, and landed the endorsement of Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man whose death in 2014 after being placed in a police chokehold became a flash point for the Black Lives Matter movement.“Eric came into this race believing that he would run a race of inevitability, not just as the borough president of Brooklyn, but the senior Black candidate in the race,” Mr. Smikle said. “Now, that’s not the case.”Mr. McGuire, talking with Councilman Rafael Salamanca in the Bronx, has raised $5 million in three months.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesMr. McGuire and Mr. Adams have quickly become rivals, and their interactions as well as several interviews with people familiar with their relationship reveal a complicated story born at the intersection of race and class.It’s a natural rivalry between two successful Black men from humble beginnings who took different paths — Mr. McGuire through the Ivy League and the upper echelons of Wall Street, Mr. Adams through night school and the upper ranks of the New York Police Department — to become candidates for mayor.For Mr. Adams, the comparison is slightly irksome, adding to a perception that he might lack the polish to lead the city. He does not have the white-shoe law firm experience of Mr. Jeffries, the power broker and No. 5 House Democrat who The Washington Post once suggested was “Brooklyn’s Barack Obama,” or Mr. McGuire’s experience managing multibillion-dollar transactions.“Coming where I come from, I think people didn’t think I’d put it together, but now I have more money to spend on a campaign than any Black person running for office in New York City’s history,” Mr. Adams said.Four Black and Afro-Latino candidates sit among the Democratic mayoral primary’s top echelon, the most in recent memory. All talk extensively about how being Black and brown in America has affected their lives and will affect how they govern.Initial polls suggest that Mr. Adams is running second to Andrew Yang, the former 2020 presidential candidate; Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer who served as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s legal counsel, is roughly in fourth place; Mr. McGuire trails behind, along with Dianne Morales, an Afro-Latina who led a nonprofit in the Bronx dedicated to eradicating poverty.Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales are also further behind in fund-raising; neither has yet qualified for the city’s generous matching-funds program. But while the two are competing for the progressive vote, they have largely stayed out of each other’s way, even naming the other as their second choice for mayor.Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuire, on the other hand, seem destined for a collision course.“I can’t remember a time where you had this many strong African-American candidates, because what normally occurs is one will emerge out of a group of several with everybody else standing down,” said Mr. Jeffries, who has not decided if he will endorse anyone in the race. “There’s no expectation that will happen in this particular instance.”Evan Thies, a spokesman for Mr. Adams, described the prison yard remarks during the video call as “nothing more than friendly advice about the intense world of city politics.”“To infer otherwise,” he continued, “is an example of the kind of bias that Eric has been fighting his entire life.”But Mr. Adams’s video call in December was not the only time he had directed criticism at Mr. McGuire. At a forum in January, Mr. Adams said that he “didn’t go to the Hamptons” when the pandemic struck New York City — an apparent jab at Mr. McGuire, who said he had spent a total of three weeks in the Hamptons with his family last summer.The remarks were similar to ones Mr. Adams made at a virtual meeting with the Fred Wilson Democratic Club in Queens in December, when he said that he didn’t attend Harvard and didn’t need to introduce himself to voters.Mr. McGuire, who left his job at Citigroupto run for mayor, has also sought to draw a contrast with his rivals, often saying that he has not been “termed out” and isn’t “looking for a promotion” — a likely reference to Mr. Adams and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, who are both barred by city law from running for third consecutive terms.As moderate Democrats, Mr. Adams and McGuire share several policy positions. Both are in favor of revamping Police Department protocols, but have not called for defunding the police. Mr. Adams was originally in favor of a plan from Mr. de Blasio to scrap the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, but changed his position and now believes — as Mr. McGuire does — that the test should not be the only criteria for admission.One area where they differ is on taxing the wealthy. Mr. Adams wants to increase taxes on those who earn more than $5 million per year for two years, and use the money to help the city recover from the pandemic. Mr. McGuire, who has business community support, has said that wealthy New Yorkers such as himself should pay their fair share but also believes that the city has to grow itself out of its financial deficit.Mr. Adams has tried to accentuate his working-class background, telling voters that he washed dishes before becoming a police officer.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe Black electorate in New York City is diverse, made up of Caribbean-Americans and African-Americans; of native New Yorkers, immigrants and transplants from other states. In the 2013 mayoral race, Mr. de Blasio won partly because of his enormous popularity among Black voters: Ninety-six percent of Black New Yorkers voted for him, according to exit polls, a higher percentage than David N. Dinkins captured in 1989 when he was elected as the city’s first Black mayor.In the 2013 Democratic primary, Mr. de Blasio garnered 18,000 more votes in predominantly African-American neighborhoods than a Black rival, the former city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., largely based on how they proposed handling the policing tactic of stop and frisk.Given the financial difficulty wrought by the pandemic, Mr. McGuire’s financial pedigree may help with voters in places like central Brooklyn and southeast Queens, said Anthony D. Andrews Jr., the leader of the Fred Wilson Democratic Club in Southeast Queens. He said that residents there are concerned about the city’s unequal property tax system and whether government jobs will be eliminated.“Some people will say the complexity of the city requires someone with a certain kind of education to be able to manage a $100 billion enterprise,” said Marc H. Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans and current president of the National Urban League, who knows both men. “But there may be other people who say, ‘Is that guy in touch with me? Does he know my pain?’”Mr. McGuire, who was urged by business leaders to run for mayor, has tried to accentuate his rise from a modest upbringing in his stump speeches. He was so poor growing up, he has said, that he washed and reused aluminum foil, and pressed scraps of soap together until they formed a bar.Having never met his father, Mr. McGuire was raised by his mother and his grandparents in a house full of foster siblings on the “wrong side of the tracks” in Dayton, Ohio. He found his way to a prestigious private school, went on to earn three degrees at Harvard, and became one of the highest-ranking Black executives on Wall Street, a mentor to young people of color and a behind-the-scenes patron of Black causes.“A Black man who grew up the way I grew up, I know exactly what they are going through,” Mr. McGuire said. “I know about the struggle.”Mr. Adams has touched on similar hardships of his youth, recalling at mayoral forums that neighbors used to leave food and clothes outside his family’s home. He said he first took an interest in becoming an officer after he was beaten by the police as a teenager.Mr. Adams worked his way up the ranks of the Police Department and founded 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, an advocacy group to confront institutional racism in the profession. He attended night school to attain a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, and has taken to saying that he will be a “blue-collar” mayor.“I’m not fancy,” Mr. Adams said at a recent Queens County Democratic Party forum. “I was a dishwasher. I worked in a mailroom.”“Acknowledging the problems Black people face,” Mr. Adams said, “is different from understanding the problems.”Mr. Adams was recently endorsed by four wrongfully convicted men, dozens of ministers and leaders from the city’s African community. Four Black City Council members, including I. Daneek Miller, co-chairman of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, have also endorsed Mr. Adams.Of Mr. Adams’s supporters on the Council, another caucus member, Laurie A. Cumbo, the majority leader, has been among the most forceful in her criticism of Mr. McGuire.At a mayoral forum, Ms. Cumbo, who represents a Brooklyn district, questioned whether Mr. McGuire had made a “visible commitment to the community” before deciding to run for mayor. She criticized his charitable work in the art world as too “highbrow,” and said that he should make sure that his campaign was “more in alignment with the people.”Not long after, Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuire appeared at a Martin Luther King’s Birthday celebration in Harlem. Hoping to keep the peace, Mr. Adams pulled Mr. McGuire aside and told him that Ms. Cumbo’s comments were not coordinated with his campaign.Ms. Cumbo was not interested in peacemaking.“Ray McGuire is running a ‘Hello, my name is Ray McGuire’ kind of campaign,” she said. “Eric is running a ‘Hey sis, I just saw your mom yesterday getting the vaccine’ kind of campaign.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cuomo in Crisis, Republicans Emerging: Updates From New York’s Mayoral Race

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Harassment Claims Against CuomoWhat We KnowCuomo’s ApologySecond AccusationFirst AccusationMayoral Candidates ReactAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCuomo in Crisis, Republicans Emerging: Updates From New York’s Mayoral RaceSeveral major candidates called for an investigation into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, as two Republicans vied for key endorsements.At least two Democratic mayoral candidates have called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign if a series of sex harassment allegations are substantiated.Credit…Gabby Jones for The New York TimesEmma G. Fitzsimmons, Jeffery C. Mays and March 1, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETThe big political story in New York City is the growing crisis surrounding Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who faced new allegations of sexual harassment over the weekend.Several Democratic mayoral candidates responded with calls for an independent investigation, and some said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, should resign if the allegations are substantiated.And as the Republican field begins to take shape, and many candidates are holding more in-person events, the contest — with the primaries now just four months away — is starting to feel a lot like a normal election, even with the coronavirus still a concern.Here’s what you need to know about the race:A rebuke for CuomoMaya Wiley was among a slew of mayoral candidates who expressed disgust over the allegations against the governor, saying that she believed the accuser’s account.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMany candidates responded to a New York Times article disclosing that a second woman had accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment by calling for an independent investigation, expressing disgust and demanding his resignation if the allegations were further substantiated.Charlotte Bennett, 25, a former executive assistant and health policy adviser for the governor, said he asked questions about her sex life, including whether she had ever had sex with older men. The charges come after Lindsey Boylan, a former state economic development official, accused Mr. Cuomo of giving her an unwanted kiss.Mr. Cuomo called Ms. Boylan’s allegations untrue and said he was sorry that some of the things he had said to Ms. Bennett “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation.” The governor is also facing questions over how he handled the state’s nursing homes during the pandemic and over charges of bullying behavior.Among the candidates, Scott M. Stringer and Raymond J. McGuire went the furthest, calling for Mr. Cuomo to resign if an independent investigation substantiated the sexual harassment allegations.Mr. McGuire called the allegations “deeply disturbing” and said the accused conduct was “abhorrent.” He said the governor “should resign” if they were further substantiated.Mr. Stringer said the governor “must resign” if an investigation “supports these serious and credible allegations.”Dianne Morales had already called for impeachment proceedings to begin against Mr. Cuomo because of allegations of bullying and the way he had handled nursing homes.“It’s time to address the complete abuses of power that Cuomo has exercised for far too long,” Ms. Morales said in a statement.Kathryn Garcia, Andrew Yang and Shaun Donovan called for independent investigations into the allegations.Mr. Yang said that victims of sexual harassment should “feel empowered” to share their stories “without fear or retaliation” and that “Albany must show they take all allegations seriously through action.”Ms. Wiley registered her disgust in a statement on Saturday, saying, “I believe Charlotte Bennett.” She followed up with a statement on Sunday that had at least 20 or so questions about the situation.Republicans jockey for endorsementsCurtis Sliwa, best known as the founder of the Guardian Angels, has entered the Republican mayoral primary race.Credit…Peter Foley/EPA, via ShutterstockAnother Republican has entered the mayoral race: Curtis Sliwa, the red beret-wearing founder of the Guardian Angels, who is running on a law-and-order message.Mr. Sliwa registered with the city Campaign Finance Board recently and was endorsed by Republican leaders on Staten Island. That prompted Fernando Mateo to announce endorsements from the Republican Party in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens. The two are expected to be top contenders for the Republican nomination, though either would be an extreme long shot in the general election, given that the vast majority of voters in the city are Democrats.“The reason I’m running for mayor is our city is a ghost town,” Mr. Sliwa said in an interview on Newsmax, criticizing rising crime and homelessness.Mr. Sliwa knocked Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate, saying he wants to “give out money that we don’t have” — a reference to universal basic income — and he argued that the Democratic field wants to defund the police. (Most of the Democrats have been reluctant to embrace the defund movement, but they do want to change department policies.)Mr. Sliwa said the Police Department had been “neutered” since George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last year, and he promised to restore police funding and boost morale by visiting every precinct as mayor.“I’ll pat these cops on the back so hard they’ll have to go for a chiropractic adjustment,” he said.Mr. Mateo, who was born in the Dominican Republic, has highlighted his appeal to Hispanic voters. The Bronx Republican Party said in a statement that Republicans had made “significant inroads” in minority communities, especially with Hispanics.“With Mateo at the top of the Republican ticket in 2021, we can replicate that success citywide and continue to expand the Republican coalition,” the group said.Ditching the video campaign, if only for an afternoonAndrew Yang made far more in-person campaign appearances than his rivals, but all of the leading mayoral candidates made campaign stops across the city last week.Credit…Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThere are walking tours and outdoor lunches, policy rollouts and church visits.As the weather begins to warm and the primary election nears, the Democratic mayoral candidates are slowly getting back out onto the campaign trail, appearing increasingly willing to balance the risks of campaigning in a pandemic with the need to engage and excite more voters beyond Zoom.In the last week, all of the leading mayoral candidates made campaign stops across the city, in some cases several stops in one day. Ms. Wiley spent Friday afternoon in the Bronx; Mr. Stringer offered his housing plan outdoors; Mr. McGuire spent Saturday campaigning in southeast Queens.Mr. Yang, who had to quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus last month, has from the beginning of his campaign shown more comfort with in-person events, and he was the pacesetter again last week, taking a five-day tour through the five boroughs.The strategy can pay off. Mr. Yang rode the Staten Island Ferry and made positive headlines for helping defend a photographer from an attack.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Carlos Menchaca, a Brooklyn city councilman, even held an unusual joint campaign event in front of the Phoenix Hotel in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to call for converting empty hotels into affordable housing.Mr. Adams said in an interview that his long days usually start with meditation at 6 a.m., and a recent evening ended with a dinner with South Asian leaders at 9 p.m.“Every second is utilized,” he said. “From the time I wake up to the time I hit my pillow.”A campaign of (stolen) ideasOne candidate accusing another candidate of appropriating their campaign’s ideas: It’s a time-honored complaint on the trail. The Democratic primary for mayor is no different. Several candidates for mayor are proponents of some version of universal basic income, one of Mr. Yang’s campaign platforms from his run for president. Now, some candidates are accusing Mr. Yang of pilfering their campaign ideas.Mr. Adams’s campaign faults Mr. Yang’s campaign for stealing ideas to provide pregnant women with doulas and use shuttered storefronts as vaccine distribution centers.Stu Loeser, an adviser on Mr. McGuire’s campaign, accused the Yang campaign of appropriating their idea to allow small businesses to keep their sales tax receipts for a year to help recover from the pandemic, and to create a teachers’ corps to tutor students.Mr. McGuire’s campaign grew so annoyed that they decided to do a bit of internet trolling: Anyone who heads to yangpolicy.com is automatically redirected to Mr. McGuire’s campaign website. The official registration for the web address is anonymous, but Mr. McGuire’s campaign claimed credit.“Lots of candidates say they will take on wasteful duplication. We set up yangpolicy.com to actually do something about it,” said Lupe Todd-Medina, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGuire.Mr. Yang’s campaign ridiculed the accusations, suggesting that Mr. McGuire’s campaign and others have used ideas they first proposed.“You know what’s not a new idea? Last-place candidate going after first-place candidate to get attention,” said Alyssa Cass, Mr. Yang’s communications director.As for Mr. Adams’s idea about doulas, Ms. Cass said Mr. Yang agreed with Mr. Adams and had spoken with others about the idea.“Eric has had 15-plus years as an elected official and never gotten it done,” Ms. Cass said. “We’ll make it a Year 1 priority.”Who will save Broadway?Kathryn Garcia said that she would serve as the city’s cheerleader as mayor, visiting museums and Broadway shows to get New Yorkers excited about returning to them.Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersOne central issue in the race is how to bring back Broadway and the city’s struggling cultural institutions.Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, released her plan last week called “Reopen to Stay Open,” which calls for removing red tape for small businesses and working with streaming services to broadcast Broadway shows.Ms. Garcia said she will be the city’s cheerleader, visiting museums and Broadway shows to get New Yorkers excited about returning to them. She held a recent Broadway-themed fund-raiser with Will Roland, an actor from the musical “Dear Evan Hansen.”Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, has talked about rebuilding the arts and proposed spending $1 billion on a recovery plan for artists and culture workers as part of her “New Deal New York” proposal.Ms. Wiley also said she wants to be a cheerleader for the city and would not run away from the job, referring to Mr. de Blasio’s penchant for spending time outside the city during a failed presidential run in 2019.“You don’t have to worry about me going to Iowa,” Ms. Wiley said at a candidate forum. “I’d much rather be on Broadway celebrating its survival.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      5 Takeaways From the NYC Mayor’s Race: Bagel Orders and Vaccine Appointments

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the Race5 TakeawaysAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBagel Orders and Vaccine Appointments: 5 Takeaways From the Mayor’s RaceA former City Council speaker decides not to run, and a current city comptroller becomes the first leading candidate to get the coronavirus vaccine.A campaign event at City Hall Park for Scott Stringer, who recently received the coronavirus vaccine.Credit…Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesDana Rubinstein, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Katie Glueck and Feb. 22, 2021Updated 10:06 a.m. ETThe horde of politicians running for mayor of New York City appears to have finally hit a saturation point.More than 30 people are still in the field, making it difficult for a clear front-runner to emerge — and near impossible for a second- or third-tier candidate to break through. With four months before the June 22 primary, one long-rumored candidate has decided not to join the scrum. But not to worry: There are still plenty of opinions to go around on everything from police funding to bagels. After deliberating for months, Christine C. Quinn, a former City Council speaker, has decided not to run for mayor.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York TimesChristine Quinn will not enter the raceChristine C. Quinn, a former City Council speaker who had been a favorite in the 2013 Democratic mayoral primary, is doing the nearly unthinkable: She is resisting the urge to run for mayor — or any elective office this year.“I’ve been thinking about it a while and it wasn’t an easy decision,” said Ms. Quinn, whose bid in 2013 was partially derailed by an anti-horse carriage super PAC, paving the way for Bill de Blasio to capture the Democratic primary and the mayoralty.Since then, Ms. Quinn has run a homeless services organization for families with children. Had she run for mayor, she would have made the issue central to her campaign.“Jesus in the Bible said the poor will always be amongst us, but this crisis we’re in now — more homeless children in shelter than there are seats in Madison Square Garden — that’s solvable,” she said. “It’s just no one has demonstrated the political will.”Ms. Quinn’s deliberations lasted months — she had been interviewing potential staff and commissioned a poll, according to a friend who was not authorized to speak publicly. But in the end, she recognized that a homelessness-centered platform would be unlikely to carry the day in a city consumed by the pandemic, the friend said.Even so, Ms. Quinn does not plan to fade into the background.“I really believe that I can effect more change by staying on the outside and being a thorn in the side of everyone who is running,” she said.Mr. Stringer, 60, center, lost his mother to the coronavirus in April and wanted to get the vaccine as soon as possible.Credit…Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesHave you gotten the vaccine? Scott Stringer has.With limited doses of the vaccine available, some elected officials have made it a point to take the vaccine in a public way to show it is safe. Others want to wait to show the system is fair.Mr. de Blasio, 59, decided not to take the vaccine yet. His wife, Chirlane McCray, 66, got it this month because she meets the state’s age requirements for people 65 and older.Scott M. Stringer, 60, lost his mother to the coronavirus in April and wanted to get the vaccine as soon as possible. On Friday, Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller, became the first leading mayoral candidate to receive the vaccine, getting it at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens.Mr. Stringer, 60, has hypertension, or high blood pressure — one of the conditions that make New Yorkers eligible for the vaccine under new rules.“I always said I would get the vaccine when I was qualified,” he said in an interview. “It was not a tough decision for me.”Many New Yorkers have struggled to get a vaccine appointment. Mr. Stringer used the state’s website and did “a lot of refreshing with a friend” early one morning.Several candidates said they had not received the vaccine and were waiting until more New Yorkers had the shot. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said he was checking with his doctor to see if he qualifies under new guidelines. Tread carefully when picking a favorite bagelUnder normal circumstances, the path to New York political power is paved with dining pitfalls. There is the scrutiny of how officials consume a slice of pizza, the pressure to eat — and eat and eat — across the city’s diverse neighborhoods.And then there is a divisive category all its own: bagel preferences.After The Forward published a survey revealing the choices of eight of the candidates (four preferred everything bagels with lox), a TikTok video from the account brooklynbagelblog ranked the candidates.“The candidate with the best order goes to Kathryn Garcia,” the narrator declared, favoring her choice of an open-faced everything bagel with cream cheese, a slice of tomato, capers, lox and onion. “You can see that she has a vision for this bagel and I assume that means she has a vision for the city.”Bagel preferences arose again on Thursday at a mayoral forum hosted by the New York Jewish Agenda, when candidates were asked about their order at a New York Jewish deli, an institution where rye bread, not a bagel, is often the starch of choice.Still, Raymond J. McGuire, Dianne Morales, Andrew Yang and Loree Sutton opted to share their bagel preferences. Mr. Stringer, who is Jewish and who has a political power base on the West Side — home to several legendary appetizing stores — said he would opt for matzo ball soup and pastrami on rye.“You don’t order a bagel at Katz’s!” Mr. Stringer later tweeted.(On the second panel, Ms. Garcia, Shaun Donovan and the now-vegan Mr. Adams referenced pastrami; Carlos Menchaca mentioned a bagel before saying he sampled pastrami sparingly.)Mayor Bill de Blasio hasn’t decided whether to offer an endorsement, saying that it was too early in the campaign.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesBill de Blasio ponders his successorMost of the leading candidates have said they don’t want Mr. de Blasio’s endorsement, but that hasn’t stopped him from weighing in on the qualities he’d like to see in his successor.At a meeting at Gracie Mansion with union leaders that was reported by Politico New York, the mayor expressed a fondness for the life story of Mr. Adams and questioned the lead that Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate, has registered in initial polls.At a news conference last week, Mr. de Blasio confirmed the meeting, explaining that the participants were not talking about “one candidate or another,” but “the working people of New York City and the future of New York City.”“We know what it’s like when the elites get it their way and working people are an afterthought,” the mayor said. “So, the meeting was really about where are we going.”The mayor hasn’t decided whether to offer an endorsement, adding that it was too early for prognostication.“If you go back to the equivalent time in 2013, I was in either fourth or fifth place before the primary,” Mr. de Blasio said of his surprise victory.The response from the candidates varied. Mr. Adams “appreciates that the mayor recognizes his powerful life’s journey,” said Evan Thies, a spokesman.The campaigns of Mr. Yang and Mr. McGuire responded to Mr. de Blasio’s comments with what seemed like sharp jabs.“Andrew Yang is focused on tangible ways to help New York City bring back jobs, reduce the outbreak in shootings, and recover from the most difficult period in its history,” said Chris Coffey, a spokesman for Mr. Yang. Mr. McGuire said the mayor’s comments were “divisive, old-school political posturing that’s making our city’s comeback harder than it should be.”“Can’t we just, for once, bring people together to solve problems, instead of seeking out ways to divide us all into narrow buckets of power?” Mr. McGuire said. “I do not see why we somehow are prioritizing secular over faith-based learning,” Andrew Yang recently said.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesYang on yeshivasIn 2019, the de Blasio administration released a report — delayed for years for politically motivated reasons, according to city investigators — that found that the vast majority of yeshivas visited by city officials were not meeting state standards on secular education.The report gave momentum to critics of yeshiva education, many of them Jews, who argue that the lack of quality education in subjects like English deprives students of the ability to thrive in the job market after graduation, and have asked city and state education officials to intercede.Some mayoral candidates have said they would take steps to ensure every New York City child received a sound secular education, in accordance with state law.Mr. Yang, however, said he is waiting for more data.“I do not think we should be prescribing a curriculum, unless the curriculum can be demonstrated to have improved impact on people’s career trajectories and prospects afterward,” Mr. Yang said at the mayoral forum on Thursday hosted by the New York Jewish Agenda.Then he pivoted to a discussion about his own experience in high school, during which he spent a month reading the Bible as literature.“If it was good enough for my public school, I do not see why we somehow are prioritizing secular over faith-based learning,” Mr. Yang said.His response startled many education leaders in New York, including Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who moderated the forum. She is Jewish and married to a rabbi.“Andrew Yang is better than this,” Ms. Weingarten said in an interview.“Regardless of who the child is,” she added, “they have a right to dream their dreams and achieve them and that means they have to have in New York State a sound basic education.”Naftuli Moster, the executive director of Yaffed, which advocates for stricter enforcement of state education standards, was sharper in his criticism.“I don’t know if he understands the magnitude of educational neglect happening in the city he hopes to represent and he’s still choosing to pander to Haredi leaders, or he simply hasn’t done his homework,” he said.In a subsequent email, Mr. Yang’s spokesman said the candidate was familiar with the 2019 city report finding inadequate secular education in dozens of yeshivas and would “work constructively with the community to improve outcomes in those schools.”But, the spokesman said, Mr. Yang is awaiting “fresh data regarding the roughly 90 percent of yeshivas that were left out” of the report.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Presidential Primary Calendar Stinks. Now’s the Time to Shake It Up.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Presidential Primary Calendar Stinks. Now’s the Time to Shake It Up.Democrats should take the opportunity to reform an out-of-touch system.Ms. Cottle is a member of the editorial board.Feb. 19, 2021Credit…Jordan Gale for The New York TimesDon’t freak out, but Nevada’s Democrats are already looking ahead to the next presidential election — and, more specifically, how to pick their nominee.On Monday, a bill was introduced in the State Assembly that would replace the current caucus system with a primary. As conceived, the move threatens to throw the party’s national nominating calendar into conflict and chaos.It’s about time.Nevada’s nominating process has had a rocky run of late. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the caucuses, but complex delegate-selection rules led to chaos at the state party’s convention, when Bernie Sanders’s fans became convinced that the process had been “hijacked” for Mrs. Clinton. (Intraparty death threats are rarely a good sign.) The 2020 cycle was less explosive but still bumpy. Mr. Sanders scored a clear win, but there were initially competing claims for second place, the reporting of results was delayed, and Pete Buttigieg’s campaign claimed “irregularities.”Not all of this is poor Nevada’s fault. Caucuses are a convoluted, vaguely anti-democratic way to pick a nominee. The rules are mind-numbing and the process time-consuming, giving an unfair advantage to party activists and people with numerous hours to kill. If anything, Nevada’s 2020 headaches could have been far worse if the party hadn’t scrambled at the 11th hour to shore up its systems in response to the epic failure of the Iowa caucuses.For those who have already repressed the debacle, Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses suffered a meltdown last year. The system “crumbled under the weight of technology flops, lapses in planning, failed oversight by party officials, poor training and a breakdown in communication between paid party leaders and volunteers out in the field,” The Times found. The results were not reported for days and, even then, were a hot mess. More than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, incomplete or flat-out impossible under the rules.It’s not as though the caucus states weren’t aware of the potential for trouble. Post-2016, as part of a push to simplify and clarify the nominating process, the Democratic National Committee urged the state parties to shift to primaries. Most did. The few that refused were instructed to adopt measures to make voting more inclusive. Iowa and Nevada toyed with remote telephone voting, but those plans fell apart over security concerns.Despite adopting changes, including setting up caucus sites in casinos to accommodate workers and providing for early voting, Nevada Democrats have now decided that “the only way we can bring more voices into the process is by moving to a primary,” the state party chairman said in a statement.This is the sensible — and democratic — thing to do. But there’s a hitch.Nevada Democrats aren’t looking simply to shift to a primary system. They are looking to host the first primary election of the presidential cycle. “Nevada’s diverse population and firsthand experience in issues relating to climate change, public lands, immigration, and health care provide a unique voice that deserves to be heard first,” said Jason Frierson, the Assembly speaker, in announcing the bill.Nevada is a lovely, diverse state with much to recommend it. But its attempt to claim pole position in the presidential primaries will not be well received by New Hampshire, which has held that honor for more than a century. New Hampshire so values its first-primary status that state law requires that the state hold its vote at least seven days before any “similar election.” A caucus is considered different enough not to pose a conflict, but if Nevada tries easing toward a primary: Fight on. New Hampshire’s longtime secretary of state has already told the local media, in effect: Relax. I’ll handle it.It’s hard to blame early states for clinging to their privilege. Leading the presidential calendar means they get lavished with time, attention and obscene amounts of money from the candidates, the parties and the legions of journalists who cover the circus. Their voters and their issues receive preferential treatment. Who knows how many Iowa diners would fail if not for all the candidates and journalists jockeying to hobnob with “real Americans”?That said, oceans of words have been devoted to why Iowa and New Hampshire should not have a lock on early voting. Especially for Democrats, these lily-white states are hardly representative of the party’s electorate. This cycle, Joe Biden’s abysmal showing in both Iowa and New Hampshire had many declaring his candidacy deader than disco.After South Carolina Democrats, dominated by Black voters, saved Mr. Biden’s bacon, the calls to overhaul the nominating calendar grew even louder and more pointed. “A diverse state or states need to be first,” Tom Perez told The Times as he was wrapping up his tenure as head of the D.N.C. last week. “The difference between going first and going third is really important.”Yes it is.There is, in fact, a strong argument to be made that no state — even a superdiverse one — should have a permanent claim on that privilege. Many worthy states would love to have their parochial concerns receive saturation coverage during an election. And the denizens of small towns in Iowa and New Hampshire are no more entitled to having candidates fawn all over them than those in North Carolina or Ohio or Maine. The current nominating scheme is not the only option. Plenty of alternatives have been floated, including a system of rotating regional primaries. It’s past time to give them a serious look.Nevada Democrats are aiming to shake things up. The national party should seize the opportunity to shake even harder, reforming a system that’s increasingly out of touch with voters.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Virginia G.O.P. Voted on Its Future. The Losers Reject the Results.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Virginia G.O.P. Voted on Its Future. The Losers Reject the Results.In a sign of the Trump era’s lingering alternate realities, Republicans in the struggling state party are refusing to move forward with a new system for choosing nominees.State Senator Amanda Chase, a Trump loyalist who has recently been required to sit in a plexiglass box during Senate sessions after refusing to wear a mask, is one of the top Republican candidates for governor in Virginia.Credit…Ryan M. Kelly/Associated PressFeb. 19, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETARLINGTON, Va. — The Republican Party of Virginia has voted four times since December to nominate its candidates for this year’s statewide races at a convention instead of in a primary election. But in a sign of the Trumpian times of denial and dispute in the G.O.P., nearly half of the party’s top officials are still trying to reverse the results.The refusal of these Republicans to admit that they have lost, or to agree on a set of nominating rules, has fractured a state party already in upheaval: Republicans haven’t won a statewide election since 2009, and they now find themselves with legislative minorities for the first time in a generation. Even the broken windows at the state party’s Richmond headquarters haven’t been fixed for months.Just a month after former President Donald J. Trump left office, Virginia’s drama is the first state-level boomerang of his legacy. State Republicans have internalized the lesson that there is no benefit to accepting results they don’t like, and the result is a paralyzed party unable to set the date, location and rules for how and when it will pick its 2021 nominees for statewide office, including the race for governor.The intraparty dispute has scrambled longstanding political alliances and left Virginia Republicans in the awkward position of defending stances that were once anathema to a party that has been redefined by the Trump era.“It’s very much about not accepting the results and trying to change the rules and game the election,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a moderate Republican who won seven terms in Congress from a Northern Virginia district. “The reality now is even when Republicans pull together, they have a hard time winning, and when they’re divided, they have no shot of winning.”The party’s decision on Dec. 5 to hold a May 1 convention rather than a June 8 primary was widely seen as an effort to stop Amanda Chase, a firebrand state senator who calls herself “Trump in heels,” from claiming the party’s nomination for governor.While Ms. Chase or other candidates could win the nomination with as little as 30 percent of the vote in a field with three other major candidates and several lesser contenders, a party convention would require a nominee to win support from at least 50 percent of delegates.Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who cannot serve consecutive terms, has prohibited most large gatherings in Virginia.Credit…Steve Helber/Associated PressBut with the coronavirus pandemic raging and Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who under Virginia law cannot serve consecutive terms, having for now prohibited most gatherings of more than 10 people, there was little chance Republicans could conduct an in-person convention of several thousand people. Changing the party’s rules to conduct a so-called unassembled convention at dozens of sites across Virginia requires approval of three-fourths of the State Central Committee’s members — a threshold so far impossible to meet because those holding out for a primary have refused to compromise.“The fact that there’s a minority faction who lost that are standing in the way of a safe convention to try to get the primary that they couldn’t win fairly — that says a lot about them,” said Patti Lyman, the Republican national committeewoman for Virginia. “All their arguments can be boiled down to: We lost, and we don’t like it.”Some proponents of a convention are arguing in favor of ranked-choice voting, a system that has been pushed elsewhere by progressives. Those making the case for a primary argue that it makes it easier for voters to participate. The dispute threatens to undercut Republicans’ already-uphill fight in this year’s elections and prolong Democratic control of the state.The party’s squabble centers on a crowded group of Republican contenders for governor that includes one candidate each from the G.O.P.’s Trump and establishment wings, along with two wealthy wild cards. The major candidates include Ms. Chase; Kirk Cox, a former State House speaker, who is the favorite of the party’s elected state legislators; Pete Snyder, a millionaire technology executive who lost a bid for the lieutenant governor nomination at a party convention in 2013; and Glenn Youngkin, an even wealthier former chief executive in private equity who is a newcomer to politics.In past intramural skirmishes, conservative Virginia Republicans have pushed for conventions to give a larger voice to the most hard-line party activists. In 2013, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II won the nomination for governor at a convention after his social conservative allies boxed out more moderate candidates who preferred a primary.But the current disagreement has more to do with derailing Ms. Chase and Mr. Youngkin, who threatened to blanket the state with tens of millions of dollars of television advertising ahead of any primary.Allies of Mr. Snyder have pushed for a convention by arguing that Mr. Youngkin would buy the election if it went to a primary.“I’m going to run hard and win the Republican nomination regardless of the method of nomination,” Mr. Snyder said. “It’s time for the Virginia G.O.P. to decide the rules.”There is little establishment support for Ms. Chase, who last month was censured by her State Senate colleagues and stripped of committee assignments after she called the rioters at the Capitol “patriots.” She has recently been required to sit in a plexiglass box after refusing to wear a mask during Senate sessions. Ms. Chase has called it her “square of freedom.”Mr. Cox, for his part, prefers a primary but has written two letters to State Central Committee members emphasizing his official neutrality in the primary-versus-convention debate.“They need to resolve it as quickly as possible,” Mr. Cox said. “We need to know the process. But I’ve been very adamant about not weighing in.”Kirk Cox, a former State House speaker, and Delegate Todd Gilbert at the State Capitol in Richmond, Va.Credit…Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch, via Associated PressVirginia Republicans face a Feb. 23 deadline to inform state elections officials whether they intend to hold a primary. The state G.O.P. chairman, Rich Anderson, warned in a Jan. 25 letter to committee members that an in-person convention would be impossible and that an unassembled convention could not proceed if supporters of a primary refused to budge from their no-convention stance.If neither side shifts, wrote Mr. Anderson, who through an aide declined an interview request, the party’s nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general will be chosen by the 72-member State Central Committee, “which will take on the perception of party bosses huddled in a smoke-filled back room.”The inability to organize a nominating contest has brought ridicule to a disorganized party aiming to win a statewide election for the first time in 12 years. John Fredericks, a radio talk show host who was the Virginia state chairman for Mr. Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, has organized bingo games to mock the party’s marathon Zoom meetings, which have each lasted four to eight hours.“To be four months away from the nomination and not have a process is terribly embarrassing and shows an unwillingness to compromise for the good of the party,” said former Gov. Bob McDonnell, the last Virginia Republican to win a statewide election. “Every passing day hurts whoever our eventual nominee is for myriad reasons.”Sixteen minutes after The New York Times emailed State Central Committee members asking questions about the Republicans’ internal nomination battle, the party’s general counsel, Chris Marston, who is also Mr. Snyder’s campaign compliance lawyer, emailed committee members asking them not to speak to reporters.Mr. Marston’s stated reason for avoiding media scrutiny is a lawsuit Ms. Chase filed in federal court challenging the party’s decision to hold a convention. But courts have long given political parties wide latitude to set and enforce their own rules for choosing nominees. Few outside Ms. Chase’s immediate circle of supporters believe her lawsuit, which has a hearing scheduled on Friday, will succeed.Ms. Chase, who was still arguing with less than a week left in Mr. Trump’s presidency that he could yet be inaugurated for a second term, said Thursday that she “doesn’t trust conventions,” which she said unfairly limit voting access for members of the military and others who can’t make it to an in-person site.“If we’re going to win as Republicans, we need to include more of the electorate who vote Republican instead of less,” she said. “Stop creating so many obstacles for people who would normally vote.”Ms. Chase this week won support for her primary push from Mr. Youngkin. During an interview with a Charlottesville radio station on Tuesday, Mr. Youngkin, whose supporters want a primary, said it was “not fair” that the party had created uncertainty for the candidates in its nominating process.“Boy, can I sympathize with Senator Chase on her frustration,” he said. “Here we are on February the 16th, we have an election in November, and we don’t even have a plan to select our candidate. I mean, this is absolutely amazing to me.”As Republicans across the country struggle with how much Mr. Trump should influence the direction of the party and whom it nominates for key races in 2022 and eventually for president in 2024, Virginia’s Republicans remain mired in their procedural fight.Those pushing for a primary say they won’t give up.Thomas Turner, a State Central Committee member who is chairman of the Young Republicans of Virginia, said he was hearing regularly from grass-roots Republicans who were dismayed with the decision to hold a convention and looking for him to keep trying to overturn it.“I am still wanting a primary because I do believe that is the best way to pick a candidate,” Mr. Turner said. “I will fight for that until the end.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump Calls on G.O.P. to Replace McConnell

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentLatest UpdatesTrump AcquittedHow Senators VotedSeven Republicans Vote to ConvictAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump, in Scorching Attack on McConnell, Urges G.O.P. to Replace HimThe former president, breaking an unusually long silence, called the Senate minority leader a “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack” and called on Republicans in the chamber to find a new leader.Former President Donald J. Trump meeting with Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, in the Oval Office last year. They were wary political allies throughout Mr. Trump’s term in office.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesMaggie Haberman and Feb. 16, 2021Updated 9:13 p.m. ETFormer President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday made a slashing and lengthy attack on Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, calling him a “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack” and arguing that the party would suffer losses in the future if he remained in charge.“If Republican senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,” Mr. Trump said.The 600-word statement, coming three days after the Senate acquitted him in his second impeachment trial, was trained solely on Mr. McConnell and sought to paint Mr. Trump as the best leader of the G.O.P. going forward.The statement did not include any sign of contrition from Mr. Trump for his remarks to a crowd of supporters who then attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Nor did it include any acknowledgment of his role during the violent hours in which his own vice president and members of Congress were under threat from the mob of Trump supporters.Rather, Mr. Trump chose to focus on Mr. McConnell as he broke an unusually lengthy silence by his standards, after being permanently barred from his formerly favorite medium — Twitter — last month because of tweets that he posted during the Capitol riot.Mr. McConnell’s office declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s attacks on Tuesday, but the senator has left little mystery about his contempt for the former president. Shortly after he joined the majority of Republican senators on Saturday in voting to acquit Mr. Trump on the House impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection,” Mr. McConnell excoriated Mr. Trump, laying the blame for the deadly riot at his feet and suggesting that further investigations of the former president could play out in the judicial system.“There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” Mr. McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor.His comments were widely interpreted as an attempt to minimize Mr. Trump’s brand of politics within the Republican Party and to appeal to donors who have said they are rejecting the party after some senators voted against certifying President Biden’s victory.Mr. McConnell wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed article and gave an interview to the paper’s news section suggesting he might get involved in primaries for 2022 as part of an effort to win back the majority.In private, Mr. McConnell has said he believed the impeachment proceedings would make it easier for Republicans to eventually purge Mr. Trump from the party. And he expressed surprise, and mild bemusement, at the hatchet-burying mission made to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., by Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader.In public, Mr. McConnell has sharply criticized Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist freshman and Trump devotee from Georgia, while defending Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming after her vote to impeach the former president.What Mr. McConnell has not done, though, is openly declare political war on Mr. Trump in the fashion that the former president did to him on Tuesday. While telling associates he knew he would have to oppose the former president in some primaries next year, he had hoped to unify his caucus by turning attention to Mr. Biden.But if Mr. McConnell wasn’t eager to begin an open and protracted feud with Mr. Trump, at least not yet, the freshly acquitted, ever-pugnacious and newly deplatformed former president was happy to do so. One person close to Mr. Trump said his initial version of the statement was more incendiary than what was released publicly.In the statement, Mr. Trump resorted to insults about Mr. McConnell’s acumen and political abilities, and faulted him for Republicans’ loss of their Senate majority.“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Mr. Trump said. “McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from majority leader to minority leader, and it will only get worse.”Mr. Trump offered up some new taunts: “The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle — they’ve never had it so good — and they want to keep it that way!” he said. “We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last.”While Mr. McConnell has faulted the former president for the party’s losses last month in both Senate races in Georgia, Mr. Trump maintained that it was because Republican voters were angry that the party’s officials had not done more to address his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.Mr. Trump claimed credit for Mr. McConnell’s victory in his own Senate race last year and took a swipe at Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who worked for the Trump administration as the transportation secretary.“McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family’s substantial Chinese business holdings,” Mr. Trump said. “He does nothing on this tremendous economic and military threat.” “He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our country,” Mr. Trump said, adding that “where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First.”After Mr. Trump made his statement on Tuesday, some of Mr. McConnell’s longtime supporters suggested that they knew bait when they saw it.“Trump going total mean girl ought to feed the cable beast for weeks,” Janet Mullins Grissom, the senator’s first chief of staff, wrote on Twitter.Others in Mr. McConnell’s intensely loyal circle of advisers, however, did not want such a bald attack to go unanswered.“It seems an odd choice for someone who claims they want to lead the G.O.P. to attack a man who has been unanimously elected to lead Senate Republicans a history-making eight times,” said Billy Piper, another former top McConnell aide. “But we have come to expect these temper tantrums when he feels threatened — just ask any of his former chiefs of staff or even his vice president.”Mr. Trump’s reference to Ms. Chao’s family was also a line of attack that Mr. McConnell and his inner circle have long denounced as racist when it comes from Democrats.The former president’s statement was the longest one he has issued since leaving office on Jan. 20. He has been mindful that he is the target of multiple investigations, people close to him said, and has been advised against appearing to taunt prosecutors or people who might sue him in civil courts. Still, Mr. Trump’s ability to stay silent through situations that anger him tends to last only so long.Mr. Trump’s advisers are discussing backing nearly a dozen candidates in primaries against the Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment, a move that would only deepen Mr. Trump’s friction with Mr. McCarthy. Not all of Mr. Trump’s aides think this is a wise course of action.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More