Primaries and Caucuses

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      R.F.K. Jr. Is a Walking, Talking Conspiracy Theory

      by

      Let’s start with some positive things about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign for president.Tick, tick, tick …OK, I really do have some. Sort of. But let’s get the downside out of the way first.There’s his anti-vax crusade. Kennedy has claimed that Covid vaccinations are responsible for practically every evil in the world — last year, in a best-selling book, he accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of using the pandemic to trigger a “coup d’état against Western democracy.”And he’s lashed into Joe Biden for pandemic restrictions that he once compared to Nazi Germany. Some of his relatives recoiled at that point. But R.F.K. Jr. holds no grudges. In his announcement speech he assured the crowd: “I bear no ill will … to any of them.”Which is certainly a good thing, given that even Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, disagreed when he claimed that the pandemic regulations were worse than Nazi Germany. (Back then, he argued, you could at least “hide in the attic like Anne Frank.”)Now Kennedy is running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Joe Biden. And while he isn’t going to win, he’ll certainly draw a lot of attention. Even loyal Democrats have gotten kinda bored with our current president, and nobody really loves the idea of him celebrating his 86th birthday in the White House.It’s very clear that many of the folks who’ve told pollsters they want to nominate R.F.K. Jr. for president are just relating to the name. But he’s earned some of his high profile. There was a time — a very long time ago — when the world knew him mainly as a battler for the environment. Talking with everybody from Oprah to the Waterbury Democratic Town Committee.Mentioning that last one so I can tell you a story about a visit Kennedy made there once, back during the Clinton era. “He spoke forever,” a Connecticut friend of mine recalled. “He explained how estuaries work. He used that word.” It was not the normal pitch you gave to the regular Democrats in Waterbury, but nevertheless, my friend remembers the audience rapt from beginning to end.That was then. Now, Kennedy is troubled by spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder that makes his voice sound hoarse and strange. And even though he must realize his anti-pharmaceutical ranting is not going to win him the nomination, he doesn’t seem quite able to contain himself. Recently, he’s claimed vaccine research and prescription drugs have been responsible for everything from H.I.V. to school shootings.“Prior to the introduction of Prozac,” he told an online audience, “we had almost none of these events in our country and we’ve never seen them in human history, where people walk into a schoolroom of children or strangers and start shooting people.”Obviously even a great environmental record won’t wipe away all this crazy stuff. But one very good thing about Kennedy’s presidential campaign is that he’s actually planning to run in the presidential primaries. Take on Joe Biden, head-to-head. Could be a problem for the president, what with his likely decision to skip the first two contests in New Hampshire and Iowa in order to start in the more diverse South Carolina. If Kennedy wins instead, a lot of Democrats who are dissatisfied with the status quo may be seriously tempted to look his way.That’s Biden’s problem. He’ll survive. But so far, what Kennedy is apparently not going to do is run as a third-party candidate.Let’s celebrate him for that. After all, it’d be a lot easier to run as a third-party candidate than trying to beat back Biden in Democratic primaries around the country. Your name will be in the news all the way through to Election Day. Only problem is that you can easily siphon votes away from the regular party candidate and throw the race to somebody none of your supporters really want at all.Chances are, for instance, that all the conservatives who voted for Ross Perot in 1992 weren’t really hoping he’d tilt the election to Bill Clinton. Or that the liberals who backed Ralph Nader in 2000 weren’t intending to help George Bush sneak past Al Gore. And if you’re ever in the mood to obsess about this matter, we’ll get together and have a long conversation about William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt.But for the moment, let’s look at Cornel West, a former Harvard professor now seeking the nomination of the Green Party, a perfect example of a group that promotes liberal causes in a way that can help the least-liberal candidate win.West is being assisted by Jill Stein, who was the Green Party nominee in 2016. When she won more votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania than Donald Trump’s margin of victory over Hillary Clinton in each state.Just saying.To summarize: People, if you’re bored with Joe Biden and believe that what this country really needs is a Democratic presidential nominee who seems to feel pandemic restrictions are nearly as dangerous as Nazis, go ahead and vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.It’s a free country, after all.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Draws Support From Outside the Democratic Party

      by

      His family name, libertarian bent and support from the tech world, along with his views on censorship and vaccines, have given Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a foothold in the 2024 contest.Speaking at a festival hosted by a libertarian group in New Hampshire, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. railed against the “mainstream media” for serving as “propagandists for the powerful.” Each time he mentioned the perfidy of the press — for silencing dissent, for toeing the government line, for labeling him a conspiracy theorist — he drew a supportive hail of jeers.It was a page out of the playbook of Donald J. Trump. But for Mr. Kennedy, who is running a long-shot challenge to President Biden for the Democratic nomination for president, it was more than a rhetorical flourish.Censorship is a central theme of his campaign, uniting an unlikely coalition that includes longtime acolytes in what is known as the “health freedom” movement; donors from Silicon Valley; and new admirers from across the political spectrum.“The mainstream media that is here today is going to report that I, you know, have paranoid conspiracy theories, which is what they always say, but I’m just going to tell you facts,” Mr. Kennedy said at the event last week. He added, “When the press believes it is their job to protect you from dangerous information, they are manipulating you.”Indeed, Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and scion of the storied Kennedy Democratic clan, is now a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories. He has twisted facts about vaccine development by presenting information out of context; embraced unsubstantiated claims that some clouds are chemical agents being spread by the government; and promoted the decades-old theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.The idea that the press has a stranglehold on public information is a core, animating belief in the health freedom movement, which broadly opposes regulation of health practices, including vaccinations. Two political action committees supporting Mr. Kennedy were formed by people who knew him through this movement, which accounts for some of his most ardent support.Censorship, and specifically disdain for attempts to regulate the flow of disinformation and hate speech, is also a motivating factor for his powerful backers in Silicon Valley. Tech executives and investors have amplified Mr. Kennedy’s anti-establishment message and celebrated his willingness to challenge liberal orthodoxies and scientific consensus — never mind that in doing so, he has often spread widely discredited claims about vaccines and other public health measures.And, for many prospective voters drawn to Mr. Kennedy, anger about censorship is a natural outgrowth of a deep distrust of authority that accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in response to the lockdowns that public officials called on to halt the virus’s spread.It is the latter group that is most diverse. Some are libertarians, searching for a standard-bearer; others are disaffected Democrats; some are Republicans looking for an alternative to Mr. Trump. Mr. Kennedy’s audience in New Hampshire of at least 250 people included at least one person wearing a Trump 2020 hat.A fund-raising email from his campaign on Tuesday said it had raised “less than $4 million” since he entered the race in April. Official figures will be released in July, along with numbers from his PACs, which have separately said they brought in several million dollars.Mr. Kennedy’s recent public appearances have tended to be before conservative or libertarian audiences. Last week, he spoke about environmental stewardship at a sold-out dinner hosted by the Ethan Allen Institute, a free-market, right-of-center think tank in Burlington, Vt. This week, he had been scheduled to speak at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization that has, among other things, pushed for the banning of books that discuss race, gender and sexuality, but later canceled that appearance, citing a scheduling conflict, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.“We are here to protect the soul of America,” said Debra Sheldon, 48, a registered Democrat from New York State, who attended a Kennedy event in Lancaster, N.H., with her son, Cass Sheldon Misri.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesDespite this rightward tilt, Mr. Kennedy has emerged as a persistent thorn in the side of Mr. Biden, posing not so much a serious threat to the president’s renomination as a high-profile reminder that many Democratic voters would prefer new blood.Mr. Kennedy’s support among Democrats reached as high as 20 percent in polls in recent months, but a Quinnipiac University poll this month also found Mr. Kennedy’s standing among Republicans to be fairly high: 40 percent viewed him favorably, compared with 31 percent of independents and 25 percent of Democrats. In New Hampshire, a Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll put his Democratic support in June at 9 percent.Mr. Kennedy’s longtime admirers are not surprised. Debra Sheldon, 48, a Democrat from New York State, campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008. But when she had a child, she said, Mr. Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense — a nonprofit group he formed that has campaigned against vaccines — “really helped inform me, as a new mom, about what was good for my kid.”Children’s Health Defense has been widely criticized for spreading disinformation about vaccines, included discredited claims linking them to autism.Ms. Sheldon is now a volunteer for Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, and was in New Hampshire selling his books and other materials about autism at the libertarian retreat, the Porcupine Freedom Festival. She described her mission in almost spiritual terms: “We are here to protect the soul of America.”Some of Mr. Kennedy’s newer supporters said they were drawn to what they saw as his message of unity and fairness, an almost nostalgic perspective he often anchors in stories of his childhood in one of America’s most famous political families. But others described feeling “awakened” during the pandemic by questions Mr. Kennedy posed about vaccines, masks and school lockdowns, issues they felt were ignored — or, worse, stifled — by the mainstream media.“All of those people watched over many years where Bobby was censored in every mainstream venue,” said Tony Lyons, whose company, Skyhorse Publishing, has picked up authors deemed unsavory or risky by other presses, including the filmmaker Woody Allen, the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Lyons is a co-chair of a PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy.“Every TV show, venue — they just wouldn’t let him on to talk about his views on what Big Pharma companies were doing to the American public,” Mr. Lyons said. “He then kind of became a hero of the freedom of speech people,” a group that includes many political identities, he said.Mr. Kennedy was kicked off social media platforms during the pandemic on the grounds that he had spread debunked claims about the virus. Instagram lifted its suspension in June, citing his presidential candidacy, after Mr. Kennedy complained about the suspension on Twitter. The complaint prompted Elon Musk — who calls himself a free speech absolutist — to invite him to a discussion on Twitter Spaces.Mr. Kennedy at the Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, N.H.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy has embraced cryptocurrency, as well: He spoke at a major Bitcoin conference in Miami last month, and his campaign is accepting Bitcoin donations.He has also embraced podcasts, and recently recorded a more than three-hour-long appearance with Joe Rogan, whose immensely popular show reaches 11 million listeners per episode. The show, which has been criticized for spreading misinformation, largely caters to young men, and many of his listeners fall on the center-right of the political spectrum.On the show, Mr. Kennedy described the modern Democratic Party as the “party of censorship.”Jason Calacanis, a co-host of a popular podcast on which Mr. Kennedy appeared in May, said in response to questions about Mr. Kennedy’s appeal that his willingness to talk for hours on a podcast stood in contrast to Mr. Biden, who has held few news conferences.“In the age of podcasting, Americans want someone sharp and willing to engage in vibrant debates,” Mr. Calacanis said. “Trump won in 2016 because of social media, and the next president will win because of podcasts.”Mr. Kennedy and his PAC are drawing significant support from the tech world, including Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter who endorsed Mr. Kennedy, and David Sacks, a venture capitalist who has raised money for Republicans and Democrats alike.Mark Gorton, a New York City trader who created the file-sharing service LimeWire, helped create and fund a PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy. The PAC, American Values 2024, has taken in at least $5.7 million, its leadership says — official numbers will be released next month.Mr. Gorton said the pandemic “unlocked all this energy” among a “very marginalized group” of people pushing back against public health protocols who found themselves ostracized or “de-platformed” on social media. In Mr. Kennedy, they saw a hero.Bill Barger, a 31-year-old from Manchester, N.H., who attended Mr. Kennedy’s speech Thursday, said he was “definitely interested” in Mr. Kennedy. But he wasn’t yet sold on Mr. Kennedy’s commitment to free speech.He said he would like to see Mr. Kennedy debate Mr. Trump, whom he described as “funny as hell.”On a radio show Monday, Mr. Trump hailed Mr. Kennedy’s poll numbers, calling him a “very smart guy.”The two candidates share common fixations. During his speech in New Hampshire, Mr. Kennedy repeatedly invoked The New York Times as an example of corrupt media.“The New York Times, which is in this room today,” he said, as an audience member pointed down at the Times reporter’s seat, prompting a chorus of boos so angry, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign manager — the former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich — told the audience member to stop it.Mr. Kennedy smiled for a few moments, then walked back across the stage. “I’m not saying the reporter who is here. She’s a very sweet person, by all accounts.”Ruth Igielnik More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      New York Primary Election 2023: Live Results

      by

      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Irineo Cabreros, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Lindsey Rogers Cook, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Will Houp, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Ilana Marcus, Charlie Smart and Isaac White. Editing by Wilson Andrews, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. Reporting contributed by Dana Rubinstein. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      New York’s Primary Elections 2023: What to Know

      by

      Primaries were being contested Tuesday for a range of New York City Council seats, district attorneys in the Bronx and Queens, and offices throughout New York State.Several Democratic incumbents in New York saw unusual challenges from more conservative candidates in Tuesday’s primary, with the opponents hoping to benefit from a demographic change, as an influx of immigrants is shifting some districts to the right.Incumbents easily held off primary challenges in Democratic primaries for district attorney in Queens and the Bronx; further north, a Council race in Buffalo was won by a woman whose son was shot in the Tops supermarket racist massacre.In New York City, just over 149,000 people had cast their ballots as of 6 p.m., according to the City Board of Elections. That includes 44,611 votes that were cast during the nine-day early voting period that began June 17 and ended on Sunday — less than a quarter of the early-voting turnout two years ago, when candidates for mayor were competing in the primary.There were contested primaries in New York City Council contests across the boroughs, with the races for a two-year term instead of the usual four years because of redistricting. Every seat on the City Council is up for re-election, but less than half of the 51 Council seats are being contested in primaries, and of those, 13 races feature more than two candidates — making ranked-choice voting, where voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference, necessary.Ranked-choice voting will not be used in the races for district attorney.How Ranked-Choice Voting Will Affect the ResultsThe New York City Board of Elections will reveal the first-place vote totals each candidate receives on Tuesday; if one of the candidates in the 13 Council contests where there are three or more contestants draws 50 percent of the vote or more, a winner should be declared.If no candidate hits the 50 percent mark, the board will use the ranked-choice system, but not until July 5. The board usually runs the first ranked-choice calculation seven days after the vote, but because that day falls on the Fourth of July, the tabulation will be delayed a day.If necessary, additional ranked-choice tabulations will be held each week afterward, on July 11 and July 18, said Vincent Ignizio, the deputy executive director of the Board of Elections.About 15,000 absentee ballots have already been filed, but additional absentee ballots can be received a week after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by June 27.Under recent changes to state law, voters will also have an opportunity to cure or fix mistakes on their absentee ballots. The tentative last day to receive absentee ballot cures is July 17.Because of the low turnout, Board of Elections officials don’t expect that more than three rounds of ranked-choice voting tabulations will be required.Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group, said ranked-choice voting gave people more options. “We heard some voters in our 2021 exit polling say that because they knew they had the ability to rank, they actually paid more attention to more candidates,” she said.Some Key Races to WatchNew York City District Attorney RacesThe incumbent district attorneys of the Bronx and Queens both fended off challengers to win their respective Democratic primaries, according to The Associated Press.In the Bronx, Darcel Clark defeated Tess Cohen, a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, who was the first person to challenge Ms. Clark in a primary. With 65 percent of the votes counted, Ms. Clark led Ms. Cohen by more than 12,000 votes.In Queens, Melinda Katz, rebuffed a challenge from her right, defeating George Grasso, a former Police Department first deputy commissioner who attacked Ms. Katz as being soft on crime. Ms. Katz disputed the accusation by pointing to her focus on retail theft, gang takedowns and gun seizures.The challenge from Mr. Grasso came four years after Ms. Katz narrowly defeated a democratic socialist who wanted to abolish the police and end cash bail. Ms. Katz was leading Mr. Grasso and another opponent, Devian Daniels, by 27,000 votes with 71 percent of the vote counted.Ms. Clark, whose tenure began in 2016, was the first Black woman to be elected district attorney in New York. She grew up in the Bronx, was raised in public housing and went to public schools.She said that her biggest accomplishment as district attorney has been “putting humanity into the criminal justice system.”Central Harlem City Council RaceIn Harlem, three moderate Democrats are running in one of the most competitive races in the city to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who dropped out last month.Ms. Jordan faced questions about her belief that the police should be abolished and about her far-left stance on housing development. Her name will remain on the ballot.The three Democrats running to replace her have sought to distance themselves from Ms. Jordan. They are: Inez Dickens, 73, who held the Harlem Council seat for 12 years before joining the State Assembly; Yusef Salaam, 49, one of five men exonerated in the rape of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989; and Al Taylor, 65, who is serving his sixth year in the Assembly.All three candidates gathered at Lenox Avenue and West 134th Street on Tuesday afternoon to try to woo voters. Ms. Dickens’s staff used a bullhorn, while Mr. Salaam’s team rang a bell every time a voter said they had ranked him first.Chantel Jackson, an assemblywoman from the Bronx who grew up in Harlem, came out with her nearly 2-year-old son to hand out fliers for Mr. Taylor. Mr. Salaam and Mr. Taylor had cross-endorsed each other, asking voters to rank them first and second. Ms. Dickens was endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams.The major issues in the historically Black neighborhood include the loss of Black residents, lack of affordable housing and a saturation of drug treatment centers and social service providers.The candidates have struggled to differentiate themselves. All three say they would have supported a new housing development on West 145th Street that Ms. Jordan initially rejected because it was not affordable enough.Ms. Dickens and Mr. Taylor have contended that their experience would make a difference, while Mr. Salaam, who moved back to the city from Georgia to run for the seat, has argued that it is time for a generational shift.“Knowledge is power,” Ms. Dickens said while campaigning. “If you don’t have the knowledge, working in the system is difficult.”Other City Council RacesIn Lower Manhattan, the incumbent Chris Marte, a progressive Democrat, was leading challengers Susan Lee, a consultant; Ursila Jung, a private investor; and Pooi Stewart, a substitute teacher. All the challengers emphasized public safety and education and argued that Mr. Marte was too far to the left.In the Bronx, incumbent, Councilwoman Marjorie Velázquez, was leading her opponents who criticized her because she backed the rezoning of Bruckner Boulevard in Throgs Neck, which will bring affordable housing to the area.In southern Brooklyn, three Asian American Democrats are running in a newly formed district.The candidates are Wai Yee Chan, the executive director at Homecrest Community Services; Stanley Ng, a retired computer programmer; and Susan Zhuang, the chief of staff for Assemblyman William Colton.In a district that has swung to the right in recent years, the winner of the Democratic primary is expected to face a tough general election challenge from the Republican primary winner.Vito J. LaBella, a conservative Republican and former Police Department officer, is facing Ying Tan, who works in senior services, in that primary.Buffalo Common CouncilIn Buffalo, Zeneta Everhart, a political newcomer whose son was a victim of a racist shooting at a Tops supermarket last May, appeared on track to defeat a well-known progressive, India Walton, in a primary race for a seat on the city’s Common Council.The seat represents Masten, an East Side district where the Tops is located and which is a traditional base of Black political power in Buffalo, New York’s second largest city and a Democratic stronghold.Ms. Everhart, a former television news producer who works for State Senator Timothy Kennedy, testified in front of Congress after the shooting, in which her son, Zaire Goodman, was shot in the neck but survived. Ten other people — all Black — were killed by the gunman, who targeted East Buffalo because of its large Black population.Ms. Walton, a democratic socialist, became a liberal star after she defeated Mayor Byron Brown in a primary in 2021, only to lose the general election that fall after Mr. Brown mounted a write-in campaign.In this campaign, Ms. Walton had criticized Ms. Everhart’s connections to the Democratic establishment, which included endorsements from the county Democratic Committee and Senator Chuck Schumer. But returns on Tuesday showed Ms. Everhart leading with about two-thirds of the vote, with about 85 percent of precincts reporting.Jesse McKinley More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis’s Pitch to New Hampshire Focuses Heavily on Florida

      by

      Focusing heavily on Florida at his first town-hall event in the Granite State, Ron DeSantis drew a reception that was sometimes warm, sometimes more skeptical — especially on the issue of abortion.At his first town-hall event in New Hampshire, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida talked on Tuesday about illegal immigration in Texas, crime in Chicago, disorder on the streets of San Francisco and the wonders of nearly every aspect of Florida — a state he mentioned about 80 times.Roughly an hour into the event, Mr. DeSantis finally got around to saying “New Hampshire.”His relentless focus on Florida was at times well received in a state that will play a key role in deciding who leads the Republican Party in the 2024 election against President Biden. Mr. DeSantis’s comments seemed to especially resonate when he connected his actions at home to issues of importance to New Hampshire residents, like the flood of fentanyl and other deadly drugs into their communities.Still, his self-confident lecture about his record as Florida’s governor left the distinct impression that he believes Republican voters need what he is offering them more than he is interested in what he could learn from their questions.“Every year I’ve been governor, we’ve decreased the assumptions in our pension fund,” he boasted, digging deep into the Florida policy weeds. “In other words, you know, whatever it was when I came in was rosier. And we always reduced down to ensure that no matter what happens, our pension system is going to be funded. I think we’re like eighth-best in the country with that.”Even his jokes were Florida-centric, sometimes to the point of obscurity to the crowd of roughly 250 people who packed a carpeted banquet hall in Hollis, a few miles from the Massachusetts border. The audience reaction was muted when he joked about property prices rising in Naples, Fla., to make a point about Chicago residents fleeing south to his state.After facing criticism in recent weeks for not answering questions from voters at his rallies, Mr. DeSantis has held recent town hall-style events in South Carolina, Texas and now New Hampshire. David Degner for The New York TimesThe main ideological skepticism in the audience concerned Mr. DeSantis’s hard-line stance against abortion — a position that is popular in heavily evangelical states like Iowa but less so in more secular New Hampshire.Like several other Republican women in attendance, Jayne Beaton, 65, of Amherst, N.H., said she came with questions about the candidate’s position on abortion, and the six-week ban he signed in Florida.“I predict it’s going to be an issue for him,” she said. “With everything else” in his platform, she added, “I’m onboard and excited, but I’m less sure about abortion, and the six-week ban.”After taking criticism in recent weeks for not answering questions from voters at his rallies, Mr. DeSantis has held town hall-style events in South Carolina, Texas and now New Hampshire since Thursday. Although he has rarely faced tough questions, he has seemed relatively comfortable in these unscripted moments, asking voters their names, thanking military veterans for their service and occasionally cracking jokes.Such casual interactions are especially important in New Hampshire — the first-in-the-nation primary state whose residents are accustomed to vetting presidential candidates over and over in intimate settings.“It is a little different here than it is in any other state,” Jason Osborne, the Republican majority leader of the New Hampshire House, who has endorsed the Florida governor for president, said in a phone interview before the event on Tuesday. “We’re so small, we’re the first, so the most candidates are going to touch the state than any others.”Mr. DeSantis, who has a reputation for being somewhat socially awkward, is working hard to overcome a deficit of roughly 30 percentage points in the Granite State against former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner. He spent more time answering questions from voters in Hollis than he has at any event since announcing his candidacy in May.The audience, which included many out-of-staters who traveled hours to see Mr. DeSantis, seemed to appreciate that he had showed up. Several told him they admired his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Florida. In a veterans-heavy state, he was also thanked for his military service and received applause when he said he was the only veteran running in the Republican field.Mr. DeSantis ducked only one question. A teenage boy invited him to condemn Mr. Trump’s efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. DeSantis declined to do so. All he would say was that he did not “enjoy seeing, you know, what happened” that day, but that he had nothing to do with it and Republicans needed to look forward, not backward, because if they dwelled on the past they would lose elections.When he was finally asked about Florida’s six-week abortion ban, Mr. DeSantis seemed comfortable answering the question and, unlike Mr. Trump, he made no effort to contort himself to appeal to more moderate voters. He said he believed that in America, “life is worth protecting,” and it was important to provide services to support low-income and single mothers.Doreen Monahan, 65, of Spofford, N.H. — who asked Mr. DeSantis the question about abortion, and the burden placed on taxpayers when women who cannot get abortions bear unwanted children — said later that she had been reassured by his answer, including his mentions of beefed-up postnatal care and adoption programs.“It’s nice that they have some options,” she said. “I have friends who waited years to adopt.”She said she had reached out to Mr. DeSantis’s campaign to ask about exceptions to the six-week ban, and felt more comfortable after hearing details.Mr. DeSantis pitched two main arguments against Mr. Trump, without naming him. The first was that change could not come to Washington if Republicans kept losing elections. The second was his theme of “no excuses” — a shot at Mr. Trump’s failure to deliver on core promises such as completing a wall along the southern border.An older man told Mr. DeSantis that he had voted twice to “drain the swamp,” but that it never happened. He wanted to know what Mr. DeSantis would do differently from Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis opened his response by recalling how exciting it was in 2016 to hear the rally chants of “drain the swamp.” But then he took two unsubtle shots at the former president.Mr. DeSantis said that “the swamp” in Washington was worse now than ever and that to “break the swamp,” a president must be disciplined and focused, and have the “humility” to understand he cannot do it on his own. The audience cheered when he promised to fire the Trump-appointed F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, and turn the Justice Department “inside out.”Mr. DeSantis made a campaign stop on Monday in Eagle Pass, a Texas city on the border.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis seemed at his most animated toward the end of the rally when a woman asked him about Covid vaccines. In response, the governor denounced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, calling their efforts to promote vaccines a “total disaster.” He also attacked big pharmaceutical companies, and highlighted a study by Florida’s health department that purported to show elevated health risks for young men who took mRNA vaccines but that was widely criticized by scientists.“These Covid restrictions and mandates were not about your health,” Mr. DeSantis said. “It was about them controlling your behavior.”The DeSantis campaign has leaned heavily into criticizing how Mr. Trump handled the pandemic, seeing widespread anger among Republicans over vaccines, masking, school closures and social-distancing measures as an opportunity to peel voters away from the former president.The crowd responded approvingly to Mr. DeSantis’s eight-minute tirade against what he called “the medical swamp.”Mark Pearson, a Republican state representative in New Hampshire who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said in an interview this month that he had seen the governor grow more confident as a retail politician.In May, Mr. Pearson said, he told Mr. DeSantis that he needed to engage directly with New Hampshire voters.“I told him, ‘Here’s what I suggest you do: You walk the rope line, you drop into the diners, you go to the small venues,’” he recounted. “‘But it better be real, Ron, because we can smell a phony from a mile away, because we’ve been doing this for a hundred years.’” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Can DeSantis Break Trump’s Hold on New Hampshire?

      by

      Donald Trump is looking to the state as an early chance to clear a crowded field, while Ron DeSantis’s camp is banking on winnowing the Republican race to two.Former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are holding dueling events on Tuesday in New Hampshire, but from vastly different political positions: one as the dominant front-runner in the state, the other still seeking his footing.Strategists for both campaigns agree that the state will play a starring role in deciding who leads the Republican Party into the 2024 election against President Biden.Mr. Trump sees the first primary contest in New Hampshire as an early chance to clear the crowded field of rivals. And members of Team DeSantis — some of whom watched from losing sidelines, as Mr. Trump romped through the Granite State in 2016 on his way to the nomination — hope New Hampshire will be the primary that winnows the Republican field to two.“Iowa’s cornfields used to be where campaigns were killed off, and now New Hampshire is where campaigns go to die,” said Jeff Roe, who runs Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down. Mr. Roe retains agonizing memories from 2016, when he ran the presidential campaign of the last man standing against Mr. Trump: Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.New Hampshire’s voters are known for being fickle and choosy, sometimes infuriatingly so. The joke is that when you ask a Granite Stater whom they’re voting for, they say, “I don’t know, I’ve only met the candidate three times.”Mr. DeSantis is campaigning in Iowa, another early-voting state.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesYet midway through 2023, the state — more secular than Iowa and with a libertarian streak — appears frozen in place. Mr. Trump, now twice indicted and twice impeached, is nowhere near as dominant with Republicans as he was in 2020, but he is stronger than he was in 2016, and his closest challenger is well behind him.In 2016, Mr. Trump won New Hampshire with a blunt and incendiary message, fanning flames about terrorist threats and without doing any of the retail politicking that’s traditionally required. But local operatives and officials believe that Mr. Trump, with his decades-long celebrity status, is the only politician who could get away with this.“It’s definitely not going to be something that someone like Ron DeSantis can pull off,” said Jason Osborne, the New Hampshire House majority leader who endorsed the Florida governor for president. “He’s got to do the drill just like everybody else.”Polls suggest there is an opening for a Trump alternative. But to be that person, Mr. DeSantis has miles of ground to make up.As recently as January, Mr. DeSantis was leading Mr. Trump in the state by a healthy margin, according to a poll by the University of New Hampshire. But Mr. DeSantis has slipped considerably, with recent polling that suggests his support is in the teens and more than 25 percentage points behind Mr. Trump.In a move that some saw as ominous, Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, went off the airwaves in New Hampshire in mid-May and has not included the state in its latest bookings, which cover only Iowa and South Carolina.DeSantis allies insist the move was intended to husband resources in the Boston market, which they said was an expensive and inefficient way to reach primary voters. And they said Mr. DeSantis would maintain an aggressive schedule in the state.“We are confident that the governor’s message will resonate with voters in New Hampshire as he continues to visit the Granite State and detail his solutions to Joe Biden’s failures,” Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, said in a statement.Still, so much of Mr. DeSantis’s early moves seem aimed at Iowa and its caucuses that are dominated by the most conservative activists, many of whom are evangelical. In contrast, New Hampshire has an open primary that will allow independents, who tend to skew more moderate, to cast ballots. And without a competitive Democratic primary in 2024 they could be a particularly sizable share of the G.O.P. primary vote.Iowa is where Mr. DeSantis held his first event and where his super PAC has based its $100 million door-knocking operation.Mr. DeSantis’s signing of a six-week abortion ban is unlikely to prove popular in New Hampshire, where even the state’s Republican governor has described himself as “pro-choice.” Trump supporters at a DeSantis event in Manchester, N.H., this month. David Degner for The New York TimesThe clashing Trump and DeSantis events this week have jangled the nerves of local officials. Mr. DeSantis’s decision to schedule a town hall in Hollis on Tuesday at the same time that the influential New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women is hosting Mr. Trump at its Lilac Luncheon has prompted a backlash. The group’s events director, Christine Peters, said that to “have a candidate come in and distract” from the group’s event was “unprecedented.”Mr. DeSantis’s town hall will mark his fourth visit to New Hampshire this year and his second since announcing his campaign in May.Mr. DeSantis did collect chits in April when he helped the New Hampshire Republican Party raise a record sum at a fund-raising dinner. And he has gathered more than 50 endorsements from state representatives. But before the town hall on Tuesday, he had not taken questions from New Hampshire voters in a traditional setting.During his last trip to the state — a four-stop tour on June 1 — Mr. DeSantis snapped at a reporter who pressed him on why he hadn’t taken questions from voters.“What are you talking about?” Mr. DeSantis said. “Are you blind?”New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, said in an interview that there was “a lot of interest” in Mr. DeSantis from voters who had seen him on television but wanted to vet him up close.“Can he hold up under our scrutiny?” Mr. Sununu said. “I think he’s personally going to do pretty well here,” he added, but “the biggest thing” on voters’ minds is “what’s he going to be like when he knocks on my door.”New Hampshire’s voters will indeed be subjected to thousands of DeSantis door-knocks — but not from the man himself. He has outsourced his ground game to Never Back Down, which is expected to have more than $200 million at its disposal. The group has already knocked on more than 75,000 doors in New Hampshire, according to a super PAC official, an extraordinary figure this early in the race.But Mr. DeSantis still faces daunting challenges.Mr. Trump remains popular among Republicans, and even more so after his indictments. And he is not taking the state for granted. Unlike in 2016, his operation has been hard at work in the state for months, with influential figures like the former Republican state party chairman Stephen Stepanek working on Mr. Trump’s behalf.Mr. Trump’s super PAC has hammered Mr. DeSantis with television ads that cite his past support for a sales tax to replace the federal income tax — a message tailored to provoke residents of the proudly anti-tax state. The large field in the Republican race is a key challenge for Mr. DeSantis, as he seeks Republican voters looking for a Trump alternative.Sophie Park for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis’s biggest problem is the size of the field. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, camped out in the state in 2016 and appeared to be making headway in consolidating some of the anti-Trump vote in recent polls.The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has already spent around 20 days campaigning in the state, according to his adviser Tricia McLaughlin. Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina is another frequent visitor. Both have events in the state on Tuesday. Additionally, the campaign of Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has already spent around $2 million in New Hampshire.If these candidates stay in the race through early next year, a repeat of 2016 may be inevitable. In a crowded field, Mr. Trump won the state with over 35 percent of the vote. In the meantime, Mr. DeSantis needs “a defining message that gets beyond the small base he has,” said Tom Rath, a veteran of New Hampshire politics who has advised the presidential campaigns of Republican nominees including Mitt Romney and George W. Bush. “He needs to do real retail, and so far there is no indication that he can do that.”Ruth Igielnik More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Ron DeSantis Calls for ‘Deadly Force’ Against Suspected Drug Traffickers

      by

      Campaigning in a Texas border city, the Florida governor laid out a series of hard-right immigration proposals, including some that would face legal roadblocks or test the limits of presidential authority.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida made a campaign stop in the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas.Brent McdonaldGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday proposed a host of hard-right immigration policies, floating the idea of using deadly force against suspected drug traffickers and others breaking through border barriers while “demonstrating hostile intent.”“Of course you use deadly force,” Mr. DeSantis said after a campaign event on a sweltering morning in Eagle Pass, a small Texas border city. “If you drop a couple of these cartel operatives trying to do that, you’re not going to have to worry about that anymore,” he added. He said they would end up “stone-cold dead.”He did not clarify how Border Patrol officers or other law enforcement authorities might determine which people crossing the border were smuggling drugs. He said only that “if someone is breaking through the border wall” while “demonstrating hostile intent or hostile action, you have to be able to meet that with the appropriate use of force.”Mr. DeSantis’s proposal served as an escalation of Republican messaging on the border and was part of a host of plans he unveiled in an effort to match the hard-line immigration stance of former President Donald J. Trump, who privately suggested shooting migrants in the legs during his administration.Mr. DeSantis said that if elected, he would seek to tear down some of the pillars of American immigration law, such as the automatic granting of citizenship to those born in the United States.And he said his administration would “fully deputize” state and local law enforcement officers in states like Texas to arrest and deport migrants back to Mexico — a power now reserved for the federal government — and to detain migrant children indefinitely, despite a court order imposing strict limits on the practice. He also promised to end “phony asylum claims.”“Of course you use deadly force,” Mr. DeSantis said of drug traffickers after the campaign event, held on a sweltering morning in Texas.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesThose policies are sure to appeal to conservative voters in the Republican presidential primary contest, but they would be likely to run into legal roadblocks and could test the limits of presidential authority. The Constitution has been held to guarantee birthright citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states cannot enact their own immigration policy.And while Mr. DeSantis argued that the country needed harsh new immigration rules because the current ones were encouraging dangerous border crossings and the mistreatment of migrant children, some of his proposals could also endanger migrants, including the use of “deadly force” against people cutting through the border wall.“You do it one time and they will never do it again,” he said.His campaign said in a news release that he would follow “appropriate rules of engagement” and that the rules would apply to “those trying to smuggle drugs into the United States.” (The overwhelming majority of drugs are smuggled in commercial vehicles coming across official ports of entry, not carried by migrants, according to U.S. border authorities.)Another plan Mr. DeSantis put forward, which would require certain asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, was previously employed by Mr. Trump, drawing criticism for forcing migrants to live in squalid tent camps where some were reportedly subjected to sexual assault, kidnapping and torture.Mr. DeSantis has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, but he has presented few specifics until now. Other policy proposals he released on Monday included:Deploying the military to “assist” Border Patrol agents until a wall is finished.Cracking down on Mexican drug cartel activity, including by blocking precursor chemicals used to manufacture drugs “from entering Mexican ports,” if the Mexican government does not act to stop the cartels.Detaining all migrants who cross the border without authorization until their immigration court hearing date. (Such a policy would most likely require the creation of a vast new prison system.)“These are ideas that have rightly been categorized for a really long time as radical and extremist,” said Aron Thorn, a senior lawyer in the Beyond Borders Program of the Texas Civil Rights Project.The policy rollout on Monday suggested that Mr. DeSantis, who is trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 percentage points in national polls, was trying to outflank the former president on immigration. Mr. DeSantis — whose “stop the invasion” language is a hallmark of America’s far right — has argued that he is the candidate most likely to enact conservative immigration policies. He has accused Mr. Trump of “running to the left,” saying that “this is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016.”But even among voters who came to see Mr. DeSantis on Monday at a cinder-block-and-steel Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Eagle Pass, some said that they remained more inclined to vote for Mr. Trump.“He’s Trump 2.0, but this isn’t his time,” said John Sassano, 60, a retired teacher in Eagle Pass who described himself as a former Democrat. “I’d love to see him as V.P.”Sandy Bradley, 66, a retired government worker, traveled with two friends from Del Rio, a nearby border town, to hear Mr. DeSantis, buying festive cowboy hats at a Walmart on the way. “I think he will catch up,” she said, adding that Mr. DeSantis seemed to share her Christian values.She added that she wanted a candidate who would address illegal immigration and “stop all the influx.”Mr. DeSantis went directly from the event to a news conference at a ranch along the Rio Grande outside town where the state of Texas had recently constructed fencing with concertina wire in an area where migrants often cross.“This is an ongoing problem,” said Ruben Garibay, who owns the ranch. Mr. Garibay, wearing a black cowboy hat and speaking in the shade of a tree as the temperature neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit, said he had agreed to host Mr. DeSantis but had yet to make up his mind about which candidate to support. “It’s a little early in the game,” he said.Mr. Trump first deployed a so-called Remain in Mexico policy, which the Biden administration later reversed. He also proposed ending birthright citizenship during his first campaign, although he failed to do so while in office, and has recently renewed those calls as a candidate. And, of course, he ran in 2016 on building a wall at the southern border, an issue that helped propel him to the White House.On his social media site on Monday, Mr. Trump said that Mr. DeSantis’s “sole purpose in making the trip was to reiterate the fact that he would do all of the things done by me in creating the strongest Border, by far, in U.S. history.”Hundreds of migrants waiting inside a makeshift migrant camp to be loaded onto buses and taken for processing at a Customs and Border Protection substation in El Paso, Texas, in May. Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York TimesAs governor, Mr. DeSantis last month sent hundreds of Florida law enforcement officers and Florida National Guard members to Texas, saying President Biden had failed to secure the border, a repeat of a similar effort in 2021 ahead of Mr. DeSantis’s re-election campaign.This year, Mr. DeSantis also signed a bill cracking down on undocumented immigrants that was seen as one of the harshest such measures in the country. And he announced a national coalition of more than 90 local sheriffs who said they would band together to fight gang activity and illegal drugs that they argue are the result of the Biden administration’s border policies. (Only a few of the sheriffs are from border states.)Some immigration analysts questioned the viability of Mr. DeSantis’s proposals, suggesting they were driven by the political imperatives of a presidential campaign.“The bulk of the proposal is the usual laundry list of Republican talking points that have not been successful, either in Congress or in the court of public opinion,” said Louis DeSipio, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, citing the idea to end birthright citizenship, among other proposals. “The purpose is probably not a serious policy debate but instead to focus on an issue that is a weakness for Biden and a sensitive one for Trump.”And Jennie Murray, the president of the National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit group that advocates immigration policies that address economic and national security needs, pointed to the difficulties in actually carrying out Mr. DeSantis’s plans.“Deporting huge numbers of immigrants would be costly and extremely detrimental, especially during these times of historic labor shortages,” she said.Miriam Jordan More